2023-09-07 07:05:00
Fifty years ago -except for Colombia and Venezuela-, South America was governed by military dictatorships. We lived in the middle of the Cold War in which Moscow and Washington were fighting for the world.
Between 1973 and 1985, democracy was lost in Uruguay, resulting in 6,000 political prisoners, of which 200 have disappeared so far. Former president Pepe Mujica is arrested, tortured and locked underground for eleven years, a fact that gives greater relevance to the document of “never again” to new coups d’état, signed by the three living former presidents and the current president Lacalle Pou.
Next September 11 marks fifty years since the overthrow of Salvador Allende in Chile, the first democratically elected socialist president, which made Nixon and his Secretary of State Kissinger authorize financing operations to undermine the Chilean process, ending with the Government Palace bombed and the president committed suicide. This financial support also sought to discourage the Italian and French left from continuing to seek to be a government through democratic means.
A hunt for Allendistas was unleashed, adding 3,216 people executed, many still missing – not a few thrown alive from helicopters into the sea -, and 38,254 survivors of political imprisonment and torture, with thousands having to seek asylum.
Like a house of cards, democracies continued to fall. Thus, in March 1976 it was Argentina’s turn, beginning a dictatorship that lasted until 1983, ending with defeat in the Falklands War.
In the midst of this antidemocratic orgy, Operation Condor was born, which consisted of the macabre coordination of the secret police of our countries, with the purpose of exterminating all those who opposed the dictatorships.
It is for all this that we must raise our voices so that “never again” to coups d’état is something inherent to democracy.
#Comercio