How Chile Won Back Its Democracy
theatlantic.com
theatlantic.com
Pinochet goes into a bucket of other dictators like himself, such as Park Chung Hee and Lee Kwon Yu, who ruthlessly cracked down on political opposition (particularly leftists), but who modernized their respective economies and (in the case of Pinochet) brought them back from the brink of utter economic collapse. These figures remain controversial in their home countries because they were a double-edged sword: the economic advancement which benefitted everyone was paid for with blood
Today, the US Left remembers this as beginning a period of neoliberalism (Chicago school economics) in much of the developing world which had just begun to set its ambitions much higher than they could reasonably afford. They consider this to be a bad thing because they didn't live through the period of the 1970s in which expanded fiscal and irresponsible monetary policy allowed inflation to rise and governments to explode their debt/gdp ratio, with disastrous results
The competing account is exactly opposite: the hitherto antiquated idea of a benevolent liberal "end of history" is torn to shreds, as research made widely available even in English variously showcases that the CIA was involved in various genocides (such as Indonesia's) in order to preserve its geopolitical and economic supremacy, to say nothing of exposes about how the FBI tried to goad MLK Jr. into suicide, and other stuff of that sort.
Books such as Vincent Bevins's "The Jakarta Method: Washington's Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program that Shaped Our World" (2020) and Vijay Prashad's "Washington Bullets" (2020) are part of this budding understanding, whose foothold is firm both academically and in terms of popularity.
But I think in the end it's always better to hear it from the perpetrators themselves, such as in the words of the so-called "Wise Man" of American Foreign Policy George Kennan, who reported, from the U.S.'s own declassified archives:
>We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1948v01p2/...
As pertains to Chile in particular, far from a hands-off relationship that approved of Pinochet and sent a few economists, the CIA was deeply involved in _causing_ the economic crisis that the Chilean right attributed to Allende, as reported by the New York Times in 1974:
C.I.A. Is Linked to Strikes In Chile That Beset Allende
>The Central Intelligence Agency secretly financed striking labor unions and trade groups in Chile for more than 18 months before President Salvador Allende Gossens was overthrown, intelligence sources revealed today. They said that the majority of more than $8‐million authorized for clandestine C.I.A. activities in Chile was used in 1972 and 1973 to provide strike benefits and other means of support for anti‐Allende strikers and workers.
https://www.nytimes.com/1974/09/20/archives/cia-is-linked-to...
As for the idea that Chileans are broadly grateful for this historical path imposed upon them thus far: we'll see.
In response you simply assert that Allende was a bad politician.
Do you see the problem?
I think the Americanized world will not survive America's decline, and this will soon become indisputable proof that it was America forcing its model onto others rather than anything organic.