#35: Caldera, where I learned more about Chile
A post from 2017 about a meeting in Chile that still lives on in my mind
For travellers, Caldera is a sleepy coastal town in Northern Chile. For the Chilean economy, it is an important port used by the copper mining industry. In my memory, more than anything else, it is where I met Carlos, who gave me a glimpse into the history of Chile and the spirit of its people.
Caldera is close to the beach town of Bahia Inglesa, a popular spot for both local and foreign tourists because of it’s clear beaches, white sands, moderate temperatures, good seafood and fresh ice-cream. The walk to Bahia Inglesa is through small villages along the coast. The terrain is empty, barren and somehow still friendly. There are no roads, just sand covered plains with a few paths wide enough for cars (only four-wheel drives) scattered like scribbles through them.
The hostel we were staying had only a few rooms, and David (a friend who was traveling with me) and I spoke to all the occupants. I remember a french father-daughter duo: the father a lawyer fighting for the rights of refugees in France, and the daughter a self-professed hippie just starting college in England. Both of them were extremely stylish and graceful, their voices low and commanding, their laughter melodious, and their eyes sincere.
While talking with them over beers and a fire, we befriended Carlos, a loud and friendly twenty-year local with curly hair. He wore oversized shirts and shorts, listened to hip-hop, and taught basketball to poor kids. “To save them from the streets, it’s good if they play sports”, he told us.
He was involved in many protests against the police and the government in Chile. After a few beers, he showed us how to wrap a sweatshirt around your head so that you don’t breathe in tear gas.
“My dad was tortured by the Chilean government”, he said one night.
I looked at David, to make sure I had heard correctly. “Did he say his dad was tortured?”
David nodded. “Under the Pinochet government.”
Carlos continued telling David his father’s story in rapid Spanish. “What’s he saying?”, I asked David.
“His dad had to flee the country”, David said, waving his hands to hush me so that Carlos could continue. “He could come back only when Pinochet was overthrown.”
I had already heard that the 1970s had been a turbulent time in Chilean politics and that it was still fresh in many Chileans’ minds. However, this was the first time someone was talking to me so freely about it.
Now, as I was writing this entry, I went down a rabbit hole on the internet, and what I found made me quite angry and sad.
Some Recent Chilean History
It is October 1970, and Salvador Allende is the president of Chile, despite active involvement by the CIA to prevent his ascendancy. They have directly funded political parties, they have actively plotted coups, and they have funded anti-Allende propaganda in the media, but the people have still voted for him.
The US is wary of him because he espouses Marxist and socialist ideas. It isn’t just that, however. He also aims to nationalise the copper mines that are a source of valuable profits to private American companies. Chilean telecommunications are almost wholly managed by ITT, an American corporation.
Moreover, all this is happening during the height of the cold war, and every country that isn’t following American ideals is a potential convert to the Russian side, even though Russia is now a little hesitant because their experiment in Cuba is costing them a lot1.
With this background, and against advice from his own state department, Nixon tells the CIA to “make the [Chilean] economy scream”2.
And they do.
Chile’s economy, even with Allende’s attempts at diversification, is hugely dependent on the US, which accounts for about eighty percent of its foreign trade. An ITT memo from 1970 reads, “A more realistic hope among those who want to block Allende is that a swiftly deteriorating economy will touch off a wave of violence leading to a military coup.”
The US stops providing economical assistance to Chile. Imports of important replacement parts for basic infrastructures such as trucks, cars, and construction equipment comes to a halt. Truckers go on a very well-publicised strike (Reference 3), and they are curiously well-funded, even admitting to reporters that their money is coming from the CIA. Bus companies stop running, there are food shortages, inflation is now through the roof, and people are finally unhappy. The plan is working, and the CIA increases its propaganda in Chile, directly influencing and placing editorials and radio programmes every day, pointing to the Allende government as the cause of all this suffering to the people3.
Despite all of this, Allende’s party’s vote share increases in the 1973 parliamentary election, and the US is faced with the prospect of a continuing Allende presidency.
However, while it has been strangling the economy, the US has been increasing the funding to the Chilean military, both directly and through private groups. The CIA is actively involved in the planning of coups through multiple parties.
They later claim they were not directly involved in the coup that actually succeeded, even though they were aware of it in the months leading up to it. Though they also acknowledge that private companies that had CIA funding were actively involved.
After one failed attempt, Allende is finally ousted on September 11, 1973. There are tanks outside the parliament, and Allende is surrounded. Instead of vacating his office and surrendering, he makes a speech to the Chilean people on the radio and then shoots himself. The song linked to below includes his speech.
They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history.
— Salvador Allende, Sept 11, 1973.
Allende is replaced by Pinochet, the army chief, who immediately dissolves congress, bans political activity, abolishes freedom of the press, arrests supporters of other parties, bans rock music, makes congregations illegal, and of course cancels all upcoming elections. More than 20,000 people are arrested, and the Estadio Nacional (National Stadium) in Santiago is converted into a prison and torture chamber.
A famous singer with communist leanings, Victor Jara, is tortured. He is mocked and told to play the guitar after his fingers are cut off. He is shot with more than forty bullets and his body is displayed publicly at the entrance of the stadium. The song linked to below talks about a girl Amanda, whose lover goes off to fight and never returns.
The US government, through Henry Kissinger, continues to support the Pinochet government, turning a blind eye to the human rights abuses that continue to pile up. More people, including Carlos’ dad, are imprisoned and tortured. Many, like my Airbnb hosts’ family in Valparaiso, flee into exile4.
In 1975, the CIA acknowledges in their report that, even with all their involvement, the prospects for a revival of democracy had declined rather than improved.
In 1980, a new constitution is put into place. In 1988, Pinochet loses a referendum to continue as President, and Chile finally returns to Civilian rule.
Much later, in 2003, after the declassification of many documents related to US involvement in Chile, Colin Powell calls the period “not a part of American history that we’re proud of”5.
Carlos’ Story
I got in touch with Carlos again while writing this post.
He told me that Hector Rivera Osorio, his father, was arrested during the military regime for thinking along the lines of the singer Victor Jara, a communist singer who was arrested, tortured, and beaten to death in the Estadio Nacional (the national stadium) in Santiago.
Hector Rivera Osorio was also tortured on the pretext that he had been building a bomb with dynamite. Many of his friends were killed by the military, but he was eventually released. After his release, he fled to Ecuador to avoid recapture where he taught mathematics under the name Juan Pablo Perez Cotapo. He lived there till the dictatorship ended in 1988, when he returned to his homeland that he still loved.
More than forty years later, his son met an Indian traveller and told him this story, adding, “My father suffered because he believed there was a better future for me and my brothers in Chile.”
When this post was written6, Carlos was studying to be an engineer in Santiago, Chile and believed he is living in the future his father wanted for Chile. He sent me this photo to include in the post.
Epilogue
These days, almost every morning starts with me reading or watching something about what is going on in the Middle East and how the US is involved in all of this. That’s most likely what led my mind to dwell on this brief encounter in Chile and what the US did — and admitted to — there.
As I (re)write this post, Israel is still killing Palestinians in Gaza, and it looks like a bigger war might break out in the Middle East. I hope that at some point in the future, there is a honest reckoning for Israel and its supporters for their genocide.
Pg 40 in the Senate report on CIA covert action
They were sent into exile because my hosts’s father was in a rock band.
I’m going to try and contact him to see what he’s up to now. Maybe he doesn’t even remember me.
History keeps repeating itself in myriad ways and I keep wondering, will we ever learn? 😢
This post is so informative and moving, and your travels are so rich. Thank you for giving us a glimpse.
In your travel you observe and learn a lot. That is nice as it makes your blogs full of content without any euphoria.
This particular blog relates to two different happenings with one bringing back your old memories of another making it interesting reading and a great comparison.
Does it also tell the reader that nothing changes and history repeats at regular intervals? May be yes.