John Buell

Chile and 9/11 (1973)

Let me begin with an apology. Last Fall I forgot to commemorate one of the most neglected yet enduringly consequential anniversaries in our nation’s history. This anniversary is often hidden from corporate news because it exposes the bankrupt Cold War priorities that shaped and continue to shape so much of our foreign and domestic policies. I refer of course to 9/11. No not 9/11/2001 but 9/11/1973.

On that day, the US CIA backed and orchestrated a coup that murdered Salvador Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, and installed Augusto Pinochet. The latter became one of the most ruthless tyrants in the blood-soaked history of Latin America. Chile is once again in the news. Its poor and working-class citizens have reached a breaking point as the costs of even minimal food, shelter, and transportation are increasingly beyond the reach of many, compliments of another IMF required austerity package.

The corporate media have given some coverage to the demonstrations, but they fail to acknowledge the role of the Nixon administration, the CIA, and neoliberal ideology. At a point in current domestic politics when the CIA is playing so prominent a role this omission is inexcusable.

The US has a long history — back at least to the Monroe Doctrine— of treating Latin America as a colony of the United States. As Steven Kinzer has pointed out, overthrowing opposition figures, who had the audacity to insist on control of their nations’ own natural resources, at the behest of major US corporations, is all in a day’s work for the CIA. But unlike earlier coups, this was designed to buttress a whole ideology and not merely secure the profits of favored corporations

Global Research author Shane Quinn provides the key elements of this story: “with crucial CIA input, Pinochet went about privatizing the Chilean economy to suit American corporate requirements. The “Chicago boys,” neoliberal Chilean economists trained at University of Chicago, were welcomed into the government – and were supported by the IMF and the World Bank.

“The Chicago boys’ policies had a disastrous effect on the population as unemployment more than doubled between 1974 and 1975, to over 18%. By 1983 unemployment further rocketed to 34.6%, far worse than the Great Depression in the US.”

In interim years, the Chilean economy has had some good periods, mostly a consequence of speculative financial flows, but its overall record is one of the worst in Latin America, and its inequalities the most pronounced.

The population revolted at various stages, but this is where Pinochet’s brutal methods of repression came in handy and were tacitly welcomed by the US government and the IMF. During the Pinochet years 40,000 Chileans were tortured, often even by physicians who administered medications to prolong their lives so that torture could be lengthened. In addition to torture, Pinochet was a major drug trafficker, establishing great fortunes for himself and his cronies by selling cocaine to Americans and Europeans.

Yes, Mr. President, there are bad people south of the border. US policy and political narratives put many of them there. The drug cartels and drug violence are another instance of the blowback that came before and set the tone for the most highly publicized blowback of 2001.

Chile represented the hidden scandal of neoliberalism and the deceptively named Washington consensus. Deceptively named because the neoliberal agenda did not emerge spontaneously nor was it fashioned through any participatory process. Its institutions and policies had to be imposed by force of arms and unspeakable bloodshed.

9/11/1973 has as much or more influence on the course of US foreign and domestic policy as the more recognized 911. It helped crush any form of democratic socialism, especially those that showed promise of social justice and economic growth. That Chile under Allende constituted a military threat to the US was absurd on its face. During World War II, Secretary of War Henry Stimson acknowledged the realities of the situation, describing Latin America as “our little region over here which has never bothered anybody”.(quoted by Quinn) Its “threat” to the US lay in its potentially very successful example of alternatives to neoliberal capitalism.

The stated aim of the Nixon administration in opposing Allende’s incoming government was to destroy any potentially successful for of nationalistic or socially just for of economic development. These were portrayed as a “virus” that might “infect” others – the domino effect

Use of the virus metaphor is revealing. It suggests a faith that opposition to neoliberal capitalism can only come from external, evil forces and has little to do with any intrinsic defect. These are tropes that go back far into the Cold War.

The coup and the repression that followed gave strength and growing confidence to forces of reaction. The combination of widespread poverty and right wing paramilitary violence were perfect incubators for cruel right wing totalitarianism.

9/11 sent a signal to right wing dictators everywhere that violence of any intensity is not only tolerable ,but is even encouraged in the interest of capitalist control. Today, the popular demonstrations on behalf of climate and economic justice are sending another message to political leaders of all stripes. These efforts are fraught with danger, but so too is the status quo.

I hope some day to see 9/11 commemorated as a day of remembrance and apology for victims of that ugly combination of imperialism and neoliberal economics that has so dominated US foreign policy for more than a century.

John Buell lives in Southwest Harbor, Maine and writes on labor and environmental issues. His books include “Politics, Religion, and Culture in an Anxious Age” (Palgrave MacMillan, 2011). Email Jbuell@acadia.net.

From The Progressive Populist, December 1, 2019

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