PCE (m-l): The Other September 11

Below is an article from the Communist Party of Spain (Marxist-Leninist) marking the anniversary of the September 11, 1973 military coup against the elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile and the white terror that followed.  The original article is posted here and this translation is from the PCE (m-l).    

The other September 11  

C. Hermida  

The mass media around the world today commemorate the 20th anniversary of the attacks suffered by the United States in 2001. Televisions have shown ad nauseam the images in which two planes were sent against the World Trade Center and the subsequent collapse of the so-called "twin towers", while the newspapers once again condemn Islamic terrorism. However, another September 11 is left in the shadows. We are referring to the coup in 1973 that, on that date, the Chilean army perpetrated against the government of Salvador Allende and that established a brutal dictatorship that murdered and tortured thousands of people. That coup does not get attention because of the direct role that the US administration had. There are many journalists who do not want to bother those who feed them. In a hypocritical exercise of double standards, the terrorism suffered by the United States is condemned, but the systematic terrorism exercised by that country against the peoples of the world is ignored.  

In 1970, after cleanly winning the elections, the socialist Salvador Allende, who headed the candidacy of the Popular Unity (UP), became president of Chile. His electoral program proposed the nationalization of key sectors of the economy, such as copper mining, until then in the hands of US companies, and the project of initiating a "Chilean road to socialism" based on respect for parliamentary institutions and multi-party politics. It was a question of building a socialist society by means of a model different from that undertaken at the time by Soviet Russia; a model that sought to use bourgeois legality to overcome it, without the need to break, according to the Leninist conception, with the state apparatus.  

Allende's victory was not only met with hostility by the Chilean bourgeoisie, which feared losing its age-old political and economic dominance over the country, but set off all the alarms in the US administration. After Cuba, the victory of Popular Unity meant a second breach in the control exercised by the United States over the Latin American continent, with the danger that the Chilean experience would spread to other countries in the area. President Nixon and the CIA, with the approval of the Chilean oligarchy, were unwilling for Allende to achieve his goals.  

Thousands of documents declassified over the years by the US administration itself show how the Nixon administration organized a plan of harassment and destabilization against Allende, which included economic and diplomatic measures and the direct use of terrorist activities. An attempt was made to suffocate the Chilean economy through an international fall in copper prices, and an immense media campaign was orchestrated accusing Allende of establishing a communist dictatorship in the country. A campaign in which the media of the Chilean oligarchy actively collaborated, especially the newspaper "El Mercurio", to which the Spanish press also contributed. At the same time, fascist groups, such as "Patria y Libertad", sowed terror throughout Chile. This was a strategy that had already been established by the Spanish right in 1936.  

However, as the popularity of Allende and Popular Unity was enormous despite the economic boycott, and it seemed an impossible task to unseat the government through an election, the coup d'état was finally chosen. The Pinochet dictatorship was the way out which the Chilean oligarchy and the United States government chose to end a government that was undertaking structural changes in the economic, social and political order in favor of the popular classes. That dictatorship exercised a relentless repression against the left to dismantle the powerful Chilean popular movement and established a neoliberal economic model that plunged broad sectors of society into misery.  

There is a parallel between the events that took place in Spain in 1936 and those in Chile in 1973. In both countries, the military coup d'état cut short a democratic experience that gave political prominence to the popular classes; and in both cases foreign intervention was decisive in the defeat of the left. For this reason, the Spanish left felt the overthrow of Allende as its own and the pain of the Chilean workers was also the pain of the Spanish workers.  

Forty-eight years after the coup against the legal and legitimate government of Popular Unity, we still remember with deep respect comrade Salvador Allende, who sacrificed his life in defense of popular interests. But we must also not forget that the so-called Chilean road to socialism proved unviable, and that is a political lesson that we communists cannot forget. The bourgeoisie will never peacefully cede its political and economic power and will only respect parliamentary democracy if the left agrees to maintain the capitalist economic order. Otherwise, as historical experience has shown, the ruling classes break the rules of the game and establish fascist forms of domination. There is no possibility of overcoming capitalism using bourgeois institutions. To build socialism it is essential to destroy the bourgeois state and replace it with a proletarian state. That is called the dictatorship of the proletariat.