As pundits around the world mull over the long consequences of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States twenty-five years ago, it is worth considering that “other 9/11,” when it was the United States that backed a terrorist attack that toppled democracy in Chile back in 1973.
With Afrobarometer last October reporting that 49% of all South Africans would prefer a camouflage-clad junta to an elected business-suited cabinet in the Union Buildings, it is pressingly urgent to reexamine the costly butchers’ bill that militarism invariably produces – as well as the vulnerability of democracy to extremist actions on both wings of the spectrum.
From the start, the long bony finger of fate that is Chile had a fraught relationship with democracy, with an oligarchy that switched between massacre and military dictatorship to enforce its authority.
Massacres included 200 protesters in 1905, 3,600 striking nitrate miners and their families in 1907, 565 strikers in 1921, and 447 peasants in 1934.
Cycles of dictatorship began in 1927 with Carlos “Paco” Ibañez; though he was toppled by a general strike in 1931, other dictatorships would follow.
By the 1950s, Ibañez was back in the saddle, the oligarchy by that stage having perfected a nominal democracy in which only literate adult men could vote, yet it ruled by decree.
The United States was increasingly involved in the Chilean economy, particularly in the copper-mining sector.
Candidates for office in the unrecognised Unique Workers’ Central (CUT) led by the syndicalist Clotario Blest had to be vetted by the political police.
State of emergency
Similar to what would later occur in South Africa over 1985 and 1986, the Chilean government decreed a partial state of emergency in five provinces in 1955, and a full national state of emergency in 1956.
In response, the CUT declared an indefinite general strike in January 1956 that shut the country down, and a nervous Ibañez offered to hand power to the CUT – but the communists and socialists broke ranks, so the opportunity for a unique “syndicalist republic” was lost.
With the oligarchy’s muscular reassertion of power, based on the recipes developed by the US “Klein-Sacks Mission,” neoliberal reforms to reduce the country’s debt crisis were introduced by imposing a wage freeze, while the CUT leadership was jailed for 100 days, and unprotected strikes became penal offences against which there was no appeal.
This drove a wedge between the moderate Communist Party of Chile (PCCh) and Socialist Party (PS) on the one side, centred on the figure of Salvador Allende, and the syndicalists and ultra-leftists centred on Blest in opposition.
After the “Battle of Santiago” in 1957 between protesters and the army that left 16 dead and 5,000 injured, though the Ibañez regime fell, further radicalisation saw the minority National Confederation of Labour (CNT) under the anarchist Ernesto Miranda split from the CUT in 1960, but the syndicalist maritime workers stayed with the CUT.
Both Blest and Miranda would be seduced by Guevarist insurrectionism, however, and in 1961, their political factions combined with just about all revolutionary left organisations to form the Movement of Revolutionary Forces (MFR) as a co-ordinating mechanism.
Popular participation
A “Revolution of Freedom” from 1964 by centrist President Eduardo Frei granted 100,000 peasants access to land ownership, modernised education, partially nationalised mining by the state’s acquisition of majority shares in foreign-owned companies, and extended popular participation in politics.
Yet the ultra-left distrusted these reforms and in August 1965, some delegates of the MFR joined with a radical splinter off the PS to form the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and adopted The Conquest of Power by Insurrectional Means, drawn up by a trio including Marcello Ferrada de Noli (who I interviewed in Sweden in 2015), as its programme.
The MIR combined Leninist vanguardism and Guevarist insurgency with the anarchist extermination of the state; it would become Chile’s leading guerrilla group, the corollary of MK in South Africa.
When the centre-left reconfigured on 9 October 1969 under Allende as the Popular Unity (UP) front to contest the 1970 elections, the CIA sponsored a series of false-flag bombings by a group of ultra-right terrorists led by Enrique Arancibia that were blamed on a fictional “Peasant Worker Brigade,” followed by the kidnapping of army chief-of-staff General René Schneider to try to precipitate a military coup.
The commando botched the job, shooting Schneider, who soon died, but the elections were peaceful and to the delight of the parliamentary left, Allende narrowly won, and was installed as president on 3 November 1970.
Instant enmity
Allende began implementing his “Chilean road to socialism,” which consisted of the complete nationalisation of key parts of the economy, especially the copper mines owned by US giants Anaconda and Kennecott, a move which earned him the instant enmity of Richard Nixon in Washington – though it was actually supported by the nationalist Chilean right.
But the right was horrified by Allende releasing political prisoners, including guerrillas of MIR splinter the People’s Organised Vanguard (VOP), some of whom became his informal bodyguard. Worse, to their minds, were the legalisation of peasant land occupations (bloody clashes between landlords and peasants were the frequent result), the raising of workers’ wages and a freeze on the prices of consumable goods which emboldened the CUT and CNT, and a constitutional change of the legislature from two chambers to one by eliminating the more patrician Senate upper house.
On 1 April 1971, a neo-fascist paramilitary party usually just known as Homeland and Freedom was founded by the lawyer Pablo Rodríguez to oppose the government by terrorism and sabotage.
Yet there was a popular upsurge: CUT and CNT workers occupied 339 factories and peasants occupied 658 estates, while armed militia called “industrial cordons” occupied workplaces, and civic organisations and community commandos occupied many barrios and rural areas.
On the ground, it looked much like insurgent South Africa would a decade later.
Developmentalist framework
Allende’s moves towards nationalisation – and subsequent attempts to establish official “popular assemblies,” “supply boards,” and “peasant co-operatives” – were mainly a way of trying to confine popular struggles within a developmentalist framework he called “Chileanisation.”
This failed, as did attempts by the government to break the factory occupations; these reveal the chasm between popular aspirations and the centre-left’s eulogising of Allende as a man of the people.
Meanwhile, in response to the copper mine nationalisations and the expropriation of over 2-million hectares of land by the end of 1971, the US boycotted Chile by denying it foreign credits, so Chile turned to the USSR for assistance, which deepened Yanqui disquiet, especially after Fidel Castro spent three weeks on an official visit to Chile over 10 November to 4 December, visiting factories, mines, and universities, and addressing massive crowds.
The Popular Unity government was already in economic and political difficulty. Economically, with an abrupt fall in the international price of copper, Chile’s trade balance went from a surplus of 95-million pesos at the beginning of the Allende administration to a deficit of 90-million pesos; the state’s budget deficit soared, and its foreign exchange reserves plummeted; shortages of consumables led to a mushrooming black market.
Politically, Allende’s policies, especially in rural areas, deeply polarised Chilean society; attempts by the UP to achieve rapprochement with the right-wing parties, the National Party (PN) and Christian Democrats (DC), failed because of strong opposition from the socialist faction within the UP, and as the courts ordered the return of many seized properties.
Street-fighting between right and left ultras escalated as the MIR seized land and factories.
Allende’s intent
In October 1972, the conservative Association of Truck Owners went on strike out of fear they would be nationalised, which was indeed Allende’s intent, and with the strike funded by the CIA, they were soon joined by conservative middle-class unions; the country ground to a halt.
The strike was only ended by Allende accepting members of the armed forces into his cabinet.
The March 1973 parliamentary elections saw the ruling UP coalition gain only 43,5% of the vote, while the combined right opposition Confederation of Democracy won 54,6%.
By May Day, the split in the ruling class, and the radicalisation of the popular classes, were leading to a decisive confrontation: 10,000 workers demonstrated in favour of the occupations, but were attacked by right-wingers with machine-guns in Santiago.
The first coup attempt occurred on 29 June 1973 when the 2nd Armored Regiment, under the command of Colonel Roberto Souper, with several tanks, a tank carrier and two trucks with forty men each, supported by the neo-fascist Homeland and Freedom.
Though the attempt failed, with 22 dead and 32 wounded, “the Tanquette” allowed coup plotters centred on the navy’s Vice-Admiral José Morino to assess government preparedness, and the willingness of the military to accept sedition.
The failure to resolve a second trucker’s strike over July to August and to disarm the popular militias led to an expansion of military representation in Allende’s cabinet.
A sociopath with paranoid delusions
The army was divided, but when its commander-in-chief General Carlos Prats, who had bravely defused the Tanquette in person, stepped down on 21 August, Allende replaced him with a general with a reputation for professional apoliticism, yet actually an authoritarian sociopath with paranoid delusions: Augusto Pinochet.
By 6 September, the truckers’ strike had bitten so deep that there was only enough flour left for three or four days; two days later, the coup plot was initiated when Vice-Admiral Merino sent word to the army’s Pinochet and the air force’s General Gustavo Leigh, demanding they pick a side; although hesitant, they opted to join the conspiracy.
On 10 September, a naval squadron sailed from Valparaíso under the pretext of joining naval exercises with the US and other Latin American navies, Operation Unitas XIV.
In reality, the US Navy was there to monitor the coup they had helped plan with their chief military attaché Captain Ray Davis at the US Embassy in Santiago, with the electronic warfare frigate USS Jesse L Brown maintaining constant contact with the Pentagon.
Returning unexpectedly in the early morning of 11 September, the Chilean squadron landed Marines who swiftly took the port city and took up combat positions.
Although the plotters gave him until 11am to surrender, Allende dithered, neither issuing instructions to UP coalition parties nor calling the 31 industrial cordons (eight in the capital) to arms, which allowed the plotters to consolidate their coup; the communist PCCh under Gladys Marín, though boasting 120,000 members, also did little; so much for their glorious resistance.
At 10:30am, rebel tanks under the command of General Javier Palacios opened fire on the presidential palace and a shootout ensued; at noon, air force planes rocketed and bombed the building; Allende held out until Palacios ordered an infantry assault at 2:30pm.
In the chaos, Allende committed suicide (though his myth denies this) by shooting himself with an AKMS assault rifle given to him by Fidel Castro.
The last industrial cordon, La Legua in Santiago, continued to valiantly resist by open combat, until 16 September when it was reduced by a joint infantry, tank, and helicopter assault; the resistance to the coup was over; Pinochet assumed dictatorial power and would not relinquish it until 1990.
Return to democracy
I have previously written in my monograph PW & Pinochet (2022) how Chile’s return to democracy closely matched that of South Africa’s.
The 1980s saw the emergence of broad resistance movements in both countries: in Chile, the formation of the Popular Democratic Movement (MPD) and the National Workers’ Command (CNT), and in South Africa, the United Democratic Front and COSATU.
In this period, both regimes made half-hearted attempts at reform and, behind closed doors, initiated talks. Those talks, I argued, led to transitions in both countries that ironically saw the centre-left come to power and entrench the right’s projects of neoliberal economics.
Both went through Truth Commission processes that were ultimately unsatisfactory to progressive forces.
But while South Africa had substantial institutional changes providing cover for the continuity of the old rightist neoliberal project, in Chile, “authoritarian enclave” clauses within the democratic constitution – hold-overs from Pinochet’s own 1980 constitution – privilege the military.
Neoliberal austerity and oligarchic hauteur provoke mass resistance, while state intransigence and foreign meddling radicalises that resistance, which in turn radicalises reactionaries.
Deeply polarised countries such as South Africa today, with an indifferent elite, China whispering in its ears, and pursuing an unstable blend of Allendist and Ibañezist policies, face restive populations reaching for ever more extremist options; but militarism is never a solution.
*This piece has been updated to add final lines excluded from the first version.
[Image: A 50th anniversary memorial poster from three years ago on the 1973 Pinochet coup features faces of the thousands murdered and disappeared during his regime. Supplied]
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