“Make the Economy Scream”: Tools of US Foreign Policy on the 50th Anniversary of US 9/11/1973 Coup of Allende & Chilean Democracy
Current president, 36-year-old Gabriel Boric of the left-wing Approve Dignity coalition was sworn in as the youngest President in Chilean history on March 11, 2022. Some 14 out of 24 ministers in Boric’s cabinet are women. Seven of the cabinet members are in their 30s, and the average age is 42.
Chile is one of the most unequal countries in Latin America. One percent of the country’s population owns about a quarter of its wealth. During his election campaign, Boric promised to introduce radical reforms to the current free-market economic model and bring the citizens’ demands raised during the 2019 social outbreak to the halls of government.
During his victory speech in December 2021, Boric once again vowed to bury neoliberalism. “If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it would also be its grave,” he said. He also ratified his commitment to reducing the glaring disparities in the country by increasing spending on public services. “We no longer will permit the poor to keep paying the price of Chile’s inequality,” he added.
However, the primary focus of the show tonight is to document how all major sectors of the Chilean political and economic system were penetrated by the CIA under the direction of Henry Kissinger, Everything from the funding monies of influence into the Christian Democratic party and other alternatives to Allende’s Popular Unity Party, monies into the police and military, into radio and print media. Monies that sought to control the labor unions and labor movement, through the AFL CIO and CIA collaboration and the 1972 Trucker’s strike all funded by clandestine US CIA government monies; Documents many of them recently declassified explains how our foreign policy was to make sure it was impossible for Allende to govern and to make the economy scream by any and all means necessary. To understand US intervention and the subversion of autonomous civil and military structures of countries throughout the world is to take a giant step in understanding US foreign policy and its complete disregard for international law and basic ethics to respect the autonomy of other nations. Chile provides the prototypical example that we deconstruct tonight.