A date which is now synonymous with the attacks in the US marks, for millions of Chileans, the anniversary of the 1973 military coup. President Salvador Allende’s elected government was replaced by General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. Many thousands were murdered – far more than on the US’s ‘9/11’ – and still more tens of thousands were tortured, ‘disappeared’ and dispossessed over the following 17 years.
In the early 1970s, the ‘Southern Cone’ countries of Latin America – Chile, Uruguay and Argentina – joined Brazil, Peru and Bolivia under a shroud of brutal repression, darkened by poisonous components from the US and corporate power. Henry Kissinger, US President Nixon’s Secretary of State at the time, was quoted as saying: ‘I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves.’
