The Other September 11th The Chilean Coup

We all remember where we were on September 11th, 2001.  I was getting ready for work, watching the first plane hit the first building. The news thought it was a small plane that accidentally crashed. I continued with my pre-work regimen when the second one hit and I drove to work dazed.


But how many of us remember September 11th, 1973? Chile-we hardly could find it on a map. The Vietnam War, Watergate...the US backed military coup was lost in all of that. 


The most striking part of it to me is that we share September 11th, as well as the amount of people killed, around 3,000 in both cases. In both instances, they were followed by heavy privatization (Walter Reed, our US military, the post office, etc., etc.) and the socialization of private debt.   Jose Pinera was in charge of the large majority of privatization and is writing glowing reports at The Cato Institute and never mentioning these were undertaken under a military dictatorship. A 17 year dictatorship. He neglects to mention the bailout President Bachelet gave to pensions. Or the commission expense ratios that take advantage of people. 


Some interesting background here or here.  It would take many books to really cover the topics, most won't be read because that is too time consuming of course. But id you can spare a few minutes to understand something of what has happened in Chile and the US and understand our commonalities, perhaps we can better predict our futures.


Many husbands and wives and children also kissed each other for the last time that day. But their days were followed by many more of detainment,  torture and murder.

Senator Edward Kennedy, A Good Friend to Chile

From the Daily Beast(Teddy's Idealism):

A 1973 military coup overthrew the popularly elected left-wing government of Salvador Allende, whom the United States worked against. Admiral Augusto Pinochet’s new regime shot hundreds of Allende’s supporters in the National Stadium, although the United States Embassy whitewashed the new regime. By 1973, Kennedy had assembled enough support in the Senate to enact a ban on all arms sales to Chile, and in 1981 secured a ban on all aid to that nation until it provided basic human rights. In 1986, he visited Chile, and despite government-run demonstrations against him, met with and encouraged opposition politicians and mothers who came with pictures of children who had been “disappeared” by the military.

In 2008, President Michelle Bachelet of Chile, herself tortured and exiled by the Pinochet regime, presented Kennedy with the Order of the Merit of Chile, saying “you were there for us when human rights were being massively and systematically violated, when crime and death was around our country. You are one of the great, good, and true friends of Chile.”

September 23, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

BOSTON – Senator Edward M. Kennedy today received the highest award bestowed to a civilian by the government of Chile, the Order to the Merit of Chile Award, for his decades-long commitment to the struggle of human rights and democracy in the country. Her Excellency Michelle Bachelet, the President of Chile, traveled to the Senator’s home in Hyannis Port this afternoon to present the award. President Bachelet is in the United States for an annual visit with heads of state at the United Nations.

Kennedy has been a leading voice in the struggle for human rights and democracy in Chile for three decades. Following the 1973 coup against democratically elected president Salvador Allende, he worked tirelessly on behalf of the tortured and disappeared. In 1974, Kennedy led the fight in Congress to cut off military aid for the Pinochet regime. This was the first time Congress directed an end to military aid to another nation without waivers, conditions and delays.

In 1986, Senator Kennedy traveled to Chile to observe human rights conditions. The Pinochet government refused to meet with him and actively tried to obstruct his meetings with human rights and religious leaders. Four years later, Senator Kennedy returned to witness the swearing-in of Chile's democratically-elected President and has continued working closely with Chile, and President Bachelet, as they have become a thriving democratic ally of the United States.

From the Huffington Post:

John McCain, who has harshly criticized the idea of sitting down with dictators without pre-conditions, appears to have done just that. In 1985, McCain traveled to Chile for a friendly meeting with Chile's military ruler, General Augusto Pinochet, one of the world's most notorious violators of human rights credited with killing more than 3,000 civilians and jailing tens of thousands of others.

The private meeting between McCain and dictator Pinochet has gone previously un-reported anywhere.

According to a declassified U.S. Embassy cable secured by The Huffington Post, McCain described the meeting with Pinochet "as friendly and at times warm, but noted that Pinochet does seem obsessed with the threat of communism." McCain, a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee at the time, made no public or private statements critical of the dictatorship, nor did he meet with members of the democratic opposition in Chile, as far as could be determined from a thorough check of U.S. and Chilean newspaper records and interviews with top opposition leaders.....

At the time of McCain's meeting with Pinochet, Chile's democratic opposition was desperately seeking support from democratic leaders around the world in an attempt to pressure Pinochet to allow a return to democracy and force a peaceful end to the dictatorship, already in its 12th year. Other U.S. congressional leaders who visited Chile made public statements against the dictatorship and in support of a return to democracy, at times becoming the target of violent pro-Pinochet demonstrations.

Senator Edward Kennedy arrived only 12 days after McCain in a highly public show of support for democracy. Demonstrators pelted his entourage with eggs and blocked the road from the airport, so that the Senator had to be transported by helicopter to the city, where he met with Catholic church and human rights leaders and large groups of opposition activists.

Mark Schneider, a foreign policy aide and former State Department human rights official who organized Kennedy's trip, said he had no idea McCain had been there only days before. "It would be very surprising and disappointing if Senator McCain went to Chile to meet with a dictator and did not forcefully demand a return to democracy and then to publicly call for a return to democracy," Schneider said.

Surprising? I'm not surprised at much anymore.

The links between Chile and the USA are endless-I can really only write about a few each time. I believe Chile under Pinochet was an immense planned experiment of privatization under Friedman 'free market" economics and the tactics practiced to get the Chilean people to behave-a combination of starving the people under Allende(military kept the food on the docks and out of the stores) and feeding them under the Pinochet dictatorship. A Chilean friend told me that on the day of the coup, four hours later, food was in all the stores. "FOUR HOURS!" she said. It all worked very nicely. Behave and you get to eat. If you still won't behave, you'll disappear. Thanks to Friedman's "miracle", corporations have control of utilities, education, and even rivers. And there was no economic miracle.

“You, Senator Kennedy, were such a friend to Chile in our hour of need,” said Bachelet as she delivered the award. "You were there for us when human rights were being massively and systematically violated … You understood what was happening from the very beginning ... and you acted accordingly."

Pinochet went to England for healthcare?

I was reading today a number of different accounts of chronologies of Pinochet and came across this in a Washington Post story:

In October 1998, the 83-year-old Pinochet traveled to England for back surgery. He was arrested on a warrant issued by Spanish prosecutors...

This England?

The National Health Service (NHS) is the publicly funded healthcare system in England. The NHS provides healthcare to anyone normally resident in the UK with most services free at the point of use for the patient though there are charges associated with eye tests, dental care, prescriptions, and many aspects of personal care. The NHS provides the majority of healthcare in England, including primary care, in-patient care, long-term healthcare, ophthalmology and dentistry. The National Health Service Act 1946 came into effect on 5 July 1948. (Wikipedia)

Mr. Jose Pinera, architect of Chile's healthcare system under Pinochet, please tell me why that would be when Chile has a simply wonderful privatized system that you yourself helped to spawn? Did he believe the "socialized" healthcare was better?

And don't we hear it said that in the USA, maybe the system has problems but without a doubt, they have the top specialists anywhere? If you can afford it, that's where you want to go to get treated...yet, Pinochet(who could afford it ) went to England where you have one of the largest and oldest "socialized" systems. Oh, I see, that "socialized" tag not completely correct. Though the public system dominates healthcare provision in England, private health care and a wide variety of alternative and complementary treatments are available for those willing to pay.

But why England and not the say, the USA? Oh, here it is

Even before the former Chilean dictator offered his country's tacit support to the UK during the 1982 Falklands War, Margaret Thatcher had long been an admirer of his radical free market economic policies.

General Pinochet was detained in London on 17 October following a request for his arrest and extradition by two Spanish judges investigating some of the 4,000-plus political murders believed to have been committed during his 1973-1990 rule.

Well, all those atrocities under Pinochet but the economy-he and Milton Friedman saved it right? Given that we are talking about the price of lives and freedom now by exchanging a "good" economy for a "bad" one(which I find horrifying), I contend those policies didn't give Chile a good economy. Here's one take on it(a portion follows):

Cinderella's Fairy Godmother, Tinker Bell and General Augusto Pinochet had much in common.

All three performed magical good deeds. In the case of Pinochet, he was universally credited with the Miracle of Chile, the wildly successful experiment in free markets, privatization, de-regulation and union-free economic expansion whose laissez-faire seeds spread from Valparaiso to Virginia.

But Cinderella's pumpkin did not really turn into a coach. The Miracle of Chile, too, was just another fairy tale. The claim that General Pinochet begat an economic powerhouse was one of those utterances whose truth rested entirely on its repetition.

Chile could boast some economic success. But that was the work of Salvador Allende - who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after his death.

For nearly a century, copper has meant Chile and Chile copper. University of Montana metals expert Dr. Janet Finn notes, 'Its absurd to describe a nation as a miracle of free enterprise when the engine of the economy remains in government hands.' Copper has provided 30% to 70% of the nation's export earnings. This is the hard currency which has built today's Chile, the proceeds from the mines seized from Anaconda and Kennecott in 1973 - Allende's posthumous gift to his nation.

So, why is Chile in great shape economically? Copper revenues of course-Allende nationalized and Pinochet didn't privatize(mainly because the military was guaranteed a percentage) and the Concertation rule has meant every President has saved money, lots of it. When the bad times came, they were able to spend quite easily. Save in the good times and spend in the bad times-John Maynard Keynes must be smiling in his grave.