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Chile after nearly fifty years of despair
Today, as the nation gets ready to write a new constitution, the horror and tragedy of the Pinochet coup and regime of terror is widely known. What is shocking is the history of Cold Warrior sell-outs who blocked solidarity inside the US labour movement, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY

ON MAY 15 and 16 of this year, the people of Chile began a process to overturn the nearly 50-year interruption of the nation’s social and economic development.

With the election of a representative body to a forthcoming Constitutional Convention, Chilean voters may finally break away completely from the nightmare imposed by the military-fascist regime of Augusto Pinochet.

The Chilean military’s coup in 1973 broke what was then the longest streak of formal parliamentary rule in any South American country. The international left viewed the Popular Unity coalition government, led by the socialist and communist parties and elected in 1970, as an experiment testing the viability of the parliamentary road to socialism. The Chilean ruling class and the US government also saw it the same way and were determined to crush it.

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