September 11th has been a relevant date in my life for a lot longer than 19 years… a sentiment you’ll hear from every Chilean.
Yesterday, you heard my 2001 version… and I was just a little kid, but here’s the 1973 version… events which have some relevance to today.
A bit of history…
In 1964, Eduardo Frei was elected president of Chile. He was the head of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP), pretty comparable to today’s Canadian Liberals. He held power until the 1970 election, where it was expected that the CDP, who’d been running South America’s best economy, would be re-elected. Unfortunately for them… well, recall our provincial election of 1996 where Glen Clark and the NDP, with only 30-something percent of the popular vote, won the election — because the Reform Party managed to snag enough votes away from the Liberals to tilt things in that direction — the same thing happened in Chile, a split of the centrist/right-wing vote… except the beneficiary and winner of all that wasn’t a moderate/leftist NDP… it was a full-on Marxist socialist by the name of Salvador Allende.
Economically speaking, things for Chile did not go so well under Allende, and on 9/11, 1973, a CIA-backed coup, supported by the Chilean army, navy and police force… took over the country. Allende committed suicide in the midst of the presidential palace being bombed and overrun by the military. The constitution was suspended. The Republic of Chile, formerly a model democracy, was instantly transformed into a military dictatorship.
All of this was initially supported by the CDP, who expected once things settled down – perhaps a few months — there’d be a general election and things would get back to normal, right? Wrong.
One of military leaders, General Augusto Pinochet, decided he liked the view from the throne. Suddenly, he wasn’t General Pinochet… he was President Pinochet, and there he remained until 1990… and left only after he agreed to hold a plebiscite to let the people decide whether he should be allowed to stick around or not. They voted him out, but not before he embedded all sorts of immunity clauses into the new constitution to prevent new governments from coming after him for his numerous crimes, accumulated over his 17-year reign of terror. What’s the relevance here?
It’s a scenario that’s played out numerous times over history; a country is slipping backwards, the military steps in to restore order, ostensibly as a stop-gap measure until things settle down, and the country can go back to being what it’s supposed to be… except that fascist military dictatorships don’t just appear out of thin air. And, more importantly, they don't go away easily either.
Something for our neighbours to the south to consider, in the days ahead, and relating to what I wrote about yesterday… it’s far easier to break things than it is to fix them. It takes one day to break them. It takes decades to fix them. Given that Donald Trump contested an election he won, we can certainly expect, no matter what happens, that he won’t leave quietly. He’s already laying the groundwork for that.
Like Boris Yeltsin, standing on a tank… or George W. Bush, standing on a pile of rubble – the WTC remnants on 9/11 – at some point, Donald Trump will stand up… my guess would be on the newly-renovated White House Rose Garden… or maybe the hood of his Cadillac… and demand, “Who’s with me??”
And the correct answer should be…. <crickets>
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I look foreword to your post each day. Thank you
Lemme guess – when Joe Biden chooses not to debate Trump and is hidden from scrutiny until the election, this will be because of Trump’s grab for power?
Loved this film, thanks for reminding us how it works.
Fabulous commentary as usual.
Good day Horatio,….. I had 15 years when I lived the 11th of September of 1973,…..among a few things that I still remember from those days was the big difficult to buy food, fuel, clothes, the car production was almost zero, no tv , no refrigerator, etc the annual inflation was around 1,000 % per year , our currency value went down, a lot,…. the mining activity received a rocket bomb too, the government took control of the mining production , becoming the owner by decrete putting political controllers over the companies, there were no law, we were living under a different type of a dictatorship, the communist party decision . Allende had the political responsibility, he was given us a similar life to the one , that you can read , people is living in Venezuela, today. My mother sent me to buy bread to the bakery , the order was every people on the file can buy half a kilo , no more,…..
after these 47 years , now in 2020, is it possible to live in a place where the communist party impose their way , condemning to live as they choose? People never learns, there are still people believing the communist are an option to rule the country.
Of course, is very bad to be a Pinochet supporting fan, but because I am an old man I can tell you the truth,…. I think Pinochet was a good leader, changed our country for the good, not the usual dictator you found in other places, ruling Chile for 17 years,….
A dictator after all imposing laws, order and prosperity, a Constitution, ….. probably a very good one,….because several democratic government were ruling changing Chile, bringing us a better future,…
i am not supporting crimes or deaths, a child of 15 years old has nothing to do with those events , I am writing about my perspective ,……