Chile’s pseudo-left government under President Gabriel Boric commemorated the 50th anniversary of the bloody, CIA-backed coup of 1973 with a ceremony at La Moneda presidential palace on September 11. The site was bombed by tanks and warplanes on the day of the coup, causing the elected Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende, who died in the middle of the attack.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric with his Mexican counterpart Andrés Manuel López Obrador at La Moneda Palace in Santiago. [Photo: Presidencia de Chile]
The ceremony was attended by several Latin American leaders identified with the so-called “Pink Tide,” including Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Luis Arce of Bolivia. Present were both the current President of Uruguay, Luis Lacalle Pou, and his predecessor, the former Tupamaro José Mujica, as well as the Portuguese Prime Minister of the Socialist Party, Antonio Costa.
Washington, which was instrumental in preparing the coup and supporting the bloodbath it unleashed, sent only Christopher Dodd, the former Democratic senator and lobbyist linked to the Wall Street bailout and who was appointed by Biden last year as its president “Special advisor” was chosen by the Americans.’
The ceremony was marked by the boycott of the entire Chilean right, whose representatives had made statements justifying the coup. Meanwhile, an event organized by the lower house of the Chilean Parliament in honor of Allende on the 50th anniversary of his death was interrupted by members of the UDI (Independent Democratic Union) who attempted to make similar statements to justify the military overthrow led by the general. Augusto Pinochet. The rest of the right-wing parties boycotted the meeting.
In a provocative maneuver staged by the Boric government, on Sunday the 10th, special forces Carabineros were deployed on the occasion of the traditional “March of the Fallen” to the General Cemetery in memory of the victims of the 17-year military dictatorship in Chile.
“Those responsible for this violence are opponents of the government,” said Interior Minister Manuel Monsalve. He was more concerned about the three injured police officers than the hundreds of protesters who tried to defend themselves after being sprayed with tear gas and water cannons.
Earlier this week, the government met with human rights groups to tell them that the path to the cemetery would be surrounded by a police fence, with only authorized groups able to enter the fenced area. It turned out that the purpose of the fiasco was to provide Boric with a photo opportunity so that he could appear with the relatives of the executed, murdered and missing.
An additional 2,000 police and special forces were mobilized for the September 11 ceremony, showing the extent to which the current government, consisting of the Stalinist Communist Party, the pseudo-left Broad Front and the Socialist Party, has moved to the right.
The Boric government has increasingly tailored its program to the political heirs of the Pinochet regime, with the presidential notion of a “common vision” taking center stage at the 50th anniversary commemorations.
Two years ago, during the campaign for the 2021 presidential election, then-candidate Boric said: “Mr. [expresidente Sebastián] Piñera, you are warned, you will be prosecuted for the serious human rights violations committed under his mandate.” Last Friday, Boric invited the former right-wing president to La Moneda to sign a supposed “democratic” pact that would involve all parties would commit to “valuing and cultivating democracy and fully respecting human rights.”
Piñera signed, but only after setting his own terms. Specifically, he called for “respect for the constitution and the laws, the rule of law, also respect for human rights, condemnation of violence.” And violence has many faces, as we knew it on October 18, 2019, but also organized crime and drug trafficking and terrorism…’.
It should be recalled that in October 2019, Piñera literally declared “war” on the massive anti-capitalist demonstrations, declaring a state of emergency and deploying troops on the streets for the first time since the Pinochet dictatorship.
In the following months, three dozen people died at the hands of repressive forces, while 3,800 were hospitalized due to serious injuries from gunshot wounds, tear gas canisters and beatings. Of the 11,389 men, women, adolescents and children detained, 2,146 reported some form of sexual violence, torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment and excessive use of force.
In 2021, Amnesty International announced that of 10,813 complaints about human rights violations filed with prosecutors, only 14 cases were concluded with a conviction of state officials. The Children’s Ombudsman reported that of the more than 3,470 children and young people who suffered human rights violations, only two cases resulted in a conviction.
This is an old story for Boric, who agreed with Piñera on the need to condemn violence in general. “Violence must be excluded from democratic instruments,” Boric agreed, equating the legitimate efforts of the millions of students and workers seeking an end to extreme social inequality with the mass murders and torture carried out by the armed forces of repression Teeth to defend capitalism.
In a nod to the far-right and frankly fascist parties that opposed signing a pact that did not explicitly blame Popular Unity for the coup, Boric said: “We will strive until the last moment so that everyone can do this without any questions “, but out of conviction for the future well-being of our country, we jointly commit ourselves to valuing and cultivating democracy and to fully respecting human rights.”
Page 12 reported that the removal of Patricio Fernández as adviser to the July commemorations marked a turning point for the right, underscoring the spirit with which Fernández intended to carry out the date.
In a television interview, “independent socialist” Fernández suggested that Pinochet and the military command had acted with good intentions in carrying out the coup. “History may continue to debate why it happened or what were the reasons or motivations for the coup … but we could try to agree that events after this coup are not acceptable in any civilizational pact,” he said. He had made similar statements before.
The Association of Relatives of the Imprisoned and Disappeared and the Association of Relatives of the Politically Executed, both dominated by the Stalinist Communist Party, and several Stalinist lawmakers called for his resignation. But as El País pointed out, Fernández limited himself to expressing the official line of the government – which includes the Stalinists – which in effect calls for coexistence with the right’s positive interpretation of the coup.
The government’s eagerness to accommodate deeply authoritarian and undemocratic political forces cannot be overstated. Both the pseudo-lefts and the Stalinists are part of the “pro-capitalism” team, but perform different functions depending on the political division of tasks. Stalinists portray themselves as guardians of “human rights” and regularly criticize rights. But when capitalism is threatened, everyone lines up to defend it.
A vivid example of this is the recent government-sponsored bill passed in both houses of Congress that criminalizes all forms of land grabbing, including homelessness, school occupations by students, occupations of workplaces and factories, and the actions of Mapuche indigenous people, who claim ancestral land. In addition to imposing stiff prison sentences, the bill grants property owners the right to use deadly force to defend their private property.
As the WSWS has noted, land occupations have profound significance in both rural and urban centers in Chile. They became one of the points of revolutionary confrontation in the 1960s and early 1970s precisely because of the oligarchic and reactionary character of the Chilean bourgeoisie and its historical inability to meet even the most basic democratic and social demands. Today, Boric is preparing “legal” justifications for the repression in anticipation of a revolutionary outburst on the fundamental issue of housing and land ownership. The permanent state of emergency, in which the military is used against marginalized Mapuche populations who claim their ancestral lands, is part of this.
The anti-usurpation law follows a host of other police state laws also passed by so-called “left-wing” lawmakers, including granting the military and police a license to kill and granting retroactive legal immunity from prosecution. Ten carabineros have already been acquitted in several cases; significantly expand the arsenal of the militarized Carabineros police force; give the military a greater role in public policy; Use the military to protect “critical infrastructure” and allow armed forces and police to forcibly repel refugees attempting to cross the Peruvian and Bolivian borders.
On foreign policy, the Boric administration issued a statement of thanks to the Biden administration for declassifying two CIA files from September 8 and 11 last month that confirmed what everyone already knew: that the intelligence agency was the White House was well informed about the preparations and implementation of the coup. The Chilean government said the gesture – which keeps far more incriminating files under lock and key – “encourages the search for the truth and strengthens our nation’s commitment to democratic values.”
What “democratic values”? Finally, Chile is just one of dozens of countries that continue to suffer from US imperialism’s aggression, including regime changes, assassination plots, military interventions, invasions and wars. But even before he took office, the former student radical Gabriel Boric demonstrated his goodwill and represented Washington’s foreign policy goals towards Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba in the region. Since taking office, he has faithfully joined Washington’s war campaign against Russia.
On the 50th anniversary of the coup, the Chilean masses face the same underlying political and economic conditions that sparked it. The police-state measures of Approve Dignity are the preparation for the outbreak of class struggles and immense social convulsions resulting from the deep crisis in the global economy and its effects in Chile.
(Article originally published in English on September 12, 2023)
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