THE PRICE OF A DICTATOR

THE PRICE OF A DICTATOR

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

[Col. Writ. 12/7/04

For a quarter of a century, the poor and working people of Chile suffered under the cruel dictatorship of Gen. Augusto Pinochet. Under the Pinochet military junta, thousands of people were tortured, and thousands were slain by the repressive military government.

According to recent news reports, Pinochet, who wore the flag of Chilean nationalist, was actually in the pay of the United States (among other countries). From the mid-1970s onward, Pinochet received millions of dollars from the U.S., from Britain, from Spain, and Malaysia, just to name a few. This wasn't financial aid to the troubled Chilean economy -- it was personal pay for Pinochet himself.

This came to light when Pinochet's financial records were released, and due to a U.S. Senate investigation into the affairs of the Riggs Bank.

For decades, the Chilean military and right-wing waged a war of repression against peasants, workers, students, trade unionists, and anybody else who tried to challenge the economic system in power there.

Indeed, how Pinochet came to power seems like one of those odd ironies of history. For he was chosen by the man whom he would later betray, and destroy.

When Socialist presidential candidate, Salvador Allende was elected President in 1970, bells of alarm went off in Washington. The CIA, in cahoots with American businesses in the region, sought ways to destabilize the Allende government. They gave money and other support to his political opponents. But they bought off more than Allende's political opponents; they bought off generals, for they didn't just want to beat him in an election: they wanted to set the stage for a coup.

The Allende government was hardly a people's government. Many heads of ministries doubled as generals, and, on August 20th, 1973, they began to desert his government, but they elected to keep their military posts. Allende, as head-of-state, demanded their resignations from their commands in the military as well. Within days, demonstrations erupted, some led by officers' wives, and other resignations followed. When the minister of defense and commander of the army resigned, Allende named Gen. Augusto Pinochet as head of the army, surprising Pinochet himself, for he was not friendly with the president.

In Chile, September 11th doesn't stand as shorthand for the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. It stands for the coup against the elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, led by the man he named as army commander, Gen. Pinochet. Beginning at 6 o'clock that morning, by mid-day, Chile's air force was bombing the presidential palace, called La Moneda. Before the day ended, Salvador Allende would be dead, alone in La Moneda, and the bloody, savage era of Pinochet would be born. According to Chilean human rights groups, over 3,100 people were killed by the government during their reign of state terror. Hundreds of thousands were sent into exile, and generations grew into adulthood under a palpable aura of fear.

This was a coup and a dictatorship, bought and paid for by the United States of America.

Gen. Pinochet continued to head the army until March of 1998.

The West, and western allies didn't pay for "freedom" in Chile. Like virtually every other part of Latin America, they paid for a relentless reign of repression, of torture, and of death. It took a quarter-century for these financial revelations to emerge. Will it be 2030 before we learn that Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai, Iraq's Ghazi al-Yawer, or Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf were in the employ of the Americans to lead brutal dictatorships against their own people?

Perhaps it won't take that long. Recently, TV-radio personality Don Imus referred to Iraq's so-called interim president as "our thug-in-training."

Perhaps history really is repeating itself.