Word: chiles
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...Monday evening press conference, President Ford acknowledged reports that the United States had financed covert operations in Chile attempting to "destabilize" the government of former President Salvador Allende. Never before has an American president so off-handedly admitted that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency has undertaken activities aimed at influencing the internal affairs of a democratically elected government. Ford also told the nation that he had every intention of continuing this course of action, which, he said, has been U.S. policy since the Truman administration...
President Ford thus gave his support to operations that helped destroy Latin America's oldest democracy. The junta that overthrew the popularly-elected Allende government almost exactly one year ago now rules Chile with an iron fist. Thousands were killed in the aftermath of the coup, and uncounted political prisoners languish in cramped cells, where they are tortured until they "confess." The extensive slums on the edges of Santiago are subject to brutal purges by government troops. The press and other media are rigorously censored, and military leader Gen. Augustus Pinochet says that it may be decades before Chile...
Substantial responsibility for this state of affairs rests with the U.S., whose policies helped make it impossible for Allende to govern. When Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970 by a 36 per cent plurality, CIA agents paid out $350,000 to bribe opposition members of the National Assembly, which had to ratify his election. Following the election, the State Department authorized more than $5 million more to undermine Allende's Popular Unity government and to influence the outcome of the Congressional elections held in 1973, when Allende increased his plurality to 44 per cent. Additional funds were funneled...
...President Ford cited for these activities was "the effort being made by the Allende government to destroy opposition news media, both the writing press as well as the electronic press. And to destroy political parties." The Allende government never undertook this so-called effort to destroy the opposition in Chile, for such an effort would be inimical to both Allende's style and his ideology...
...intervention in Chile was directed not against so-called repression but against Allende's substantive policies, which attempted to eradicate the social injustices prevalent in one of Latin America's wealthiest countries. In nationalizing industries owned by foreign companies, the Popular Unity government hoped to place profits from native resources in the hands of the Chilean people. Through its taxation policies the Allende government sought to redistribute wealth more evenly between rich and poor. By legalizing workers' factory takeovers, Allende moved to give laborers a greater say in the operation of their places of work. Through its land reform policy...