Salvador Allende
On September 11, 1973 a fascist military junta, encouraged, incited and supported by the government of the United States and its organs of terror, violently seized power in Chile, abolishing all democratic and progressive gains of the Chilean people.
Salvador Allende was elected to the presidency of Chile in September 1970. This was a period of struggle for political, economic and social change under very difficult conditions. Allende began nationalizing foreign businesses in Chile.
During this time the US government and the CIA worked to destabilize Allende’s government, spending millions of dollars funding opposition groups, anti-Allende propaganda,inciting strikes and unrest in key sectors of the Chilean economy and building ever closer relations with the Chilean military.
Powerful Chilean and multinational companies used every method at their disposal to undermine the government.The US exercised its influence to place an embargo on Chilean copper in conditions where Chile’s balance of payments was heavily dependent on its copper exports. Simultaneously, the World Bank and other banking institutions, at the behest of the US,refused loans and credits to Chile.
Allende supporters
In addition to its economic terrorism against the Chilean people international capital and the US fomented a coup against Allende, to discourage his example.
In the aftermath of the coup, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, commander in chief of the armed forces, became dictator of Chile. He overturned and subverted the democratic wishes of the Chilean people. Thousands were arbitrarily arrested and detained. The imposition of martial law, the creation of curfews and “emergency zones”, military intervention in education, the development of a system of concentration camps, torture, imprisonment without trial, executions and “disappearances” became the order of the day. Within the first few years alone, repression had already reached shocking levels with more than 20,000 people murdered, 95,000 arbitrarily detained, 2,000 disappeared, over 72,000 children having lost their parents and 25,000 students being expelled from the universities. The premeditated murder of opponents of the dictatorship abroad such as the killing of Professor Orlando Letelier in Washington and General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires demonstrated that the reach of the junta and the DINA were not confined to Chile and even those progressive who fled into exile were not safe.
The United States immediately offered military and economic aid to the dictatorship.
The Workers’ Party of Ireland at the time and in the subsequent years was part of the worldwide solidarity campaign with the Chilean people against the Pinochet junta. We remember the heroic struggles of the Chilean people against the dictatorship and the many lives that were lost and destroyed. We remember also the role of the US and its agencies in those years of terror, a role which continues today across the globe as exemplified by its interventions and attempts to destabilise Venezuela.
Today we remember Chile’s 9/11 and the bloody hands of imperialism.
Venceremos.
Gerry Grainger
International Secretary
Workers’ Party of Ireland