Exhuming an ugly history:
As Chile and other countries wrestle with whether it's better to exhume their dark pasts or to leave them buried and try to move on, the current, elected government of President Michelle Bachelet, who herself was detained and tortured by the Pinochet regime, has moved to make that black period in Chile's history part of the country's national heritage.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
McClatchy, as always, doing outstanding journalism on this interlinked Chilean and U.S. histories:
Chile proposes turning torture house into museum
By Jack Chang | McClatchy Newspapers
SANTIAGO, Chile — An innocuous two-story house on a cobblestone street in downtown Santiago has become a symbol of human-rights activists' fight for Chile's history.
Known by its former street address, Londres 38, the house was the headquarters of Chile's Socialist Party until Sept. 11, 1973, when Augusto Pinochet ousted Socialist President Salvador Allende and Pinochet's forces took over the building.
Nearly 100 dissidents, many of them young members of the Revolutionary Left Movement political party, died after they were taken to the house and tortured during interrogations.
Many were electrocuted while they were tied to a metal bed frame in a practice called "the barbecue." Others were suspended by their arms and knees from a pole.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
Arghhh! How I'd not like to be assassinated:
Ex-Chilean president was assassinated in '82, forensic expert says
By Jack Chang and Helen Hughes | McClatchy Newspapers
VALPARAISO, Chile — A court forensics expert said Wednesday that former Chilean President Eduardo Frei Montalva was assassinated in January 1982 after a simple hernia operation during the rule of dictator Augusto Pinochet.
The statement by Carmen Cerda, the chief of the forensics team investigating the case, confirmed longtime suspicions that Frei Montalva, who was Chile's elected president from 1964 to 1970, had died of foul play at age 71. Medical officials had said that infection related to the surgery was the cause of death.
Cerda, however, said that a combination of toxins, including mustard gas, gradually administered to the former president ultimately killed him. If confirmed, Frei Montalva would be the only Chilean president to be assassinated.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/...
Of course, there has always been an element of U.S. involvement in events of this sort:
While U.S. government hostility to the Allende government is unquestioned, the extent of the U.S. role in the coup itself remains a controversial matter. Documents declassified during the Clinton administration show that the United States government and the CIA had sought the overthrow of Allende in 1970, immediately after he took office ("Project FUBELT"; U.S. efforts to prevent Allende taking office in 1970 are discussed in 1970 Chilean presidential election), but claims of their direct involvement in the actual coup are neither proven nor contradicted by publicly available documentary evidence; many potentially relevant documents still remain classified.
There is no doubt that the U.S. did intervene in its foreign policy initiatives surrounding Chile, working to deepen the economic crisis faced by Allende in order to create the atmosphere for the eventual coup.
http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Nixon. Of course.
Revelations that President Richard Nixon had ordered the CIA to "make the economy scream" in Chile to "prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him," prompted a major scandal in the mid-1970s, and a major investigation by the U.S. Senate. Since the coup, however, few U.S. documents relating to Chile have been actually declassified- -until recently. Through Freedom of Information Act requests, and other avenues of declassification, the National Security Archive has been able to compile a collection of declassified records that shed light on events in Chile between 1970 and 1976.
These documents include:
** Cables written by U.S. Ambassador Edward Korry after Allende's election, detailing conversations with President Eduardo Frei on how to block the president-elect from being inaugurated. The cables contain detailed descriptions and opinions on the various political forces in Chile, including the Chilean military, the Christian Democrat Party, and the U.S. business community.
** CIA memoranda and reports on "Project FUBELT"--the codename for covert operations to promote a military coup and undermine Allende's government. The documents, including minutes of meetings between Henry Kissinger and CIA officials, CIA cables to its Santiago station, and summaries of covert action in 1970, provide a clear paper trail to the decisions and operations against Allende's government
** National Security Council strategy papers which record efforts to "destabilize" Chile economically, and isolate Allende's government diplomatically, between 1970 and 1973.
** State Department and NSC memoranda and cables after the coup, providing evidence of human rights atrocities under the new military regime led by General Pinochet.
** FBI documents on Operation Condor--the state-sponsored terrorism of the Chilean secret police, DINA. The documents, including summaries of prison letters written by DINA agent Michael Townley, provide evidence on the carbombing assassination of Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt in Washington D.C., and the murder of Chilean General Carlos Prats and his wife in Buenos Aires, among other operations.
http://www.gwu.edu/...
Crap! I suppose that one day the U.S. will also be obliged to open a museum in Guantanamo. And elsewhere.
More documentation of the U.S. role in the destabilization of Chile is documented in Hostile Intent: U.S. Covert Operations in Chile 1964-1975, by Kristian Gustafson, 2007.
http://www.unc.edu/...
Gustafson was an officer in the Canadian Army, is presently a lecturer at Brunel University's Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies in England.
Also, a brief word on Operation Condor, a covert multi-nation (Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay) terrorist conspiracy, circa 1970s. The U.S. supported rightist governments of these nations engaged in political repressions involving assassination and intelligence operations, tea party stuff like genocide, coup d'etats, torture, death squads, disappearances, various civil rights violations ... do you wish lemon or milk or would you prefer being tossed out of a helicopter with your tea?
Interesting note: John Negroponte entered the U.S. foreign service in 1960.