- 15 May 2018 00:33
#14914823
How Middle-Class Chileans Contributed to the Overthrow of Salvador Allende
The roles of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Chilean elites, the Chicago Boys, and the Chilean military in the coup that overthrew Allende and the neoliberal transformation of Chile under Pinochet have been well-documented and widely studied. There have, however, been few studies of the role of the middle class, which served as the mass base of the counterrevolution. Yet this angry middle-class mob was one of the central features of the Chilean political scene leading up to the coup.
After the coup of September 11, progressive analysis of the event and actions leading up to it focused on the role of the United States, which was seen as directing or working intimately with Pinochet and the leadership of the National and Christian Democratic parties. That a counterrevolutionary mass base had been central in the overthrow tended to be omitted, or if it wasn’t, the tendency was to regard it as largely a force manipulated by the CIA and the elites.
The reality, however, was that, contrary to the prevailing explanations of the coup, which attributed Pinochet’s success to US intervention and the CIA, the counterrevolution was already there prior to the US destabilization efforts; that it was largely determined by internal class dynamics; and that the Chilean elites were able to connect with middle-class sectors terrified by the prospect of poor sectors rising up with their agenda of justice and equality.
In short, the US intervention was successful because it was inserted into an ongoing counterrevolutionary process. CIA destabilization was just one of the factors that contributed to the victory of the right, not the decisive one. This was not something that progressives wanted to hear then, since many wanted a simple black-and-white picture, that is, that the overthrow of Allende was orchestrated from the outside, by the United States. Being of the left, I could understand why politics demanded such a portrayal of events. Being a sociologist, I realized that the situation was much more nuanced.
https://www.thenation.com/article/how-m ... r-allende/
Socialism without freedom is fascism.