Chile And The History Of An Assasination 50 Years Ago

 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/chile/2020-10-22/cia-chile-anatomy-assassination?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=96a5a40f-1640-4e13-a468-9b593c1995b6

Chile Out With The Old

 

NEED TO KNOW

CHILE

Out with the Old

Recently, an officer in Chile’s national police force, the Carabineros, was caught on video throwing an unidentified 16-year-old over a bridge. The teen is now in the hospital recovering from the 23-foot drop.

During the days of Augusto Pinochet, the military dictator who ruled Chile between 1974 and 1990 after a CIA-backed coup, the public couldn’t do much to express its outrage over such miscarriages of justice. Those days are long gone.

Chileans have taken to the streets to demand reforms in the Carabineros, who racked up 8,500 human rights abuse allegations in the past year, as well as other big changes to the country’s political system, the Guardian reported.

Earlier this week, the demonstrations descended into looting and violence.

The protests started a year ago over an increase in metro tickets. They’ve now morphed into demands for wholesale change based on grievances stemming from years of political, economic and human rights abuses, wrote the New Yorker. The Carabineros’ crackdown on protesters hasn’t helped.

Gustavo Gatica was blinded after being shot in both eyes by the Carabineros during a protest in November, he told Amnesty International in a first-person piece. “The most difficult thing has been going outside and using a walking stick,” he said. “It’s stressful because of the noise and the surroundings. But in March I went out to protest again in the same plaza where I was shot.”

A referendum on Oct. 25 to change the South American country’s Pinochet-era constitution has become a rallying point for the demonstrators, Agence France-Presse explained. Proponents of the referendum said it would end the inequality fostered by Pinochet, who allowed a few elite families to acquire massive fortunes while the middle and lower classes fell behind.

Around 70 percent of voters favor reforms, mostly because a new constitution would guarantee education and healthcare, MercoPress wrote. The referendum would also weaken the power of property owners and the private sector, including making it easier to change laws that currently can be blocked by small, right-wing political parties.

Pinochet handed down the current constitution in 1980. Since then, it’s been amended numerous times. Chilean leaders drafted a more liberal constitution a few years ago. But it was scrapped in 2018 when conservative President Sebastián Piñera took office, according to the Center for Strategic & International Studies.

Conservatives fear a new constitution would jeopardize the economic growth that has made Chile a darling among globalists for its pro-business policies, reported the Washington Post.

“Chile has become the freest, safest and most prosperous country in Latin America,” argued Pedro Pizano, a fellow at the McCain Institute for International Leadership, and Axel Kaiser, a scholar at the Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez in Santiago, the capital of Chile, in a separate Washington Post op-ed.

Evidently, many Chileans disagree.

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Bolivia-Do It Over!!!!

 

BOLIVIA

The Do-Over

The US allegedly backed a military coup against the leftwing government of ex-president Evo Morales in Bolivia late last year. If that is the case, the coup’s impact doesn’t appear to be lasting.

The former senator who became interim president after Morales resigned under pressure from the military, Jeanine Anez, recently decided not to run for office in a bid to unite the opposition against the Movement Towards Socialism, Al Jazeera explained.

“Today I put aside my candidacy for the presidency of Bolivia, for the sake of democracy,” Anez said in a video addressing the nation. “If we do not unite, Morales will return. If we do not unite, democracy loses.”

But polls recently found that Luis Arce, the candidate from Morales’ Movement Toward Socialism political party, is widely expected to win the first round of voting on Oct. 18, Reuters reported.

The Americas Society/Council of the Americas cited polls suggesting similar results. Anez has yet to endorse another candidate, and her supporters are splitting between Carlos Mesa, a centrist former president, and rightwing Catholic civic leader Luis Fernando Camacho.

Leftists worldwide view Morales, as the first indigenous person to become a head of state in South America, as an icon. He might have had the stature of Nelson Mandela if he had simply accepted the results of a 2016 referendum to determine whether he could run for reelection, argued Texas A&M political scientist Diego von Vacano in the New York Times. Instead, Morales had a court annul the results.

Also, his administration was rife with corruption. His machinations to win an unprecedented and arguably illegal fourth term were too much for the country’s security forces who decided to pull the plug on his 14 years in office, wrote the National Review.

The military’s record has been no better if not worse, however, according to Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. Writing in the Guardian, he said, “Bolivia has descended into a nightmare of political repression and racist state violence since the democratically elected government of Evo Morales was overthrown.”

The targets of racist state violence in Bolivia are indigenous communities, wrote leftwing magazine Jacobin in an interview with Movement Toward Socialism vice presidential candidate David Choquehuanca. That discussion includes the candidates’ deep historical thinking about the legacy of Spanish colonialism in Bolivia, the roots of much of the political battles in the country’s halls of power.

Irrespective of who wins, many in Bolivia are at least celebrating that democracy allows for do-overs.

Ched Guevera In The Mountains Of Bolivia

 https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/cuba-intelligence/2020-10-09/che-guevara-cia-mountains-bolivia?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=718a1bb9-5db5-42bf-91cf-6435edb0c1ee

Brassil: Ending The Probe

 

BRAZIL

Magical Thinking

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro ended the country’s long-running corruption probe known as Operation Car Wash, saying there is no more corruption within the government, Bloomberg reported Thursday.

The far-right president said he was “proud” to end the country’s largest corruption investigation which has led to the jailing of numerous political and business leaders since its inception in 2014. Those imprisoned include Bolsonaro’s rival, former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, as well as multiple chief executives of construction companies, who were sentenced for taking part in a large bribery scheme that diverted billions of dollars from public coffers.

Following the announcement, Bolsonaro’s former Justice Minister Sergio Moro, who had overseen the probe as a lead judge before joining the government in 2019, countered that official corruption was still alive and well in Brazil and attempts to end the probe “represent the return of corruption.”

Despite its track record, critics have accused the probe’s overseers of playing politics. Meanwhile, the government has been slowly dismantling the probe.

Meanwhile, the federal police has been carrying out a number of investigations with potential to implicate Bolsonaro’s sons.

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