Rev Left Radio - [BEST OF] Chilean Coup of 1973: Salvador Allende, Pinochet, & the CIA

Episode Date: September 12, 2023

On the 50th anniversay of the US-backed fascist coup in Chile, we are re-uploading our classic episode on the topic!  ORIGINALLY RELEASED May 21, 2018 Professor of History at ASU, Alex Aviña, returns to RLR to discuss the Chilean coup of 1973. Intro Music: Isle of Man by Feudalism  Outro Music: Monsters by Bambu Please support our show and get access to bonus content here: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio

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fascist ideology to turn it in and turn it up loud Revolutionary Left Radio starts now Hello everybody, welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio I'm your host and Comrade Brett O'Shea And today we have back on Alex Avenia

to talk about Chile, Yende, Pinochet, the CIA, and that entire event. Alex was a guest on our previous episode about the Mexican Revolution and the Zapatistas, and today he's actually coming to us from inside the Atlanta airport on his way to Spain. So we really appreciate you, Alex, taking the time to find a little bit of a quiet space in the airport to do this interview. We really appreciate it. What's up? Yeah, no problems. Thanks, man. I appreciate the invitation to be on again.

For sure. I like having repeat guests because we kind of know each other a little bit. We're a little more comfortable and the conversation seems to get better every time I have somebody back on. But for those who missed our previous episode on the Mexican Revolution, would you just like to maybe introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background? Sure. So I'm a professor of history at Arizona State University. I'm a historian, really, of modern Mexico.

But I teach modern Latin American history courses and revolution courses. and the Chilean case is one that I always teach. But more so than that, I think I became a historian because of a book that I read as an undergraduate in a revolution's class, this wonderful book by Peter Wynn, Weavers of Revolution, which looks at this revolutionary process from below. So that's that book and its oral history component really got me into thinking about wanting to be a historian. So I have like this weird personal connection to Chile. All right. So did you want to say anything else about what got you more and more interested as you learned more about the history of Chile and everything that happened? What got you interested in it to really pursue it as you have? Sure. So in addition, while I was an undergraduate, I had a political scientist professor whose husband and partner was actually a Chilean popular unity activist who was captured and tortured in the national soccer stadium in Santiago. So it's just these personal.

interest came together while I was undergraduate. As a professor, as I teach this revolutionary process, one of the things that interests me about Chile is its uniqueness in terms of trying to construct this revolutionary process in a way that's different than these other revolutions that

tend to take more attention in Latin American history. So our last episode, we talked about the Mexican Revolution, the Zapatistas. The Cuban revolution is another Latin American revolution that gets a lot of attention. Maybe the Nicaragua revolution in San Anas in the late 70s. but Chile sometimes gets lost in a more popular sense.

And what's always fascinating me about Chile is that they try to construct socialism from below through a different means, right? Through following a country's legalistic, constitutional, and historical traditions. And I think that's one of the things that stands out about this revolutionary process that continues to fascinate me to this day.

Yeah, and I think we will get into that as this episode goes on, but would you sort of define, the Chilean revolution as a democratic socialist revolution as opposed to a purely armed Marxist or anarchist revolution? I would just call it a, it was a socialist revolution, right? I think splitting that, to me at least, and I think to some of the popular unity activists and maybe even Aende, there's no need to put the democratic before the socialist part because they understood socialism as a democratic radical ideology.

So I think because Salvador Allende, who was this democratically elected Marxist president in 1970, you have this peaceful, well, legalistic, let's say. There's no armed insurrection in which a small group or a revolutionary movement takes power. You have a Salvador Allende who's actually elected as president of Chile on an explicit platform, right, in which he's saying, we are trying to construct socialism for the masses, for the workers, the peasants. the progressives, the intellectuals, the women. Yeah, and I think it's really interesting to remember how this revolution came about via democratic mechanisms, precisely because the first thing that anti-communists or anti-socialists always want to do is paint these movements as inherently authoritarian or disruptive or chaotic or murderous. And in reality, supposedly, they did everything right. They went about the

regular, popular mechanisms for electing a democratic leader into office without any sort of of brutality or authoritarian means, quote-unquote authoritarian. And still, as we're going to find out throughout this episode, it wasn't enough to the biggest country, the strongest country in the world who loves to opine about democracy and freedom and liberty and the right for people to choose their own representative governments. The moment that that becomes inconvenient for the U.S. imperialist state, it's attacked from every angle.

But again, we'll get into that as this goes on. I think a good way to start and the best way to kind of get into this topic is to maybe highlight some of the background conditions that Chileans were operating in, which eventually led up to the election of Salvador Allende. So what was Chile like in the 50s and 60s? Who had power and wealth and who didn't? Sure. So if we step back a little bit and look at it like in a longer historical perspective, Chile, at least up until September 11th, 1973, there was a popular perception within Latin America and within Chile that the country was somehow different than the rest of Latin America, right? That they had only had two constitutions since independence from Spain

in the 19th century, that the military had largely stayed out of politics, that there was the military respected the Chilean constitution and constitutional civic life. So there was this image of Chile always, like constituted almost like a Switzerland of Latin America. Now, what that image conceals is that this was an exclusionary system. It may have been less violent or less outwardly oligarchic as some of these other post-colonial Latin American nations. But for the mass majority of Chilean history, the vast population was disenfranchised politically and economically, right? So we have this famous incident, for instance, in 1907, where you have a massacre of nitrate

workers in Iquique in the far north of Chile in the Atacama Desert region. More than 2,000 minors, their wives, their children, their families are massacred by the Chilean military, right um so despite the fact that there's only a couple instances in which the military takes power or you have this other interesting moment in 1932 when you have a socialist republic of chile that's momentarily uh proclaimed by this guy who i think has one of the greatest names in latin american history colonel marmaduke grove with the exception of that like there was some sort of a constitutional rule in chile um chile was actually also one of the only countries in the world had a popular front government, right?

So other than France and Spain, Chile had the third popular front government in the late 30s and early 40s, and that's when Salvadoriende comes into the political scene that we can talk about in a little bit. So on the surface, it seemed like Chile was a constitutional republic. Now, at the same time, political enfranchisement was limited to small sections of the population. So by the time we get into the 1960s, for instance, there was a 1960s study that talks about how the 80% of the land in Chile was owned by 7.5% of the population. So you have a land a gentry that's notorious for its aristocratic tendencies. They don't use

their land, right? They have this almost like this feudalistic mindset when it comes to land ownership. So you have this pernicious asienda system in which the vast majority of the land is owned by a tiny percentage of the population. 70% of the peasantry earned less than 100 US dollars annually, which has

repercussions for trying to create any sort of industrial domestic and manufacturing market for the Chilean economy. You had a majority of 2.5 million peasants that lived in terrible housing, they suffered nutritional deficiencies, you had high rates of illiteracy, lack of educational opportunity, lack of health care, peasants in the 50s and 60s started leaving the countryside to seek economic opportunities in the cities. These cities were not a process that had begun early in the 20th century,

but then takes off again in the 50s and 60s. These cities aren't prepared to house them, so you have the creation of these massive shanty towns, right? So political and economic power are really enshrined in an oligarchic system. Nonetheless, again, you still have voting rights, you still have constitutional governments, you still have presidents that are elected, and they serve their terms, and they leave office. And within the broader region of Latin America, this level of economic and political, economic inequality and political disenfranchisement is not as bad as some other Latin American countries, but still, it's pretty, it's pretty, it's an oligarchic system.

So by the time we get to the 1960s, and we get to, especially after the Cuban revolution, there's a sense amongst the Chilean elites and working with people like John F. Kennedy and the United States government that that revolution, that might be on the march, right? That the conditions in places like Chile are so unequal that some sort of revolutionary situation might be brewing. So what John F. Kennedy does in nearly 60s is proclaim this alliance for progress, which is supposed to be a martial plan for Latin America. This was supposed to, it was a different type of counterinsurgency than the one they tried to do in Cuba with the Bay of Pigs. Now, what that does in the 60s, though, is that, like, it raises popular expectations, right? Because you have elected governments who are decreeing things like a grain reform. They're talking about higher wages for the workers and the peasants.

And a lot of this stuff doesn't come into fruition. And in terms, in Latin America in general, the Alliance for Progress program generally failed to meet the economic and political goals that were set by Latin American elites. and John F. Kennedy, U.S. elites. So by the time we get to Allende, in 1970, this is a country. It's highly unequal economically. Political power is restricted to a minority of people, but you have raised expectations since the early 1960s for peasants and for workers that their lives are going to be better.

And you also have growing population, you have growing cities. So there was this really dynamic situation brewing by the late 1960s. Yeah. And one thing I want to ask, too, is one of the biggest industries in Chile was the copper industry. And am I correct in stating that large parts, if not the entirety of the copper industry, was more or less owned by firms from the United States, U.S. corporations? Yes. So the Chilean economy, like most of the Latin American economies from the late 19th century throughout the 20th, right there,

they depend on one or two single commodities. So Chile depended on nitrates until artificial nitrates were invented, right? So then the vast majority of Chilean economy switches and it becomes dependent on copper. So I think in the 1950s, like 80% of income coming in or wealth coming into the country is based on the copper economy or copper global prices. Yes, and most of the copper was owned by Kennecott Company and Anaconda Copper Company. And that's going to come into play later after Yende, ultimately gets elected and some of those U.S. corporations start leaning on the U.S. government

to do something about, you know, the nationalization of the copper industry, etc. But let's go ahead and talk about A Yende as both a human being as well as a politician. Like who was Salvador Yende and what sort of platform did he run on that garnered him so much popular support? So Salvador Yende, who in some ways he's one of these like figures that it's super mythical. But he seems like too good to be true, right? So he was, he comes from like comfortable, comfortable family economically from Valparaiso. He studies to be a doctor, right?

But he's, he's very clear that during his teenage years on the way home from school, he would stop at this anarchist shoemaker's house, cobbler. And it was this, this Italian anarchist, Juan de Marci, who introduced radical text to him. They talked about life. They talked about politics. Demarchi, for instance, introduced Ayende to the writings of Mikhail Bakunen. They played chess, right? So Ayende always traced back one of the earliest phases of political radicalization with these meetings that he had with, this informal just hanging out with Juan Demarchi, this shoe cobbler and carpenter. And this guy on his own accord, right?

He was this, he is an Italian immigrant. He went to Argentina. He went to Chile. He was a tireless organizer. I think he even may have belonged to the IWW by the late 1920s. So Iyenda becomes a doctor and his experience treating poor people essentially also leads those radicalization. He starts to view illnesses in a broader social, political and economic context, right? So he's not just looking at illness.

He does not, he's not just diagnosing illnesses and malnutrition as the consequence of individual actions, but he's looking at it in a broader context. And he starts to realize, right, that a lot of these illnesses and nutritional deficiencies are the product of very. precise political economic decisions made at high levels of the government. By 1933, he helped found the Chilean Socialist Party, which was not aligned with the common turn or with Moscow. He enters political life in the late 1930s with this popular front government. At a really young age, he becomes the Minister of Health of Chile. And from then on out, he's involved in the political life of Chile. He's a federal deputy.

He becomes a senator. he runs for president four times he's very consistent in his political and ideological activism right he's very clear about that he's a marxist that he's a socialist he's very clear about who he's fighting for for the workers the peasants the women uh for peasant women um he runs for the third time he runs for president in 1964 he gets really close to winning and this is where we have um you know now we have declassified documents of of the CIA in which they were pouring money into the christian Democratic Party that was opposing Ayanda's candidacy. They were pouring money into the national press and, you know, using all the red-baiting

strategies that they had done since the Cuban Revolution. So the thing that, like, stands out to me about Ayanne is the longevity of his political and social activism. Toward the end of his life, when a coup seemed imminent, he said that he wasn't made to be a prophet and apostle or a martyr, but that he was a social. fighter and an activist and he was going to go down that way and like to me when I first read that as a 22 year old or 21 year old that was just like struck by this guy's consistency right um now he's not obviously he has a lot of issues that we can talk about right um but I think someone who has

four plus decades of that type of political and social activism and commitment I mean I think that's something to uh worth teaching right um especially when he ends up being elected president in 1970s. Yeah, and you mentioned the sort of the documents that have recently been released. If I'm not mistaken, it was in 2014, a bunch of previously classified documents about the CIA's involvement in Chile during this period were released. So this is only four years old. But once that documentation came out, sort of a resurgence in interest in Chile, you know, kind of took up a little bit because there was this, this finally these facts and this information that we could used to more, you know, more fully understand what exactly happened in Chile. And of course,

what happened was deep, deep U.S. imperial involvement in not only toppling Allende, but installing and supporting fascist dictatorship under Pinochet, which again, we'll get to in a bit. But let's just sticking to 1970, as you mentioned, Ayende was elected, president of Chile, and after he was elected, what sort of policies that he began enacting and how did they benefit the poor and working-class Chileans who ultimately elected him? So in many ways, the platform of popular unity, which was this unwieldy political coalition that included the Communist Party, the Socialist Party,

Social Democrats, Christian Socialists, an assortment of other groups. What they were trying to, in some ways, their platform was the actual fulfillment of some of these demands and some of these policies that in 1960s Christian Democratic governments that tried to implement, right? So one being land reform and the other being the nationalization of copper.

So those policies actually begin with the Christian democratic governments of the 1960s. But they don't really accomplish much. So part of the platform of Unidad Popular, Popular Unity, was to actually implement these things, right? In their platform, one of the quotes that really stands out to me is when they write, quote, the popular and revolutionary forces have not united to struggle for the simple substitution of one president of the republic for another, nor to replace one party for another in the government, but to carry out the profound changes the national situation demands

based on the transfer of power from the old dominant groups to the workers, the peasants, and the progressive sectors of the middle class of the city and the countryside. So they're very upfront about how they're going to create socialism and what socialism means

from below through constitutional legalistic means. And they're going to try their best to not scare away the middle classes. They're going to try their best not to scare away the more nationalistic-minded of small and medium industry owners. I think really the core of this, without getting into the specifics of the platform, the core of this platform is national sovereignty and social justice. How can we recuperate Chile's economic national sovereignty,

and how can we embark on a program of social justice for all Chileans? So they carry through with the nationalization of copper. they complete it. They carry through a pretty successful land reform initiative that would begun during the 1960s. They did, they tried to increase access to health clinics, to education. One of the programs that you'll read about, that seems not that important, but to me says a lot about what this revolutionary process did for was trying to give a glass of, a daily glass of milk to all Chilean children because natural nutritional deficiency was a serious problem in the shanty towns in the countryside. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

They did this through pre-existing constitutional mechanisms, which is astounding to a certain, looking at it from a certain perspective, right? Because he wins the presidency in 1970, only because really there's three candidates, and he wins the most, like 36% of the vote. The Supreme Court will remain in the hands of the most regressive members of the right wing. The Congress will never be more than 50% in his favor, if I remember correctly. and you have all sorts of like active violent right wing forces in chile as well that will come out against this process and despite that if you look at municipal elections and if you look at the midterm elections of 73 you could see that the popularity of popular unity was only increasing despite economic hardship despite outside attack despite internal sabotage carried out by right wing fascistic forces they were they were and i think that's why the coup starts right i mean the coup has launched precisely because because some of these military leaders realize that this process is winning,

that this process has successfully elevated the political, social, and revolutionary consciousness of the peasants and the workers. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and I think it's also worth noting that when there was the attempt to nationalize the copper industry that was previously owned in large part by U.S. corporations, the same thing happened in Chile that happened in Cuba, which was an attempt by the new revolutionary governments, to compensate U.S. firms for the land or the industries that they had previously owned.

And I read somewhere that Allende compensated or offered to compensate U.S. copper companies more than their book value just to let them hand over those industries to the Chilean people themselves. So there's always a good faith attempt to compensate these companies for their industry. Oh, totally. I mean, that happens throughout Latin America, right? Like when you have a grain reform in Guatemala, for instance, 50s, it's not that the government steps in just takes the land away. They offer to compensate United Fruit Company or these individual landowners that they're trying to take the land away from, right?

But what they use to base that the value of the land is what these companies and individuals recorded on their taxes, which I think is kind of funny, right? Because they know that these companies are massively underreporting their tax responsibility, right? So it comes back to them in the ads like when when you have a nationalization or a revolutionary process that like expropriates economic sectors that are deemed vital to the economic and political life of the country absolutely yeah now before before we move on i'm just going to read a little chunk from an article by opendemocracy.com where they're they're talking about some of the things that a yende started implementing just to kind of top off this this part of the the conversation

and the article says a yende immediately set out to implement major social reforms Examples included social security rights for all workers, land redistribution, rent reductions, improved health care facilities, improved housing and sanitation, free milk for nursing mothers and school children, anti-illiteracy campaigns, the raising of the minimum wage, and the granting of 3,000 scholarships to the marginalized Mampuchas Indian community. Positive results from such initiatives included an increase in school enrollments and a reduction of nearly 20% in malnutrition rates, amongst the very young. In order to finance such programs, Allende embarked on an ambitious program encompassing the accelerated nationalization and expropriation of industries. Such policies were of deep concern to U.S. corporations such as Connecticut, Anaconda, Pepsi, and IT, and T. And criticizing the wildly excessive profits enjoyed by U.S. corporations from copper, Chile's most lucrative resource, Allende argued that, quote, those same enterprises exploited Chile's copper

for many years. In the last 40 tiers alone, taking out more than $4,000 million in profits, although their initial investment was no more than $30 million. $4,000 million would completely transform Chile. A small part of that sum would ensure proteins for all the children in my country, end quote. So that just kind of, that kind of fleshes that out a little bit. Yeah, and it just, for the first time in Chile in history, right, you have a different logic that's operating at the political level in the presidential office, right? There's a reason why he's referred to as

the Companero President. If you read about these, if you read the testimonies of workers and peasants, something that motivates, whether it's union activism, or the actual seizing of lands in factories, is part of them, their motivation is the sense

that they have a Companiero president at the top supporting them. In many cases, actually, that wasn't true, right? And that's one of the tensions that emerges in this three-year revolutionary process. You have a revolution from a revolution, above that Allende and his advisors in Popular Unity are trying to really manage carefully to prevent the coalescing of right wing forces into an organized opposition and to prevent

scaring off the middle classes. But there's also a revolution from below and they see Popular Unity's victory and Salvador Allende's victory is kind of like the signal of, okay, it's our time. We're the ones who work, we're the ones who produce. So now it's our time to take, to show the political and economic power that we deserve and we're going to take. So there was always, in many ways, that's one of the tensions, I think, that never gets resolved and it's partially contributes to, to the ability of the military to take power in September 11th, 1973, that gap, right? And if you read Peter Wynne's book, Weaver's

Revolution, you get another perspective of Allende, right? When the workers at one of the biggest mills, cotton mills in the country, at Yedore factory, take it over on their own accord. Ayenda gets pissed. And he, and he, his, and he starts talking about, how the workers don't know what's good for them. The workers don't know what they're doing. I know what we're doing. Right. So that, when I first read that, I was like totally disheartened, right?

But it just reveals that tension, right? The revolution from above, revolution from below, it can be a creative tension. And I think for the most part, it was a creative, productive tension. But it left them open by 1973 when you have forces from the right with international allies like the United States, but also Brazilians, actually, the Brazilian military government did a lot to help the military coupliers in Chile. Yeah, I think that's an extremely important point because here at Revelef Radio, when we're talking about these things, we do not want to do a one-dimensional, overly romanticized, sort of incomplete, non-nuanced analysis. We want those tensions and that messiness to be woven into these stories,

precisely because any future revolutionary movement or program is going to have similar tensions, similar contradictions, similar hardships, and for us to ignore that in favor of a more romantic version of things is really a disservice to the listeners and disservice to ourselves when we are trying wherever we are all over the world to bring about a better world. This is a messy, complicated process, and sometimes, yeah, there's infighting.

It's totally messy, right? It can't be any other way, right? I think two other areas where it was really messy was with the question of the Mapuche's, the indigenous peoples of the south of Chile, right? I mean, there was special attention paid to them under popular unity, but they also did not prevent this, like, century-long settler colonialism of their lands, right? And the establishment of a foresty industry in these native communities' lands. And that struggle continues to the stay.

You have, well, now you have a right-winger in power in Chile, but even when the left was in power, they still maintained a lot of Pinochet's emergency powers, state of emergency powers that they apply explicitly against the mafouches because these continue to act they continue to mobilize and organize to prevent their to protect their lands and to protect their forests and that that conflict also existed in rea and the second one is with the issue of women and gender right so like in the countryside with land reform and with the promises to increase the wages of agricultural laborers UP is passing a very progressive radical message at the same time they're telling

peasant women, where you are the civic homemakers. You're going to be emancipated. Your emancipation will be accomplished or achieve via increased wages for male peasant workers. So their mixed messages on indigenous rights and gender

rights is there, which is if you contextualize it in that time, right, that doesn't really make them exceptional. That's just some of the conversations that were happening in revolutionary movements throughout Latin America, those tensions between indigenous rights and indigenous identities and then also women and gender via revolutionary processes.

Absolutely, yeah, extremely important parts to understand about this. I do want to move on, and I want to talk about, because this is kind of interesting to me that I learned relatively recently, but that Fidel Castro kind of had a role in supporting A Yende throughout his campaign and during his presidency. So what role did Fidel Castro in the Cuban Revolutionary Government play in supporting a Yende in his political project, and what did this camaraderie and international bond do for Yende and his supporters. So Castro visits Allende in Chile in late 1971, and he actually tours the entire country.

He's there for like, I don't know, almost a month, maybe like 25, 26 days. They had met previously. I think Allende actually goes to Cuba in 1959 or 1960. He hangs out with Che and with Fidel. In late 1971, when Castro goes to Chile, that's a big moment because most of Latin America had ruptured diplomatic relations with revolutionary coup, with a few exceptions, right? So Castro's visit to Chile represented like a reestablishment of diplomatic ties.

It was Castro's first visit back to South America since the Cuban Revolution of 1959, if I'm not mistaken. So he tours the entire country. He's meeting with peasant co-ops. He's meeting with peasant unions, with workers. He's going to factories. Castro gives a series of really interesting speeches in when he lods the uniqueness of the Chilean Revolutionary

process. He's talking about how Chile is demonstrating to the world that you can accomplish socialism via different ways. It doesn't always have to be armed insurrection, the seizure of the state, which is really interesting. His visit lasts almost a month. Now, and he's very popular. There's workers and peasants coming out to see him. At the same time, it scares the hell out of the right wing. In Chile, right, completely polarizes parts of the Chilean society. I I mean, they see Fidel coming in, they think, okay, well, we're next, and we're going to turn into, totally in their weird imagination, right? But we're going to turn into some sort of, like, Castro Escuba. At the same time, I think it also scares the hell out of the United States to see these two men who represent two different ways of achieving revolution and achieving socialism, working together.

And that's one of the things that comes out, I think, in some of the declassified documents. In many ways, I think Chile and what Allende is doing, what Popular Unity is doing, is much more threatening to the U.S. and what Castro did in 1959, 1960. It was very easy to demonize that revolutionary process when they're executing Batista Aides, right? It's really hard to demonize a movement that came through power via the ballot box. And you see that in the conversations between Nixon and Kissinger, which they're afraid that that's going to set an example to not just Latin America, but they talk about Italy, which had a large Communist Party presence. They're afraid that this example that Chile would be the type of example, if successful, to be emulated in other countries. So I think it's a really interesting, and to look at the, there's footage of like these like bearded Cubans who are part of Fidel's delegation playing basketball. Yeah, yeah.

I think hilarious, right? I love that. I was going to say that too. Navarbros playing basketball with the Chileans, which is like hilarious. But I mean, they got a lot of. And I think the most interesting thing that comes out of that, besides the fact that, like, the famous Fidel story of gifting an AK-47 to Allende, which will have be used tragically later on, it's these speeches that Fidel gives in which he talks about how there's multiple ways of accomplishing revolution. And there'll be some sort of, Fidel will say later on that his people, his internal security people were helping to train some of the personal security and bodyguards for Allende. it because by 1971,

1972, there's a sense that something's going to happen in terms of a coup. Yeah, absolutely. And I think at one point, Allende goes to Moscow to kind of ask for some financial help because of the sort of economic embargo and sanctions

that are coming from the U.S. And I think if I'm not, I didn't delve too deep into this, but I think overall the USSR's idea was that this movement's going to be crushed. We don't need to. invest in it because they don't have any arms. They're not militarily ready to

fight back against counter-revolutionary forces once they're inevitably going to kind of rain down on them. Is that true? That's true. Yeah. I mean, they couldn't fathom how this was ever going to work out. Whereas Fidel, I think, something that convinced Fidel was that he was actually there. And he actually got to see what political, civic, and social life looked like in Chile. And he got to see firsthand what this revolution via the ballot box or via the constitutional processes was actually accomplishing on the ground. And I really love the idea and it's kind of worth just reemphasizing Fidel's notion that, you know, socialism, the socialist project building up a socialist society can take many different forms. And sometimes I see on the left this sort of dogmatic adherence to one strategy or another exclusively.

And I think that that is sort of anti-materialist and that it's sort of decontextualizes any possible revolutionary movement from the actual conditions they're operating in. And sometimes based on. on, you know, the conditions that you're dealt, you have to operate in ways that might not totally align with how you as a Leninist or you as an anarchist or whatever may want them to develop. So this sort of staying open to different methodologies of building up a socialist program that Fidel was talking about, I think is important. And I think that leftist, even today all over the world, should kind of keep that in the back of their mind whenever they're thinking about revolutionary movements in their own areas.

Yeah, I think the history of different successful revolutionary movies in Latin America testifies to that. Absolutely. Right? There's a moment, if you read the testimonies of some of these revolutionaries, there's a moment where their theoretical knowledge of revolution confronts reality and they tend to write about and think about, well, what do we do at that moment? And the most successful revolutionary process are the ones that are more quickly able to adapt to context, to adapt to self-critique, and to be, to demonstrate that openness that you're talking about. And to large extent, that's one of the reasons why they win, right?

In the case of especially Cuba and Nicaragua in 1979, and Chile as well. Yeah, now you mentioned Nixon and Kissinger, and this is a huge part of this. And so I really want to kind of delve into this specifically. What was the response to the election of Iyende by the U.S. government, namely Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and ultimately the CIA? What did they hate about Iende and his political program specifically? I mean, if you read those declassified documents, like, right after Ayyende wins the election in 1970, I mean, they're like, Nixon can't believe it, right? And Nixon continuously refers to Ayende as like the son of a bitch, the son of a bitch. He can't, what, what, they know that that Ayende is anti-American, right?

He's, he's demonstrated and explained why he's anti-U.S. He's anti-U.S. He's anti-U.S. imperialism. He's anti-the, the monopoly powers of the U.S. transnational companies in places like Chile, right, where they control vital economic sectors of these national economies. So if you look at, if you read like Peter Kornblos' book, the Pinochet file, which he brings together in really like smart, helpful way, he brings together a lot of these classified documents, but with his own analysis, is what enrages them is that one, again, they wins, and they kind of freak out at the beginning and they're trying to think of multiple ways to like not even get to the presidency, not even take office, right?

So they, in October of 1970, the CIA works with this extreme right-wing military group and they try to essentially organize a coup against Allende before he even takes office. This results in the assassination of the head of the armed forces, Renish United, or General Renege United. And that has the actually that has the effect of the Chilean political system and parties closing ranks around Ayanda because they realized what this assassination meant. This was an attempt to destabilize Chittenden. After that failed, what you see in these declassified documents is a more clandestine type of almost economic warfare. It's more a covert that's not the – they're not going to repeat the Bay of Pigs.

They're not going to repeat the marine invasion of the Dominican Republic in the mid-1960s. What they're going to do is pressure the IMF and the World Bank to not renegotiate Chilean debt. They're not going to allow them to give them credit. They're going to cut off any sort of technological assistance. So one of the things that Nixon does is he prevents transportation parts, like mechanical parts, from being sent from the U.S. to Chile, right? So for factories, for cars, for trucks, whatever. Essentially, with this type of economic warfare, what Nixon referred to as making the economy scream, what they were trying to do is provoke civil strife, provoke political polarization to create a cool climate, which at that point would force the Chilean military to intervene and take out of Yanda. And that's what they work to do.

So actually, I think one of the things that enrages Nixon and Kissinger throughout this period from 1970 and 1973 is that they're constantly unable to do that. They're unable to influence very much impacts and developments on the ground in Chile. So when you have the coup in September of September 11th, 1973, it's really the initiative the Chilean military by that point. I mean, there is a coup climate that's been created, but it's initiative mostly of the Chilean military. and they get a lot of assistance in terms of military training and in terms of like the type of post-coup society they want to organize from the Brazilians. And this is something that Tanya, historian Tanya Harmer,

talks about in her recent book, Chilez Allende, in which she contextualizes the coup within the broader Latin American context. And she sees that the Brazilians are actually more directly involved in the coup than the actual Americans. And that has a series of consequences. And the Brazilians at this point are playing this really nefarious role. They're also providing military assistance and counter

insurgency training to Mexico, helping to wipe out guerrilla movements there. So this is not to, I bring this up not to deny U.S. Empire, not to deny how U.S. imperialism works. But it's, it's much more complicated, and it just shows the level of adversaries and enemies that the Chilean, this Chilean revolutionary process of red wine and empanas was facing in 1973. Right. Yeah, that's extremely important. And I do want to like kind of talk about the fact that we see over and over again, and we've done so many of these episodes where we've covered revolutionary movements. And every time we see this pattern where the U.S. will use before it engages in toppling regimes or, you know, funding and organizing coups, the first thing it

always does is engage in economic warfare. And so, you know, Alex just laid out a bunch of ways that the U.S. did this and then the economy starts to suffer and then the first thing that reactionaries in the U.S. and the U.S. ruling class want to do is point and say, see, socialism doesn't work. Look at it. The economy is a mess. Well, that's a direct result of the imperial sort of mingling inside the economy that the U.S. did. And so I think we always have to remember that. It's kind of commonplace now, but it's like important to always just reemphasize that. Totally. I mean, this should immediately bring to mind one current case, right? Right, yeah.

Where it's the same argument of, well, there's something innate to socialism that will always lead it to collapse on the basis of its own internal contradictions. Never like the broader context, never the type of economic warfare that's being waged. It's always something innate to this revolutionary socialist project, right? And we obviously, if you read any of the mainstream media pieces on Venezuela, it's like over and over and over. That's their thesis now. Yep, yeah. Is that, well, Minnesota has a mess because socialism is in in aly bound to fail. I mean, that's completely anti-indexamination.

intellectual argument and it's designed to further a certain political argument. And that's, you don't even have to, I mean, obviously the Venezuelan regime and even Chile under a end, they committed a lot of mistakes on their own, right? But to just take that lazy argument is just, it's such an imperial argument at this point that, um, we need to completely deconstruct it. I mean, there's one instance of Nixon. He was willing, he was, he was, he don't think he did this. He didn't do this, but he was thinking of dumping the United States copper reserves onto the international markets in order to depress prices. Right, right. Right. I mean, And so he didn't have to because prices went down anyway during 1972.

And nonetheless, the popularity of popular unity continued to increase. So, yeah, there's a lot of this stuff that we don't see going on, right? But if you bring this up, whether it's, you know, people at the time were bringing this up and they're conspiracy theorists. Yeah, exactly. But then 30, 40 years later, we get the documents and we're like, no, you know, we were actually right about this. And this is a famous quote, and I posted this on Twitter, and I just want to reemphasize it here. But Henry Kissinger to Nixon, after Yende was elected, said, quote, this is coming from Henry Kissinger's mouth. He said, 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, end quote. And that's just sort of the chauvinism, the imperial arrogance and hubris that the U.S. empire always takes towards, you know, populations that they deem less than. It's really, the democracy and the care of people deciding for themselves, which way they want to take their country, goes completely out the window the second it becomes inconvenient. Oh, totally. I mean, I think Kissinger and Nixon both had really, they had racist values and ideas toward Latin America. I mean, Nixon, as a vice president in the late 1950s, almost got practically lynched when he visited Venezuela, right? So he, from that experience on, he had very particular view of Latin America and Latin Americans, basically, that these people are racially inferior and that they're not fit for democracy. Kissinger took a different precision, but he basically said nothing of historical value occurs in Latin America.

It's either in the Soviet Union, it's either in Asia or in Europe, the United States, but nothing happens in Latin America. What shocks them a little bit is the victory of Allende in Chile, I think. So I think that quote that you just read I think captures in a weird way what the Chileans under this revolutionary Chileans under the end they were trying to do, right? They were trying to reassert national sovereignty. They were trying to, in a political and an economic sense.

And what the US was trying to do was undermine it. Like they have in Latin America since the mid-19th century. There's another really interesting quote in which I think it, I can't remember if it was Nixon or Yende, or Nixon or Kissinger, which they write, quote, the example of a successful elected Marxist government in Chile, would surely have an impact and even a precedent value for other parts of the world, especially in Italy. The imitative spread of similar phenomena elsewhere would turn,

would in turn significantly affect the world balance and our own position in it. So they were aware that this was a dangerous example that other countries throughout the world, not just even Latin America would want to emulate, right? They knew what was at stake. And that's why from the moment before they even took office in late 1970, they were already trying to plot to get him out of it, to prevent him assuming office, despite the fact that he won according to Chilean laws,

according to the Chilean constitution. Absolutely, and one more thing. You mentioned the sort of racism towards Latin America by the U.S. and I remember the CIA documents talking about Che Guevara. I think one of the quotes that we covered in one of our episodes was they said about Che that he was that he was very smart for a Latino. And there's always that caveat. And that's that sort of disgusting sort of racism.

It's ubiquitous in all of these documents and all of these quotes that we can find from these people. Oh, totally. I mean, like if you read any of declassified documents that involve some sort of like U.S. training of desquads, they'll train these deaths like in Guatemala in the mid-60s they'll train these death squads

these death squads will do what they do and the U.S. advisor will step back and be like oh it's because these people are innately violent and vicious and uncivilized it's like what? You just gave them the tools and you gave them the training like how can you step back and give that type of what it is is a racialist

colonialist project in view of Latin America that's what it is exactly right and you and it hasn't necessarily gone away right I mean as late as 2014 John Kerry who's supposed to be the liberal side right he was calling latin america our backyard so this idea of latin america latin american affairs being subsumed to what the u.s. wants has never completely gone away the language changes um but this idea this ontological idea that latin americans are incapable of democracy your self-governments i don't

think has ever entirely gone away the language to describe it changes but that sentiment is still there yeah it's rooted in white supremacy and it was codified way back in the day with the monotonousal Roe Doctrine and we're still living in that legacy today. But I do want to move on to the reaction inside Chile from the, from sort of the reactionaries. You mentioned earlier that the CIA had teamed up with a far-right extremist group in Chile. And I think the name of that organization was called Fatherland and Freedom. And they were a fascist organization. So just broadly, what was the response to the election of Allende from the ruling class, from the military, and from the far right of Chile? They were outraged. I mean, I think they

they saw this as a mortal threat. So one of the things I would recommend to listeners is to watch this brilliant documentary by Patricia Guzman called La Bataya de Chile, the Battle of Chile. It's a three-part documentary and some of the best parts of this documentary is when he interviews both workers and peasants

but also people who opposed Allende. And when he's, you know, when he presents a video of the right, of the conservative sector, there's this like disdain And this hate that, like, just comes through the screen, man. It's, I don't know how to describe it. What the right was, though, was it was, it was disarticulated. And I think, again, one of the reasons why Ayanne and popular unity wanted to carefully manage this revolutionary process was to prevent that coalescing of the right into a unified force.

And they were unable to do so. So it's industrialists, it's manufacturers, it's, eventually the Christian Democratic Party will go over with the coup plotters. they will eventually regret that. Even parts of the middle class ended up going over supporting the coup in 1972 and in 1973. You have this far-right group, fascist group, Batre Libertat that was

modeled after the Spanish Philanj. And they were more the street fighters. They were committing industrial sabotage. They were blowing stuff up. They were having street fights with leftist groups, leftist militants in major cities. But by 1970s,

to, especially after a trucker strike at the end of 1972, that Allende essentially used the military to bring to an end. I think that's when you started to see an uptick in this right coalescing into something organized, and in supporting the coup,

a way of kicking Ayenda out before his six-year presidential term was going to be up. Yeah, and there's, you know, there was like attempts earlier. There was one time where a certain group of the military, the far right section of the military, took to the streets, and they actually started attacking leftist or just popular supporters of a yende in the streets with with guns and

they even killed i think it was a swiss cameraman who was filming the the sort of rollout of these of these military fascists and they shot him dead as he kind of recorded his own murder at the hands of these people but before 73 before the big coup these these little attempts by by sort of rebel factions inside the military they were they were largely like they drew out the popular support of a yende. The people hit the streets in staggering numbers and they they supported a yende in a way that still kind of brings a tear to my eye and is heartbreaking knowing how it all turned out. But the amount of support that he had from regular Chileans and the lengths that regular Chileans were willing to go to stand up to these, you know, these fascists, it's really

inspiring even to this day. Yeah, I think that the incident you talked about, the Tancaso, is when this tank battalion did this preemptive coup attempt in the middle of 1973, and it's crazy to watch on film, but when they assassinate the Argentine Swedish journalist, right, who manages to record his own assassination, it's crazy. But it is. I think there's, Patrice Guzman has another documentary called Allende, and he has footage in there of a industrial worker, in which the industrial worker is at a meeting, and I think this is in 1973, and this work. worker stands up and he says, look, you guys told us to organize our communities. You told us to organize our barrios. You told us to organize our towns. You told us to organize our factories.

You told us to organize our industrial belts, which was this really innovative organizational structure that was set up by workers across different factories. And he's like, but then what then? He's like, you guys are all about conciliation and not trying to like take on the army and you let them far right do whatever they want. But you're not telling us what to do, right? And again, And there's a tension between this carefully managed revolutionary process from above and a revolution from below that was way too fast and way more direct and way more radical than what Aienda and popular unity leaders had in mind. So when Ayaenda needed popular support, he could draw 800,000 out people to march in Santiago, a million people to march, right? He had the vast majority of the support from the peasants and the workers, which were the majority of the Chilean society, Chilean population. But by 1973, I think that worker was right.

Like, we're organized, but what else are we going to do? From Ianda's perspective, though, and he's very clear about this, he was not going to be responsible for provoking a sort of civil war. He says that in the speech. He says, I am not going to provoke a civil war. There was calls for him to arm these industrial belts. There was calls from to arm the peasants, and he refused to do it to the very end, believing that they could accomplish this this this revolutionary transformation via the chilean

constitutional process and structure yeah um in the end he proved wrong but you can also understand what he was trying to avoid absolutely yeah there was there was one i was watching a documentary there was one thing where he was standing in front of tens of thousands of his supporters and they were actually chanting after some of these attempts they were actually chanting to shut down congress and and and in front of everybody he said he said he said he said he said he said he said he said, no, I'm not going to do that. He's like, we can't do that because his idea was we have to continue playing things, you know, the right way, quote unquote, the right way. And that, you know, it was, you could look back and say that that was one of his mistakes and perhaps it was,

but at the same time, he was really, really trying to have this, this democratic legitimacy to this movement because he thought that in the end, if it worked out, everybody would be better for it. But it's just fascinating. And whenever I see, like, when I saw the people come to Allende's defense after the fascist attempt the first time. It reminded me of how the Cuban people came to the defense of the revolutionary government during the Bay of Pigs, how they all came out and sort of beat back that invasion and how in Venezuela in the 2002 coup attempt against Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan people came out and helped beat back that coup. And that just really shows you that in Latin America, all of these socialist movements were rooted in the people

given the tensions, given the contradictions, given some of the internal dimensions and struggles, it was still very much backed by popular support, and that's a beautiful thing. I totally agree. I mean, I think in his last radio, famous last radio speech, Allende has this famous quote when he says, La Storia is our and the people make history, right? And I think that totally goes to what you were just saying, right? Like these revolutionary processes worked were successful or victorious, depending on how you define it,

because they were about the people because it was because it represented the desires the utopian imagination the willingness to sacrifice of millions of people to engage in a revolutionary process that essentially represented

jumping into the open right because they didn't know that they were going to win they didn't know that they were going to be successful but they took that leap right so now it's easy like it's and also from the U.S. perspective right they individualize these revolutionary process and the figures of Fidel Che Allende whatever

But what made these things successful in Latin America and somewhere like Chile are the millions of people who sacrificed everything because they wanted a better life because they wanted to create something new. They wanted to create a better world. And if you read the testimonies of regular Chilean supporters of Allende, they all talk about that, that we were in the process of creating a better world. We were going to create something utopian. We had a beautiful dream. And that's what motivated these processes. That's what gave these processes life, right? Regardless of how this revolutionary process turns out, what initially gives them life are the millions of people who want, who are being oppressed, who are being exploited, who live terrible lives, and they say enough, and we're going to create something more. Allende essentially says that in his last speech. He says, I was just like a translator of your ideas and your values and your dreams and your desires. I was just a translator. I was the interpreter. You guys put me here. That's why I love that quote.

and it's in Pueblos. History is ours. People make history. Obviously, that idea or value is completely missed out with a sort of imperialistic representations advocated for the U.S. when they tend to individualize everything in the figure of a Fidel or aiente.

Like somehow these revolutionary processes with the evil machinations of a genius who's able to control the fates of millions of people, right? It's ridiculous. But that's if you look at mainstream media, even today, that's how they approach these processes in Latin America. But what this is about is like

the normal peasant and worker who sacrificed everything to create a better world exactly yeah it is i mean very very well said 100 percent people should really really reflect on that and and the sort of individualizing of these movements whether it's it's it's Mao or it's fidel it's really this reflection of this great man of this liberal great man of history idea and also it serves exactly what you do to sort of to whitewash the role that the masses that the people themselves played in these movements because that gives it the democratic legitimacy that the U.S. so desperately wants to strip away from all of these attempts at liberation. So we should always be conscious of that. But let's go ahead and move on

to the coup itself. And I think the best way to get into it is to talk about Augusto Pinochet. Who was Augusto Pinochet and what role did he play leading up to the coup? So Augusto Pinochet was a military man. He was a general. He steps into the scene in In 1972, 1973, so after the trucker strike in 1972, Mayanda starts to bring in more military men into his cabinet. He brings in General Carlos Prats to be the head of the military. By the summer of 1973, he's, after a series of embarrassing incidents and middle class protests in Santiago,

Prats, who was a constitutionalist who did support the military respect of the Chilean constitution, he's removed from power. And, of course, is Pinochet, chosen by Allende, who takes that position as the head of the Chilean military. Probably at that point, he was already involved in some sort of coup plotting. So by the time the coup takes place on September 11, 1973, also on a Tuesday, he's the one Karen, he's the one giving the orders. It involves the Navy. It involves the Army. It involves the carabineros, the riot police, or the urban police.

Um, there's radio transmission that are declassified now that you can hear, uh, Ian, uh, Pinochet communicating to his commanders on the ground. They're asking him what to do about Ayende, who was in the presidential palace getting bombed by British made jets. And you can hear, um, Pinocche saying over one of these radio transmissions killed in this in Spanish, basically says, kill the bitch and the litter dies. Um, so you have these hunter, hawkered British made jet just bombing the hell out of La Moneda, which is the, the Chilean version of the White House. So that is like a crazy. I mean, you see the footage of this in Guzman's La Bataya de Chile. The coup has been planned.

There was a sense that something was going to happen. But the actual planning of it probably began early to the middle of 1973. The Navy probably started with the Navy. The Navy was always the most conservative branch of the Chilean military. There's a famous incident, I think at the end of 1972, when I end they go to the naval cadets. ceremony and they heckled the hell out of them. His naval aid, the comp, was assassinated by his own comrades, precisely because he supported

Hyundai and because he supported protecting the Constitution. So by the time you get to September 11, 1973, it's these different branches of the Chilean military that are engaged in the forceful overthrow of a democratically elected government. Yeah. And that's something that we should really remember that the primary forces at play here was obviously the Chilean bourgeoisie but the military was really the force and the power and that extended to the police themselves

so you had the national police you had different branches of the military and you had the Chilean bourgeoisie with the help of Brazilian or US operators as well but the coup itself really came from out of the military and we've seen that over and over again

in fascist movements this real binding of the movement with the military and the police I mean hell we even see it here in the U.S. with fascist movements going out of their way to align themselves with the police and the police returning that favor as well to the fascists. So that's a longstanding sort of tradition that we see. And also the fascism that you see in just different law enforcement agencies as well. I mean, it's a similar logic, right? There's, there's, by the night of September

11th, there's Pinochet gets on the national television flying to buy other generals of the Chile military forces. And they all are speaking to the nation in terms of what they're, they're doing and why they're doing it. And I think it's Peter Shea who says something about we had to do this to extirpate, quote, extirpate the Marxist cancer. Now, that terminology I think is really significant, right? Because I think that the depravity and the level of terror and violence that comes after the coup is relative to the level of political and social revolutionary consciousness that the masses in Chile

had achieved in just three years. So in other words, the revolutionary had succeeded to such an extent at the level of consciousness and in popular creativity and organizing that you had to do a brutal form of state terror to, quote-unquote, extirpate that revolutionary consciousness from the workers and the peasants. And you see, I mean, from 19, after the coup to about 78, 79 is when the most violent part of Pinochet's military dictatorship that would last until 1990 is when most of the 3,500, an estimated 3,500 people are disappeared. Hundreds of thousands of people, are tortured, hundreds of thousands of people have to flee Chile, those that have economic means.

Many more are put into this gulag of prison archipelagos that's created. You have these different torture centers. You have one instance, and you asked me in the outline that you sent me about the helicopter rides, that's become such a popular meaning of the right wing here in the United States, the fascist right. Well, the reason, I think one of the places that comes from is that you have this thing called the Caravan of Death. in which Chilean military forces started at the very south of Chile and using helicopters, they flew the entire length of the country executing political prisoners, torturing and executing political prisoners. Some of the clandestine prisons they had, one was called Colonia Dignidad,

which was run by a Nazi, and the level of terrible torture. I mean, you read the people's testimony such a vibe. It's just, it's crazy, the level of violence that these people experience. Villa Grimaldi, which was on the outskirts of Santiago, we used to be like a meeting spot of intellectuals, of artists, of teachers during the Allende years. It becomes transformed into this brutal torture center. The national soccer stadium in Santiago becomes, on September 11th, 973,

it becomes turning to this concentration and torture center, which through thousands of people went through, including the partner of my college professor for my undergraduate years. You had the case of Victor Hara, right, the famous folk singer, who was a big Allende and popular union supporter. He's captured September 11, September 12th. He's taken to the soccer stadium. He's tortured. We now know that they broke his hands with hammers, and then they would throw his guitar at him and say, play music for us now.

And eventually they machine gunned him over 40 bullets, and it just dumped him in some random street in one of the shanty towns in San Diego. And actually one of his killers was just, I think, captured in the U.S. like 2016. 3,000 plus disappeared. And I think a lot of that, some of the military people who have, and secret police, Dina agents, the secret police Dina agents have testified since then that they were trying to do with terrorize the entire population. They were using these people who they were killing and disappearance as examples to force people to submission, right? to put aside that sort of political and revolutionary consciousness that they had achieved,

that they had enjoyed and put into practice during the Ianda years, right? So you have these instances of expropriated factories that were being run by workers while the military went back in there and they returned the factories to the previous owner and now the workers had to work for the guy that they had ousted just a couple years ago.

Lands that were taken by peasants were returned to the previous land of elites and now those peasants that once again had to work for the former boss who they had taken out. Absolutely. And then that goes back the famous quote that, you know, fascism or, you know, fascism is capitalism and decay.

It's a way of maintaining and reestablishing the capitalist order. And whenever you see these alt-right neo-Nazi assholes here in the U.S. drawing on this helicopter imagery, talking about anti-communist action and dropping commies out of helicopters, they're drawing on this brutal, torturous, murderous, disgusting history, and they are proud of it. And we should never forget for a second, whether you live in the U.S. or anywhere else where fascist movements are on the move, that the moment they get the chance to do the same to us, they will do it in a heartbeat. And that's what's at stake. That's what's always been at stake. And that's what we'll continue to be at stake. And so we really have to think about this. And you talked about that

Pinochet quote where he talks about disease. And I think there's a really interesting fascist language. There's an obsession with purity. And then there's on the flip side of that obsession with Purity is an obsession with degeneracy, with infestation, with disease. You see it used in the rhetoric of Nazis in Germany. You see it used in the rhetoric of Pinochet fascist, and you see it used in the rhetoric today in fascist movements in the U.S. and beyond. And it's a really dangerous, horrifying movement, and we should never sort of not take it seriously.

It is on the move, and it's on the move globally as we speak. And this is the history that they want to recreate. Yeah, totally. And I think this type of terror violence was also very targeted, right, because there was an intellectual aspect to it. And the intellectual aspect comes with applying for the first time neoliberal capitalism in a post-World War II setting, right? So the very day, the day after that the coup happens, you have these Chilean economists and intellectuals who had studying the United States at the University of Chicago under people like Milton Friedman, Arnold Harbiger, Frederick Maheig, they go. to Pinochet and they provide the intellectual project and plan along with the Brazilians in terms of how to reorganize a post-coup Chile and what they give him are these free market neoliberal economic texts and ideas and policies drawn from Milton Freeman from Von Haig from Arnold Harbinger. These are these guys are the ones who are referred to as the Chicago boys right these elite Chilean students who had who in the 1950s had begun

studying, went from the Catholic University of Chile to do PhD and advanced studies at the University of Chicago at the economics department under Friedman. And they're the ones who would come back to work for Pinochet after the coup. And what they did was they completely dismantled the economic project that had been established under popular unity and did the holy trinity of neoliberal capitalism, right? They privatized, they deregulated it, and they massively cut social spending. They induced what Freedman referred to as shock therapy. They needed to do a jolt into the economy. So from the very beginning then, there's this link between political terror and the type of savagery state terrorism that I described earlier with this argument that's based

on quote unquote economic freedom. So in August of 1976, there's a wonderful article that's and I always assign it to my students. It was published in the Nation magazine, and it was written by Orlando Le Talier, who was a member of Allende's cabinet. He served a series of different positions. Within the cabinet, he manages to flee Chile after being stuck in one of these clandestine torture centers. And he comes to Washington, D.C., and he starts publishing all sorts of writings against, you know, trying to raise international awareness of what's happening to Chile. He publishes this article in the nation of late August, 1976, in which he makes that connection between the political terror being implemented by Pinochet's military dictatorship, but at the same time, this so-called economic freedom project that's being implemented in Chile by Chilean disciples of people like Milton Friedman. It was a really powerful argument, and just a couple weeks later, Orlando Le Tele would actually be car bombed in DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C., along with his two American assistants, one of which Ronnie Moffitt died.

and it seems that the Chilean secret police was involved in that assassination. So this is something that that Pinochet did was they waged a war of state terror against not just within Chile but they also worked abroad. So they assassinate, they carbond Orlando Letellier

because he was being so effective internationally and raising awareness. They assassinated another popular unity figure in Rome and they actually assassinated a general in, I think, Argentina also in 1974, 1974, 1975, which then this leads us to this transnational right-wing death squad network that's created in the 70s called Operation Condor, in which these different military dictatorships in Latin America work together, worked with one another, to disappear people that they thought were dangerous to their respective military regimes.

And we actually are planning an episode on that exact topic in the future, so people can learn more about that and the sort of the wake of this. Now, I do want to say a few things. You mentioned that Pinochet, his government carried out the assassination of Orlando Latelier in Washington, in the U.S., on U.S. grounds. And that just shows the connection between the U.S. government and the fascist dictatorship in Chile. And Pinachet and his government went about privatizing public services and profiting off themselves immensely. And I think it's really worth noting, especially in the context of today, and always really when you see this fascist attempt to hijack left-wing rhetoric. So even like some fascist circles in the U.S.

today are trying to claim to be anti-capitalist. I've even seen some leaked discord chats from fascists calling each other comrades. And it's really this cynical attempt to hijack leftist rhetoric. But everywhere that fascism has actually taken hold, it has not been anti-bougeoisie. It has not been anti-capitalist. It's always been a movement that has been completely in line with capitalist interest. It's a violent reassertion of capitalism. And I think Milton Friedman and other libertarian capitalist intellectuals going down and helping Pinochet get off the ground and the close ties with the U.S. government to that dictatorship over the 18-year span that it ran. Really, it shows that the libertarian and the capitalists and the fascist movements are not at odds.

they are one in the same and they are they are they are in unity the moment that push comes to shove and we've seen it over and over again so always remember that totally and even if you like even if you keep it just at the level of like macro or microeconomics like these guys fail at their own stated goals right so even beyond we get to like broader argument that you just put forth right like as economists and as economic like policy people they suck right right because their whole project is the reconcentration of wealth and political power in a tiny oligarchy. And this is what Letelier called out in that famous article, right? And it gets them killed.

This hypocrisy of people like Freeman who can disconnect themselves from the political terror being waged by Pinochet, but then as somehow not having any sort of influence or connected to or justifying the sort of economic free market policies that benefits a tiny percentage of the population. By the end, by 1976, 1977, Chile had an inflation rate of like over 300%. So if you read the writings of Milton Freeman, these monetary supply people, like they think inflation is like the greatest evil. They fail, but their own prescriptions fail at addressing that, right, beyond the ideological or political arguments. The unemployment rate was 25, 30, 35%.

I mean, this project failed by 1982. two, Pinochet had to like nationalize the banks because the only type of economic activity that was happening in Chile after the coup were financial speculators, where banks were these things called financieras, which was a combination of like savings banks but also like speculation banks. There was a lack of economic productivity. Small and middling size businesses and industries got wiped out by their transnational competition to the point where people who had supported the coup by 76 were thinking about how they kind of messed up, right? Because they completely they had actually enjoyed some of Allende's economic policies, and now they were completely wiped out.

Friedman has this really famous quote in Newsweek in 1975, and this gives you an idea, I think, about what type of intellectual he was, but also some of the consequences of his arguments about capitalism and freedom. In the Newsweek article, he wrote, quote, in spite of my profound disagreement with the authoritarian political system of Chile, I do not consider it as evil for an economist to render technical economic advice to the Chilean government. any more than I would regard it as evil for a physician to give technical medical advice to the Chilean government to help end a medical plague. And that year he gets a Nobel Prize in economics. Wow. Right. I mean, so to me that says a lot, right, about this intellectual project that now has become hegemonic globally. We all live in this now.

Chenea was just the first battle line and now it has spread globally. Absolutely. Well, yeah, I mean, wow. It was just amazing, so many angles to take on this, so much to learn from this. Now, I want to wrap it up with this question. How did Allende ultimately, like what happened to Allende in the coup? And what can we learn from this event today, in your opinion? So Allende, it seemed, I think we're pretty sure now,

it's been definitively stated that Hayende committed suicide using the AK-47 that Fidel Castro had gifted him. rather than be captured, he took his own life. I think the public memory of both Allende, the Allende period and the dictatorship of Pinochet that lasted from 73 to 1990, it's still a really raw topic in Chile, right? And there's still a lot of any time this comes up to the surface publicly, you can get street fights about it, but this is still a raw, these are still raw historical periods that haven't been come to, that Chileans haven't come to terms with exactly. It's still anytime that you get the anniversary of Pinochet's death or Iyende's death, there's a potential for political discord, right?

Because this is still a really raw time. I think in terms of what we can learn from this, I think, one, I think is we have to engage and really appreciate and work to visibilize the richness and the creativity of mass political action, organizing, and mobilization. To me, that's what sticks out from this revolutionary process. So Allende is great. He's one of my personal heroes, I suppose. But if you watch the Bataya del Chile and you watch the part where Guzman just talks to factory workers, that's where the revolution is. And it's really interesting and important imperative for us to engage with that type of lower class, working class, peasant intellectual ideas, right? Just because they may be illiterate or they don't have high level of formal education, they're still intellectuals and they're still creative politically.

And I think we have a lot to learn from it. I have a learned to learn from it. I think another thing that's really interesting is it brings up the question of, you know, can we have multiple paths of accomplishing revolution, right? Are there multiple paths to use Marx's old quote of assaulting heaven? By the end of my class on modern Latin American history, I asked my students, like, so which revolutionary process is still around? And someone will say Cuba, and I'm like, so what do you think that teaches us about

Latin American revolutionary processes. So Chile brings up a series of really difficult questions. Can you have a peaceful process to something that we can define as socialism? Can we have a peaceful process to a better world? Chile tends to give certain suggestions and tactical propositions that are really difficult to engage, but I think they're key, really important that we engage them. And the final thing I think is it teaches us something about the use of abuse. of history because Pinotche's Chile in particular has become this case study for American

neoliberal as a successful case of neoliberal capitalism. It's got a completely a historical, decontextualized argument, but if you engage some sort of right-wing neoliberal intellectual and you say, well, neoliberalism has never worked in Latin America, they'll be like, well, Chile, look at Chile. It's one of the most successful economic case studies in the history of the world. I think the example, the most famous example, this is good old Brett Stevens, who wrote this op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in 2010, and right after the hate the dramatic, the horrible earthquakes in Haiti and in Chile. And he basically says that Chile only suffered, you know, 700 casualties versus Haiti's 200,000 plus casualties because they had, because Pinochet had implemented neoliberalism in Chile. And Chile is this neoliberal success story and the fact that they survived this eight.

0.0 earthquake on Skate demonstrates that. The best part about that is that he attributes building codes to Pinochet, those building codes were actually implemented by Allende. I mean, so the uses and abuses of history by people that we have to, I don't know at this point if we have to engage them, but we have to be able to completely demolish their positions and their arguments. Even with a simple thing as historical chronology, right? because those building codes were actually implemented in 1971 or 72,

not during Pinochet's dictatorship. So in a weird way, Chile has become this battleground for U.S. economists that I find really interesting and tragic at the same time. All right, everyone, I'm going to interject really quick before we wrap up because I think it's worth reading the last words of Salvador Allende to the nation of Chile. This speech was delivered at 9.10 a.m. on September 11, 1973, in the midst of the U.S. sponsored coup d'etat against him and his government. He was barricaded inside the presidential palace,

and he gave this last speech over the radio waves before he was ultimately killed. So I'm just going to read this for you because I think it's worth reading in its entirety. Allende says, my friends, surely this would be the last opportunity for me to address you. The Air Force has bombed the towers of radio stations around the country. My words do not have bitterness but disappointment. May they be a moral punishment for those who have betrayed their oath. Soldiers of Chile, titular commanders and chief, Admiral Moreno, who has designated himself commander of the Navy, and Mr. Mendoza, the despicable general who only yesterday pledged

his fidelity and loyalty to the government, and who also has appointed himself chief of the national police. Given these facts, the only thing left for me is to say to workers, I am not going to resign. Placed in a historic transition, I will pay for loyalty to the people with my life. And I say to them that I am certain that the seed which we have planted in the good conscience of thousands and thousands of Chileans will not be shriveled forever. They have strength and will be able to dominate us. But social processes can be arrested neither by crime nor force. History is ours and people make history. Workers of my country, I want to thank you for the

loyalty that you always had, the confidence that you deposited in a man who was only an interpreter of great yearnings for justice, who gave his word that he would respect the Constitution and the law and did just that. At this definitive moment, the last moment when I can address you, I wish you to take advantage of the lesson. Foreign capital, imperialism, together with the forces of reaction, created the climate in which the armed forces broke their tradition. The tradition taught by General Schneider and reaffirmed by Commander Araya, victims of the same social sector which will today be in their homes, hoping with foreign assistance to retake power

to continue defending their profits and their privileges. I address, above all, the modest woman of our land, the Compensina who believed in us, the worker who labored more, the mother who knew our concern for children. I address professionals of Chile, patriotic professionals, those who days ago continued working against the sedition sponsored by professional associations, class-based associations that also defended the advantages which a capitalist society grants to a few.

I addressed the youth, those who sang and gave us their joy and their spirit of struggle. I address the man of Chile, the worker, the farmer, the intellectual, those who will be persecuted because in our country, fascism has already been present for many hours. In terrorist attacks, blowing up our bridges, cutting our railroad tracks, destroying the oil and gas pipelines, in the face of the silence of those who had the obligation to protect them. They were committed.

History will judge them. Surely our radios will be silenced and the calm metal instrument of my voice will no longer reach you. It does not matter. You will continue hearing it. I will always be next to you. At least my memory will be that of a man of dignity

who is loyal to the workers. The people must defend themselves, but they must not sacrifice themselves. The people must not let themselves be destroyed or riddled with bullets, but they cannot be humiliated either. Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Go forward knowing that, sooner rather than later, the great avenues will open again where free people will walk to build a better society. Long live Chile, long live the people, long live the workers.

these are my last words and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain I am certain that at the very least it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony cowardice and treason those were the last words anybody ever heard from Salvador yende well I just want to say thank you so much for coming on this is now the second history episode that we've had with you we appreciate your expertise and your knowledge and your passion on these fronts deeply and the reason that I have these history episodes is precisely because there's so much we can learn from our comrades in the past

who have taken up this project of building a better world and in their successes and in their failures. We can learn so much and apply it to what we're doing today and what's going to be coming in the next couple of decades because this global system of, this global death system of capitalism cannot last forever. And as it circles the drain and collapses in on itself, we have to be ready to take action. And if we are disconnected from the past or if we buy, into the bourgeois representations of those pasts, we are doomed. And so studying history is essential to understanding the present. And you, Alex, have been wonderful on this program and helping us do that. And I'm sure we'll have you back on at some point in the future. Two of

the recommendations you made, just to reiterate are the book Weavers of Revolution and the documentary, the Battle of Chile. And before I let you go, can you let listeners know where they can find you and your work online? Sure. No, thank you so much and keep up the great work. learn a lot from from your podcast so uh i love that so i love being able to come on um because i've learned a lot from from your interviews and your shows um you can find um on twitter at alexander underscore avina because the english language discriminates against my enia in my last name um or you can find some of my work on like my uh faculty profile on the arizona state university web page if you just google me it should pop up yep and we'll link to your twitter too when we post this all right

comrade I know you have a plane to catch so thanks for coming on and doing this in an airport I think is our first airport interview ever thanks man no thank you it was a great time all right solidarity thanks all there you're ready to night night yeah daddy okay so what would you call a person that has so much money and lives in a giant castle and this person makes all this money, he has all these things that he doesn't need, and the way he gets it is by hurting people. Even though people might die, people could get separated from their mommies and daddies, that person doesn't care. As long as that person is making a lot of money, that person doesn't mind hurting people. What would you call that kind of?

person. They're monsters daddy. I can't tell lies to your baby the boogeyman is alive. He dances with the sound of money falling from the sky. The sound so loud he can't hear the party calling. It don't stop and no. It don't stop. So that he can't hear all of my day once calling.

It don't stop. So loud I bet they hear it when it all bobbing. It don't stop. It don't stop. It don't stop. It don't stop. Uh-uh, it don't stop, uh-uh, it don't stop, uh-uh, it don't stop. Good night, a transmission from the planet Earth when we block out the sun by putting gases in the atmosphere.

South cider till I'm planting food, long as I lived around these lame-ass rap busters is that dude. The dude who looked a boogeyman square in the eye, bought the line and sold it back and I'll be red until I die. Be Lockett said it's hard up in Manila, Carly, I'm Raleistas, we gonna make you all remember it's the anti-buggyman. Killer of the greedy man Sinner I don't give a fuck The Bible is a fucking sham Only thing that's real Is that I rep mine

You front like you Christ like I nail you to a stop sign It don't stop And it don't stop Pardona my mother For my vida loca Make music that I'll swoove you like Indian flutes to Cobras

Let me see your hands And not behind your back And not on top your head And as a matter of fact The laws are different where you stay So study up because they can buddy up And fuck you up Or just be in a soul

With the type of stereotypes they train to put in a prison So a private company can make some money off a system buying prisons up filing through a tax loop Lute all of these bailed-out companies making more loot and more lose Daddy come back you're tripping again Okay I'm back return like I never left a veteran who dying in the hospital my last breath Tell the audience I said they are the person that I am the rapper that could wrap a circle around a mini van Man, your papa like, damn, your brother like, yeah, your sister like, words, your mama like, bam. The old man from that smog and shrouded flatlands, adopted by Echo Parking good back in the motherland.

I'm all city, raised my son where it's hard-edged, in a hood so I don't raise a little shit head. I know I'm on the clock, lounging through my break time, just to stitch you bums up like I embroidered my fucking rhymes. You fucking right, check under my baby's bed. Here, Khalil, hold this doose, deuce, angel the head. Betre would give back every dime from beats to hear the beating heart of his second son in a heartbeat It don't stop it no it don't stop nana it don't stop it you It don't stop uh-uh it don't stop It don't stop yeah yeah it can't stop

Daddy Oh good boy can you go brrack yet The R's are rolling, that's good, do it again. You got some work to do. I love you.