Chilean Democracy Pros And Cons Research Paper

Tough Choices, Bad Outcomes

By the end of 1973 the Chilean coup d'état left democratically elected socialist President Salvador Allende dead and put a military junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet in power. The coup was a long time in the works, and was masterfully and meticulously carried out by the CIA, the U.S. Department of State, National Security Council, and various corporations. Each one of these factors had motives and justifications for their actions. Ranging from economic and political loses to the fears of the spread of communism. The decisions made are done, and history and those who study it will determine whether they were correct. (Still working on a better thesis statement.) Before the coup, the United States had already invested heavily in Chilean democracy, starting with the Alliance for Progress initiated by John F. Kennedy in 1961, aimed at establishing economic cooperation between the U.S and Latin America. On pg. 12 of the introduction Kornbluh discusses how Chile had long been a country that attracted a case

“U.S businesses generated two-thirds of the $1.6 billion in foreign investments in Chile.” (p.101) Two U.S based copper corporations also controlled 80 percent of the copper industries, also on page 101 this industry was more than four-fifths of all of Chiles export earnings. In the theoretical work of Karl Marx (Marxism/Socialist ideology) socialization is taking economic activity and transfers the means of production to the workers, and is now socially owned. Or the means of production are controlled by the state. Many of the global corporations were worried of an Allende takeover, where their investments would be taken over by the state. On page 25. Documents how titans of industry swayed Nixon’s views. Agustin Edwards who was a publisher of a newspaper in Chile was staying at Don Kendall’s house, a CEO of Pepsi and a contributor