September 11 was the date when it took place. Backed by the CIA, it is an event whose scars can still be felt throughout the country. It is an event that left the most representative building of the country in ruins. It is an event, which not only caused many direct deaths, but set the prerequisite for thousands more. Today, we think of the tragic attack on the World Trade Centre when we see the date 9/11.
Though the terrorist attack was a pivotal point in US-politics, other pivotal events happened on this day as well. Perhaps because the events of September 11, 1973 didn’t happen in the “West” they don’t immediately jump to mind alongside the twin towers.
September 11, 1973 was the date when Chile’s military dictator Pinochet rose to power through a coup d’état. What followed were seventeen years of inequality, work-camps, and thousands of gruesome murders.
Since the colonial period, land-ownership had been in the hands of only a few oligarchs, creating large inequalities in society. The country was plagued by corruption and bursts of violence until about 1964. From then onwards it slowly stabilised; Chile built up a functioning democracy with regular elections. It unfurled to become a non-aligned, democratic, socialist country, drifting towards welfare. Land reforms transferred 59% of the land-ownership to the farmers, which raised the incomes for a significant part of the rural population. Many farmers unionised, giving them more political power and the ability to organise parts of the agricultural sector. Given this power, they decided to reduce the production of “cash crops”, which were meant for export, and instead focused on “food crops” to ensure a sufficient supply of food for those in rural areas. These reforms represented a paradigm shift for most Chileans, since many were farmers.
While the land reform was at first purely agricultural, other parts of the economy were also restructured to invest the revenue into welfare projects. The large mining industry was nationalised and its profits used to improve education and healthcare. These socialist reforms worked: Chile saw a growth in industry of about 12% as well as an 8.6% growth in GDP in the following year.
Much of the mining industry, however, especially the copper industry, was owned by US companies; therefore, the US government had a high interest in these companies continuing to reap revenue from Chilean mines. The USA was also concerned about having a socialist state in their “backyard” even though Chile remained non-aligned in theory and practice.
~Instead of reaping profits, quite the opposite happened: for the nationalisation of the mines, private companies received little compensation, because they were said to have reaped “excessive”, “above-average” profits previously.~
Due to these two concerns, the US government started to influence the Chilean political sphere to turn things around in their favour in the elections of 1970. They financed economically liberal media outlets and organisations within Chile. To fuel public discontent against the current socialist government, the Chilean economy was pressured to “scream”, as President Nixon put it. At the same time, the CIA made plans with local party leaders to stage a coup d’état in Chile, should the elections not turn out in the USA’s favour. Despite the resulting polarisation of the country, though, the trend of a socialist-leaning government continued after the elections.
With significant US-support, the Chilean military finally staged a coup on September 11, 1973. President Allende and many government officials were murdered. What followed was a military dictatorship until the 1990s which liberalised the economy once again, significantly restricted the freedom of speech, and caused the death or “disappearance” of up to 3200 people. Concentration camps were set up and tens of thousands of people were tortured. Agricultural land was given back to large land-owners and many industries were reprivatised. Welfare expenses plummeted and the socio-economic divide deepened drastically. In a few days, the young, socialist democracy had been turned into an economically liberal dictatorship, practising human right abuses and reversing the progress of the past ten years.
~While many industries got reprivatized under Pinochet, this did not include the the mining industry, which had been one reason for the USA’s support in the coup~
Pinochet’s influence on the country remains omnipresent, even though Chile has since returned to be a democratic republic. The current constitution, which states the principles of how the country functions as a whole, was written under the dictatorship in 1980 and has remained largely unchanged since then. Though there have been attempts in recent years to rewrite the constitution, as was discussed during a SIB event in 2023, these attempts have failed and Pinochet’s constitution will continue to serve as the legal foundation of Chile. Similarly, Pinochet’s ultra-liberal water code from 1981 continues to cause issues, especially as water resources become increasingly scarce. The code allows water to be traded privately as a commodity regardless of the land it is on. This commodification of water has led 90% of the natural water resources to be owned by a few dominating companies which are typically also engaged in the mining and agro-industry. Conspicuous examples of the problems surrounding the water-code include cases where smaller, land-owning farmers lost access to water, while continuing to own the land it was on. The lack of water then made farming or animal herding unfeasible, sending these farmers into poverty.
To this day, there continues to be a large socio-economic divide in the country, which was expressed in the form of small-scale riots and protests by indigenous and lower-class citizens several times in the past years.
On the other end of the political spectrum, an increasing part of the population finds a nostalgia for the Pinochet era, claiming that it “wasn’t so bad after all”. As proof, they often point to the boost in GDP as a result of the market liberalizations that followed the establishment of the dictatorship. The support for the deceased dictator is growing, even after the recent declassification of many CIA-documents indicated the large extent to which the US was involved in the coup and the previous propaganda campaigns.
The coup in Chile remains a good example of how even democratic countries can intervene with foreign policy that serves a few businesses at the cost of the well-being and life of a whole country’s population, not only in the present but for many generations.
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