(MintPress) — Protests erupted across Santiago, Chile over the weekend in the leadup to the 39th anniversary of a U.S. backed coup removing President Salvador Allende from power. Protesters set up barricades and threw molotov cocktails in violent demonstrations conducted mostly by younger Chileans and political leftists.
Following President Allende’s removal from power in 1973, a Western-backed government headed by Augusto Pinochet was installed, ushering in a new era of liberal market reforms and privatization. Although the Chilean economy grew markedly during the 1980s, slashes to public programs, including higher education, have lead to increasing inequality today. The echos of the 1973 coup are still seen on the streets of Chile today as students continue to toil in their fight to reverse government austerity and costly university tuitions.
Chilean protests
Hundreds of protesters marched to a cemetery to remember the victims of the murderous 17-year rule of Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator who served as the Chilean president after Allende’s brief three year term. Allende was popularly elected in a free democratic election in 1970.
The commemoration has become an important event for survivors and younger generations of Chileans grappling with the brutal legacy of their former president. An exhaustive government commission based upon the interviews of 30,000 Chileans revealed last year that the Pinochet government killed at least 3,197 members of the political opposition and tortured 38,000. Two-thirds of these cases took place in 1973, shortly after the coup.
Those survivors who qualify for compensation will receive lifetime government payments of about $280 per month. Augusto Pinochet passed away in 2006 at the age of 91. While many victims sought to try Pinochet for murder, torture and crimes against humanity, the dictator never stood trial.
The Pinochet administration was aided by the United States, a government seeking to install a capitalist regime friendly to Western business interests.
History of US intervention
Salvador Allende became the first popularly elected Socialist candidate in Latin America when he was came to power in 1970. Shortly after his election, Allende nationalized key industries, including vast copper mines held by U.S. corporations.
Through the help of his political ally Fidel Castro, Allende expanded the public sector and looked to the Cuban economic system as a model for Chilean reforms.
While the U.S. has never accepted responsibility for aiding the Chilean military in Allende’s ouster, CIA documents declassified during the Clinton administration reveal that there was an immediate hostile response to Allende’s election in the Nixon administration.
Documents and testimony reveal that covert CIA agents were placed in Chile to prevent a Marxist government from emerging by sowing anti-Allende propaganda and by aiding the Chilean military in the 1973 coup. One of the underlying reasons, among many, for U.S. intervention in Chilean affairs was to restore private control of resource wealth by forcefully installing a friendly capitalist regime.
The U.S. has not shied away from directly intervening in the affairs of other Latin American countries, employing paramilitaries and mercenary groups to assassinate democratically elected political leaders. While the U.S. intervention in Chile was more covert, other interventions in Nicaragua, Panama and Grenada, among others, took a more direct form of military intervention.
The circumstances of Allende’s death are still unclear. However, official reports indicate that Allende committed suicide to avoid capture by the military. In his final address to the Chilean people shortly before his death, Allende issued a brief pronouncement, saying:
“Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, the great avenues will again be opened through which will pass free men to construct a better society. Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!”
The new leader, Augusto Pinochet quickly rose to power, implementing a range of liberal market reforms by privatizing key industries and reversing years of collectivization under Allende’s government. The market oriented reforms created large economic growth, prompting some economists to refer to Pinochet’s reforms as a “Chilean economic miracle.”
Although the U.S. criticized the Pinochet government publicly, Washington and Santiago quietly enjoyed favorable relations in the years after the coup. The U.S. provided material support to the new regime which became a stalwart opponent of communist expansion throughout Latin America.
Additionally, a group of top Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago, called “the Chicago Boys,” helped to implement favorable relations between the two countries, expanding the post-Allende neoliberal economic reforms.
However, income inequality grew markedly during this time as much of the new wealth was concentrated in a small percentage of Chilean society. With few protections and safety nets, the lower classes of Chilean society saw few benefits from the mass privatization of industry.
One such reform that has had a lasting impact on Chile is the privatization of education, a decision that has affected the current education crisis in Chile today.
Student protest movement: A lasting legacy of Pinochet
Last month, up to 200,000 students marched through Santiago, continuing more than a year of anti-austerity protests. Much like students in Quebec, student groups have organized strikes, marches and occupations of education buildings in an effort to reverse tuition increases.
The policies that scores of Chilean students protest today are directly tied to the reforms made by the Pinochet government. In 1981, the Pinochet regime eliminated government funding for higher education and sharply cut funds to secondary schools. Families had to purchase expensive vouchers to send their children to high school, and college students were forced to take out costly loans to afford their education.
Richard Seymour, a contributor at the Guardian newspaper, contends that the mass privatization is causing many students to make a difficult choice: accept a burdensome debt or forgo higher education altogether.
“In 1981, the Pinochet regime dismantled free public education. Primary and secondary education is paid for by a vouchers system, which involves the government paying private sector providers to educate the young. Higher education is dominated by private professional and technical colleges, which cost up to £530 a month to attend. The state exists primarily as a regulator rather than a provider. As a result, working-class Chileans often receive at best a poor education, and students end up burdened with debts.”
Pinochet’s leftist predecessor, Salvador Allende, promoted free compulsory education and expanded government support for students wishing to attend university. After the mass privatization measures, however, only the elite could easily afford to educate their children.
The student movement in Chile has also expanded the national discussion on the control of resource wealth. Currently, the majority of Chile’s massive copper reserves are held by private investors or by multinational corporations. Many involved in the student movement promote public ownership of resource wealth as a means to finance public education, ensuring equal access to quality education for all Chilean youth.
However, overcoming this challenge will again put the Chilean public against corporate interests.
Camila Hernandez, a student leader of the Young Communists of Chile, clarified the demands of the student movement in an interview last month, saying:
“The public education must be a quality and decent education. The government is not giving us that right. We have seen how the government is seeking through this bill to deepen segregation and inequality in education. The bill does not meet the basic needs for comprehensive reform to the Chilean education, it slams public education through profit incentive.”