2023-09-11 07:01:00
September 11 is not only a date that divided the history of the United States in two due to the fall of the Twin Towers in New York in 2001, it is also a day that divided – and continues to divide – Chileans: the military coup against President Salvador Allende in 1973. 50 years have passed.
At that time, close to Allende’s third anniversary in power, the southern country was experiencing an economic crisis that generated food shortages (for which the Government blamed a group of businessmen for conspiring) and triple-digit inflation. Likewise, the political tension plunged Chile into a deep polarization between supporters of the president and opponents who called for his departure.
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It was then that on September 11, 1973, the La Moneda Palace (presidential headquarters) was bombed by the military and left it engulfed in flames. The attack left the president dead from a gunshot (it is still debated whether Allende committed suicide or if he was murdered in the middle of the takeover) and the military conquered power.
“Mission accomplished. Coin taken. President dead” was the message that the military troops – under the command of General Auguto Pinochet, appointed commander in chief of the Army by Allende 19 days before – delivered at 2 in the afternoon reporting on the fate of Allende, the first elected socialist president. by popular vote.
Thus, Chile, although it left behind the economic crisis it was experiencing, entered into a 17-year military dictatorship (it lasted until 1990) under the command of Pinochet that left thousands dead and missing and an unbridgeable gap between the critics and defenders of that period. of history.
A fracture that deepens to this day, when Gabriel Boric – a former student leader who led marches in 2011 – has been in power for a year and a half. Recently, the opposition in that country abstained from adhering to the commitment to “defend democracy from authoritarian threats” promoted by the president and which was signed by four former post-dictatorship presidents.
The image of Pinochet now
70% of the current population of Chile was born after the coup. According to the pollster Activa Research, 60% of young people born in democracy have a negative opinion of Augusto Pinochet, against 12% who have a favorable opinion.
“The general took the Presidency and the nation, and he did it based on his thoughts. I don’t think he was fine, ”says Cristian Duarte, a 25-year-old programmer.
On the contrary, Alexánder Bustamente, an 18-year-old high school student, thinks that Pinochet was important for Chile. “Some call him a dictator, but he still did good things.”
Precisely, it was the young people who shook Chile in 2019 with massive protests that ended in a plebiscite and a constituent assembly.
From this malaise emerged Boric’s left-wing government, which failed in the attempt to change the dictatorship’s Constitution, promulgated in 1980. The Republican Party took the helm at the polls and guides the constituent process.
“The confidence of the youngest (…) moves in a very liquid way from one side to another. A large number of them are anti-political young people who vote for what is useful to them,” says Rodrigo Espinoza, an analyst at the Diego Portales University. The truth is that young people “see the coup and the dictatorship as a conversation about the past and not about the future,” says Espinoza.
Allende and Pinochet “alive” still
In Chile, Allende’s heirs and political followers govern, but the Republican Party, which vindicates Pinochet, gained prominence amid its opposition to Boric. Therefore, 50 years later, both characters have been revalued politically.
“This resurgence” of Pinochet’s image “from a historical perspective is a pendulum,” historian Patricia Arancibia tells AFP.
40% of Chileans believe that Allende was responsible for leading Chile to the coup d’état, while half have a negative image of General Pinochet, according to the Activa Research study.
In the midst of the Cold War, Allende wanted to promote socialism in Chile. His experiment drew attention in Latin America and Europe, but he alerted the United States that he was aware of the coming military coup, according to documents recently declassified by the US State Department.
But the figure of Allende resurfaced and is present in “Boric and his generation, the millennials, (who) have a rather mythical and positive vision of a president who commits suicide and is succeeded by a horrible military dictatorship,” says Eduardo Labarca, author of “Salvador Allende: Sentimental Biography”.
Murders and missing persons
On the other hand, according to human rights reports, the dictatorship left 1,747 people dead and detained and disappeared another 1,469, of whom 307 have been identified. The whereabouts of 1,162 are still unknown, whose search was only recently undertaken by the State. Chilean.
An example of this is the case of Emilia Vásquez, whose son – Miguel Heredia, a 23-year-old leftist militant captured in 1973 – was never heard from again.
“When they told me that they had thrown him into the sea, it was the most shocking thing because I always wanted to find him alive,” says the woman, who is now 87 years old.
Since 1998, the Chilean justice system began to investigate the human rights violations that occurred at that time. For this reason, some 250 agents of the military dictatorship are currently convicted and in prison, among them those responsible for the torture and murder of the popular singer and author Víctor Jara.
Augusto Pinochet died in 2006 at the age of 91 and in the last years of his life he faced legal proceedings in Chile and the United Kingdom, which had him in preventive detention in September 2000 and in January 2005. However, his problems with health made it impossible for the legal actions against him to succeed.
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