The right has always chosen dictatorship over popular front

Chile

50 years after the coup in Chile: the example of Allende shows a sad lesson from history 

 

Olle Svenning  

 

This is a cultural article that is part of Aftonbladet's opinion journalism.  

 

Published at 05:00  

 

 

Images of people who disappeared during Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile, from a ceremony held last week at a building where a torture chamber was located. Photo: Esteban Felix / AP 

 

On september 11,1973, the bombs fell on the presidential palace La Moneda in Santiago de Chile. General Pinochet, in close collaboration with the US leadership, was about to literally destroy the constitutionally elected President Allende and his government.  

 

Poet and Nobel laureate Pablo Neruda predicted the victory of violence. He already wrote in 1950 in his huge poem suite "Canto General":  

 

"So they command from above, from the dollar bag.

  

So receives the shrunken traitor the 

 

command,  

 

So the generals play cops,  

 

That's how the trunk rots in the motherland's tree." 

 

Twelve days after the US-backed military coup, Neruda died; the cause of death is still disputed. His home in Santiago was in ruins and his books were thrown into huge bonfires in Santiago and other Chilean cities. The military used Santiago's soccer stadium as an execution site. The torture chambers were erected, the concentration camps were completed. The most beastly of the extermination camps bore the beautiful name of Villa Grimaldi and was run by DINA, Pinochet's bloody security service. Death squads made nocturnal raids.  

 

The vital, innovative cultural life essentially disappeared. Cultural creators like Victor Jara were murdered, the most important writers, filmmakers and artists were forced to go into exile or into the underground. Rural folklorism remained as decoration for the dictatorship.  

 

Money was funneled from the White House to anti-democrats in Chile, left-wing politicians were mapped, Chilean media were bought up 

 

*Money was funneled from the White House to anti-democrats in Chile, left-wing politicians were mapped, Chilean media were bought up *  

 

The Documents from 70s are less and less hidden by the secret stamp. It is thus possible to read the plans Nixon, Kissinger and the CIA's plans, printed together with the Pinochet military: "The most massive espionage efforts ever", said CIA director Stansfield Turner. Money was funneled from the White House to anti-democrats in Chile, left-wing politicians were mapped, Chilean media was bought up, above all from newspaper magnate Augustin Edwards. Systematic and targeted killings began. One of the first victims was the Chilean general René Schneider. He was accused of loyalty to President Allende.

 

The US and Pinochet were unable to prevent Allende from being elected president in 1970. The fight against the Chilean Popular Front intensified: systematic sanctions, canceled bank loans, financing of the opposition and systematic spreading of rumours. And murder.  

 

Allende was accused of being controlled from Cuba and the Soviet Union. Allende was not a revolutionary; he rejected Fidel Castro's advice to abandon democracy to stop fascism.  

 

The People's Front maintained the basic democratic institutions, freedom of speech and the press was self-evident, persecution of oppositionists did not occur.  

 

Chile was destabilized economically: inflation reached 600 percent, unemployment grew, communications were sabotaged. The chaos planned by the CIA and others tore the country apart. For the political right of the West, the military coup was hailed as a rescue from Chile's economic and parliamentary crisis. In civilized democracies, the people oust weak governments in political elections, not through military coups and mass murders. International capital and the political right viewed Chile as a pioneer country, freed from democracy and other restrictions.  

 

The socially ambitious but economically unsustainable policies of the Allende government were replaced by extreme and authoritarian neo-capitalism. The privatizations worked their way into every sector of society. Trade unions became illegal. Schools and universities were subordinated to the dictatorship. Chile became one of the world's most unequal countries. The country became a military dictatorship where oligarchs ruled the companies and feudal landowners seized the land.  

 

Pinochet was never held accountable for crimes against humanity; he was protected above all by his close friend Margaret Thatcher. 

 

In 2010, 30 years after the fall of Pinochet, a museum was inaugurated in Santiago in memory of the victims of the dictatorship: photos of the liquidated. Documents, protocols, abuses, human deaths; everything is available.  

 

In 2018, the nationalist right-wing culture minister Mauricio Rojas attacked the museum; the exhibitions were called one-sided and without history. He wanted the executioners to have the right of reply. After 94 hours, Rojas was deposed. He became director of a private water company in Chile and somewhat later in the country

 

Pinochet was never held accountable for crimes against humanity; he was protected above all by his close friend Margaret Thatcher.

 

In 2010, 30 years after the fall of Pinochet, a museum was inaugurated in Santiago in memory of the victims of the dictatorship: photos of the liquidated. Documents, protocols, abuses, human deaths; everything is available.  

 

In 2018, the nationalist right-wing culture minister Mauricio Rojas attacked the museum; the exhibitions were called one-sided and without history. He wanted the executioners to have the right of reply.  

 

After 94 hours, Rojas was deposed. He became director of a private water company in Chile and somewhat later a member of parliament for the Liberals. After 17 years of the Pinochet dictatorship, the victims could be counted. A total of 3,197 people were murdered; 1,102 are still missing. 40,000 were tortured.  

 

* In Chile, Sweden is assigned yet another honorable role, for the efforts during the military coup. *

 

Ambassador Harald Edelstam had thousands of refugees protected at the Swedish embassy. 8,000 Chilean refugees came to Sweden in 1973. Chile is an obvious part of Sweden. Roberto Bolaño, one of the foremost writers of our time, made an observation during his short life after visiting Sweden: 

 

"The Chileans there spoke the same kind of Spanish as in Chile in 1973. That Spanish was spoken nowhere else but in Sweden."  

 

In november 1975In, Spanish dictator Franco was buried in the monstrous El Escorial Castle outside Madrid. General Pinochet came to say goodbye to his close friend and predecessor. These two embodied a little over half a century of fascism.

   

President Allende assured in his last speech: Violence shall not prevail; "social transformation and democracy cannot be stopped." More of hope than political forecast.  

 

It took more than half a century before Chile overwhelmingly elected a president representing the Popular Front, Gabriel Boric. His appeal is that of the new left: ecology, decentralism, indigenous rights, staunch protests against Putin's war, criticism of Cuba. All summed up in the concept of "dignidad" (dignity), all that Pinochet and his American friends deprived the Chileans of. 

 

The opposition from the right against Boric is massive. Pinochet's constitution has not yet been fundamentally revised. The nationalist right again pays tribute to the dictator. The impatience of the working class and the left is constantly increasing: protests, demonstrations, uprisings.  

 

The example Allende  shows  a sad lesson from history. Popular fronts risk being very short-lived. That's what happened in Spain and France in the 1930s. And in Chile both in the 30s and 70s.  

 

In the choice between popular front and fascism, the political right and the big company owners have chosen dictatorship.