So while it was technically true that some semblance of legal continuity, and certainly institutional continuity did extend from 1833 to 1973, it was hardly a straight line of uninterrupted, pacific democracy that was breached in 1973. By the 1960s, general strikes against government policies aiming to limit worker wage increases in order to solve the problem of inflation became common, led by an increasingly unified labor movement, under the auspicies of the Central Unica de Trabajadores (CUT). With the re-emergence of a massive class struggle in Chile, the analysis provided by Trotskyists and other revolutionaries of the failures of the Chilean government under Salvador Allende in the early 1970s is critically important. The industrial and agrarian reforms under Allende were instigated by a tremendous push from below in … The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event in both the history of Chile and the Cold War.Following an extended period of social and political unrest between the center-right dominated Congress of Chile and the elected socialist President Salvador Allende, as well as economic warfare ordered by US President Richard Nixon, [2] Allende was overthrown by the armed forces and national … Prior to 1970, Nixon and Kissinger did not pay much attention to Chile. The Agency's extensive efforts to promote a military coup in Chile—known as Track II—were revealed by the U.S. Senate Select Committee led by Senator Frank Church in the mid-1970s. Chile - Chile - Struggle for independence: Despite the colony’s isolation, its inhabitants at the start of the 19th century were affected by developments elsewhere. If there was any one key event that set the stage in terms of the International politics at play in Chile during the revolutionary process from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, it was the Cuban Revolution. Votes: 18,403 | Gross: $14.00M Allende survived the aerial attack but then apparently shot himself to death as troops stormed the burning palace, reportedly using an automatic rifle given to him as a gift by Cuban di… Inprecor. The footprint was estimated to be 12,500 years old, and other evidence of human habitation in Chile dated back still further - perhaps as far as 33, 000 years. At the outset the junta received the support of the oligarchy and of a sizable part of the middle class. Page 303. While the “ranks are on the march,” Garcia wrote, the UP “leaders are trying to deflect this thrust into the electoral arena,” but because of the mass mobilization of the class that has led to the UP in the first place, the bosses are consolidating their own strength in order to alter the balance of power in a way that can only be resolved through civil war. And when the constitution of 1833 was finally replaced, it was only after a military coup had ousted the president and then was itself ousted by a counter-coup of left-wing forces within the Armed Forces who reinstalled the president and had him write a new constitution with a stronger presidency. Kissinger believed that nothing important happened in the Southern hemisphere, and they were preoccupied by the Vietnam War. Allende died during an assault on the presidential palace, and a junta composed of three generals and an admiral, with Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte as president, was installed. The subsequent collapse of the saltpeter economy in Chile led the Chilean ruling class to seek two potential remedies — opening up greater trade links to the United States to prop up a collapsing export market in saltpeter, and the development of industry internal to Chile through protectionist policies, leading to the growth of the state and of “intermediary” urban economic activity and thus the development of urban middle classes. Beauvais continued by showing that Allende would have to resort to implementing austerity and further demobilizing the working class, justifying the imperialists’ “wait and see” posturing. Soon afterward, the Oct 5, 1970, issue of IP carried an article by a Chilean, Alfredo Garcia, titled “Behind Allende’s Electoral Victory,” which had been written on the eve of the elections. Pages 62-63. “We were aware of coup plotting in 1973, but we did not instigate it,” she said. 1973: BBC's Louise Crane reports on coup 1973 - Gen Augusto Pinochet … Even before the election of Allende, Intercontinental Press covered developments in the Chilean class struggle with a high level of depth and precision. His analysis pointed out that although the Christian Democrats had gained great influence among the population through their bourgeois-democratic reformist program, they had shown themselves unable to significantly raise the country out of poverty or to free it from domination by imperialism. The growing power of militant syndicalism as well as the growth of popular left-wing political parties came increasingly to be seen as a political threat to both the landowning oligarchy, whose political basis was eroding, and the foreign-dependent bourgeoisie (who feared the loss of US investment).