Chile

Posted by: John Phoenix ‘The rich people in my country were always foreigners – let them fly off to Miami with their aunties. I don’t want my country divided – let them take their tune somewhere far, far away.’ These defiant words by Chile’s Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda were set to music by his compatriot Victor Jara early in the fateful year of 1973. A few months later, Jara – a communist – was tortured and killed days after the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. Neruda, a fellow communist, also died – quite possibly poisoned – while in hospital in the aftermath of the coup. In December 2025 the Chilean electorate chose a professed admirer of Pinochet, José Antonio Kast, as the country’s new president. In the first round of the election the ...

BY ARIEL DORFMAN Chilean workers marching in support of Allende in 1964. Photograph Source: James N. Wallace – Public Domain For 50 years, I have been mourning the death of President Salvador Allende of Chile, who was overthrown in a coup the morning of Sept. 11, 1973. For 50 years, I have mourned his death and the many deaths that followed: the execution and disappearance of my friends and so many more unknown women and men whom I marched with through the streets of Santiago in defense of Mr. Allende and his unprecedented attempt to build a socialist society without bloodshed. I can pinpoint the moment I realized that our peaceful revolution had failed. It was early on the morning of the coup in the nation’s capital, when I heard the announcement that a junta ...

The wife of murdered folk singer Víctor Jara kept her husband’s legacy alive and never gave up the fight for justice for Chile’s disappeared. Proletarian writers Subscribe to our  channel Joan Turner was a British dancer who found herself unexpectedly catapulted into the limelight as wife of the most famous and totemic of the thousands of communists and leftists who were rounded up and slaughered by the US-backed Pinochet coup regime in 1971. Her tireless efforts in the quest for justice for the disappeared brought her renown in her own right, both in Chile and around the world. “If you tremble with indignation at every injustice, then you are a comrade of mine.”– Che Guevara ***** Joan Alison Turner, wife of the legendary Chilean folk singer Víctor Jara, was b...

BY ARIEL DORFMAN Chilean workers marching in support of Allende in 1964. Photograph Source: James N. Wallace – Public Domain For 50 years, I have been mourning the death of President Salvador Allende of Chile, who was overthrown in a coup the morning of Sept. 11, 1973. For 50 years, I have mourned his death and the many deaths that followed: the execution and disappearance of my friends and so many more unknown women and men whom I marched with through the streets of Santiago in defense of Mr. Allende and his unprecedented attempt to build a socialist society without bloodshed. I can pinpoint the moment I realized that our peaceful revolution had failed. It was early on the morning of the coup in the nation’s capital, when I heard the announcement that a junta led b...

MICHEL CHOSSUDOVSKY Half a century ago on September 11, 1973, the Chilean military led by General Augusto Pinochet, crushed the democratically elected Unidad Popular government of Salvador Allende. The objective was to replace a progressive, democratically elected government by a brutal military dictatorship. Thanks for reading Michel Chossudovsky! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Subscribe The military coup was supported by the CIA. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger played a direct role in the military plot.1 In the weeks leading up the coup, US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis and members of the CIA held meetings with Chile’s top military brass together with the leaders of the National Party and the ultr...

BY PAUL CANTOR Photograph Source: Biblioteca del Congreso Nacional – CC BY 3.0 CL Fifty years ago, in July 1973, Charles Horman and I planned to meet up at the World Trade Center. I had returned from Santiago, Chile after the March 4 legislative elections in which the popular unity government headed by President Salvador Allende gained two seats in the Senate and six in the Chamber of Deputies.[1]  Charlie was back in New York to visit his parents, Ed and Elizabeth Horman. Both of us had traveled to Santiago out of interest in and enthusiasm for the UP’s promise to move Chile along a democratic and peaceful road to socialism.  I had a degree in journalism from American University and was serving as a correspondent for Metromedia.  Charlie had a degree i...

BY TAROA ZÚÑIGA SILVA Pictures of persons missing after the 1973 Chilean coup. Photograph Source: Marjorie Apel – CC BY-SA 3.0 Ten days after the 1973 coup against the Popular Unity (UP) government of President Salvador Allende, the military opened the Río Chico concentration camp on Dawson Island, located in the Strait of Magellan, near the southern tip of Chile. The island had served as an extermination camp by a Catholic order between 1891 and 1911 to confine the Selk’nam and Kawésqar peoples, who died due to overcrowding, the spread of disease, and the cold. The coup regime sent 38 officials of the UP government to the Compañía de Ingenieros del Cuerpo de Infantería Marina (COMPINGIM) naval base and then to the Río Chico camp. It also sent hundreds of ...