ROBINSON ROJAS, "The Murder of Allende and the end of the
Chilean Way to socialism", Harper and Row, 1975
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NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHERS:
"Ever since 1973 coup in Chile there has been considerable speculation
about what really happened and about the involvement of the U.S.
government and U.S. business interests. Now, this explosive account by
a Chilean journalist who lived through it all reveals the military,
industrial, and commercial conspiracy, abetted by North American
interests, to bring down the Allende government.
"Beginning on the day of the coup with Allende's murder and the
military's artful staging of his "suicide", the book goes on to reveal
the background of intrigue and counter-intrigue; the participation
of the CIA, the Pentagon, and U.S. business interests, as well as that
of the Brazilian government; the sinister roles of the Chilean armed
forces, police forces, and political parties; the events throughout
Chile on the day of the coup as the massive military apparatus got
under way; and the reign of terror and torture unleashed on the
civilian population.
This is a fast-moving, well-paced narrative,
with a "State of Siege" quality to it. It will be an important and
controversial book which neither Allendistas nor the conspirators
and their respectable fronts will like. It shows the latter as a gang
of premeditated murderers and the former, including Allende, as
honorable but very foolish men, who, until the very last moments,
believed that the military was made up of loyal soldiers, faithful to
the Constitution they were sworn to uphold. The author is an excellent
reporter and has carefully woven together the strands of seemingly
unrelated events into a coherent, compelling, and well-documented
story of who did what to whom, when."
=====================================================
(excerpts from "A Necessary Explanation")
"This book is an accusation. As such, it is written in the manner of
an extensive police report. It recounts the story of an assassination:
the assassination of one particular man, of thousands of other men and
women, and of the ideas of those men and women. Here is the story
behind the assassination of Dr. Salvador Allende Gossens, the
constitutional President of Chile. The main actors in this drama are
his murderers: their habits, their ideologies, their meetings, their
plans, their conspiracies.
"This is not a book that analyzes what happened. It is a book that
tells what happened and how it happened. And because I am writing
as a journalist, a Chilean, a leftist, and a personal participant in
the events in Chile from 1970 to 1973, the reader will also find an
Allende very different from the image created by the funeral eulogies,
the statues, the posters, the worl-wide homages. Here is an Allende
stripped of the mask of perfection, of "everything he did, he did
well", that so many people have been at such pains to present. Here
the heroic picture of Allende changes to one of a vacillating,
contradictory man attempting to defend "the Chilean way to socialism"
but making the political mistakes that opened the door to the forces
of fascist repression in Chile, aided and abetted by U.S. interests,
both commercial and governmental.
"This is not to say that Salvador Allende was not a hero. No one
doubts that. No Chilean is unaware that Allende went down fighting,
without any hope of survival unless he surrendered. And he did not
surrender. Heroes die like that, and that is how he died. And that
is how many thousands of his fellow Chileans also died, hopelessly
defending a democracy crushed by the tanks, armored cars, fighter
planes, and machine guns of the rebel soldiers. Allende once said:
"Let them know this, let them hear this very clearly, let it make
a deep impression on them: I will defend this Chilean revolution and
I will defend the Popular government. This people have given me this
mandate; I have no alternative. Only by riddling me with bullets will
they be able to end our will to accomplish the people's programa".
So they riddled him with bullets. A few hours before his death, as
the rebel attack was under way, he broadcast a speech to his
countrymen: "Thus the first page of this story has been written. My
people and the people of the Americas will write the rest."
This is the Allende you will find in this book. And you will read
how the common people, the victims of the coup, were denied the
opportunity to organize for their own protection. In sum, while
this book is a denunciation of Allende's assassins, the generals and
admirals in Santiago, Chile, and in Washington, it is also a
denunciation of the tragic and vacillating conduct of those who
called themselves leaders of the people, but left their people
defenseless against the fascist-imperialist attack...
...The Chilean people paid for this mistake with more than 15,000
dead, more than 30,000 prisoners, more than 100,000 brutally
tortured, more than 200,000 dismissed for political reasons, and
more than 30,000 students expelled from the university by the
military...The Chilean military unleashed their reign of terror
against the Chilean people in order to protect the interests of
the great North American consortia (Anaconda, Kennecott, ITT, et al),
as well as the strategic interests of the military-industrial
complex in Washington...R.R.(1975)"
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BACK TO TOC Back to Cover
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