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Salvador Allende Still Speaks to Us Today
Fifty years ago, in late 1972, I was one of a multitude of Chileans who lined the streets of Santiago to support President Salvador Allende as he embarked on a trip abroad to tell the world about how...
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Boric Says Chile Will Open Embassy in Occupied Palestine
Palestinian officials and supporters welcomed leftist Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s announcement this week that his country will open an embassy in the West Bank, which has been illegally occupied...
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The “Chilean” Democracy
The minimum required of democratic countries is that their authorities are elected by the people in free, informed and secret elections. In Chile, let’s say that this objective is fulfilled, although...
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Forensic Probe Confirms Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda Was Poisoned After Pinochet...
A toxicology report reveals a “great quantity” of the neurotoxin clostridium botulinum was found in the body of the leftist—who claimed he was injected while hospitalized just before his death in...
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Fifty Years After Chile’s Coup, the First Year of Popular Unity
(Image by Public Domain) A conversation with Miguel Lawner, who remembers life as a former political prisoner of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship while projecting his hope that Salvador Allende’s...
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A Conflict in Chile Over Minerals Needed for Clean Energy
A mining venture that improves the environment? That’s the image Aclara Resources, a Peruvian mining company seeking to extract rare earth elements in the BioBio region of Chile, tries to project....
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Chile, a Left Without the People Is Doomed to Fail
Nearly two weeks after the election of the Convention of Conventions, with an overwhelming victory for the Chilean ultra-right, I share six reflections with the aim of contributing to the analysis of...
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Kissinger’s Bloody Paper Trail in Chile
As Henry Kissinger reaches 100 years of age on May 27, Chileans are preparing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the bloody military coup that the former US national security adviser helped...
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South America’s War Criminals Face a Growing Clamor for Justice
Thousands of people took to the streets across Uruguay on May 20 to participate in the March of Silence, a yearly event that commemorates those who were disappeared during the military dictatorship...
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Handing Power Over to Those Who Defend Pinochet’s Constitution
(Image: Gobierno de Chile – CC BY 3.0 CL) The results of the election on May 7th to form the 51 members of the Constitutional Council who will finalize the drafting of the new Constitution represent a...
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In Chile, Having A Good Constitution Doesn’t Guarantee Social Change
A conversation with Bárbara Navarrete, secretary-general of the Communist Youth of Chile. “We are a generation totally interested in taking power,” says Bárbara Navarrete, the new secretary-general of...
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How An Eccentric English Tech Guru Helped Guide Allende’s Socialist Chile
Stafford Beer pioneered ‘cybernetic management principles’ but Pinochet’s coup saw technology turned to nefarious ends In the autumn of 1971, an ambitious young engineer from Talca, central Chile,...
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During the 2019 Chilean Protests, the Walls of Santiago Dreamed of a...
October 2019 is a month of paramount importance in Chile’s current political imagination. On Friday, October 18, while millionaire-turned-president Sebastián Piñera celebrated the birthday of one of...
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Defending Allende
On September 4, 1973, an enormous multitude of Chileans—I was one of them—poured into the streets of Santiago to back the besieged government of Salvador Allende. Ever since he had won the presidency...
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The Tragedy of Allende-Era Chile: A Strong Start Countered by Imperialist...
The 50th anniversary of the first 9/11 — the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government government headed by Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende — is this month. Chilean...
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Learning from Chile: Navigating Complexities of Political Crises
Chileans were unable to turn a national uprising into transformation of the social order. For the US there is much to learn about relationships between left government, movements, and popular...
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Chile Is Still Bitterly Divided by the Legacy of Augusto Pinochet’s Dictatorship
Over thirty years after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990, the government of Chile has formally admitted responsibility for the disappearance, and presumed deaths, of over two thousand...
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“The Other 9/11”: Ariel Dorfman on 50th Anniversary of U.S.-Backed Coup in...
We look at the 50th anniversary of what is sometimes called the “other 9/11” — the U.S.-backed coup in Chile, when General Augusto Pinochet ousted President Salvador Allende and inaugurated almost two...
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Salvador Allende: “I Am Essentially a Man of Action”
After being elected Chile’s president in 1970, Salvador Allende discussed his background and political outlook with the French writer Régis Debray. In this excerpt from their conversations, he also...
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Remembering Salvador Allende and the Chilean Counterrevolution
When I heard that Salvador Allende won the Chilean presidential elections in September 1970 and sought to bring his country to socialism by peaceful means, I decided to do my doctoral dissertation on...
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