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This chapter discusses the time when Fidel Castro heard that Salvador Allende had narrowly won Chile's presidential election late at night on 4 September 1970. “The miracle has happened!” Castro exclaimed, when Luis Fernandez Ona walked through the door. Ona then joined Castro, Manuel Pineiro, and others as they debated the election's significance for Chile, for Latin America, for the cause of socialism worldwide, and for Cuba. Castro also instructed the next day's edition of Granma to categorically proclaim the “Defeat of Imperialism in Chile.” Later, he signed a copy for Allende and, having been up most of the night, called Santiago at dawn to congratulate his friend on what he considered to be the most important revolutionary triumph in Latin America since his own victory a decade before.

This chapter discusses how Salvador Allende embraced the idea that his election represented a turning point for inter-American affairs. On the night of his election victory, Allende had spoken elatedly to thousands of supporters in downtown Santiago and declared that countries around the world were looking at Chile. Indeed they were, but not necessarily with the admiration that Allende implied. Beyond Cuba, and across the Americas, Allende's election simultaneously sparked jubilation, terror, respect, and apprehension. While the majority of Latin America's leaders adopted moderate postures toward Chilean events, others were far more alarmist. Brazilian military leaders, in particular, began referring to Chile as “yet another country on the other side of the Iron Curtain,” only more dangerous because it was so close.

This chapter talks about Salvador Allende's international tour that took him from Mexico City to Havana via New York, Algiers, and Moscow. In many respects, the trip was a gamble—a somewhat uncoordinated effort both to improve Chile's position before its representatives sat down to bilateral negotiations with the United States in December and to boost the UP parties' chances in Chile's forthcoming congressional elections. The journey also encapsulated the different strands of Chilean foreign policy, which since 1970 had aimed to protect La Via Chilena and to promote systemic change on behalf of the global South. During his trip, Allende simultaneously appealed to Latin Americans, the Third World, the UN, the Soviet Union, Cuban revolutionaries, and, at least indirectly, the Nixon administration.

This chapter presents a series of crises that Kissinger and Nixon faced in the Middle East and Latin America. In Cuba, the Soviets were apparently building a submarine base. In Chile, despite the strenuous efforts exerted by the U.S., the socialist candidate Salvador Allende was still able to claim the presidency. In Jordan, the Palestinian uprising that occurred resulted in a near full-scale regional war. The scenarios that occurred in these crises are explained exhaustively in this chapter. However, these crises also showcased Kissinger's ability to be a key player in foreign policy negotiations which eventually led to him earning the full trust of the president. Thus, Kissinger's ability to formulate, control and execute policies was enhanced. This in turn later confirmed his position as the foreign policy czar.

This chapter describes the efforts by the United States and Eduardo Frei to prevent Salvador Allende from attaining the presidency. The Nixon administration, after choosing not to involve itself in the 1970 presidential race to the extent the Johnson administration had in the 1964 election, reacted with great alacrity to Allende's victory in the popular election. Richard Nixon himself instructed CIA director Richard Helms to conduct covert operations in Chile, behind Ambassador Korry's back. In addition, Chilean politicians, particularly Christian Democrats of the Frei line, tried or at least explored ways of averting an Allende victory and sought for that purpose the support of the U.S. embassy in Santiago. Though many of the documents that tell this part of the story have been available to researchers since at least the early 2000s, only one scholarly work has treated these attempts by Chilean politicians, especially Eduardo Frei, in depth. The tendency of scholars of U.S. foreign relations during the Cold War to assume rather uncritically that the only decisions that mattered were taken in Washington has narrowed the perspectives from which the history of Cold War Chilean politics has been studied and interpreted.

This book begins with a focus on 5 November 1970, when thousands of people crammed into Chile's national stadium to mark the beginning of Salvador Allende's presidency and what was being heralded as the birth of a new revolutionary road to socialism. For some, Allende's inauguration two days earlier had been a cause for mass celebration. Along the length of Santiago's principal avenue, musicians, poets, dancers, and actors had performed on twelve open-air stages specially erected for the occasion, and crowds had partied into the evening. Now, on a sunny spring afternoon, along with foreign journalists and invited dignitaries from around the world, they flocked to hear the president's first major speech. As Allende rose to the podium to deliver a message of national emancipation and rebirth, he looked out on a sea of flags in optimistic anticipation of what was to come. He then proclaimed that Chile was ready to shape its own destiny.

This chapter discusses the role of the U.S. embassy in Santiago in the Chilean presidential election of 1964. One of the leading candidates in the race, Salvador Allende, was an avowed Marxist and the standard-bearer of the Popular Action Front (FRAP), a coalition of Socialists and Communists formed in 1958. Allende's main contender was Eduardo Frei Montalva, the undisputed leader of the Christian Democratic Party. For the United States, an Allende victory in the presidential election would entail a huge setback in the Western Hemisphere. Thus, the United States supported the candidacy of Eduardo Frei, whose project seemed an excellent alternative to the revolutionary path proposed by the Marxist Left and a good representation of the goals and values of the Alliance for Progress. The U.S. ambassador in Chile, Charles Cole, and more so the political staff of the embassy in Santiago, played an important role in shaping the race and advising the main chiefs of Eduardo Frei's political campaign, and even Frei himself, in the course of 1964. The mostly untold story of the U.S. embassy's involvement in the 1964 presidential race is an excellent example of the way in which U.S. foreign policy was carried out on the ground and, in many situations, in the open.

This chapter investigates the racial dimensions of the “Revolution in Liberty” led by the Christian Democrats and the “Chilean Road to Socialism” embraced by the Popular Unity, exploring in particular the tensions between ethnic-based and class-based organizing. It examines teaching reforms, poetic production, and museums under Eduardo Frei Montalva, the music of New Chilean Song [Nueva Canción Chilena], artists Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara, the writings of Communist intellectual Alejandro Lipschutz, and the public declarations of Salvador Allende. Overall, the chapter demonstrates how Mapuche culture became increasingly visible during this turbulent period despite, in conjunction with, or indeed sometimes as a direct result of government initiatives.

This chapter investigates the factors that led the Nixon administration to pursue covert regime change against Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist President of Chile in the early 1970s. Initial attempts at preventing Allende from coming to power, including a military coup, failed. Although subsequent covert destabilization efforts contributed to Allende’s eventual downfall in 1973 at the hands of Augusto Pinochet and his co-conspirators, U.S. decision makers were not directly involved. They did, however, have advance warning. One of the primary reasons for the use of secrecy in this case was America’s commitment to nonintervention and the attendant credibility and legitimacy costs associated with brazenly violating it. Although U.S. officials never considered overtly invading Chile, they were reticent to pursue less dramatic overt policies aimed at overthrowing Allende, including sanctions and other hardline policies, unless they could secure legal cover.

This chapter studies the 1970 Chilean presidential election. As the Marxist Left had a good chance of winning, the 1970 election stood as a rare opportunity for a nation to head toward socialism by freely choosing an avowedly Marxist leader and an explicitly revolutionary project. The implications of such a choice, everyone understood, were enormous. From the viewpoint of Salvador Allende and the Left, the so-called “Chilean road to Socialism” would eventually lead to a thorough renovation of Chile's political framework and economic system and realize the goals of social justice long sought by the parties representing the true interests of the working class. From the viewpoint of anti-Marxist sensibilities, especially in the Christian Democratic Party, a government of Popular Unity could transform Chile's fine democracy into an authoritarian or dictatorial system like those of Cuba or Eastern Europe. On the international scene, an Allende victory would also have profound repercussions. An Allende victory would be a huge triumph for the cause of world revolution and, consequently, a crushing blow for the standing of the United States in the global Cold War.

This section introduces Chile’s criollo (or home grown) counterculture and the broader subjects of youth and youth culture during the late sixties and early seventies. It situates the phenomenon amid the country’s cultural and political landscapes on the eve of and during the “Chilean Road to Socialism,” the revolutionary project of Marxist President Salvador Allende and his governing coalition, Popular Unity. The section provides a theoretical framework for identifying and understanding counterculture and its Chilean peculiarities. Moreover, it describes the book’s novel approach to the subject in the context of Latin American historiography on youth, youth movements, and counterculture.

This chapter focuses on the biographies of Michael Townley and his wife, Mariana Callejas de Townley. Townley is the American-Chilean electronics expert and a militant anti-communist who becomes politicized during the Salvador Allende years and joins an armed resistance called Fatherland and Freedom. After the Pinochet coup, he becomes a bomb-maker for Contreras’s Directorate of National Intelligence and arranges assassinations for the regime. Through Chief of Operations Pedro Espinoza, Contreras gives Townley the order to assassinate Letelier. His wife Mariana becomes an important aide in his awakening to right-wing politics.

This chapter focuses on the relationship between Isabel and Orlando Letelier before the military coup by Pinochet on September 11, 1973. They met as stdents, fell in love and into politics, and lived in Washington for a decade when Orlando was ambassador. They also raised four boys who were bi-national in their culture. Right before the coup, Orlando returned to Chile as a minister for the socialist government of Salvador Allende. The chapter establishes the depth of the couple’s love, which is tested in later chapters.

This chapter tells the story of the coup of September 11, 1973. It is also a biography of coup leader Augusto Pinochet, who pretends to be a loyalist of civilian leaders such as Allende and Letelier, who was minister of Defense on the day of the coup. Pinochet is less gifted than Contreras, but equally ruthless. The coup prompts many of those later associated with Letelier’s assassination into early atrocities against human rights. It also sends Letelier into prison camps for a year.