This year, Chile commemorates 50 years since Augusto Pinochet's coup d'état. It is a country where the wounds of the dictatorship are still open, and society cannot find consensus either regarding the country's past or its future. On September 11, 1973, el Palacio de La Moneda (seat of the presidency) was bombed with a clear objective: to put an end to the democratic government of the socialist Salvador Allende. A political crisis had been looming over the country, with an opposition that refused to accept the political project of a socialist government and an international community alarmed by the ideological shift of the government, especially the United States – then in the midst of the Cold War – which saw Chile as a threat to both the region and the global balance of power. Although certain key individuals were aware of President Allende’s intention to call a plebiscite to find a way out of the crisis, on September 9, 1973, the military junta that would carry out the coup d’etat was consolidated.

On the morning of September 11, President Allende went to La Moneda, aware of the coup d’etat that was already taking place. From there, he pronounced his last words before committing suicide, in order to avoid being assassinated or captured by the enemy forces. His ministers, high government officials, and leaders of the leftist parties had either been captured, were in hiding, or were in asylum in embassies. The events of that day gave way to 17 years of dictatorship under the regime of the Military Junta, headed by Augusto Pinochet. This dictatorship involved a change in the country's domestic policy, defined by an economic turnaround to being the experimental cradle of economic neoliberalism in Latin America.

Fifty years later, and despite the fact that 33 years have passed since the return of democracy to Chile, the political and social situation of the country is under tension. In 2019, Chile experienced a social outburst triggered by an economic crisis and social discontent. To alleviate the crisis, the government proposed a constituent assembly to tackle an old ghost: the controversial 1980 constitution created during the dictatorship.

The 50th anniversary of the military coup d'état against democracy is an opportunity to understand the social, political, and economic dynamics that triggered this event within a more global framework of world geopolitics, as well as the dynamics that influenced the processes of transition and return to democracy.

In order to analyze and understand these processes, the JHU-UPF Public Policy Center, together with the Neus Català Foundation, delivered the thirteenth Policy Dialogues session entitled "USA, Western Europe and the coup d'état in Chile, 50 years later." The speaker was Joan Garcés, a jurist and political scientist who was advisor to the former President Allende, was present at La Moneda on the day of the seizure, and was actively involved in the defense of human rights and the search for justice in Chile. The session was moderated by Jordi Mir, Director of the Center for the Study of Social Movements (CEMS) of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.

Joan Garcés began the session by pointing out that although many of the attendees were not even born when the dictatorship began, it is important to remember these events that serve to analyze current global political situations.

Garcés set the conversation in the Chile of the 1970s and explained how, with the election of President Allende in 1970, not only had a new political project been created but there was an intention to move towards a socialist society. This involved democratically overcoming the structures of the dependent capitalist system, such as developing a foreign policy not aligned with centring the economy on private property, as well as a national public system of strategic companies, both extractive and banking, foreign trade, among others. On the other hand, there was an intention to build a democratic society, in the sense of respecting and developing not only first-generation human rights such as political rights, civil rights, freedom of the press and political freedoms, but also second-generation human rights, such as economic rights, social rights, the right to health, the right to housing and the right to work.

A few days after the elections in Chile, Garcés explained, the UN General Assembly approved the Declaration on Principles of International Law concerning Friendly Relations and Cooperation among States in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. This declaration recognizes the right of peoples to self-determination, by virtue of their political status and their economic, social, and cultural development, and asserts that no state may intervene in another, under any measure or circumstance, with the objective of changing its regime. However, while this was being approved, an intervention by the U.S. government was taking place in Chile, in exactly the opposite direction of these principles. The instruction from the U.S. was not only to prevent the elected President Allende from forming a government, but also to generate a coup d'état and intervene in the Chilean economy to justify it.

One of the main concerns of the then-President of the United States, Richard Nixon, was the threat that Chile represented for the region: an ideological change that proposed economic and social transformations towards socialism through democratic means, which could be replicated in other countries in the southern part of the continent and would be a threat to global balances, in Nixon’s perspective. Garcés noted ironically that “The right to decide is what threatens the stability of the world,” according to the U.S.. Garcés demonstrated, using unclassified documents from the U.S. administration during the time surrounding the presidency of Allende and the subsequent coup d’état, how the United States used a variety of political and economic measures to foment social divisions and discontent with Allende’s government, strengthen the opposition, and help to overthrow the democratic government by creating the sociopolitical conditions necessary for a successful military coup d’état.

In the second part of his presentation, Garcés explained the effects of the rise and fall of Allende’s government specifically in Western Europe. "You cannot imagine, today, what the repercussion was in the political leadership of all of Western Europe, particularly Italy, and also in France, of the tragic and terrible way in which the Chilean democratic process ended," he commented. Allende’s influence was particularly notable in the Italian communist party, which was the strongest communist party in Western Europe at the time, and a major concern of the U.S. According to Garcés, some Italian politicians denounced the strong pressures from the United States to prevent the development of their leftwing political project.

In addition to Italy, the Chilean influence also reached France. According to Garcés, the impact of the Chilean process was such that in 1971, the leader of the French Socialist Party, François Mitterrand, visited Santiago to talk with Allende and study how the Chilean process was developing. After that visit, the French left-wing parties – the Socialist Party, the Communist Party and the Radical Party – signed a common program to run for the presidential elections, which Garcés explained included the following: "reform of the Army, nuclear disarmament in France, dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and NATO, support for the European Economic Community, rupture with South Africa, the apartheid dictatorship, and with Franco's Spain, recognition of the communist states of North Korea and Vietnam, possibility of self-determination for overseas territories (i.e., the French colonial empire), and the right to self-determination and support for independence movements in all foreign colonies."

Finally, Garcés explained the relationship between Franco's Spain and the Allende government. Franco, despite governing with U.S. support, did not support U.S. intervention in the two countries that were outside of its sphere of influence: Cuba and Chile.

This, Garcés pointed out, is very important. "Why? Because it would influence the subsequent debate on NATO. That is to say, within Spain in the 1970s, both in the Francoist right wing and the anti-Francoist opposition, there was a majority opinion that foreign policy towards Latin America should not be subordinate to the United States. In practice, as I have already said, not only did it not join the [U.S. economic] blockade [of Chile], but Franco's government, in '72, offered a loan to the Chilean government when the United States had closed its financing channels", Garcés stated. The issue of U.S. interventionism generated a long debate in Spain on whether or not the country should join NATO and how this process should be carried out.

For Garcés, these strategic elements surrounding Allende's electoral success, as well as the successful destabilization of his government and military coup d'état, have had ramifications in very important political decisions taken in France, Spain, Portugal, and Italy.

At the end of the session, the audience asked Garcés questions about the current U.S. foreign policy, current Chilean politics, social unrest, and the future of Chile, especially regarding the constituent process, among others.

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