forgotten
Pietro Nenni was prescient. In his diary on 27 October 1970, spoke of Chile and Salvador Allende Gossens was elected President of the Republic on September 5, just over a month ago. "The Chilean Socialist Party and the newly elected President of the Republic of Salvador Allende-wrote-I was invited to attend a November in Santiago at the ceremony of investiture of the president. "The historic leader of the Socialist Party was already worried and saw dark portents on the horizon." Poverty is much-remarked-that is feared and fears of a coup. "And the coup de was reached after three years, confirming the alarm Nenni. It happened on 11 September 1973, another tragic September 11th for democracy. One day, almost forgotten after the September 11, 2001, the date of the terrorist Osama Bin Laden on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon in New Yorrk.
The coup in Chile was carried out by armed forces led by General Augusto Pinochet Duarte was supported by the reactionary right and backed by the United States of America. Richard Nixon once said war against Allende. The U.S. president held a meeting Sept. 15, 1970 fire already in the White House with his closest collaborators and Richard Helms, then CIA director. "One chance in ten-story-but then Helms liberate Chile from the son of a bitch is worth a try, we will not be directly involved, ten million dollars available and more if necessary, full-time job - Nixon-added for our best agents. A strategy: strangle the economy; 48 hours to schedule the action. " Li urged: "Do everything you need to damage it and drop it." Sentences confirmed by subsequent U.S. commission of inquiry, a willingness by Bill Cliton, Nixon's successor in the House Bianca.Da that time to the Allende government began three years of hell, to the bloody military ruling of 11 September 1973. Allende, a Marxist, supported by a coalition of socialists, communists, Catholics and radical left, was elected with just 36.3% of the vote. He had an ambitious program of "socialism in freedom." The reform program was comprehensive and incisive: the nationalization of banks, agrarian reform, expropriation of foreign capital ownership of mines, particularly those of copper, the largest in the world. The first socialist president of Chile wanted to nationalize the copper ("Take back our mines"), until then controlled by U.S. multinationals (in particular the Kennecott and Anaconda). The Americans had two problems: one political and one economic. They did not want the loss of a "colony" in Latin America and defended the interests of U.S. multinationals. So strangle the economy, causing a collapse in copper prices, the cutting of credit by the International Monetary Fund and the flight of capital from the South American country. Financed the right, the conservative press and strikes against the Allende government, particularly the drivers, which paralyzed the country (Chile has long been a more than 4000 km wide and up to 200). On the eve of the coup by Pinochet, the country was bent by economic crisis, inflation and deadly attacks by the terrorists of the right and left.
September 11, 1973, 36 years ago, took the putsch. Allende tried to get in touch with Pinochet. The Chief of Defence with whom he had full confidence, not answers. The President said: "They will have already arrested Augusto." Instead, General Pinochet had betrayed his oath of allegiance to the Constitution and the government and was the head of the coup. Allende entrenched himself with a group of loyal police in La Moneda presidential palace. La Moneda was surrounded by tanks and army. Allende refused to surrender. He doctor, a pacifist, he made his exit from the building and continued to fire the machine gun Fidel Castro had given him. He stated: "Stay here a la Moneda has a very precise political meaning. It would be terrible if after all that has happened, the president of Chile ended up running away like a rat." For his personal doctor committed suicide, others died under the bombs dropped by aircraft against the rebels Moneda Chilean Air Force. He died at 65 years of age.
on September 11, 1973, the naval attache of the U.S. Embassy in Chile, a member of the U.S. Navy, he hastened to inform the Pentagon: "Our D-day was almost perfect." The power was taken by a military junta government headed by Pinochet. There followed long and fierce years of dictatorship. Were suppressed political parties, trade unions, parliament, freedom of the press. The dissidents were killed, imprisoned, tortured or made to disappear into thin air. Two government commissions established in the early nineties of the last century, when it was returned to democracy, officially documented 3,197 cases of victims of "disappearances". The dictatorship, according to sources, has caused over 60 thousand victims.
Socialists and the Italian Communists were traumatized by the coup. When Ricardo Lagos, a Socialist and former close associate of Allende, sets up as President of the Republic on 11 March 2000, hundreds of journalists flocked to Santiago from all over the world. There was also a small group Italian reporters. "Blow up a lot of enthusiasm. Lagos-tells a reporter who was there at that time, he proclaimed that he wanted to meet with Italian journalists. We did go to a palace on the outskirts of Santiago, and we said, 'I want to thank the Italians and, in Specifically, the Socialists who supported us during the dictatorship. Craxi mate helped us and gave us the funds to buy this building in which we resumed political activity '. " During those same years, the PSI claimed all the other socialist parties under the heel of the right-wing dictatorships (Spain, Portugal and Greece) and dissidents in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries dominated regimes comunisti.Enrico Berlinguer in 1973, after the coup in Chile, he proposed the policy of the historic compromise in Italy among the great popular forces. The secretary of the Communist Party, with three articles on 'Rebirth', proposed for the historic compromise "with 51% of the votes can not govern."
now governs in Chile Michelle Bachelet, a socialist, first woman president. Even as she is a doctor and Allende as Ernesto Guevara, known as El Che. There is almost a missionary spirit. Michelle Bachelet has paid a high price in the fight against the dictatorship, she was arrested and tortured, his father Albert, general aviation, paid with their lives for loyalty to Allende, the boyfriend Jame Lopez, he was interned and eventually "disappeared." The 34 * president governs a country of Chile vibrant, democratic, although struggling with the recession internazionale.Il traveler who goes to Santiago today is a statue of Salvador Allende in front of the Moneda: peaceful walks. And 'the symbol of democracy that has set in motion. "Chile is a long sigh of love," says Pablo Neruda.
April
online
Leo Samson