Salvador Allende and Che Guevara
Today In Latin American History
September 11
- 1541: The Picunche indigenous leader Michimalonco leads an ultimately unsuccessful attack against the newly founded Spanish colonial settlement of Santiago de la Nueva Extremadura in present-day Chile. The settlement’s leader, Inés de Suárez, retaliates by beheading seven indigenous chiefs who had been imprisioned by the Spanish.
- 1829: In Mexico, Antonio López de Santa Anna earns the title El Héroe de Tampico after defeating an invading Spanish army led by Isidro Barradas.
- 1973: A violent military coup d’état headed by Gen. Augusto Pinochet and backed by the United States puts an end to the government of president Salvador Allende, who commits suicide inside the presidential palace of La Moneda while under attack by the military.
- 2009: Juan Almeida Bosque, a major figure of Cuban Revolution who went on to have a long career in the Cuban government, dies at age 82 in Havana.
Imágenes de la campaña “No te olvido”, que busca apoyo para la creación de un Plan Nacional sobre el Alzheimer y otras Demencias.
Public Employees Go on Strike in Chile
Santiago de Chile, November 29 (Prensa Latina) - Chilean public workers will begin a 48-hour strike on Tuesday to demand job security and reject the wage adjustment presented by the government.
The protesters are members of the National Association of Fiscal Employees (ANEF), the Teachers Association and the National Federation of University Professionals in the Health Services, three of the main public sector unions.
According to ANEF leader Raul de la Puente, the wage proposal of a five percent increase is still insufficient. This was announced by the government in recent hours and accepted by 11 of the 14 public associations such as the National Confederation of Municipal Health Workers.
The ANEF had requested a salary increase of 9.8 percent, while the government had proposed a four percent increase which then rose to 4.5 and finally to five percent.
Besides an increased adjustment and automatic renewal of employment contracts designed to ensure job security, the strikers also demand an adequate retirement incentive policy.
Repression in Chile, 2011
(Source: tomasdintrans)
Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo sits among a peace sign created from empty teargas canisters used by police against protesters. Photograph: Roberto Candia/AP
Wow. This is a powerful image.
After our adventures in the occupied highschool, we went to a nearby cafe, drank amazing coffee with rum in it, and made a new friend, the proprietor of the cafe, a man called Eddy. The quote above comes from him.
Eddy sat down with us and talked to us about all kinds of things - being an activist before and during the Allende government, the horrors of the Pinochet coup and its aftermath, including being tortured by them for being a dissident, and the continuous negative effects of Pinochet’s economic and social policies on Chile today.
He talked about the horrible inequality that exists in Chile today - corporations and mining companies are incredibly wealthy, but the labour movement was pretty much destroyed under Pinochet and hasn’t really recovered. The GDP of the country is pretty high, but the overall standard of living is much lower than in Argentina, for example. There’s pretty high levels of poverty, particularly for the Indigenous populations, for whom land rights and access to education are very important issues. The government has a pretty high federal reserve, but instead of spending it on infrastructure, education and other important things in Chile, it’s being loaned to European countries to prop up their struggling economies.
When I was small, my mother was involved with a group of Chilean refugees who were anti-Pinochet, and I remember learning about the disappearances at a very early age. Because of this, I expected that there would be a much more anti-Pinochet presence in Chile, but it’s been pretty minimal. The wealthy part of the population seem to still be very in favour of him, and all the 11/9/73 memorial stuff was in the form of subversive protests, which I wasn’t really expecting. Eddy told us that a lot of people don’t care about the crimes against humanity that the Pinochet regime perpetrated, because some people managed to become very wealthy.
Eddy talked to us about the recent student protests, as well, which he was very in favour of. He told us that last month, there was a protest in the Plaza Brasil and the carabineros let off a lot of teargas bombs, which made everyone in the neighbourhood sick afterwards. He told us that the parents of students who are occupying the universities are sometimes losing their jobs because of what their kids are doing.
This made me incredibly thankful to live in a country with a strong labour movement. Having the right to organise, to not lose your job because of the political affiliation or actions of your family members, to be able to fight for decent conditions that mean class is not entrenched - these are valuable rights that I think a lot of people take for granted.
It was maybe one of the most interesting conversations I’ve ever had in my life, and I’m incredibly grateful that he took the time to talk to us about a piece of history that we don’t hear a lot about in Australia. I’m also very grateful to be in Chile at a time when there’s so much political action taking place, and I’m very sad that this isn’t getting a lot of attention from the Anglosphere media. I think people assume that all of Chile’s problems ended when Pinochet left power, but it’s very much not the case.
I hope that when I am Eddy’s age, I am still passionate about equality for all people, regardless of nationality or gender or sexual orientation etc. He is an amazing man, and he also makes the best coffee we’ve had in Santiago so far.
Thank you, Eddy.
Love Julia.
(via newworldgrandtour)
Thanks so much for this Julia! It is really interesting to read and also quite sad. Really do wish the Western media would talk about this more.
(via stinkysister)
Chilean student leader Camila Vallejo sits among a peace sign created from empty teargas canisters used by police against protesters. Photograph: Roberto Candia/AP
Not since the days of Zapatistas’ Subcomandante Marcos has Latin America been so charmed by a rebel leader. This time, there is no ski mask, no pipe and no gun, just a silver nose ring.
Meet Commander Camila, a student leader in Chile who has become the face of a populist uprising that some analysts are calling the Chilean winter. Her press conferences can lead to the sacking of a minister. The street marches she leads shut down sections of the Chilean capital. She has the government on the run, and now even has police protection after receiving death threats.
Wednesday saw the start of a two-day nationwide shutdown, as transport workers and other public-sector employees joined the burgeoning student movement in protest.
“There are huge levels of discontent,” said Vallejo in a recent interview. “It is always the youth that make the first move … we don’t have family commitments, this allows us to be freer. We took the first step, but we are no longer alone, the older generations are now joining this fight.”
“We do not want to improve the actual system; we want a profound change – to stop seeing education as a consumer good, to see education as a right where the state provides a guarantee.
“Why do we need education? To make profits. To make a business? Or to develop the country and have social integration and development? Those are the issues in dispute.”
Chile: Hunger strike by 50 students continues
fuckyeahmarxismleninism: Santiago, Aug 23 (Prensa Latina) - Almost 50 young students have been on hunger strike for 36 days, demanding free and public education; the health of three of them is seriously deteriorating. The spokesman of the protesters, Matias Villegas, declared Tuesday to Radio Cooperativa that the students are demanding that the Executive solve the problem as soon as possible.
Felipe Sanhueza, Matías Ortega and Gloria Negrete are the ones with the worst health conditions, especially Gloria who remains in the San Luis de Buin hospital, just outside Santiago.
Angel Muños (18) and Fidel Carrasco (16) chained themselves in front of a high school in solidarity with the students of Buin and also joined the hunger strike on Monday.
According to the spokeswoman for the Chilean Students Federation, Camila Vallejo, the government is responsible for these extreme measures, like the hunger strike, since it has not changed its position.
Vallejo warned that the strikers’ lives are in danger, and criticized the Chilean government for remaining indifferent towards this crisis.
Meanwhile, social groups keep joining the 48 hours national strike called by the Workers United Center of Chile starting Wednesday.
Social protests have been taking place in Chile since last April when students took the streets, schools and universities demanding the end of education for profit, established by the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).
Meet Camila Vallejo, president of the Federation of Chilean Students (FECH) and leader of the protests for education reform in Chile. On Thursday, the march she led gathered more than 100,000 people who came in support of students’ rally for free university education. Yesterday, “Families for education”, an informal get together for families with young children, gathered more than 1 million participants. She was the main speaker and organizer.
I am surprised English speaking media is not all over her case already. She has encountered bitter misogyny from government ministers that refer to her as “the bitch”, she has successfully created a political movement that is demanding concrete action and she is extremely media savvy and articulate. Charismatic, young, smart and beautiful, those are not qualities found in many political figures these days.
She is also a proud member of the Communist Youth (JJCC).
Campaign rachets up defense of Victor Toro
The next phase of the campaign to stop the deportation of Victor Toro, a 69-year-old Chilean activist and revolutionary, is being launched.
Toro was arrested by U.S. border patrol agents on July 5, 2007, while on an Amtrak train in Rochester, N.Y. The Committee states that he was racially profiled, asked for papers and detained.
Toro and his spouse, Nieves Ayress, are both longtime freedom fighters. In Chile, Toro was instrumental in struggles for basic survival in his community, including the fight for water and housing. Ayress is a longtime activist for women’s and Indigenous rights.
They both organized and fought against the U.S.-backed dictator, Augusto Pinochet, in the 1970s, and were forced to leave Chile as a result of brutal torture and a wave of repression against the political movement. Tens of thousands of Chileans were massacred at the time.
But Ayress and Toro never gave up fighting for the rights of the workers and oppressed. They are founders of La Peña del Bronx and active organizers in the May 1st Coalition for Worker and Immigrant Rights. You will see both at demonstrations on every single struggle, whether it is against U.S. wars abroad or support for Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Cuban Five and other political prisoners.
Toro and his family, along with his supporters and legal team, have carried out an aggressive legal and political challenge to demand political asylum. However, in March Judge Sarah Burr denied Toro’s request for asylum. He now faces possible deportation at any time.
This denial is a blow to the struggle for justice not only for Toro, but for all the undocumented and documented immigrants for whom he has fought so hard.
• 1953: USA overthrows democratically elected Prime Minister Mossadeq of Iran, then installs dictator Shah
• 1954: USA overthrows democratically elected President Arbenz of Guatemala 200,000 civilians killed
• 1963: USA backs assassination of S. Vietnamese President Diem.
• 1963-1975: American military kills 4 million people in Southeast Asia.
• September 11th, 1973: U.S. stages coup in Chile. Democratically elected President Salvador Allende assassinated. Dictator Augusto Pinochet installed. 5,000 Chileans murdered.
• 1977: U.S. backs military rulers of El Salvador. 70,000 Salvadorans and 4 American nuns killed.
• 1980S: US trains Osama bin Laden and fellow terrorists to kill soviets. CIA funds $3 billion.
• 1981: Reagan administration trains and funds “contras” 30,000 Nicaraguans die.
• 1982: US provide billions in aid to Saddam Hussein for weapons to kill Iranians.
• 1983: White House secretly gives Iran weapons to kill Iraqis.
• 1989: CIA agent Manuel Noriega (also serving as President of Panama) disobeys orders from Washington. So, US invade Panama and removes Noriega. 3,000 Panamanian casualties.
• 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait with weapons from US
• 1991: US enter Iraq. Bush reinstated dictator of Kuwait.
• 1998: Clinton bombs “weapons factory” in Sudan, factory turns out to be making Aspirin.
• 1991: American planes bomb Iraq on a weekly basis. UN estimates over 500,000 Iraqi children die from bombing and sanctions.
• 2000-2001: US gives Taliban-ruled Afghanistan $245 million in “aid”
2001: 3,000 murdered in 9/11 attacks.And this is a selective list of atrocities. Woot Yoo Ess Ayy.
(via woodsmaiden)
On 17 Janurary 1893, the United States overthrew the sovereign government of Hawai’i.
Unfortunately, this list could be much longer. The Philippines, Indonesia, even on the American continent where the US Army classifies the so-called Indian reservations as Prisoner of War camps. Accurately, of course. Colonialism is an old war, but it’s still a war.
Let’s not forget the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, more widely known as the School of the Americas, a US military academy famous for training Latin American armies in the suppression of leftist anti-dictatorship insurgents in the mid-20th century.
