Chile: A critical look at American power

George Wald is Higgins Professor of Biology. This article is the text of a speech he delivered to the International Commission of Enquiry into the Crimes of the Military Junta in Chile. The Commission met February 18 to 21 in Mexico.

I'have always felt that it is better to criticize one's country at home rather than abroad. I speak as I do here now for several reasons: First, what I say here I have already and often said at home. Second, I am not criticizing my country or my people, but the present U.S. administration, which many of us hope soon to change.

Americans by and large are not imperialists; but we are unfortunate at present in having a highly imperialistic administration. I think that by far most Americans are deeply shocked--indeed can hardly believe it--when they learn that their government secretly subverted and helped to overthrow the democratically elected government of Chile under its democratically elected President Salvador Allende.

We now know that that was so. ITT offered our CIA one million dollars to block Allende's election. We are told that that offer was refused. In effect, the Nixon Administration told ITT to keep its money: the administration would make it impossible for Allende to govern, using the tax-payer's money.

In a closed meeting in October 1971, the then Secretary of State, William Rogers, told executives of such American corporations as ITT, Ford, Anaconda, Ralston-Purina, the First National City Bank and the Bank of America: "The Nixon Administration is a business administration. Its mission is to protect American business." That is clearly also the mission of the Ford Administration. Mr. Ford stated publicly in September 1974 his approval of the activities of the CIA in Chile.

The role of the U.S. in undermining Allende's government included the following operations:

(1) Virtually all civilian aid and credits were cut off, including the very important suspension of all guarantees on loans made by private banks to Chile.

(2) Simultaneously the military aid to Chile was doubled.

(3) The Forty Committee of the National Security Council--with Henry Kissinger as its chairman--authorized five million dollars for anti-Allende activities in Chile shortly after his election. This was followed in mid-1973 with a further 2.5 million dollars for the same purposes. Former CIA director Richard Helms has recently acknowledged that in all about 11 million dollars went into such efforts.

I have it on good authority that twice--once during a strike of copper mine technicians shortly after Allende's election and again during the truckers' strike just before the military coup that murdered him and brought down his government--Chile was so flooded with American dollars that the value of the dollar on the black market fell by about half.

Representative Michael J. Harrington, Democratic. Representative from Massachusetts, has brought suit in the U.S. courts to bring out these activities publicly and restrain the CIA from engaging further in such entirely illegal procedures.

I was in Santiago for a scientific meeting at the University in the Spring of 1971. At that time friends took me to meet President Allende. I said to him "You are a physician." "Yes,"--he replied. "Like Juan Negrin." I said--speaking of the ill-fated President of the Spanish Republic. "Ah!" said Allende. "I hope that this time it will end better!"

The tragic fate of Chile is a message to the world that recent U.S. administrations will tolerate no interference with the exploitation of the Third World--or indeed of any of the weaker nations--by American business.

In that regard it is important now to watch Peru. Recent U.S. administrations have not hesitated to support military dictatorships in many parts of the world. The trouble with Peru is that its military dictatorship leans toward the left. It has nationalized several U.S. businesses, and has initiated reform programs to make Peru's economic life more independent. Peru is now under heavy pressure, perhaps even in danger of military attack. It shares borders with Chile. Bolivia and Brazil, all ultra-rightist regimes and all client states of the U.S. Also it has just been announced from Washington that the Administration is considering cutting off all arms aid to Peru, on the grounds that such action would balance the U.S. Congressional ban on arms aid to Chile.

What caused the downfall of the Allende government? Needless to say, it was not all caused by American intervention. Sections of the Chilean upper and middle classes saw the Allende government and its proposed social and economic programs as a distinct threat to them.

But it must be understood also that the Allende government was felt to be an intolerable threat to the U.S. political and corporate system in Latin America--an even greater threat to that system than Cuba. In part this was because it was the first elected socialist regime in Latin America, and so aroused the fear that if it was successful there might be a domino effect throughout the Latin American states. Also there was the direct involvement in Chile of such giant U.S. corporations as ITT and Anaconda, both of which have recently negotiated large financial settlements with the Chilean junta: $125 million to ITT, $253 million to Anaconda.

But beyond these political and economic considerations, the military coup in Chile represents a violent attack upon our entire concept of human rights. The whole world is horrified by the brutality with which the junta has operated, its widespread use of imprisonment without charges or trials, its beatings, rape, torture and murder of prisoners.

All of us know of the murder of President Allende, the beating to death of the great Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, the jailings, beatings and torture of former members and supporters of the Allende government.

But there is also a continuing brutal oppression of vast numbers of nameless and unknown workers and peasants, whose only crime was to try to improve their condition, to relieve their awful poverty, ignorance and want. This oppression extends to all who try to help the Chilean masses--doctors, nurses, health workers, intellectuals from many fields--all of whom now are made to feel the unrestrained violence of the military junta.

We call upon all men of good will to protest these brutalities. Henry Kissinger has suggested that human rights are an internal matter; but human rights are never an internal matter. They concern us all.

We who are Americans have the special task to see to it that our country begins again, as at its birth, to represent peace and democracy throughout the world; that it insist upon human rights and decency everywhere; and that such subversion and intervention as our recent U.S. administrations have practiced in Chile must never happen again.

Finally, we must ask our friends abroad to realize that the American people are their fellow victims of U.S. imperialism; that there exists a domestic U.S. imperialism to match that practiced abroad. The same corporations and banks that exploit the Third World also exploit the American people. Even the CIA, as we know now, practices its secret activities on Americans as it does on others.

So in speaking for the Chilean people, in protesting the crimes of the Chilean junta, we can speak together, as people facing a common enemy, united for peace, human rights, justice and human dignity.