I have been re-reading Robert Wilson’s quartet of novels featuring, Inspector Jefe Javier Falcon. I hadn’t been able to find the third book for some time so, once I had them all, I thought I’d read through them in the correct order. I came across something in The Silent and the Damned that I hadn’t realized before.
Most of remember the overthrow, by the military, of the Salvatore Allende government in Chile. The democratically elected Allende was a Marxist and he made it clear that he intended to nationalize several of the large America firms working in Chile. He particularly focused on the huge US owned copper mines and IT&T which owned the communications systems in Chile. This so troubled IT&T that it offered a million dollars to support any US backed action to overthrow the Allende Government.
Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger saw Allende as a threat and a problem that had to be fixed. Nixon told then CIA Director Jesse Helms to “Make the (Chilean) economy scream to prevent Allende coming to power or to unseat him”
After three years or so of secret actions by the CIA the American government was successful. Allende was killed and the coup d’etat saw American backed Army General Augusto Pinochet installed as President of Chile. So, when did this all happen?
On September 11, 1973 American backed terrorists overthrew the democratically elected government of Salvatore Allende and installed a ruthless dictator. During the dictator’s rule somewhere between 1500 and 3500 Chileans were murdered by the regime, 80,000 were imprisoned and 30,000 were tortured. Many of the intelligencia fled Chile during this period and lived abroad in exile. This was the regime that gave us the term “the disappeared”.
There is something terribly ironic about all this.
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