Word: chile
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...believe that a majority of Congress or the country is prepared to stand by passively while the people of Central America are delivered to totalitarianism." Why not? He seems to have been willing to accept arrests of political dissidents and the lack of free elections in countries like Chile and Argentina...
Similar scenes occurred throughout Chile last Tuesday, when a peaceful "Day Of Protest" suddenly turned ugly. Tens of thousands of people took to the streets to express their unhappiness with the military regime of General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. The government cracked down amid scenes of violence that were the worst in almost ten years. When it was over, three people were dead, including a 14-year-old boy, hundreds were injured, and more than 1,300 had been arrested in ten cities...
...protest was not the first of its kind. In May, Chileans engaged in similar demonstrations that left two dead and 150 injured. But last week's outbreak was far bigger and confirmed a growing, broad-based impatience with Pinochet. The demonstrators demanded an end to Chile's worsening economic crisis: inflation is running at about 35%, unemployment is at 21.9%, and real income has dropped 27% in the past two years. More significantly, the protesters also demanded an end to Chile's five-year-old state of emergency and a speedy return to democracy...
Spearheaded by the activist 23,000-member Copper Workers Confederation, Chile's largest union, the protest movement has attracted support from a broad range of Chilean opinion: labor leaders, conservative and leftist politicians, business leaders and farmers. Its leading figure is Rodolfo Seguel, a 29-year-old cashier at a grimy mining center, who rose from obscurity five months ago to become the chief of the Copper Workers Confederation and is sometimes called the Chilean Lech Walesa. Said he: "We are pacifist in attitude and active in behavior. If they hit us with clubs, we will endure. We will...
Before the United States has to negotiate with extreme cultural, nationalistic and internationalist pressures of both the left and the right in the remotest nations of this hemisphere--Chile and Argentina--in the largest nation--Brazil--and in the closest one--Mexico--it should rapidly, in its own interests as well as ours, negotiate in Central America and the Caribbean...