Comment by Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص on September 11, 2012 at 4:34pm

The other ‘9/11’

10/09/2011

The Other 9/11

1973 bloody coup against Popular Unity government – Lessons for today

Tony Saunois, CWI

The capitalist media and commentators have given great emphasis to discussing the consequences and lessons of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York a decade ago. Yet this was not the first ‘9/11’. Following the first 9/11, thousands were slaughtered and thousands more tortured and suffered the horrific consequences which followed. This slaughter took place not in the US but in Chile on September 11th 1973. It was planned and executed not from the tribal territories of Afghanistan or Pakistan but in the head-quarters of the CIA and the White House, in collusion with the ruling elite in Chile and its armed forces. This 9/11 should be commemorated, and its lessons studied, by socialists and workers everywhere.

No US presidential apology, including by Obama, has ever been made for what was unleashed on the workers, students and ordinary people of Chile. The consequences of what followed still shape the lives of the mass of Chilean people. The aftermath of the attacks on the Twin Towers are felt by workers and the poor in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan and around the world. What followed the coup in Chile also had consequences for the international working class and all those exploited by capitalism.

Under the iron heel of Chile’s military dictatorship, a laboratory economic experiment was conducted. The neo-liberal policies of privatisation, open markets, de-regulation and private pension schemes were all first tested out in Chile following the coup. They were then applied in the 1980/90’s and continued in this new century, by the ruling classes internationally. The ‘Chicago Boys’, economic students of Milton Freidman, arrived in Chile in the aftermath of Pinochet’s coup. The military regime gave them a free hand to test out their theories. These were the policies later to be pursued by Thatcher, Reagan and other capitalist leaders.

The September 11th 1973 coup followed the election of Salvador Allende to the Chilean presidency on 4 September 1970, as head of the Popular Unity (UP) coalition. This was led by the Socialist Party (PSCh) and the Communist Party (PCCh), together with other left parties and some radical liberal capitalist parties. The election victory shook the ruling elite. It opened a revolutionary process that inspired the working class internationally. The revolutionary developments in Chile during this period probably went further than in most Latin American countries at the time - with the exception of Cuba. Moreover, the working class played the central role in the struggle. It terrified the ruling classes throughout Latin America, the US and Europe. Following Allende’s election, the US Ambassador cabled Washington: “Chile voted calmly to have a Marxist-Leninist state, the first country in the world to make this choice freely and knowingly.”

Link For Full Article:  http://www.socialistworld.net/doc/5277

Comment