December 14, 2006
Pinochet, the Untold Story
There's been a lot written about Pinochet in the wake of his death, most celebrate the passing of a dictator but omit the facts about the 1973 coup and his subsequent rule.
The brilliant and always unequivocal Humberto Fontova sets the record straight at NewsMax:
To read the mainstream media lately, you'd think Augusto Pinochet's villainous henchmen, while twirling their pointy black mustaches and snickering maliciously, overthrew a Chilean "president" (Salvador Allende) somewhere on the order of Jimmy Carter.Then they lined up 3000 harmless sociology professors and innocent leftist parliamentarians and shot them, for the sheer heck of it.
The real story, as you might imagine, is a tad more complicated — despite the media/academia black legend regarding Chile.
Upon Stalin's death in 1953, Chilean communists held a "homage to Stalin" in Santiago's Baquedano theatre where Salvador Allende could hardly contain himself: "Stalin was a banner of creativity, of humanism, and an edifying picture of peace and heroism!" he gushed while choking back the tears. "Everything he did, he did in service of the people. Our father Stalin has died but in remembering his example, our affection for him will cause our arms to grow strong towards building a grand tomorrow — to ensure a future in memory of his grand example!"*
After assuming power in 1970 (with roughly the same percentage of votes as Hitler garnered in Germany in 1933), the Allende regime's true colors were not long in manifesting. In January 1971, Allende's minister, Carlos Altamirano, boasted that, "We're following the example of the Cuban Revolution and counting on the support of her militant internationalism . . . represented by Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Armed conflict in continental terms remains as relevant today as ever!"
"Hear me loud and clear!" Salvador Allende himself boasted the following month. "We will employ revolutionary violence!"
This was more than an idle boast by Allende. Among the myriad unreported (by the MSM) aspects of the Chilean coup were the dozens of "Guerrilla" schools being set up throughout Chile by Soviet bloc agents shortly before that coup.
Marxist death squads were also roaming Chile, murdering "bourgeois elements" with impunity or with the tacit support of the regime. When Salvador Allende visited Moscow in December 1972, among his longest meetings were with Boris Ponomariev, the Kremlin's head of "Irregular Warfare" for the Western Hemisphere.
By 1973, 60 percent of Chile's arable land had been confiscated by the government, often with the aid of these death squads.
Rolando Matus and Jacinto Huilipan were among the many farmers who protested Allende's "Agrarian Reform" and would up kidnapped and murdered.
"In the final analysis, only armed conflict will decide who is the victor!" added Allende's governmental ally, Oscar Guillermo Garreton. "Without the complete destruction of the bourgeois character of the state we cannot march on the path of socialism! The class struggle always entails armed conflict. Understand me, the global strategy is always accomplished through arms!"
Allende's deputy economic minister, Sergio Ramos, didn't mince words either: "It's evident," he proclaimed in mid 1973, "that the transition to socialism will first require a dictatorship of the proletariat."
"We have no choice," declared Chilean communist Volodia Teitelboim, "but to act with resolution and a civil war is not a careful affair. It draws targets on both the political and the apolitical."
His Communist comrade Luis Corvolan followed up with, "We have never considered the path of the Chilean Revolution to be exclusively an electoral one."
By the time of Pinochet's coup, an estimated 31,000 Cuban, Soviet bloc, and communist operatives infested Chile, including Castro's top terrorist spymasters, Antonio De La Guardia and his (nominal) boss Manuel "Barbarroja" Pineiro. Among the hundreds of Soviet personnel were KGB luminaries, Viktor Efremov, Vasili Stepanov, and Nikolai Kotchanov.
The Chilean military had kept scrupulously to their barracks through several leftist (democratic socialist) regimes. But they recognized Allende's regime as a completely different animal.
Pinochet himself, while instructor at Chile's military academy, had specialized in "geopolitics." So what Brezhnev, Castro, and their Chilean proxies had lined up for his nation must have struck him as obvious. In light of the proceedings in Poland's Katyn Forest in 1940 and those in Cuba's La Cabana prison in 1959, the prospects for the Chilean military must have struck him as equally obvious.
While "conservative" pundits have been lauding Chile's post-Allende economic and political character, a scrupulously democratic government and the most free (hence) most prosperous economy in Latin America, there's been much hand-wringing and pussyfooting by these "conservative" pundits about the brutal (but unavoidable) advance work that made it all possible.
Sure, it's nice to have their effete luxury from a cushy media pulpit in 2006. But in September of 1973, Pinochet's men weren't out to score debating points on some fatuous think-tank panel or win applause on some asinine chat show.
They knew their nation was looking up the locked and loaded muzzle of a Stalinist takeover.
So they marched into the Chilean "OK Corral" loaded for (Soviet) bear. That they managed the messy business with 3,000 dead, including all collateral damage, will amaze anyone fully informed of what they went up against.
In 1973 Chilean communists and their Soviet and Castroite proxies were no more inclined to surrender power than Iraqi Baathists are today. The cost of persuading them to do so, as we learn daily in the news, can be onerous — collateral damage and all.
No doubt it would have been nice that inserting daisies into the muzzles of the arms the Soviets and Castro were pouring into Chile at the time would have persuaded Chile's Marxist death squads and the tens of thousands of foreign communists and terrorists to take up Swedish Socialism and hold hands in a circle while chanting the Beatles' "All You Need is Love." But 20th centruy history teaches that communists are extremely jealous of their power and privilege and extremely pitiless against those who would challenge it, or even question it.
The millions who wound up in mass graves and Gulags offer stark and ready proof.
From Pilsudski's victory over communists in Poland to Horthy's in Hungary to Franco's in Spain, history also teaches that when communists get even a small taste of their own medicine their moaning and whinning and sniveling becomes a worldwide cause celebre.
The current anti-Pinochet media orgy shows that nothing has changed.
* La Agresion Del Oso; Intervencion Sovietica y Cubana en Chile by Gonzalo Rojas Sanches, a Fullbright Scholar and visiting professor at Notre Dame who heads the History Department at Chile's Catholic University.)
Humberto Fontova is the author of "Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant," a Conservative Book Club Main Selection.
Posted by Ziva at December 14, 2006 01:37 PM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.babalublog.com/cgi-bin/mt/hut.cgi/4387
Comments
Fontova, as always, is educational.
Here's a link for one of the only reviews that I've seen that is unbiased.
Posted by: mavi ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.babalublog.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at December 14, 2006 04:38 PM
not sure if you were aware of this essay:
Posted by: h0mi at December 14, 2006 08:11 PM
THIS IS IN CAPITAL LETTERS...GRACIAS A FONTOVA,SU ARTICULO,Y A VAL POR PONERLO EN ESTE BLOG....AND AGAIN..LONG LIVE PINOCHET,LONG LIVE CHILE,AND,..VIVA CHILE MIERDA..!!!!!!!!
Posted by: tony44 at December 14, 2006 08:51 PM
as long as we are posting about the chicago boyz, Val Dorta's excellent essay on allende and pinochet's "miracle" i offer an article which i don't know if it is all true (it is after all a lefty site), but i can certify the statistics presented are in fact correct.
it is here in english (in the site there is a link for Spanish): http://www.gregpalast.com/tinker-bell-pinochet-and-the-fairy-tale-miracle-of-chile-2
Posted by: La Ventanita at December 14, 2006 09:07 PM
ventanita..i beleive that you really have to "jump out of your little window"...during the whole "pinochet's years",chile had two economic crises,and both caused by international economics,not by "pinochet's sistem",and wow..what a coincidence,the lefty writer of that article is basing his "statistics" exactly in those years when chile was affected by international economic crisis,one,and the other was for the prices of cooper,the main source of gains at that time in chile.well,now too is the main source of income,but chile has diversified its economy during all these years..so,please,if you are going to try to make a "point" out of your wrong idea about pinochet,please,choose a better article..or a better source..or a better writer..that one is very biased,and well..another lefty loone...c'mon ventanita,dont disappoint me..!!!!!!!!!ohh..by the way..dont know if you know some about Jose de San Martin,un general de la independencia de argentina..si no me falla la memoria,dijo..PARA SALVAR LA PATRIA,CUALQUIER METODO ES LICITO....
Posted by: tony44 at December 14, 2006 10:41 PM
For the record, I posted Sr. Fontova's article, not Val. Tony & Venti, amigos, por favor, I didn't post it for you two to keep at it with the same week old arguments. Maybe you two should shake hands and agree to disagree and let it go?
Posted by: Ziva at December 14, 2006 10:58 PM
sorry ziva,then,kudos for you,and millon de gracias por poner el post..y por mi,i can smoke the pipa de la paz,y hechar el humo por la "ventanita"... :)
Posted by: tony44 at December 14, 2006 11:16 PM
There are dictatorships on the right and dictatorships on the left... I am pro-democracy and anti-dictatorship of any kind.
If we are going to oppose castro and his actions, we should be consistent.
It goes without saying that Allende was misguided by communism and would have hurt Chile's economy. And that Pinochet introduced (re)built the economy.
But it's the authoritarianism that I oppose. Allende should have been replaced by a democratic capitalist, not an authoritarian capitalist. Why does the ouster of one bad ruler necessitate an authoritarian regime, and the elimination of elections? (It doesn't.)
There is no justification to persecute and disappear people because of their beliefs. Whether it's castro persecuting his opponents on the right and center, or if it's Pinochet persecuting his opponents on the left, as Cubans, we should oppose all dictatorships.
Even when we agree with the dictator's economic policies, and we hate the other guy!
Posted by: Dave Sandoval at December 14, 2006 11:42 PM
Dave, did you read Humberto's article? That's the point, it wasn't just about economics. He saved Chile from Cuba's fate, and that wasn't 3000 innocents.
Posted by: Ziva at December 14, 2006 11:51 PM
And, I'm not saying we shouldn't oppose dictators. But in this case we are talking about history, not current events where the outcome is up for grabs. In retrospect, Pinochet saved Chile,and I have to ask; should we give raul a pass for 47 more years of horror in Cuba to avoid bloodshed if that becomes the choice?
Posted by: Ziva at December 15, 2006 12:03 AM
Ventanita, Greg Palast? Please. That man has zero credibility. He is an enabler of the most vile leftist causes. If you want to present evidence supporting your point of view, then you have to do a lot better than Greg Palast.
Posted by: George L. Moneo at December 15, 2006 12:41 AM
george that is why i clarified that i didn't know if what he was saying was correct, but that i knew for a fact that the STATISTICS were correct.
Posted by: La Ventanita at December 15, 2006 06:31 AM
ziva i agreed to disagree a long time ago, it's tony who cant agree to disagree. And ziva i beg to differ that all of the desaparecidos were not innocent or that all of them were enemies of the states. There were a lot of innocents that got caugt up by association or b/c someone declared them communist.
Posted by: La Ventanita at December 15, 2006 06:33 AM
While I am by no means an expert on Chile or Pinochet/Allende, my question remains...
...if Chile needed rescuing from marxism, or a potential marxist dictatorship, why did the replacement have to be a right-wing dictatorship? Why not right-wing democracy, where free speech is respected?
My point is that we can't ignore the very crimes that we criticize castro for, just because we agree with the other policies of the person who commits them.
Posted by: Dave Sandoval at December 15, 2006 08:18 AM
Dave of course it would have been better if Chile had been saved by a peaceful democracy loving leader, but that's not what happened. And Venti I know that innocents were also among the victims, that is the way it always is and I don't condone it, but its better than the tens of thousands or more that would have been victimized if Pinochet had not seized power.
Posted by: Ziva at December 15, 2006 08:27 AM
So what you're saying, if I understand you correctly, is that "it could have been worse."
Yes, it could have been worse. I agree.
But my point was simply that as Cubans, whose friends and family had to endure the injustices and brutal oppressions of a dictatorship, we should be consistent. Y por lo tanto, we should oppose all deprivations of freedom.
I can't just say "that's the way it always is," because that doesn't make what Pinochet did right. And that's also the justification I hear for castro-apologists, and I don't buy it.
So, yes, it could have been worse. I agree. But let's not go too far and say Pinochet was a great guy, because he did some of the same bad things that castro and che did.
Posted by: Dave Sandoval at December 15, 2006 12:24 PM
Dave, no one is saying Pinochet was a great guy, at least I'm certainly not. I don't condone or support any dictator period. The problem with Pinochet is that the MSM doesn't tell the truth, that's what Fontova's article is about. It's about the truth, that's all.
Posted by: Ziva at December 15, 2006 12:33 PM
that's right,..is about the truth,and is about different countries,doing things in a different way to get to democracy,freedom,etc..the same way people cook rice in a different way,build buildings in a different way,make love in a different way,also people from different countries get rid of puppets,and try to regain freedom and democracy in different ways..there is one word..democracy,but you going to find different ways of democracy..USA is different from France,or England,or Singapour,and so on,so,dont expect that countries try to get a better way of life WITH ONE FORMULA,..HISTORY,PEOPLE,ECONOMICS,WEATHER,CULTURE,THOSE ARE NOT MATHEMATICS FORMULAS...so,in chile,they were lucky and got pinochet..his methods were not very pleasent for some,ok..but he made his country and his people better..he won,his country won,...GET OVER IT!!!!!!!!
Posted by: tony44 at December 15, 2006 10:29 PM
Post a comment
Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)
(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)
