September 11, 1973, a tragic day for Chile.  A CIA-engineered coup brought Augusto Pinochet to power.  Following in the steps of Nazi-lover Stroessner in Paraguay and blazing trails for Argentina’s military junta, the Generalisimo was evil incarnate.  His and his evil twins’ fascism in southern South America set a new standard for torture and killing.  If there is a Catholic hell, he is probably the Devil’s right-hand man.  As in Argentina, everyone that crossed his regime was declared a communist or Jewish terrorist, brought up before a military tribunal, if they were lucky, tortured in jail, and dumped into mass graves with other bullet-riddled corpses.

During most of the second half of the 20^th century, anti-communist paranoia reigned supreme in Washington D.C.  Starting with McCarthy, many politicians made their names by jumping on the anti-communist bandwagon.  Nixon made his name in trumped-up proceedings in Congress, playing his anti-pinko cards just right to eventually become president.  The Dulles brothers ruined the Middle East for years to come.  Reagan became famous by running actors out of the country and nearly destroying the University of California.  If you questioned American foreign policy, you were declared a puppet of Moscow or Peking.  Many progressives, myself included, learned to keep mouths shut and eyes watchful.  Anyone to the left of the Rotary Club was a bleeding-heart pinko communist.

As a country, we’ve come to our senses—a little bit, at least.  While socialism is still a cuss word tripping off many a right-winger’s fascist and forked tongue, the fall of the Soviet Union and the morphing of China into the kind of fascist-capitalistic system most American industrial leaders would love to have (poverty wages, few benefits, and no unions), we have few people ranting in Congress about communists.  Of course, there was Allen West, Florida’s McCarthy reincarnation, but he was tossed out on his butt after just one term.  Other Tea Party canards have focused more on defining rape for women, promoting campaigns against same-sex marriages, and being obstructionist in just about everything to get even with Obama.

I’m not sure we’ve learned from history, though.  Go to my webpage “Steve’s Bookshelf” {/?page_id=23}.  Under non-fiction, you will see Stephen’s Kinzer’s book Overthrow.  In it, you will find thirteen case studies of how the U.S. government has overthrown completely legitimate governments in its rush to manifest destiny and later to keep the world safe from communism.  Chile is but one example.  The list is already out-of-date too.  It starts with Hawaii (ask a native Hawaiian what he or she thinks of the overthrow of their queen—I have).  I’m not certain whether Reagan’s folly, Grenada, was included, but I’m certain Bush’s folly, Iraq, was not.

Now we are really worried that Iran will develop nuclear weapons.  They don’t need super-accurate missiles to launch them against Israel, you know.  Just a few scattered around will start an arms race in the Middle East.  (Never mind the fact that Israel has atomic weapons—I’ll bet their missiles are a lot more accurate, too.)  But we caused the whole botched-up foreign policy mess we call Iran.  The British oil company that became BP wasn’t happy with the royalties they were getting from the Iranian prime minister.  They asked the Dulles brothers to help.  The latter were only too glad to declare the prime minister a communist and have the CIA engineer another coup.  The Shah came into power.  Overturning his brutal regime led to the Islamic Revolution in Iran.  The story’s all there in Kinzer’s book.

Back to Chile.  What makes these stories so sad are the personal tragedies.  I recently reviewed Edgardo David Holzman’s Malena, historical fiction about the dark days of the junta in Argentina.  I don’t know about Chile, but the anti-Semitic pogroms in Aregentina are only second to the “final solution” that took place in Nazi Germany.  In both countries, university professors and students, LGBTs, dissidents—just about anybody daring to disagree with the regimes—were rounded up, tortured, and killed.  The U.S. caused both of these national tragedies.  The Chilean tragedy was instigated by American business interests that didn’t want the newly elected government to nationalize the copper mines.  Argentina was more hidden and insidious (read my review of Holzman’s book—better still, read the book!).

Every American should know about the horror we caused in these regime changes.  More specifically, every American should have to relive in words some of the personal tragedies.  A case in point: just recently eight people were charged with Victor Jara’s murder.  Who is Victor Jara, you ask?  I suppose the CIA and the Pinochet government would call him a Marxist-Leninist dissident.  Our foreign policy leaders and media wonks are good at smear tactics—always have been; always will be.  Our far-right nutcakes are good at it too—how else was Allen West elected?  Point a finger, call a person a name, whether true or not—it’s the modern version of the Salem witch trials.

Victor Jara was a university professor and a folksinger.  If memory serves me, he played the guitar left-handed.  I learned some of his story while living in Bogotá, Colombia.  Some months before the CIA-engineered coup, we took a trip around South America.  We were enamored with the Chileans and their beautiful country.  Chile seemed to be the place California ought to be.  They were hard-working, fun-loving, and very hopeful for a new future with the elections that brought Allende to power.

Time marches on.  Later, in our Bogotá apartment building, we enjoyed a small but progressive UN-like environment.  Our nextdoor neighbors were Italian (the husband was in fact Libyan, born there during the time of Mussolini—how he hated the man).  A Chilean and Colombian couple shared the apartment above us.  The Colombian man became my doctor (his son disappeared in Guatemala at the hands of another dictatorship).  The Chilean man had been the transportation secretary in Allende’s cabinet and had barely escaped Pinochet’s brutal regime.

We received a first-hand account of what happened to Victor Jara and many other Chileans.  The folksinger was arrested along with many university students.  He was tortured.  Some of his torturers thought it would be amusing to cut off his hands so he couldn’t play the guitar anymore (I assume this story is true—I’m repeating details heard from the ex-transportation secretary, but they haven’t appeared anywhere in our lackluster media releases).  I guess those torturers didn’t have much chance to enjoy their blood games.  On September 14, 1973, Victor Jara was found dead.  He had been shot 44 times.

Incredibly, the story is not over.  One of Jara’s murders living in Florida is fighting extradition.  A firing squad would be too lenient for him and his cohorts—nevertheless, it’s doubtful that any of them will be tried.  The U.S. government certainly won’t be cooperative.  (FYI, the CIA taught torture techniques to both the Argentine and Chilean juntas as “consultants.”)  Unfortunately, Chileans don’t have such a dedicated group like the one that went after Eichmann and other Nazi murderers.  Fascists in Latin America tend to get away with their crimes because current regimes were often peripherally involved at least.

Justice moves slowly there, if there is any justice at all.  Mothers in Chile and Argentina still pace in the city plazuelas and protest, wondering what happened to their children.  Refugees still wonder whether it’s really safe to return to their home countries.  And human beings’ capacity to maim and murder never seems to diminish.  Mercedes Sosa escaped Argentina to sing her songs of protest and win the hearts of people everywhere.  Victor Jara never had the chance.

And so it goes….

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