Fifty years after the coup d’état of September 1973, beyond the just tributes paid in Chile and around the world to Salvador Allende, we all had the opportunity to observe the tension that this national and global anniversary always produces in the right wing. Although the years that have passed bring us more and more evidence that the overthrow was conceived and organised by Henry Kissinger and the US government under Nixon, curiously enough, this fact was ignored by official events, despite the fact that this time there were forceful acknowledgments from Washington. Especially when the White House unsealed new and conclusive secret documents revealing a number of actions and millionaire contributions from the CIA aimed at destabilising the Popular Unity government in order to install Pinochet in the government of our country after a criminal and terrorist operation.
Of course, the current rulers are not available to emphasise the responsibility of US imperialism in dozens of coups d’état on this continent and in the world. Let alone demand that the US masterminds could be sent to our country to be tried as seditionists and murderers. Certainly, it would be too much to request that impunity should not be imposed in this regard so that the current and future US rulers can continue to carry out criminal operations aimed at overthrowing governments of any political persuasion that endangers US interests.
With the 1973 coup d’état, the imperial power made it clear that its efforts are not only limited to combating leftist governments but also any regime that will be willing to make substantive changes in favour of social justice that might affect its investments abroad. Fifty years ago, a democratically elected government was overthrown to impose the neoliberal regime that reversed the democratic and social conquests undertaken, for example, the nationalisation of copper and agrarian reform.
We find it an unacceptable omission that this year too there has been no broad and severe condemnation of the actions of the United States. This can be explained by the complicity of the right wing and the political entities that promoted the coup. And now, still worse, with the shameless silence of the neo-liberal left, that is to say, those socialists, Christian Democrats and others who at this point are honoured to shake hands with the US Secretary of State himself, who has reached 100 years of existence without reproach from those who contemplated and even suffered in their own flesh the human rights violations also encouraged from Washington. In this way, we continue to be warned that imperialism is still on the rampage, just as we are notified of its forthcoming seditious and terrorist interventions in any part of the world it believes to be its own.
Likewise, with all that continues to become known about the horrors of the civil-military dictatorship, the right wing remains unperturbed and complicit in what happened. Despite the disagreements between their parties, practically all of them remained in agreement in justifying the institutional breakdown and the regime of terror that followed. The truth is that the ideological pertinacity of the far-right Republican Party prevailed and permeated the entire right-wing spectrum of the traditional parties in the sector.
However much the ruling party may have urged them to dissociate themselves from Pinochet’s work, the truth is that in recent weeks these sectors have valued the infamous legacy of the dictatorship and everything indicates that they will agree to maintain the 1980 Constitution with those touches that were made to it later to disguise its authoritarian essence. As well as their willingness to maintain the current health and social security system. And everything that represents its sacralisation of the market as the rector of the economy and the unrestricted maintenance of the subsidiary state. Everything indicates that the prolongation of the status quo does not bother the current rulers and left-wing referents very much either when access to the state apparatus and its opportunity to control and embezzle the national treasury seem to be the main priority of many of its actors.
It has become clear that US imperialism is still very much alive, and everyone is aware of the enormous power of the employer classes, together with the existence of a political right wing that claims to be democratic without any proof of such a pretension. For many have once again proved their anti-republican and coup-plotting vocation here, as well as in Latin America and now even in the countries of the First World.
There was little room to recognise the mistakes of the left and the Allende government, which there undoubtedly were, but which in no way justified the coup and its dramatic consequences. In this sense, instead of continuing to wait from the ruling party and the left for the conversion of the right-wing, its mea culpa and democratic conviction, the current rulers should be committed to organising the people and preparing them to defend the profound reforms that have been postponed for so long. In order to prevent another civil-military conspiracy, an intention that is still valid among those who have always despised human dignity, social equity and the sovereignty of the people. And which, fifty years after the coup, are reiterated with such arrogance and cynicism. Because, in reality, a united and active people can never be defeated.
