Comment

Some Reflections on The Battle of Chile

Joan Pedro

The coverage of Augusto Pinochet's death late 2006 is one of those clear examples of an apparent media objectivity - and even positive partiality - in which the social and human rights aberrations committed by a brutal dictatorship are exposed.

However, similar to other major political events, the media in the Pinochet case did not offer a deep contextual analysis and understanding of other important and relevant issues, which when uncovered, reveal the active role of the CIA, the US government, and trans-national corporations prior and during the reign of the dictatorship.

In this context it's worth viewing one of the best political documentaries, La Batalla de Chile (The Battle of Chile, Director Patricio Guzmán, Part 1, 1975; Part II, 1976; Part III, 1979), which depicts Salvador Allende's rule in Chile nine months prior to the coup and up to the day of its downfall. It is helpful to deconstruct some myths still sustained by some media such as the belief that Pinochet saved Chile from communism, which allegedly would have plunged the country into poverty and civil war.

Allende's social democrat government, the Unidad Popular, had great appeal to the mass of disinherited common people, but both the national and international media campaigned agressively against Allende's policies insisting they were marxist/communist pitted against freedom/democracy in order to demonise Allende. Some newspapers, like El Mercurio (funded by Washigton), which were fearly belligerent of the democratic government and utilised all types of fallacies to manipulate public opinion, continue with the same discourse today against Hugo Chávez.

Allende's reforms were oriented to improving the national economy in a way that it benefited wider parts of society and to developing a people-based democracy - autonomy from the USA was key. Some initiatives regarded a more just redistribution of wealth, salary improvements, workers self-management, better social security, reform and democratisation of the educational system, free milk programmes for the poor, nationalisation of major copper, steal, iron, textile and carbon industries, the dismantling of latifunds, and controlling the distribution of food through the 'Juntas de Abastecimiento y Precios'. However, many of these initiatives were paralysed by the opposition.

A myriad of political and economic stratagems were put into action by the opposition to finish off the leftist government. On the one hand, Nixon's 'soft line' consisted of an economic strangulation intended to provoke a crisis so that massive poverty would finally lead to Allende's overthrow. The internal embargo was just as bad. There was a nationwide lockout, harvests and distribution were sabotaged, production boycotted, one third of the collective transport was immobilised, miners at 'El Teniente' went on strike... all under US promotion. Employer's guilds formed in the USA and financed by the CIA, also carried out several offensives. On the other hand, the 'hard line' would consist of using any means to fulfil Nixon's known desire to overthrow Allende. There were constant attempts to subvert the army's traditional support of the Constitutional order and an important faction of the military was trained in the USA; there were two failed coups with CIA arms, financing and organisation; and multinational corporations such as Pepsi and ITT (which in the 1970 elections had funded the right wing candidate Alessandro Rodríguez with $350,000) put extra pressure on the US government to take action (www.medialens.org).

Rightist Chilean groups also provoked street violence and disorder under US guidance, organisation and funding. For instance, the fascist group 'Patria y Libertad' and other 'clash squads' marched on the streets seeking to create violence, chaos and disorder. Part of the left also opted for violence in which confrontations occurred between the two opposing groups. Meanwhile, the people came out in huge support for the Allende government.

Finally, Washington succeeded and Pinochet seized power before Chile's socialist example 'infected', in Kissinger's words, other countries. The US poured millions in economic aid and corporations entered the country. Both the US and UK government with help from international capital and neo-liberal economists were influential factors inside and outside Chile. Friedman's 'economic miracle' or the praised 'social stability' and 'social peace' programmes became widely accepted albeit reality showed that they were no more than myths. The miracle was according to Greg Palast 'just another fairy tale'. Neo-liberal policies augmented inequalities drastically, with the employment rate falling 17.7% and real wages 40% in ten years. He adds that 'Chile could boast some economic success. But that was the work of Salvador Allende - who saved his nation, miraculously, a decade after his death' (www.zmag.org).

Most of the pre-dictatorial era implications are made clear in the documentary and one can easily establish some straight parallels with Venezuela or Bolivia today where similar and equal strategies are being used (for more details see www.rethinkvenezuela.com). That is why many images and comments in 'The Battle of Chile' recur in other recent documentaries such as 'The Television Will Not Be Televised' and 'The Fourth World War'. However, UK mainstream media has buried them so that they remain unseen from the public gaze as the December 19th 2006 MediaLens alert demonstrates. The CIA's active creation of the dictatorship is represented in vague terms while some of the participative elements are simply omitted.

In Spain, newspapers such as El Mundo and El Pais may have included a few articles that offered more context than others but nevertheless failed overall to produce a more rounded reality. For instance, Joan Garcés, one of Allende's most important advisors, said that 'Nixon ordered the coup in 1970, days after Allende's triumph' (El Mundo, December 12th 2006). In El País, the Supreme Court Prosecutor and driving force in the 'Pinochet case' Carlos Castresana affirmed unreservedly that 'Blair, Frei and Aznar permitted Pinochet not to be judged', but overall in Spain as well as in the UK the majority of the mainstream media produced superficial accounts. It's in this context that I quote Pablo Neruda 'don't anyone else eat more of the liar food that in our time nourished us'!