Word: junta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...SEPTEMBER 11, 1974, the residents of Santiago. Chile, woke up to hear tanks rumbling through their streets; four years ago, the democratically-elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by a military junta supported by U.S. arms and money; four years ago, the junta, headed by General Augusto Pinochet, initiated its reign of bloody terror, beginning with the murder of Chileans who tried to protect their constitutional right to choose their own government...
...Chile than the U.P. expected, or than Americans were told about. The American intelligence agency--in cooperation with America's International Telephone and Telegraph Co., which feared the U.P. would nationalize its Chilean branch--funded rightwing and fascist groups that tried to provoke chaos, preparing the way for a junta whose major bid for support came in the guise of promoting security for the middle and upper classes. The CIA also paid small shopkeepers to hoard goods, and truckers--who comprise one of the best-paid sectors of Chile's labor force--to go out on strike, virtually shutting down...
SINCE THE COUP, the junta has been even more repressive and reactionary than most of the people who originally supported it could have foreseen. Shortly after he took over, Pinochet banned all political activities--to the horror of the centrist Social Democrats who had previously gone along with the army. As more and more stories of mass murder and imprisonment leaked out, the American people learned with horror about the monster their intelligence agency had helped create. The awarding of a Nobel Prize to University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman last fall was roundly condemned: Friedman...
American protests about the Chilean junta's brutality were redoubled this past year when President Carter began his campaign in support of human rights. In an effort to assuage international ire, Pinochet reported the junta had released all its political prisoners; the report was somewhat undermined when Amnesty International later revealed that at least 400 Chileans--and perhaps many more--are still in jail on political charges. More recently, Pinochet dissolved the DINA, the feared secret police that had imprisoned and tortured suspected leftwing sympathizers, and answered only to Pinochet and the rest of the junta. Like the earlier announcement...
...Pinochet last week, Carter told reporters he and the general found themselves in complete agreement on human rights. It does not appear likely now--if it ever did--that Carter will put the muscle behind the human rights drive he once promised by refusing all aid to the Chilean junta--surely one of the worst offenders. A different U.S. president felt no qualms about ending financial support to a peacefully-elected Chilean government, whose goal was only to improve the lot of its people. It is too bad Carter does not seem to feel...