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U.S. Imperialist Foreign Policy - the U.S.- Organized Coup in Chile

The Americans were devastated when on September 4, 1970, Salvador Allende, the candidate of the left, won the Chilean presidential elections. His victory came despite widespread American interference in the process, including directly funding other candidates and running a multi-million dollar smear campaign which portrayed Allende as a communist who would sell Chile out to the Soviet bloc.

The Americans were also surprised by their failure to sway the Chilean electorate - it had worked in the 1964 elections, when Allende had dropped from leading in the opinion polls to second place on election day.(In 1964, the Americans spent over $20 million on the Chilean election campaign - more than either of the American presidential candidates, Johnson and Goldwater, spent on their campaigns).

In the month and a half between Allende's electoral victory and the meeting of the Chilean Congress where they were to ratify his presidency, the U.S. engaged in a vigorous campaign to bring the government down. This included attempts to bribe Chilean congressmen into refusing to ratify Allende and encouragement to discontented ranks in the military for the staging of a coup. The Commander-in-Chief of the army at the time, René Schneider, seemed committed to enforcing the Chilean constitution, so CIA operatives assisted in a botched kidnapping attempt. Schneider was mortally wounded, but the end result was the majority of the armed forces rallied around the Chilean constitution. Allende was sworn in and assumed the presidency on November 3.

The Americans turned to a two-pronged approach to destabilize Allende's government. Between 1970 and 1973, all economic aid to Chile was halted and the U.S. vetoed any loans from the Inter-American Development Bank. Between 1971 and 1973, the World Bank refused to loan Chile any money. American industries withdrew, or refused to sell much needed supplies to the Chileans.

At the same time, the Americans continued some military assistance, and continued training Chilean military personnel in the United States and at the School of the Americas (then located in Panama). The strategy was transparent - strengthen the military while weakening the government.

Because of the virtual economic boycott by the U.S., the Chilean people faced an ever-increasing amount of shortages. But in the 1973 congressional elections, Allende's Unidad Popular (UP) party increased its standing, winning almost 45 percent of the vote, up from 36 percent in 1970. The Americans were stunned - they had confidently predicted the opposition parties would sweep the congressional elections, but none of them won enough of the vote to challenge the UP. A CIA-sponsored destabilization program was launched in earnest, with different sectors of the economy going on strike directly under CIA supervision. Throughout the summer, there were assassination attempts and attacks against the Presidential Palace, organized by the right wing extremist group Patria y Libertad. The group was nurtured and trained by the CIA shortly after Allende's election.

On September 11, 1973, after months of planning, the Chilean military launched a coup against the Allende government. It started in the Pacific port of Valparaiso, with the dispatch of Chilean naval troops to Santiago. U.S. Navy ships participating in "joint training exercises" were present to oversee the coup and provide moral support to the plotters. At the same time, 32 American observation and fighter planes landed at the U.S. air base in Mendoza, Argentina, close to the Chilean border, to be near at hand if they were needed.

By the end of the day, the military, under the leadership of Commander-in-Chief Agosto Pinochet, had assassinated Allende and seized control of the Presidential Palace. In the first week of military control, thousands of trade unionists, leftists, and supporters of the Allende government simply disappeared. Hundreds of others were killed outright and their bodies dumped in piles in the streets of Santiago as a warning for any who would oppose the junta. Others were sent to the torture chambers for which the Pinochet regime became notorious. In the following years, Pinochet cemented his control over one of the most brutal dictatorships in Latin America, and U.S. economic aid started pouring in. In 1974, U.S. President Gerald Ford told journalists that what the Americans had done in Chile was "in the best interest of the people of Chile and certainly in our own best interest."