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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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 Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:44 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| Just to remind you, Gopher, Pinochet murdered more than 3,100 Chileans, disappeared 1,100 and tortured and jailed thousands more. He closed the ' Chilean Congress, banned political parties, censored the press and took over the universities. Some people have a tendency for losing sight of these ghastly facts. |
I've never lost sight of those facts.
I've been to Villa Grimaldi, I've walked down Republica street in downtown Santiago, I've seen it, even had returned exiles (friends) guide me around.
I just think it's inaccurate to pin this on the United States govt, and it's childish to do so with an air of righteousness. Even the most leftist historians on this event -- see Loveman, see Stern -- point out that no one expected the brutality of the Pinochet regime, and it's character surprised everyone.
Furthermore, Pinochet was never a coup plotter, only came around in the last ten days or so before the coup unfolded. I would argue that he was much more of an opportunist than has yet been recognized. Just look at the details of his and his family's financial impropriety that are now emerging in the Chilean press.
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Sep 11, 2005 4:05 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:53 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| As for me, I can't smell its "stink" any stronger than any of the other "stink" that's out there throughout all of the centuries... |
Again, the comparative analysis.... aigooo... My entire pint is that what others do is immaterial. I judge myself based on whether I act consistently within my values, and treat the US the same. I judge the US byt the values expressed in the D of I and the Constitution, not by what Pinochet has done.
| Gopher wrote: |
| Therefore, it isn't an apology if I don't want to go into your courtroom and proclaim the U.S. "guilty" or as, you say, "stinky." What's the point? Politics? I'm not interested in politics, or in reducing complex historical events to simplistic "trial exhibits," as you seem to be. Besides, who is righteous enough to judge? You? |
Gopher, this makes no sense. You're forgetting, again, the overall thread and responding as if this last post was my only post. But as to the last question, of course me!! Everyone of us makes these judgements day in and day out. Otherwise, it would not be logically possible to even have an opinion!
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| So even though I still believe that you and others are seeing the School of the Americas as more sinister than it is |
I don't understand why you continue to fail to understand that I have no opinion on the School of the Americas...
| Quote: |
| suggest we agree to disagree and leave it at that. |
See preceding. |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:55 am Post subject: |
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[quote="Gopher"]
| Summer Wine wrote: |
Gopher: WHATEVER  You are still missing my point. |
The only point I see in your commentary is that the U.S. govt is bad and hurts innocent people, and that this is not nice. |
He's really good at that. I'm beginning to think it's Ivory Tower syndrome. (Not an insult, meant purely to be descriptive.) |
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in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 8:56 am Post subject: |
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EFLtrainer
Joined: 04 May 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 9:00 am Post subject: |
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| Gopher wrote: |
| I've never lost cite of those facts. |
Oh My God. This is just PERFECT. Anyone else see why? (Sorry, gopher, but this is too amazingly perfect to handle directly; got to have a little fun with it.) |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 9:01 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| Gopher, you talk about the Chilean militaries increasing disillusionment with Allende. Yet you fail to mention how this same military granted itself and Pinochet blanket immunity after the overthrow of Allende.Why was such amnesty necessary? |
It was necessary in Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay, and it was a sticking point on the negotiations with guerrilla forces in El Salvador and Guatemala, because of the extreme brutality of the military regimes while they were in power. The civilians who negotiated with them clearly understood this.
Which do you think was more of a priority: getting civilians back in power, or refusing to give-in to the military's demands about amnesty first?
Incidentally, you might be (accidentaly) making a straw man of me here, because I would not disagree with you that these military regimes were exceptionally brutal, just that the United States was not pulling their strings. And, in any case, I'm still not sure how the point I made demanded that I also make the point that you insist I ignored. How are they so closely related?
And as I've said earlier, the military's insistence that it is above the law is not a character trait attributable to the United States govt, but to the constitutions of each individual Latin American state, as well as an earlier Hispanic tradition of keeping military officers and priests out of civilian courts, going all the way back to the Reconquest of Spain from the Moors, as you know, a seven-hundred year process that deeply impacted Hispanics and their worldviews.
| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| You also have a tendency to talk about the military as though it were some homogenous entity rather than subscribing to a fragmentation necessary for the constant desire of a sophisticated analysis that you invoke. I'm afraid it's far more complex than that (do these words sound familiar?). For example, you failed to mention the October documents that show direct CIA assistance, including weapons, to the group of coup plotters who in 1970 assassinated General Rene Schneider, then the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Armed Forces. |
Very early on, I cited the existing literature on the Latin American militaries, which gets into the complexities of any discussion about them.
I don't have time to get into the fine details of each and every point here, so I'd ask you to give me the benefit of the doubt on this.
On Schneider's death: what you say is not entirely true. The weapons that DIA's man, Col. Paul Wimert passed to Brigadier General Camilo Venezuela, et al., were not involved in the death of Schneider.
Let's be clear on these weapons: we're talking about three untraceable submachine guns that were never fired. Wimert quickly recovered them from Valenzuela, after Schneider's death, and tossed them into the sea off the coast of Vina. The cable traffic I've reviewed suggests to me that Langley did not understand what was going on on the ground after 15 October, that events were proceeding too fast for them, and that they sent the weapons in good faith without understanding how exactly they were to be used (which, in any case, was clearly not for target practice).
You fail to acknowledge here that Kissinger and CIA reviewed the so-called Viaux Solution, which planned to abduct Schneider and exile him to Buenos Aires, on 15 October 1970. They decided that it had such a low probability for success that it would be better to hold everyone in reserve and wait for a better opportunity to launch a coup attempt against Allende. They communicated this order to retired Brigadier General Roberto Viaux, the ringleader, and Viaux told them that that was fine, but he was going to move against Allende (and Schneider) in any case.
CIA was simply unable to dominate or even seriously influence events on the ground. That, at least was the gist of Hecksher's "Viaux Solution" cable to headquarters, and, indeed, a whole series of discouraging cables to headquarters throughout Sept. and Oct.
On the action that Viaux and Valenzuela planned to execute with or without CIA backing, Santiago Station seconded headquarters' opinion that it had a very low-probability for success and was quite naked and known to the MIR (and the Socialists), whose intelligence organs had penetrated Viaux's informal group, but everyone watched the events unfold, of course, with great interest, hoping the coup would succeed. Indeed, in his testimony before the Church Committee Kissinger clarified that, although it was not authorized by the U.S. govt, he still would most likely have authorized it had the Valenzuela group asked for support.
In any case, this is how Schneider's death unfolded, according to the Church Committee's staff report and according to recently declassified dox available at State's Chile Declassification Project available at http://www.state.gov
On the morning of 22 October 1970 Schneider's luck expired (there had been two unsuccessful attempts to abduct him). The general's abductors forced him to stop while he was traveling to the Ministry of Defense. They used a sledgehammer and handguns to force Schneider out of his vehicle, but he drew his sidearm and exchanged gunfire. Using small arms, and not the submachine guns Wimert had passed to Valenzuela's group, the abductors shot Schneider several times and he died from his wounds three days later.
We don't know who the abductors were. They were right-wing students, former military personnel, active-duty military personnel, and some have alleged, Puerto Rican mercenaries. We still don't know this one yet.
So it wasn't an assassination as much as it was an attempted abduction that went very badly.
An assassination is a specially-targeted politically-oriented murder. Schneider was not assassinated, and he wasn't killed with any weapons that CIA had passed, and even though CIA and the White House most probably wanted the Viaux Solution to succeed, they had earlier, and unsuccessfully, attempted to put the coup plotters on standby.
Like I said, more forces were at work than the interests of the United States govt or CIA.
Last edited by Gopher on Tue Sep 13, 2005 3:02 am; edited 10 times in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 9:14 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| The CIA was massively implicated in both the 58 and 64 elections against him. In 1964 they funnelled in 3 million to be employed in various covert operations against Allende; close to 2 million between 1964 and 1969; one million in 1970 contributed by each of the CIA and ITT. |
Your facts here are correct except for your allegation that the United States was "massively implicated" in the 1958 elections. The United States was not involved in the 1958 Chilean elections.
At least I've never heard of that before. What's your source? Why didn't the Chuch Committee investigate and report on it? Why would they even be interested in Chilean elections before the era of the Cuban Revolution?
| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| And when all this failed to impede what proved in 1970 the inevitable transpiring of the people's electoral voice... |
This overstates the election. Look:
Allende won 36.3 percent of the vote
Alessandri won 34.9 percent of the vote
and Tomic won 27.8 percent of the vote
This is hardly the "inevitable transpiring of the people's electoral voice": 62.7 percent of the electorate opposed Allende. These percentages got a little worse after the 1973 Congressional elections, when Congress started openly calling for a military coup. He handled this opposition poorly and failed as a national leader to bridge these gaps...this is to be attributed to Allende's bad politics and not CIA.
And I realize that what his govt was dealing with was a hard core of Allende haters, not unlike the hard core of Bush haters that we see in the U.S. today. They needed very little foreign encouragement to hate Allende. CIA certainly encouraged them, however, with propaganda not unlike Michael Moore and his election-year film, Fahrenheit 9/11, and all of his other anti-Bush material that comes out quite regularly.
Not defending Bush, or even saying that I like him. Just drawing the analogy to dramatize my point.
CIA enabled but did not create the opposition to Allende, then. And Allende failed to negotiate with them or cede on any issues that were important to them just as Bush fails to negotiate and cede to those who oppose him in the U.S. today. And what does this accomplish? They hate Bush even more. It was the same in Chile 1970-1973. Allende could have been a better politician, then, and you must recognize that he indeed undermined himself and set the stage for counterrevolution.
Last edited by Gopher on Mon Sep 12, 2005 6:38 am; edited 8 times in total |
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in_seoul_2003
Joined: 24 Nov 2003
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 9:17 am Post subject: |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 9:23 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
Gopher, it was neither the Soviets nor Cuba which Washington feared. The threat, in fact, was that he could develop an economic model that relied neither on Communism (since Allende himself held certain principles of the latters paradigm in derision) nor on some dictatorial reign (since the US openly admitted that Allende's greatest threat was in becoming successful through democracy). Again, I will cite this: ""Henry thought that Allende might lead an anti-United States movement in Latin America more effectively than Castro, just because it was the democratic path to power," commented an ex-staff aide".
As for Castro, though they were on freindly terms, they were hardly isomorphic ideologues. In a comment made to American reporters, Castro not only highlighted his differences with Allende but testified on behalf of the latters committent to democracy: "Castro told American interviewers in July 1974: Allende respected all these rights. The opposition press conspired. There were newspapers conspiring for a coup d'etat every day, and they finally delivered the coup. Everyone had the right to conspire, and the results were that they overthrew the Allende government and set up a fascist regime."
To be sure, Allende's political intentions from the get go were always well-documented: nothing insidious, covert or deceiving. He always publicly insisted that neither Cuba nor the Soviets could be paradigms upon which Chile could model its visions independent of US regional hegemony. From another source:
"And though he considered himself a friend and ally of Fidel Castro (especially in the face of US hostility), Allende rejected any suggestion that Cuba or any of the other Communist countries of the time could be a model for his vision of socialism... but rather an authentically socialist and democratic alternative to meek social reform, on the one hand, and authoritarian 'people's democracies"-Stalinist dictatorships- on the other." |
The interpretation of Allende as a European-style Socialist parliamentarian is false. Allende was clearly a Socialist militant. And Socialism in Latin America was an entirely different animal than Socialism in Western Europe.
I've seen photos of Allende in the uniform of the Socialist militants. According to the oral histories that Cristian Perez is producing out of the Universidad de Santiago, this is becoming rather indisputable. Perez cites the AK-47 that Castro personally presented him with in Nov.-Dec. 1971: "To Salvador, from your comrade-in-arms, Fidel. [translation is mine]"
Also, you forgot to mention that Allende's daughter, Beatriz Allende, or "Taty," was married to a Cuban intelligence official, and was a very militant revolutionary in her own right.
I do not dispute at all that Washington mixed up hegemonic maintenence with its anticommunism in Latin America.
Just as several Latin Americans, Arbenz, Castro, and Allende, mixed a strong dose of yanquiphobia with their Marxism-Leninism.
Still, the U.S. was just one actor among many that brought the final outcome about.
Focusing on U.S. interpretations and U.S. policies, or giving them undue emphasis, distorts the historical reconstruction of this coup, just as relying on what ex-staff aides (who was that you were referring to...Pete Vaky?) much later is less indicative than contemporaneous documentation.
Also, don't forget that "the democratic path to power" was still a "democratic" strategy to Socialism, a non-democratic end, and that Allende aggressively used decrees and every legal loophole available to subvert the constitution he had promised to respect. He hardly acted in good faith with respect to the opposition and his earlier "promises" to them.
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Sep 11, 2005 4:50 pm; edited 3 times in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 9:53 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| So, Gopher, let's talk about propaganda machines. |
I'm aware of El Mercurio, the major Chilean newspaper, and its contributions to this event.
In your presentation of its high-power rightist publisher, Augustin Edwards, you failed to mention that there was no Track II coup operation until Edwards flew to Washington and told Nixon that the sky was falling in Chile. On 15 Sept. 1970 Edwards breakfasted in Washington with Kissinger, Attorney-General Mitchell, and Donald Kendall, PepsiCo's CEO, and a major Nixon campaign contributor. (Edwards was also PepsiCo's distributor in Chile, thus his ability to go directly to the White House.)
In any case, here's Helms's testimony on the origins of Track II, the military coup track, which is, incidentally, also described in Kissinger's memoirs:
"...the President called this meeting where I have my handwritten notes because of Edwards' presence in Washington and what he heard from Kendall about what Edwards was saying about conditions in Chile."
At 3:25 that afternoon, Nixon called Helms to his officer, and in the presence of Kissinger and Mitchell, Nixon gave specific orders to Helms, which led to Helms to produce these notes...
http://foia.state.gov/documents/PNARA3/000097BC.pdf
So who was pulling whose stings here?
In any case, I'm also very well aware of El Mercurio's role in the downfall of Allende. The 40 Committee authorized CIA to pass the funds that you reference in your post, and CIA/El Mercurio kept the heat on Allende throughout his term in office. Indeed, Santiago Station itself drafted many of the editorials you reference.
You use the term "destabilize" to characterize Nixon and CIA's intent toward Chile. The Nixon administration used words like "harm him" and "bring him down" to describe its intents, and it moved to cause Allende serious economic damage (damage sustained but not totally reversed, by the way, by the Soviet aid which was coming in).
According to former Director of Central Intelligence William E. Colby, however, Massachusetts Congressman Michael Harrington mischaracterized his Senate testimony on Chilean affairs in 1974, claiming the director had used the word "destabilization" to describe CIA's covert operations against Allende's government. Although "destabilize" does not appear in contemporaneous documents, Harrington's charge gained currency when leading newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post ran stories repeating it in the mid-1970s. After all, given the course of subsequent events, it offered a plausible interpretation of Nixon's policies and their effect. Still, using "destabilize" to characterize CIA's intentions towards the Allende regime between November 1970 and September 1973 conveys certain shades of meaning that were not present in contemporaneous Agency planning documents and operational cables in their declassified and redacted form.
Colby attempted to clarify the record with no luck. Langley simply had no credibility in the press in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal, the environment in which Harrington made the allegation. Since then, however, "destabilization" has become an integral part of the literature on the coup, with some writers relying on it to buttress the notion that the Agency, as Peter Kornbluh asserts, continued to pursue "the long-sought 'coup climate' necessary for overthrowing Chile's elected government."
In fact, neither Nixon nor Kissinger directed Langley "to destabilize" Chilean democracy, or to induce or become otherwise involved in a renewed coup effort either. Nixon had little or no faith in the Agency after Track II -- indeed, he purged Langley in mid-1973. In any case, CIA did not form a task force to overthrow the Allende regime between November 1970 and September 1973. Santiago Station did establish and maintain what historian Steve J. Stern calls "sympathetic political conversation with Allende's opponents including coup-oriented actors" -- and the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency was also very close to the military plotters. Langley tasked Santiago Station to collect operational intelligence as well, such as the details of la Moneda's contingency planning. These intelligence operations were meant to keep Washington informed of any potential coup, however, and not to promote or coordinate it, even though the distinction tended to blur in the field.
So I think continued use of "destabilize" should be reserved for Oliver Stone and Michael Moore, but it doesn't belong in a historical reconstruction because it isn't in the historical record.
On another point: you take exception to being labelled a strict revisionist, and I can certainly see how most of us fade in and out of each and every one of the categories, and there are also more perspectives than there are categories. This notwithstanding, your citation of sources talking about "daming CIA cables" is duly noted...
Also on revisionism, you said "let's talk about propaganda machines" but you only spoke on the U.S./CIA propaganda machine. Why did you avoid the Chilean Communist Party, very heavily financed by the KGB, and its control over the labor federation -- CUT-- and its use of papers like El Siglo?
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Sep 11, 2005 4:19 pm; edited 5 times in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 10:03 am Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
" just think it's inaccurate to pin this on the United States govt, and it's childish to do so with an air of righteousness. Even the most leftist historians on this event -- see Loveman, see Stern -- point out that no one expected the brutality of the Pinochet regime, and it's character surprised everyone."
No, no, no and absolutely NOT! Gopher, look at the following points:
---On June 8, 1976, at the height of Pinochet's repression, Kissinger had a meeting with Pinochet and behind closed doors told him that "we are sympathetic to what you are trying to do here," according to minutes of the session (according to official records).
---According to official documents, the U.S. was fully aware of the extent of the repression immediately following the coup and aware of "Operation Condor", Chile's secret terror network.
---Again, according to official documents, U.S. Ambassador to Chile Nathaniel Davis suggested that, while it would be politically risky for the U.S. to provide the Chilean dictatorship expert assistance in setting up concentration camps, material aid such as "tents, blankets, etc.," could be sent for the camps without specification of their purpose.
---Another document shows Kissinger assuring the dictatorship's foreign minister Patricio Carvajal that he viewed criticism of the dictatorship on human rights as "a total injustice" and that he was committed to "helping [the Chilean] government." (Documents made public earlier have shown Kissinger making similar assurances directly to Pinochet.) |
It is fairly obvious that you are citing and repeating Kornbluh's thesis. And it's a blatantly leftist position, not a professional historical reconstruction. It belongs in the halls of Congress or at the Hague, but that's about the only place it belongs.
I've seen no evidence that anyone in Santiago Station, Langley, or the White House knew anything about Pinochet's intentions before the coup, or that they approved of them, whatever they were, or that the military would hold power, Kissinger's reassurances to an anticommunist ally during an era of turbulence and uncertainty in U.S. politics notwithstanding.
Most in Washington, indeed, many officers in the Chilean armed forces, expected a coup, followed by new elections, which they hoped someone like Frei would win.
And the reactionary, even irrational, ideas, intentions, and policies of Nixon and Kissinger in Chile and elsewhere are not in dispute. I'm not sure why you're raising these points "against" my position. It seems like you're creating a straw man (that I sympathize with Nixon and Kissinger, or worse, Edwards or Pinochet), and that's absolutely false.
I believe you are reading history backwards when you talk about Operation Condor and the repression of the Pinochet regime. There is no evidence in the record at all, and I've been through most of the dox in the Chile Declassification Project (not just the selected dox Kornbluh published), that anyone in the U.S. govt knew this was coming. (How they felt about it as it happened, and after it happened, is another story, but their backing of the opposition 1970-1973 was not the same thing at all as approving Pinochet's future course of events. Even local military commanders in the north were taken surprise, for example, by the so-called Caravan of Death. And it wasn't the first time Washington and CIA rushed headling into a dark room without knowing what they'd find there, either, if they are to be accused of this, that is.)
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Sep 11, 2005 4:24 pm; edited 2 times in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 10:15 am Post subject: |
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In_seoul_2003: you never responded to this issue...Why not?
| Gopher wrote: |
| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| Has it occurred to you, Gopher, that, perhaps, YOU need to SEE in people the need to reduce as such in order to gratify your own pre-existing ideological conviction that America is always falsely accused, or disproportionately so? |
Have you reviewed the existing literature?
http://www.cepchile.cl/dms/lang_2/doc_3236.html
Excerpt, and this is a Chilean history professor writing:
"Anti-imperialism has been a favourite recurring weapon in public politics in Latin America. Underlying this is the thesis that the United States is the principal culprit for the general problems of societies south of the Rio Grande. This has been the El Dorado of the anti-Establishment forces of the region, although it also has planetary explanations in that the United States arose as a global power during the course of the 20th century. Certainly it is the emotion that dominates every 'conspiracy theory' at the moment of taking positions, not only regarding inter-American relations but also regarding any type of diagnosis of our societies. We believe we have found the thread of the plot that leads to the culprit, to the puppet master sprawled on his chair in some large North American city..." |
Here is more data that Kornbluh doesn't care to acknowledge, coming from the same source, a Chilean research project funded by grants from Princeton. Are you aware of these findings?:
http://www.cepchile.cl/dms/lang_2/doc_1140.html
http://www.cepchile.cl/dms/lang_2/doc_1148.html
http://www.cepchile.cl/dms/lang_2/doc_1119.html
http://www.cepchile.cl/dms/lang_2/doc_1120.html
Last edited by Gopher on Sun Sep 11, 2005 11:17 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 4:39 pm Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
And I see no evidence to reject what Nixon and Kissinger have said as anything less than reality and culpability. According to officially released documents:
President Nixon and selected Cabinet members casually discuss the need to "do everything we can to hurt [Allende] and bring him down."
As Kissinger informed Nixon on November 5, 1970, the "example of [a] successful elected Marxist gov. in Chile would have .[an] impact on-and even precedent value for-other parts of the world, especially Italy. . .similar phenomenon elsewhere would in turn significantly affect world balance and our own position in it."
"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people." |
I missed this last night.
You can't rely on the arrogant statements coming from the White House for much more than identifying intent. These statements are no indication at all of what actually happened -- not in Guatemala, not in the Congo, not in Cuba or Saigon, not in the Dominican Republic, and not in Chile.
Even the Church Committee concluded that "American officials had exaggerated notions about their ability to control the actions of coup leaders�the United States had no such power." Have you never recognized this point that even a hostile and somewhat antigovernment Senate recognized in 1975? |
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Gopher
Joined: 04 Jun 2005
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| Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2005 5:10 pm Post subject: |
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| in_seoul_2003 wrote: |
| Do I realy need to comment on how ridiculous the argument accussing Allende of repressing the media truly is, given the anti-Allende media events that transpired only three months before (only 2 years and 9 months after he became president) his murder? |
I've never really advocated the idea that Allende supressed the media, and I think you may be arguing against another position that I don't take. In any case, Allende did generally harass the right and the opposition, using obscure devices and loopholes such as Decree Law 520 and other "constitutional" measures to expropriate recalicitrant interests.
He also failed to take a consistent stand with respect to MIR's and other of the so-called ultras' illegal land and factory seizures. This hardly bespoke of an overriding committment to legality.
And finally you lapse into a revisionist position where you reference Allende's "murder." It's been well-publicized for several years now that, upon exhuming his body and performing an autopsy, he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head.
Oral histories based on first-hand witnesses reaffirm this. Here's what Perez, a leftist, sympathetic to Allende, tells us about Allende's suicide, for example:
"A little after 2 o'clock in the afternoon of the 11th of September 1973, Salvador Allende, on hearing that military forces commanded by General Palacios had occupied the first floor of the Palace, ordered his men to go downstairs: he fooled them into believing he would go down last. The last ones who were going down the stairs heard two shots and later a cry from 'Kique' the Intendant of the Palace 'Allende is dead. Long live Chile!' He then took up a rifle to continue the fight but Ricardo Pincheira snatched it away from him and told him it would be a useless sacrifice."
You also forget to mention that Allende had referenced suicide to foreign diplomats in the past, and that Allende's daughter, who retired to Cuba with her husband, a Cuban intelligence officer, also committed suicide with a rifle much later. She left a detailed suicide letter for Castro which he has refused to publish, against the wishes of Chilean scholars like Perez, who want to know what she said. |
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Summer Wine
Joined: 20 Mar 2005
Location: Next to a River
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