By María Rivera and Otávio Calegari, MIT Chile
On October 22, 1970, a little more than a month after Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile, then commander in chief of the army, René Schneider, was assassinated by a group of right-wing extremists and military officers who wanted to prevent Allende from assuming the presidency. The attack, which was attributed to a leftist group, was part of a series of actions aimed at creating a situation of instability in the country that would justify a military coup to “put the house in order.” Schneider was a “democratic” officer and was considered an obstacle by the pro-coup sectors. This attempt ended with his death, but did not achieve its main goal. The coup attempt failed due to the enormous popular uproar caused by his assassination, which made the coup plotters hesitate on carrying out the coup.
The person behind Schneider’s assassination and the failed coup attempt was one of the most important politicians in the United States, Henry Kissinger, then National Security Advisor to the government of Richard Nixon in the United States. Recently, on November 30, 2023, Kissinger died at the age of 100. He died with total impunity, leaving a profound legacy in his service to U.S. imperialism and against the world’s peoples. In this short note, we do not want to talk about the importance of Kissinger for U.S. imperialism, but we want to discuss one aspect of the countless atrocities for which he was responsible: his intervention in Chile.
Henry Kissinger and Chile
U.S. intervention in Chilean national politics did not begin with the election of Salvador Allende. Since the late 1950s and early 1960s, the United States, through the Alliance for Progress policy, had financed and promoted the strengthening of the Christian Democratic Party as a possible alternative to the advance of communism (as the traditional right wing proved increasingly politically exhausted). After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, U.S. imperialism realized that its power in Latin America was at risk and that it could not allow “new Cubas” to come into existence. In Chile in 1964, the U.S. financed more than 50% of the campaign of Eduardo Frei Montalva, the Christian Democratic candidate for the presidency, as an alternative to Salvador Allende, the Popular Front candidate. The CIA helped organize a real terror campaign against Allende and the UP wherein it tried to increase the feeling of fear within the middle and working classes of a possible Allende government. The result was the election of Frei Montalva.
After the so-called “Revolution of Freedom” of Eduardo Frei Montalva and the DC as a “third way” against the right and the “Marxist left” was exhausted, Allende was elected in September 1970. Thus began the more direct military coup initiatives. The assassination attempt on General Schneider was the third coup attempt against the newly elected Allende government, which had not yet taken office. The two previous attempts were also organized by Kissinger, the CIA, and some big American and Chilean businessmen, who used extreme right-wing groups and military coup plotters such as Roberto Viaux to do their dirty work.
After Schneider’s death and the failure of the coup, Kissinger (with Nixon’s support) ordered a plan to destabilize Salvador Allende’s government economically, politically, and socially. According to UP scholar Jorge Magasich,
“Before Allende becomes president, the National Security Council (NSC) established its boycott policy, which anticipated what was to come: actions to divide the Unidad Popular; economic boycott by encouraging the exodus of technicians; support for media that criticized the government at a level sufficient to provoke a repression of the press, which thus led to claims that government was interfering with the ‘freedom of the press’; sponsorship of programs for the military to remain an independent power; claims that the Investigations Police of Chile was being controlled by Cubans in order to provoke a reaction; financial support to anti-Allende groups; clandestine techniques to promote a climate of insecurity, especially among political centrists, whom appeared to have accepted Allende; development of an international propaganda campaign denouncing the weakening of the democratic system. “[1]
This destabilization plan would be carried out throughout the 1000 days of Salvador Allende’s government, culminating in the coup of September 11, 1973. Kissinger’s role was also fundamental in the preparation of September 11, since he coordinated the initiatives with the CIA, the Chilean big bourgeoisie, the right wing and military coup plotters. Today, there is no doubt about the involvement of the United States and the role of Kissinger in the coups in Latin America, especially in the case of Chile. Many secret archives have been opened in recent decades, and a large number of books have been written on the subject [2].
After the military coup, Kissinger was one of the great defenders of the Pinochet dictatorship within the United States and also in his travels around the world. Kissinger was in Chile in 1976 when he met with Pinochet and thanked him for his service against communism. Kissinger’s words to Pinochet at that time were:
“We sympathize with what you are trying to do here, […] you did a great service to the West by overthrowing Allende […] my assessment is that you are a victim of all the leftist groups in the world and that your greatest sin was to overthrow a government that was going communist.”[3]
Henry Kissinger understood that Pinochet, despite his innumerable crimes against the Chilean workers, was necessary to defeat the socialist revolution that was underway in the 1970s.
A few years later, during the administration of Gerald Ford, the State Department, under the responsibility of Kissinger, also promoted and strengthened the so-called Operation Condor, a coordination between the intelligence apparatuses of the different dictatorships of the Southern Cone, promoted by Pinochet, which included the dictatorships of Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. Operation Condor was responsible for the death, torture, and disappearance of thousands of people in different countries of the world (including assassinations in European countries and in the United States itself, as in the case of the assassination of the former communist minister Orlando Letelier).
Imperialism has No Remorse
Kissinger died with total impunity. The case of the assassination of General Schneider was tried in the United States. However, the Colombian Court of Appeals ruled in favor of Kissinger, stating that Kissinger’s actions were in accordance with political orders in the context of the Cold War and the U.S. fight against communism [6]. In other words, the U.S. justice system defended and justified all the crimes committed by Kissinger (and Pinochet) to “fight communism” and defend the property of U.S. and Chilean capitalists.
For workers around the world who continue to fight to end capitalist society, we must be clear that imperialism and its strategists, like Henry Kissinger, will not hesitate for a second to do the same thing they did in the 1970s.
Kissinger was one of the greatest criminals of the 20th century. But his crimes were not the crimes of an evil or psychopathic individual. Kissinger represented all that imperialism is capable of doing in order to continue to dominate and plunder the peoples of the world.
NOTES:
[1] MAGASICH, Jorge. Historia de la Unidad Popular, vol. 1, p. 164.
[2] https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cold-war-henry-kissinger/2023-05-25/henry-kissingers-documented-legacy
[3] https://elpais.com/chile/2023-05-26/la-reunion-privada-entre-kissinger-y-pinochet-en-chile-queremos-ayudarlo.html
[4] In Chile, between 1971 and 1973, there was a profound revolutionary process, with the seizure of land and factories, the emergence of embryonic workers and popular power, the possibility of ruptures in the bourgeois armed forces, etc. The government of Salvador Allende and the UP tried to stop the revolutionary process that was challenging the entire bourgeois and imperialist domination in the country. Allende tried until the last moment to avoid a socialist revolution and to lead the revolution towards bourgeois institutionality, taking some anti-imperialist measures, but without breaking with capitalism. However, his role was questioned by imperialism and the Chilean bourgeoisie, which perceived Allende as a danger mainly because he could not control the revolution advancing from below.
[5] See the book by John Dinges.
[6] See https://www.justice.gov/osg/brief/schneider-v-kissinger-opposition / https://internationalcrimesdatabase.org/Case/1072/Schneider-v-Kissinger/
