It seems almost unbelievable to me that half a century has passed since the coup d’état in Chile on September 11, 1973, as this event remains so deeply engraved in my memory, even though I was only a child at the time. Over time, it became a textbook case, the most infamous coup d’état of the period of dictatorships in South America, which ran from the early 1960s to the late 1970s.
Beyond commemorations, categorizations and statistics, this violent overthrow of power shook an entire country, put an end to the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende and caused assassinations, disappearances, imprisonments and the exile of several hundred thousand Chileans. , thousands of whom have rebuilt their lives in Quebec — today there are nearly 15,000.
Looking back, what lessons, if any, can we draw from this coup?
To the naked eye, a coup d’état is the coup d’état by soldiers who bomb a presidential palace, who display their tanks in the streets of cities, who lay down the law in an arbitrary manner. Although this grim spectacle has serious consequences, it still only gives a partial view of the story.
Last August, we learned that the Biden government had declassified documents on diplomatic relations between the United States and Chile during these pivotal years (see the report by the tireless and reliable Peter Kornbluh on the National Security Archive page ). Among other things, we learned that even before Salvador Allende came to power in 1970, Agustín Edwards Eastman, the richest man in Chile at the time, met with President Richard Nixon to develop a plan to prevent the election of the socialist candidate.
On the phone with Nixon, Henry Kissinger, national security advisor, who had just inquired about the failed attempt to block Salvador Allende’s access to power, would have described the Chilean army as “a fairly incompetent bunch”. This anecdote and others revealed by these documents are known to political scientists, historians and an informed public.
However, the confirmation of these meetings by these official documents – which certain American governments, especially of Democratic allegiance, have made available sparsely since the 1970s – is of capital importance: it shows that all the journalists and researchers who , for decades, have been telling the story behind the scenes, are not “ideologues” as they are still described today by those who, more numerous than we think, in Chile and in the rest of the world, try to minimize the ravages of dictatorship.
This is why the Biden government must declassify the remaining documents from this period, as requested by Chilean President Gabriel Boric Font and US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
A shameless plunder
Edwards Eastman and other businessmen did not stop there, they did it again: they paid handsomely for a truckers’ strike in October 1972 to disrupt the economy of the Allende government, plotting with the military for a first attempt coup d’etat in June 1973, then a second one which succeeded, with the complicity of the CIA and the American government of the time.
During the dictatorship, El Mercurio, the largest daily newspaper in the country, owned by the same Edwards Eastman, as well as other publications quickly forget their profession of faith in favor of democratic values to unconditionally support the dictatorship. They enlist in their maneuvers academics (Sergio de Castro and others) to advocate a version of liberalism which had never been applied until then, where the market must penetrate almost all spheres of life.
They keep silent about human rights violations, truncate the facts to preserve the image of the civic-military regime and lie shamelessly (Plan Z, the “Exterminated Like Mice” affair and so many other “constructions”) .
They “privatize” as many state companies as possible to appropriate them and reward their loyal allies and subordinates, engaging in a veritable “ransacking” (in the words of journalist Maria Olivia Mönckeberg). The proof, if we still doubted it, that a dictatorship is above all that: shameless looting. They are concocting a new Constitution for themselves and their allies, a real affront to the people, leading to serious consequences, particularly in terms of education, health and pension plans.
In Policy, Aristotle introduces the notion of “deviation”, which for him describes political situations where the constitution ceases to serve the common interest, as in the case of a ruler who turns into a despot. According to him, the oligarchy is one of the cases of deviation, during which the richest take power. According to him, the oligarchy is characterized by its hostility towards the people. Aristotle clearly indicates that these categories intersect: it is not forbidden for a tyrant to collude with industrialists to seize power.
The intoxication of power
If the coup teaches us anything, it is that democracy is fragile and should never be taken for granted. We must ensure the solidity of institutions and the strength of the rule of law. Chile in those years had let its guard down, so to speak: it lulled itself into the myth that it was the exception in the region in terms of political stability, forgetting that the last coup d’état dated back to 1932, that in the meantime certain democratically elected governments had become authoritarian along the way and above all that, during each decade, from the 1930s to the 1970s, abortive coups d’état had occurred.
This event warns us against the dangerous temptation that awaits the figure of the oligarch: that of laying down the law. In a state of panic or succumbing to the intoxication of power, the latter can choose to use his influence to put his interests before those of the nation, when it seems to him, rightly or wrongly, that his fortune is in danger. Danger. We must not underestimate the capacity to act of an individual who perceives himself as all-powerful, his capacity to change course and flout the values whose merits he nevertheless extolled while he was making his profits grow. easily.
In this sense, this event teaches us that coups d’état are fundamentally deceptive: they exhibit a theater of violence that screens the discreet puppeteers who pull the strings, inside and outside the country. This is why, again and again, we must redouble our vigilance, find mechanisms to cement the foundations of democracy.
Finally, if this event teaches us anything, it is that a coup leaves scars in its wake that take decades to heal, as the popular uprising of October 2019 in Chile cruelly reminded us. It breaks not only institutions, but also the social contract, installing distrust in the hearts of citizens towards their leaders and the forces of law and order. Let’s never forget that the human cost caused by this type of event is immeasurable.