EDITORIAL
More than Pinochet
News of the Dec. 14 indictment of the butcher of Chile, Gen.
Augusto Pinochet, on charges of murder and kidnapping was
certainly welcomed by workers and peasants from Arica to Punta
Arenas, as well as around the globe. During the 17 years of
iron-fisted rule by this military dictator, some 30,000
workers, students and progressive organizers were massacred and
tens of thousands more subjected to torture or exile from their
homeland.
The charges are based on just nine victims of this "dirty
war."
In the last few years, Pinochet could not travel outside of
Chile without fear he would face arrest for these crimes. On
Dec. 14, Chilean Judge Juan Guzman Tapia ordered Pinochet held
under house arrest--mansion arrest, actually--after it was
determined he was competent to stand trial. Attorneys for the
hated dictator are already trying to quash the indictment.
Pinochet--then and now--has friends in high places. Those
friends, who helped plan, fund and back the
counter-revolutionary military coup, are right here in the
imperialist citadel. There is no justice until they are in the
dock, too. In a people's court.
Start with Richard Nixon's national security advisor, Henry
Kissinger, who engineered the coup that carried out the Sept.
11, 1973, fascist "regime change" against the elected
president, Salvador Allende, a socialist.
Last December, excerpts from transcripts of June 1976
conversations between Pinochet and Kissinger were released. "My
evaluation," Kissinger said, "is that you are a victim of all
left-wing groups around the world, and that your greatest sin
was that you overthrew a government that was going
Communist."
Kissinger concluded, "You did a great service to the West in
overthrowing Allende. Otherwise Chile would have followed
Cuba."
Kissinger himself was a willing tool of war criminals even
higher up. The Rockefellers--Kissinger's bosses--should be put
on trial for their role. And the owners of International
Telephone and Telegraph and Anaconda Copper.
These major corporations worked hand-in-hand with the
Chilean ruling class to drown the people's aspirations in
blood. The U.S. government secretly backed the fascist generals
to prevent the Allende regime from carrying out even limited
social and economic reforms.
Pinochet, Somoza, Trujillo, Batista. These tyrants took
their orders from Washington and Wall Street.
But a new tide of struggle is rising in Latin America and
the Caribbean--from Venezuela to Colombia, Haiti to Cuba. With
NAFTA and other imperialist neoliberal schemes impoverishing
workers everywhere, including in the U.S., and class and
anti-imperialist consciousness growing, the prospects for
international solidarity and struggle against today's Pinochets
and Kissingers are looking brighter.
Reprinted from the Dec. 23, 2004, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyright under a Creative
Commons License.
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