Why Allende Had To Die, by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (New Statesman, reprint of 1973 article)

[Ken Burch]

(note: this article, written shortly after the U.S.-backed coup that ended Chilean democracy on September 11, 1973-Chile's "9/11"-was posted on the New Statesman website this week in honor of the Nobel Laureate's passing)

http://www.newstatesman.com/world-affairs/2013/04/why-allende-had-die

It was towards the end of 1969 that three generals from the Pentagon dined with five Chilean military officers in a house in the suburbs of Washington. The host was Lieutenant Colonel Gerardo López Angulo, assistant air attaché of the Chilean Military Mission to the United States, and the Chilean guests were his colleagues from the other branches of service. The dinner was in honour of the new director of the Chilean Air Force Academy, General Carlos Toro Mazote, who had arrived the day before on a study mission. The eight officers dined on fruit salad, roast veal and peas and drank the warm-hearted wines of their distant homeland to the south, where birds glittered on the beaches while Washington wallowed in snow, and they talked mostly in English about the only thing that seemed to interest Chileans in those days: the approaching presidential elections of the following September. Over dessert, one of the Pentagon generals asked what the Chilean army would do if the candidate of the left, someone like Salvador Allende, were elected. General Toro Mazote replied: “We’ll take Moneda Palace in half an hour, even if we have to burn it down.”

One of the guests was General Ernesto Baeza, now director of national security in Chile, the one who led the attack on the presidential palace during the coup last September and gave the order to burn it. Two of his subordinates in those earlier days were to become famous in the same operation: General Augusto Pinochet, president of the military junta, and General Javier Palacios. Also at the table was Air Force Brigadier General Sergio Figueroa Gutiérrez, now minister of public works and the intimate friend of another member of the military junta, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh, who ordered the rocket bombing of the presidential palace. The last guest was Admiral Arturo Troncoso, now naval governor of Valparaíso, who carried out the bloody purge of progressive naval officers and was one of those who launched the military uprising of September 11.

That dinner proved to be a historic meeting between the Pentagon and high-ranking officers of the Chilean military services. On other successive meetings, in Washington and Santiago, a contingency plan was agreed upon, according to which those Chilean military men who were bound most closely, heart and soul, to US interests would seize power in the event of Allende’s Popular Unity coalition victory in the elections.

[Ken Burch]

1. More, from the article:

Finally, on September 11, while Operation Unitas was going forward, the original plan drawn up at the dinner in Washington was carried out, three years behind schedule but precisely as it had been conceived: not as a conventional barracks coup but as a devastating operation of war.

It had to be that way, for it was not simply a matter of overthrowing a regime but one of implanting the Hell-dark seeds brought from Brazil, until in Chile there would be no trace of the political and social structure that had made Popular Unity possible. The harshest phase, unfortunately, had only just begun.

In that final battle, with the country at the mercy of uncontrolled and unforeseen forces of subversion, Allende was still bound by legality. The most dramatic contradiction of his life was being at the same time the congenital foe of violence and a passionate revolutionary. He believed that he had resolved the contradiction with the hypothesis that conditions in Chile would permit a peaceful evolution toward socialism under bourgeois legality. Experience taught him too late that a system cannot be changed by a government without power.

That belated disillusionment must have been the force that impelled him to resist to the death, defending the flaming ruins of a house that was not his own, a sombre mansion that an Italian architect had built to be a mint and that ended up as a refuge for presidents without power. He resisted for six hours with a sub-machine gun that Castro had given him and was the first weapon that Allende had ever fired.

[Ken Burch]

2. And this:

(warning: descriptions of brutality below...thanks to Nixon and Kissinger).

Around four o’clock in the afternoon, Major General Javier Palacios managed to reach the second floor with his adjutant, Captain Gallardo, and a group of officers. There, in the midst of the fake Louis XV chairs, the Chinese dragon vases and the Rugendas paintings in the red parlour, Allende was waiting for them. He was in shirtsleeves, wearing a miner’s helmet and no tie, his clothing stained with blood. He was holding the sub-machine gun but he had run low on ammunition.

Allende knew General Palacios well. A few days before, he had told Augusto Olivares that this was a dangerous man with close connections to the American embassy. As soon as he saw him appear on the stairs, Allende shouted at him: “Traitor!” and shot him in the hand.


Fought to the end


According to the story of a witness who asked me not to give his name, the president died in an exchange of shots with that gang. Then all the other officers, in a caste-bound ritual, fired on the body. Finally, a non-commissioned officer smashed in his face with the butt of his rifle.

A photograph exists: Juan Enrique Lira, a photographer for the newspaper El Mercurio took it. He was the only one allowed to photograph the body. It was so disfigured that when they showed the body in its coffin to Señora Hortensia Allende, his wife, they would not let her uncover the face.

[dipsydoodle]

3. Pinochet wasn't the USA's first choice to lead the coup - it was General Rene Schneider

General René Schneider Chereau (December 31, 1913 - October 25, 1970) was the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army at the time of the 1970 Chilean presidential election, when he was assassinated during a botched kidnapping attempt. He coined the doctrine of military-political mutual exclusivity that became known as the Schneider Doctrine.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ren%C3%A9_Schneider

Schneider didn't agree with Allende's policies but did accept that Allende had been democratically elected - that was why he wouldn't play ball with the US.

Part of the background to US interference in Chile was that ITT had threatened to withdraw funding to the Republican Party. Some details here : http://newsmine.org/content.php?ol=coldwar-imperialism/chile/chile-plots-pepsi-itt.txt

There is a live warrant for Kissenger's arrest in Paris for contempt of court in relation to not showing at proceeding brought by Schneider's family regarding his involvement in Schneider's assassination.

[postulater]

4. We had become our enemy. There was no escape from

ourselves.

And we allow ourselves to remain ignorant to avoid confronting the horror.

[Ken Burch]

7. This seems a good place to post this song

(written by the American truckdriver-songwriter Don Lange). Lead vocal here by Christy Moore.

[postulater]

11. Hadn't heard that one. Thanks for showing it too me.

No wonder I've been cynical and bitter for forty years. It's hard to remember when I didn't have this deep frustrating sorrow for the rest of the biosphere. But songs like this remind me I'm not alone in that.

And Christy (City of Chicago) Moore! One of the greats. The Irish woody Guthrie (?). I missed seeing him in Dublin by one night some years ago.

A good teary start to my day.

[Ken Burch]

10. There was a Victor Jara song that, in a dark-comic way, referenced Schneider's assassination:

Last edited Sat Apr 19, 2014, 10:42 PM - Edit history (1)

It's from the song "Las Casitas Del Barrio Alto&quot the "Barrio Alto" is the wealthiest neighborhood in Santiago, Casitas means "cottages"-Rich people in Chile are pretty much of full German or Italian ancestry, so they design homes that allow them to pretend they live in the Alps-so the title basically means "the Cheesy, Overpriced McCottages Where The Rich Bastards Who Want To Kill Salvador Allende and The Workers and the Indigenous Live". The song is basically Victors Chilean-specific rewrite of "Little Boxes", by Malvina Reynolds, and pretty much uses the same tune. This is the verse I was talking about)

Y las gentes de las casitas
se sonríen y se visitan.
Van juntitos al supermarket
y todos tienen un televisor.

Hay dentistas, comerciantes,
latifundistas y traficantes,
abogados y rentistas
y todos visten polycron.
(y todos triunfan con prolén)

Juegan bridge, toman martini-dry
y los niños son rubiecitos
y con otros rubiecitos
van juntitos al colegio high.

Y el hijito de su papi
luego va a la universidad
comenzando su problemática
y la intríngulis social.

Fuma pitillos en Austin mini,
juega con bombas y con política,
asesina generales,
y es un gángster de la sedición.

(I've just made an English adaptation of that verse, which goes like this)

And the people of the cottages
All smile and get lots of party guests.
And they go to the supermarket
And unlike us, they have TV's.

There are dentists, there are traders,
drug kingpins and landowners,
There are lawyers and corporate bankers
and they all wear prolene shades.

And play bridge and drink martinis dry
and their children all look Aryan
and with all the other little Aryans
they all attend the private schools.

And like their rich daddies did,
They go to the university,
Where they study social problems
And learn how to make them pay.

Then they smoke in their Austin minis,
And play games with bombs and "policy",
And assassinate non-fascist generals,
Like seditious gangsters always do.

(ok...maybe not "dark-comic", maybe just sardonic-prophetic...still, Victor DID have those people pegged.

[Judi Lynn]

12. It was excellent Victor Jara decided to mention the assassination of Rene Schneider in this song.

It would seem if he knew about it, made it common knowledge through his music, that he was very well aware of what could easily happen to him, too.

Deeply, deeply courageous man. In the end, his side, his faith, his belief in life for all, rather than power for a few will win, after all.

[scarletwoman]

5. Thank you for this.

One of the few great desires I have in this life is to read the announcement of Henry Kissinger's death.

[Ken Burch]

6. Might be awhile...

...I'm thinking "Dr. K" is one of the undead.

[scarletwoman]

8. Your OP inspired me to post a poll:

Poll question: Why hasn't Henry Kissinger died yet?

[Ken Burch]

9. Good poll. I've now participated in it. n/t

[RainDog]

13. k&r n/t

[pa28]

14. Excellent read. Just as relevant today as the day it was written. n/t