American Amnesia and the Other 9/11
Understanding the death of Chile’s democracy in the Cold War
O n September the 11th, many still pause to reflect on the horrible violence of that day. Airplanes raining down terror on a major metropolis. Crumbled buildings. A nation traumatized.
It is not the destruction of New York’s World Trade Center that is the subject of this reflection, but an event 5,000 miles and a hemisphere away in Chile’s capital Santiago where forty four years ago the city’s La Moneda Palace was bombed by air force jets during a coup d’etat against the country’s democratically elected president. Chile had long been a bastion of democracy in South America, withstanding the rise of tin pot dictators who already stifled the political aspirations of so many others in the region. That legacy came to a sudden and deeply troubling end in the rubble of La Moneda, as Chile’s president, Salvador Allende, died as another victim of the Cold War.
The coup that snuffed out Allende and his government — and nearly all political activity in the country for that matter — was a product of a Cold War paranoia where Chile represented the next front in the battle against Communism in Latin America. The Chilean Right-wing, who supported the coup, were convinced that it was the only way to avoid a Communist dictatorship. Santiago, in the mind of Nixon, would become the next Havana if Allende’s socialist experiment were to go unchallenged. For the US, General Augusto Pinochet’s brutal regime would be a convenient bulwark against the perceived inroads made by Communism in Chile during the Left-wing Allende’s three years in power.
During the Cold War, much of Washington’s preoccupation with Latin America was squarely linked to the Cold War ideological confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union. Latin America was seen as a battleground where the United States could gradually end up losing out, however ridiculous that seems today. The political wounds inflicted on successive US Administrations by Castro’s Cuba were still fresh, and they weighed heavily on Nixon as he attempted to provoke a coup against Allende and his political coalition in Chile. A decade later, the Reagan administration’s interventions in Central America were driven by this same Cold War paranoia.
Yet after the fall of the Soviet Union and the vanquishing of the Communist threat around the world, Washington’s policy in the region would be better described as one of benign neglect. Latin America was no longer the tip of the spear of the Communist menace. Absent the rising political challenges of Asia, the growing specter of terrorism in the Middle East, or the large scale pandemics and famines of Africa, Latin America was easy to ignore — the more so once the graying generalissimos holding power in much of the southern cone gave way to elected governments.
Even today, many Chileans feel that the United States has never meaningfully dealt with its own role in the Chilean past.
It seems almost impossible for U.S. policymakers to steer a middle course between these two approaches. President Trump’s recent threats to explore a military option to the rapidly deteriorating situation in Maduro’s Venezuela only helped to reinforce this bipolar approach to Latin America. To many Latin Americans, it didn’t seem so far-fetched to imagine Marines landing on the beaches of Puerto Pirito.
It is not just impromptu remarks about interventions in Venezuela that have caused heartburn in capitals across the region. As President Trump begins the delicate process of reopening negotiations over NAFTA, the historical memories of America’s self-interested role in the Latin America are being reawakened. Trump’s rhetoric of naked economic self-interest harkens back to the economic exploitation often conducted by the United States towards the region in the first half of the 20th century.
As we think about Allende’s downfall and the dreadful legacy of Chile under Pinochet, it is clear why 9/11 means something very, very different in Latin America from what it means in the United States. Few Americans today of course would think of this other 9/11 and how the overthrow of Chilean democracy was abetted and eventually supported by the United States. It is a perfect example of the kind of historical neglect that the US is often guilty of.
Even today, many Chileans feel that the United States has never meaningfully dealt with its own role in the Chilean past. Though the Obama administration went further than any previous US administration in accepting blame for its role in fomenting the coup against Allende, its impact was blunted by a failure to more systematically confront the history of Chile’s 9/11 and the US role in supporting Right-wing dictators across Latin America.
Americans need to more actively engage the past, both at home and abroad. That includes policymakers as well as the public. Without understanding how things went so terribly wrong in Chile, why should we be surprised when contemporary references to US intervention in the Americas cause the region to recoil en masse.
Perhaps as we look back at the events of 44 years ago at the La Moneda Palace, Americans will have an opportunity to consider the power that history continues to play in the region.
For the United States, historical memory in Latin America has been little more than an afterthought. The legacy of vacillation from intervention to neglect has done little to soothe the fears of Latin Americans long suspicious of Yankee motives. Perhaps as we look back at the events of 44 years ago at the La Moneda Palace, Americans will have an opportunity to consider the power that history continues to play in the region.
Odd Arne Westad (@OAWestad) is a Professor at Harvard Kennedy School and the author of the newly released The Cold War: A World History.
