Word: chiles
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Even for Jesse Helms, the words were extreme. On a visit to Chile, the North Carolina Republican Senator accused U.S. Ambassador Harry Barnes of "planting the American flag in the midst of Communist activity." If President Reagan knew of the situation, Helms claimed, "he would send the Ambassador home." After returning to Washington last week, Helms charged that the State Department and Barnes were "trying to appease a bunch of leftists and Communists" by pushing for democratic reforms from the four-man military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet. Chile under Pinochet, said Helms, was moving toward "a stable, productive...
...strike against the Pinochet regime on July 2. While visiting a shantytown near Santiago, witnesses said, de Negri and a Chilean student were doused with gasoline and set on fire by uniformed men with grease-blackened faces. Riot police later tear- gassed the funeral march. The U.S. had urged Chile to investigate the murder, and last week the army announced that it had arrested 25 soldiers in the case...
This time, however, the Reagan Administration decided that Helms had gone too far. Undercutting U.S. policy while visiting a foreign country is "indefensible," said Elliott Abrams, Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American affairs. After Pinochet announced his intention to remain as President of Chile until 1997, Abrams argued that Helms might be "playing into the hands of the Communists" by supporting "an indefinite extension of military rule rather than a transition to democracy." Abrams said that he had approved Barnes' attendance at the funeral. State Department Spokesman Bernard Kalb pointedly described Barnes as "one of the most experienced...
...dispel Helms' notion that Reagan and the State Department might view the recent events in Chile differently, White House Spokesman Edward Djerejian declared, "Ambassador Barnes is carrying out the President's policy toward Chile...
...government, caught by surprise, was slow to respond to the action. But by late afternoon on Wednesday, the strike's first day, thousands of troops, their faces daubed with black to conceal their features, arrived at plazas and the teeming slums that border Chile's major cities. During the two-day protest, security forces killed eight people, including a 13-year-old girl who witnesses said was carrying bread home from a Santiago bakery. Thirty-eight people were wounded and 300 arrested, including 180 who have been detained. Leftist guerrillas reacted with counterviolence. They set off at least 30 bombs...