http://www.ua.es/webs/centrobenedetti/Imagenes/chile30_fotog.jpg
1973
Augusto Pinochet takes power in a USA backed military coup against the democratically elected government of Chile. President Allende is killed when the palace in Santiago is bombed. The USA had attempted to sabotage Allende's election campaigns in 1964 (successfully) and 1970 (unsuccessfully).
This is the end of 150 years of democracy in the country. According to Pinochet: "Democracy is the breeding ground of communism".
During the coup, hundreds are herded into a football stadium where many are executed by the military. At least 5,000 people are killed, tens of thousands are tortured, over 9,000 are exiled and around 250,000 are interred in concentration camps. Specially trained dogs are used to sexually molest female prisoners. Women are stopped in the street and have their trousers slit by soldiers: "In Chile women wear dresses". Many books are burned.
The political singer, Victor Jara, is tortured and shot, his body dumped in the street. Even nationals of other countries are victims including citizens of the UK, Spain and even the USA (Charles Horman and Frank Terruggi). These events are shown in the USA made film, Missing.
The USA and most Western governments recognise, praise and trade with the new regime that rules with terror for the next 17 years. The coup is the culmination of three years of USA planning. In 1970, the USA Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had commented on the results of the elections in Chile that had brought Allende to power:
"I don't see why we have to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."
During this period, the director of the CIA, Richard Helms, informed his staff that:
"President Nixon [has] decided that an Allende regime in Chile was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him."
The CIA had planted news articles around the world about "Chile's peril". The articles were part of a covert propaganda campaign which, the CIA boasted, resulted in at least 726 stories, broadcasts and editorials against an Allende presidency. The USA began planning to remove Allende in secret. A CIA memo states:
"Dr. Kissinger discussed his desire that the word of our encouragement to the Chilean military in recent weeks be kept as secret as possible."
A cable from CIA headquarters to Henry Hecksher, the CIA station chief in Santiago, revealed:
"It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup ... prior to October 24, but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource.... It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the [USA government] and American hand be well hidden. Please review all your present and possibly new activities to include propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure which will permit you to continue to press forward toward our [deleted] objective."
Economic pressure was put onto the new regime. At the World Bank, USA officials worked behind the scenes to ensure that Chile would be disqualified for a pending $ 21,000,000 livestock improvement credit as well as future loans.
The mix of economic sabotage, political propaganda and army prodding works. Allende finds himself confronted by growing disorder and soaring inflation. At every turn, his policies encounter well-funded adversaries. On 11 September 1973, amid the mounting chaos, Chile's military strike. In a classic coup d'etat, the army seizes control of strategic sites throughout the country and corners Allende in his presidential offices. He dies in a fire-fight, apparently shooting himself in the head to avoid capture.
A report written by the USA's Marine Lt. Col. Patrick Ryan in Valparaiso asserts that "Chile's coup de etat was close to perfect". A few years later, Kissinger would assure Pinochet that "In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here... We wish your government well".
Three weeks after the coup, the USA's President Nixon authorises $ 24,000,000 in commodity credits to buy wheat. A second $ 24,000,000 in commodity credits to Chile for feed corn is authorised. Two destroyers are transferred to the Chilean navy.
Armando Fernandez Larios (responsible for killing 72 political prisoners) later moves to the USA where his extradition to a democratic Chile is refused.
Poem from Pablo Neruda's Canto General
Anaconda Mining Co.
Name of a coiled snake,
insatiable gullet, green monster,
in the clustered heights,
in my country's rarefied
saddle, beneath the moon
of hardness--excavator--
you open the mineral's
lunar craters, the galleries
of virgin copper, sheathed
in its granite sands.
In Chuquicamata's eternal
night, in the heights,
I've seen the sacrificial fire burn,
the profuse crackling
of the cyclops that devoured the Chileans' hands, weight
and waist, coiling them
beneath its copper vertebrae,
draining their warm blood,
crushing their skeletons
and spitting them out in the
desolate desert wastelands.
Air resounds in the heights
of starry Chuquicamata.
The galleries annihilate
the planet's resistance
with man's little hands,
the gorges' sulphuric bird
trembles, the metal's
iron cold mutinies
with its sullen scars,
and when the horns blast
the earth swallows a procession
of minuscule men who descend
to the crater's mandibles.
They're tiny captains,
my nephews, my children,
and when they pour the ingots
toward the seas, wipe
their brows and return shuddering
to the uttermost chill,
the great serpent eats them up,
reduces them, crushes them,
covers them with malignant spittle,
casts them out to the roads,
murders them with police,
sets them to rot in Pisagua,
imprisons them, spits on them,
buys a trecherous president
who insults and persecutes them,
kills them with hunger on the plains
of the sandy immensity.
And on the infernal slopes
there's cross after twisted cross,
the only kindling scattered
by the tree of mining.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Chile_Hardball_TPOP.html
1973
Augusto Pinochet takes power in a USA backed military coup against the democratically elected government of Chile. President Allende is killed when the palace in Santiago is bombed. The USA had attempted to sabotage Allende's election campaigns in 1964 (successfully) and 1970 (unsuccessfully).
This is the end of 150 years of democracy in the country. According to Pinochet: "Democracy is the breeding ground of communism".
During the coup, hundreds are herded into a football stadium where many are executed by the military. At least 5,000 people are killed, tens of thousands are tortured, over 9,000 are exiled and around 250,000 are interred in concentration camps. Specially trained dogs are used to sexually molest female prisoners. Women are stopped in the street and have their trousers slit by soldiers: "In Chile women wear dresses". Many books are burned.
The political singer, Victor Jara, is tortured and shot, his body dumped in the street. Even nationals of other countries are victims including citizens of the UK, Spain and even the USA (Charles Horman and Frank Terruggi). These events are shown in the USA made film, Missing.
The USA and most Western governments recognise, praise and trade with the new regime that rules with terror for the next 17 years. The coup is the culmination of three years of USA planning. In 1970, the USA Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had commented on the results of the elections in Chile that had brought Allende to power:
"I don't see why we have to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people."
During this period, the director of the CIA, Richard Helms, informed his staff that:
"President Nixon [has] decided that an Allende regime in Chile was not acceptable to the United States. The President asked the Agency to prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him."
The CIA had planted news articles around the world about "Chile's peril". The articles were part of a covert propaganda campaign which, the CIA boasted, resulted in at least 726 stories, broadcasts and editorials against an Allende presidency. The USA began planning to remove Allende in secret. A CIA memo states:
"Dr. Kissinger discussed his desire that the word of our encouragement to the Chilean military in recent weeks be kept as secret as possible."
A cable from CIA headquarters to Henry Hecksher, the CIA station chief in Santiago, revealed:
"It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup ... prior to October 24, but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource.... It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the [USA government] and American hand be well hidden. Please review all your present and possibly new activities to include propaganda, black operations, surfacing of intelligence or disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else your imagination can conjure which will permit you to continue to press forward toward our [deleted] objective."
Economic pressure was put onto the new regime. At the World Bank, USA officials worked behind the scenes to ensure that Chile would be disqualified for a pending $ 21,000,000 livestock improvement credit as well as future loans.
The mix of economic sabotage, political propaganda and army prodding works. Allende finds himself confronted by growing disorder and soaring inflation. At every turn, his policies encounter well-funded adversaries. On 11 September 1973, amid the mounting chaos, Chile's military strike. In a classic coup d'etat, the army seizes control of strategic sites throughout the country and corners Allende in his presidential offices. He dies in a fire-fight, apparently shooting himself in the head to avoid capture.
A report written by the USA's Marine Lt. Col. Patrick Ryan in Valparaiso asserts that "Chile's coup de etat was close to perfect". A few years later, Kissinger would assure Pinochet that "In the United States, as you know, we are sympathetic with what you are trying to do here... We wish your government well".
Three weeks after the coup, the USA's President Nixon authorises $ 24,000,000 in commodity credits to buy wheat. A second $ 24,000,000 in commodity credits to Chile for feed corn is authorised. Two destroyers are transferred to the Chilean navy.
Armando Fernandez Larios (responsible for killing 72 political prisoners) later moves to the USA where his extradition to a democratic Chile is refused.
Poem from Pablo Neruda's Canto General
Anaconda Mining Co.
Name of a coiled snake,
insatiable gullet, green monster,
in the clustered heights,
in my country's rarefied
saddle, beneath the moon
of hardness--excavator--
you open the mineral's
lunar craters, the galleries
of virgin copper, sheathed
in its granite sands.
In Chuquicamata's eternal
night, in the heights,
I've seen the sacrificial fire burn,
the profuse crackling
of the cyclops that devoured the Chileans' hands, weight
and waist, coiling them
beneath its copper vertebrae,
draining their warm blood,
crushing their skeletons
and spitting them out in the
desolate desert wastelands.
Air resounds in the heights
of starry Chuquicamata.
The galleries annihilate
the planet's resistance
with man's little hands,
the gorges' sulphuric bird
trembles, the metal's
iron cold mutinies
with its sullen scars,
and when the horns blast
the earth swallows a procession
of minuscule men who descend
to the crater's mandibles.
They're tiny captains,
my nephews, my children,
and when they pour the ingots
toward the seas, wipe
their brows and return shuddering
to the uttermost chill,
the great serpent eats them up,
reduces them, crushes them,
covers them with malignant spittle,
casts them out to the roads,
murders them with police,
sets them to rot in Pisagua,
imprisons them, spits on them,
buys a trecherous president
who insults and persecutes them,
kills them with hunger on the plains
of the sandy immensity.
And on the infernal slopes
there's cross after twisted cross,
the only kindling scattered
by the tree of mining.
http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Kissinger/Chile_Hardball_TPOP.html
