Many people are familiar with the fact that 9/11 is a date of great sadness not just for the people of the United States. It was on September 11th, 1973 a military junta funded and supported by US intelligence and military agencies overthrew the democratically elected government of Chile. The military junta that took power, headed by General Augusto Pinochet, instituted the economic policies developed and promoted by American economist Milton Friedman. These policies could only be described as transnational corporatists extremism, and in pursuit of these policies tens of thousands of Chileans and many foreigners were tortured, murdered, and disappeared by the Pinochet regime. Often lists of these suspected "dissidents" was provided to Chilean dictatorship by American intelligence and military agencies. The torture methods used by the Chilean military and secret police were taught to their commanders at the School of the Americas and in-country by US military advisors.
Of all this, there is no doubt. Between the criminal forensics of mass graves in Chile (and around Latin America), recently released CIA documents, and evidence presented against Henry Kissinger it is clear that the coup in Chile would not have happened but for the US supplying intelligence, funding, planning, and diplomatic cover.
The story of Allende standing, defiant, at the doors of the La Moneda, the Presidential Palace in Santiago is well known. What is less known is how the popularly elected government of Salvador Allende and his coalition of centrists and leftist parties became paralyzed as the economy crumbled. Only after this had been accomplished were the corporatist in America and their rightest and military allies in Chile able to sway the middle class portions of public against the government they had voted for, and stop the progress the Allende government was making.
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