Posted inChile / Dictatorship / Fascism / Politics / ToMl / USA Empire

Trump doesn’t invent anything, its all here before

Isabel Allende talking:

Chile had been the longest and most solid democracy in the continent. And we elected a socialist president that represented a coalition of parties of the left and the center, Salvador Allende. And immediately, the CIA and the forces of the right in my country tried to stop him from becoming the president. But eventually, that was impossible, and he assumed the presidency in 1970.

And the next three years were years of political, social and economic crisis in Chile, because the government was sabotaged by the right and by foreign forces, as well. The CIA intervened, and Allende denounced that many times. Nobody believed it, because it was like the story of the bad wolf, you know? Ah, the CIA was always blamed for everything in Latin America. The worst thing that you could say to any Latin American is, “Oh, he’s an agent of the CIA.” Yeah, that’s the worst insult.

And so, on September 11th, also a Tuesday, 1973, we woke—we had been hearing that there could be a coup, but we didn’t know what that was. We never had had that. We woke up to the sound of helicopters and airplanes and tanks in the streets. People who didn’t have time to hear the news didn’t stay home, and so there were workers in the streets waiting for buses that never came. I went to my—tried to get to my office, and the office was closed.

I was a journalist. And the building was closed, was locked. And the streets were empty, except for the military tanks and trucks.

So, during that day, it was all just rumors. We didn’t know what was going on. But I saw the bombing of the presidential palace, the Palacio de La Moneda. And we could not believe it. It is as if the armed forces in the United States would bomb the White House. I mean, it’s something that we can hardly imagine. And then, in a matter of 24 hours, the Congress was dismissed. All political parties were declared illegal. There was no free press, no public opinion therefore. All institutions were banned, all forms of communication and gathering, except the Catholic Church. That actually played a very important role in defending the people who were victims of repression.

Everybody in Chile, me included, thought that this was a sort of historical accident, and in a couple of weeks maybe, the military would call elections, and we would go back to democracy. In the minds of everybody was the idea that the president would be, possibly, Eduardo Frei, who was a Christian Democrat and was a very conservative man. And that would probably be the option.

Salvador Allende, had died in the palace. He had died in the coup. And so, that was something that was in the air. But, of course, that was not the plan of the military. They had done this to be in power. And they stayed in power for 17 years. The first few years were brutal repression. Then the repression became much more targeted. So it wasn’t as if anybody just could be arrested in the office, as it was at the beginning, or in the street or at home. It was very targeted. By then, I was out. I had left my country. And that is what happened. And it’s only much later that—after Pinochet left and we have democracy, that all this information about how things happened has come up.

– in terms of the findings that the Nobel laureate, Neruda, did not die of cancer in 1973 as stated on his death certificate. And he died just a couple of weeks after the coup and bolstering claims that Neruda was poisoned under General Pinochet’s rule. And Neruda’s driver has claimed he was poisoned by a stomach injection administered by doctors. Neruda had won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1971. He was a close friend of the ousted president, Allende. But now forensic experts say they’ll need up to a year to determine the true cause of Neruda’s death.

One of the reasons to suspect is because Eduardo Frei was killed the same way, in a very mysterious way. He went to the same clinic and mysteriously died of a sudden bad development of a minor surgery. And now it’s been proven that he was poisoned. And so, the suspicion is that the same happened to Neruda, because if Neruda would have lived, he would have gone into exile. The same day of the coup, every country in the world was offering asylum to Pablo Neruda. There were telegrams coming from everywhere offering to take him out of the country and give him a home somewhere else. So he would have been a voice against the dictatorship, a voice against the military. And it’s very possible that they decided to eliminate him, as they eliminated people here in Washington, as well. Letelier was assassinated in Washington. In 1976. So, that is a possibility, but it has not been proven, so I cannot really talk about it. I don’t know anything more than you do.

Pablo Neruda was our national poet. To give you an idea of the impact of his poetry, Pablo Neruda was the candidate for the presidency right before Allende was. We don’t have primaries in Chile. But at the time, the idea was that Allende had been a candidate in three previous elections, and he was sort of cursed. He was never going to be president. He would make the joke that in his tomb it would say, “Here lies the future president of Chile.” So, it was a joke, really. And so, they decided to have Pablo Neruda as a candidate for the left, because he was known everywhere. And he did—he traveled the country in a train, and the train would stop in stations. And the people would gather. And the people would recite back to him his poetry in a choir. And this was coal miners, fishermen, workers in the country. So, that’s the impact he had.

Of course I was at his funeral. Very few people could go, because he died—he died on—I think it was September 22nd, 11 days after the coup, when all his people from his party—he belonged to the Communist Party—people from the left, friends, intellectuals, journalists, were either arrested or hiding somewhere, and it was very hard to show up. But I went. And I remember that the ambassador of Sweden was there, a very tall man in a long black coat. And I just stood behind him, holding onto his coat. And I thought, “No one is going to shoot him,” because there were soldiers with machine guns along the road all the way to the cemetery.

And at the beginning, the procession was in silence. And then, at some point, the workers in a construction building—in a building, shouted, “Compañero Pablo Neruda!” And everybody responded, “Presente!” And then somebody else shouted, “Compañero Salvador Allende!” And we all shouted, “Presente!” So the funeral of the poet became a sort of symbolic funeral of democracy.

I see the fascist forces have been in this country and in my country always, because Trump doesn’t invent anything. He picks up what is already there. Pinochet would not have been possible for 17 years without the support of a third of the population that thought that it was much better to live under a repressive government and don’t have any urban crime than have democracy and have free will and all the things that we take for granted.

When I came to this country 30 years ago, I told Willie, who was then the man I loved, I said, “I’m scared. This country has this fascist element that I’m so scared of. I ran away from that.” And he said, “Are you crazy? This is the cradle of democracy.” And I said, “Yeah, but people have this sense that they are superior, that they can teach the world how to live, how to govern themselves. Half the population is armed. There is the idea of white supremacy, a latent fascination with violence.” We don’t want violence in our lives, but we are fascinated with the violence of football, of war, of the video games, of movies. We want to live it vicariously. And then, when it happens, like in the church a few days ago, then we are horrified. But our kids grow up with it.

I thought that the people who had always been there, the sentiments that had always been there, but under control in a civilized country, had been given a megaphone. And that could be expressed openly. But I never thought he would be president. When he becomes president, then all this is permitted as part of the culture.

So, how do we pull back now? How do we defend the institutions, defend the values that we have had and that we have defended for so long? So all this is threatened. And only when we lose it will we know how valuable they are and how we could have protected it.

Because that happened in Chile. We didn’t protect our democracy. We didn’t value it enough. And then, when we lost it, for 17 years, and when we were finally able to recover it, we had learned a lesson. And I don’t think it will happen again in Chile.

social movements pivotal. because when everything else was forbidden, still, under the surface, all these political movements, social movements, the church, every—was moving. So, that doesn’t stop. It’s there, waiting.
____

Isabel Allende
best-selling Chilean writer and one of Latin America’s most renowned novelists. Her latest book is called In the Midst of Winter.

— source democracynow.org 2017-11-08

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