Re. my Chilean history thread: So many people refuse to accept my account that the CIA had no involvement in the 1973 coup whatsoever that I’m going to have to make this mini thread explaining why.
It centers on the killing of General René Schneider in 1970.
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There was a right wing group called Patria y Libertad, who were just a bunch of crazies. Hard-core right wing youths who hated everyone left of Attila the Hun.
They were definitely financed by CIA. And somehow, they got the idea to kidnap General Schneider.
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He was the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Armed Forces, and a man who was extremely well-respected throughout Chilean society, especially in the military.
After the 1970 election, there were calls to ignore the democratic process and prevent Allende from taking power.
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Gen. Schneider publicly articulated what became known as the Schneider doctrine: The armed forces would always support and protect institutional democratic authority, and would never go against a legal outcome duly passed by Congress or the courts.
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In other words, Schneider was refusing to stand in the way of an Allende presidency.
This enraged the far right — so Patria y Libertad came up with this idiotic idea of kidnapping Schneider, possibly (likely?) at the instigation of the CIA. This has never been very clear.
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The kidnapping was botched, Schneider defended himself with his side arm and in the process was killed by the kidnappers. This led to the accession of Carlos Prats to the post of commander-in-chief.
It was also deeply traumatic to the Chilean military as a whole.
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A few senior officers outright blamed the Americans for the Schneider killing. Most took a more nuanced view.
But the net effect was the same — no one in the Chilean Armed Forces would have anything to do with the CIA or the people from the US Embassy after this incident.
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Outcasts from the Chilean military, like Roberto Viaux, or marginal people in Chilean politics, gravitated to US Embassy personnel and the CIA, who gave them money.
But their involvement with the Americans made them even more suspect — and marginal — in Chilean society.
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Later, the CIA in order to justify itself and show that they had been effective in Chile, elevated these marginal or unimportant people as “key to the successful removal of Allende!” Leftists and historians ran with this bullshit. But it was just to hide CIA incompetence.
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Because of the trauma of the Schneider killing, it’s absurd to think that the Chilean armed forces would get in bed with the US for the 1973 coup — especially when they didn’t need them to pull it off successfully.
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It was only after the coup, and only out of national economic necessity, that the Pinochet dictatorship got closer to the Americans.
But institutionally, the Chilean military never trusted the Americans — and never allowed themselves to be dependent on them.
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And the American government was never happy with the Pinochet dictatorship — because it never gave back the lucrative copper mines that Allende had expropriated.
But that’s for tonight’s continuation of the main thread.
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