Odysseus Carabantes (1967), industrial engineer and author of several books such as “Ferdinand Magellan 500 years”, addresses in his new essay “Chile 1973. Story of a crisis” (Almuzara) the main events of the period between June 1965 and September 11, 1973, when Salvador Allende committed suicide during the military coup that brought Augusto Pinochet to La Moneda Palace. “Those were the years in which decisions were made that gradually but continuously undermined Chile’s democratic institutions,” he says. Carabantes claims he wrote “objectively and without attempting to satisfy anyone’s historical political palate.” The work, he explains, “shows the harsh reality of the mistakes that politicians, and especially the ruling left, made until they destroyed Chilean democracy.”
What were the ten years before the coup in Chile’s history? What progress had the country made?
I believe that the most important milestone in the decade before the military coup was in September 1973 Agrarian reform under the government of Eduardo Frei Montalva. When this process began in the agricultural world, Chile was importing food worth 150 million dollars per year, a figure that largely justified the reform that the Christian Democratic government was just beginning to implement and which envisaged the change of ownership of these lands without production and with an area of more than eighty hectares, which unfortunately was distorted during the popular unity government of Salvador Allende. In 1972; When Allende ruled in La Moneda, the number of food imports rose to 450 million dollars, because the program of popular unity provided for the confiscation of agricultural lands in production and assigned the responsibility for their preservation to political activists who had nothing to do with agricultural work. They knew it. Regarding the nationalization of the large-scale copper mining industry, which relates to the Nationalization of large-scale copper mining which was in the hands of American companies, was a factor in increased revenue for the Chilean state, but in the long run it had the opposite effect, as it had the opposite effect in the Allende government, namely less foreign exchange and less flexibility in the Obtaining financing from the Chilean Treasury.
What did the People’s Unity Government look like from 1970 onwards? Had there been polarization, as happened in Spain during the Republic before the 1936 coup?
The People’s Unity Government was full of contradictions. He wanted to promote far-reaching changes without having the majority of Chileans support such a task. Only 36% of Chileans voted for Salvador Allende and his program, that is, only 36% of Chileans voted “for the urgent renewal of contemporary society.”, as the UP program said and 64% were against it. Popular unity unilaterally gave the 1970 presidential elections a plebiscitary character; referendum which he lost. Furthermore, it is important to highlight that Salvador Allende’s government undermined Chile’s institutions and economy by making terrible decisions in both areas. At the institutional level, Allende himself had no problem admitting in early 1971 that he would not respect the Constitution when he referred to the agreement signed with the Christian Democrats that said that party would support him in the National Congress in the presidential election process of 1970. Economically seen The Allende government introduced something that a country’s production system does not need to function properly: uncertainty. As a result, the Allende government disarmed Chile institutionally and economically. All of this contributed to the polarization of Chilean society, creating two irreconcilably opposing blocs that brought Chile to the brink of civil war. Gradually, democracy lost value in all areas and it became increasingly clear that the confrontation in which Chilean society found itself could not be resolved through democratic means. In 1973, Chile experienced a reality very similar to Spain in 1936.; with the difference that the military coup in Spain was carried out partly by the armed forces and not by all, which triggered the coup Civil War, which did not happen in Chile in 1973; with a military intervention that is monolithically united and led by the institutional high command.
How did the Socialist Party prepare militarily for the foreseeable threat of a coup?
The socialist party has taken the armed path since 1967; when it took three more years for Salvador Allende to become president of Chile. Since this year, this party began to form paramilitary cadres, who often displayed a double militancy in the MIR. Many of the members of these Marxist paramilitary groups underwent training in Cuba, which gained particular importance during the government of Salvador Allende. The socialist party prepared militarily to crush the reaction of the bourgeoisie against the left’s attempt to establish the announced dictatorship of the proletariat.
Why didn’t Allende heed the alarm bells of Washington, which expected the US’s stern refusal to tolerate a socialist Chile because it would be a “bad” example for the region and the rest of the world?
Allende did not heed the warning that many gave him about the opposition that the United States would raise against the installation of a Marxist-Leninist, pro-Cuban and pro-Soviet government in Chile as part of the so-called Cold War. because he understood that his base was the left, the communists and the socialists, both Marxist-Leninist parties, and before them he had to show himself not as a reformist politician, but as a true revolutionary with a redeeming character for the people. And his appearance as an “anti-imperialist,” that is, anti-USA, reinforced the image that Salvador Allende wanted to convey to his support base. The United States began intervening in the 1970 Chilean electoral process immediately after the results were announced on September 4 of that year. The Marxist Salvador Allende won the election with a narrow relative majority over the right-wing independent Jorge Alessandri. They attempted to interrupt the electoral process, which would end with the proclamation of the National Congress fifty days later, on October 24th. The action that would be taken would be Kidnapping of the Army Commander-in-Chief, General René Schneider, with the aim of create a state of national excitement and the intervention of the armed forces led to the abrupt end of the government of Eduardo Frei, who left the country, leaving Vice Admiral Hugo Tirado Barrios as President of the Republic. Frei would emerge from the maneuver unscathed as a victim of the alleged left-wing terrorist action and the armed forces’ seizure of power, without anyone questioning his quality as a democrat. After the situation calmed down, Admiral Tirado would call new elections in which Eduardo Frei could run. In this operation The United States contributed money and weapons; In the end it didn’t end with Schneider’s kidnapping, but with his murder by a right-wing commando. Later, during the Allende administration, the United States took visible measures such as: Chilean copper embargo in the world’s ports and organizing actions to deny Chile’s creditworthiness in the international financial system, as well as covert actions such as financing the Chilean anti-Marxist opposition.
Who were the main people responsible for the collapse of the system in 1973?
The main person responsible for the institutional collapse in Chile in 1973 is Salvador Allende, since he was president of the republic and supreme head of the nation under the 1925 constitution. Allende unconstitutionally handed over his government before assuming his mandate, in the hands of a political committee that no one elected to govern Chile, which became a real de facto government. It was Allende, constitutionally given the presidency of the Republic, who shook the Chilean economy, created uncertainties in industry and agriculture, and, through the uncontrolled issuance of paper money, led to runaway inflation the likes of which Chile had never experienced before.
Does Allende’s end with suicide and his loyalty to his principles overshadow his mistakes for posterity?
To begin answering this question, another question arises: what were Salvador Allende’s principles? As for suicide itself, I don’t want to go into detail about it, as it is an act of entirely personal choice.
What cultural and political impact did the coup have abroad, particularly in Europe?
To Salvador Allende He is considered an icon, an example of global social democracy. I ask myself, how can this be when Salvador Allende declares himself a Marxist-Leninist? For Marxism-Leninism A social democrat was as much an enemy as a Nazi, whatever it is. Therefore, I think that the cultural impact, the martyrdom of Salvador Allende, is mistakenly viewed as a sacrifice to save the democratic republican system, when in reality this is the case What Salvador Allende did during his government was to undermine and destroy the Chilean republican democratic systemwhich was otherwise enshrined as a goal in its government program and which had previously been adopted as the political goal of the Socialist Party of Chile at the 1965 and 1967 congresses. So everything that can be observed in Europe as a vision of what happened in Chile in 1973 is, in my opinion, nothing more than a product of the very widespread misinformation that exists.
