Sad Death of a Crooner

Guest Post by Southern Sage

In the latest news from Chile, a kangaroo court has just convicted and sentenced to 18 years in prison eight former soldiers for the killing of Victor Jara, a Communist folk singer who was shot following the September 11, 1973 coup that overthrew the regime of Salvador Allende, the “socialist” president of that long, thin, country at the tip of South America.  One other soldier was sentenced to five years for his part in a “cover up” of the killing.

For one who has spent much of his life fighting people Like Jara, these “convictions” are a dreary repetition of many similar instances whereby soldiers and police officers who fought the Communists in Latin America are being hounded by their liberal and leftist enemies for actions taken under desperate circumstances.  In view of the looming civil conflict in America, it would be well for all of us to remember that a fight is not over until the last one of these rats and their sympathizers are put in a place where they are never again in a position to take revenge on their political enemies.

Imagine an America where the lunatic left has managed to seize power and then imagine the fate of those who have opposed their conspiracy to destroy our country.

Uninformed Americans have been spoon-fed a tale of a “democratically-elected socialist” government in Chile that was tossed out by a brutal military coup which was followed by the mass killing of innocent people, with the complicity of the CIA, Nixon, etc.  The truth, of course, is totally different.

The facts are that feckless, self-centered Chilean politicians allowed Salvador Allende to be elected through a minority vote.  Allende was the head of the Chilean Socialist Party, a party that was even more radical than the stodgy Chilean Communist Party.  Once the levers of power were in his hands Allende set up making sure that there would one man, one vote, one time.

Surrounded by a gang of vicious bodyguards and terrorists from the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) and a host of Cuban intelligence agents and special forces soldiers, Allende and his even more extreme supporters began to a calculated campaign to destroy the democratic system that brought him to power.  It is an old Communist tactic.  Allende set out to marginalize the Chilean middle class, neuter the military, and make his “fundamental transformation” of Chile irreversible.  Sound familiar?

Illegal “worker’s militias” were formed with weapons brought into the country through clandestine drops by Cuban fishing boats.  Hordes of other Latin American Communists were brought in to staff government positions (I knew one of them, an ex-Communist, quite well; he described to me the sequence of events in great detail).  Land and factory seizures soon followed.  The courts were packed with revolutionaries and the other political parties were outflanked using unconstitutional means.  The free press was attacked using financial pressure and open threats.  Censorship was imposed by denying the opposition any means to state their case.  Again, sound familiar?

Chile, while certainly not perfect, had been a functioning democracy for many years with no military interference in politics, a vigorous intellectual life, a relatively strong economy, and no recent history of political violence.  It was no banana republic.  True, there was poverty and as in all Latin American countries economic equality and social justice could have been improved but it was already making progress in all of these areas.

The “moderate” Chilean political parties were similar to the Republican Party in their utter selfishness and lack of imagination.  They thought they could “deal” with Allende and his Communist friends.  Wrong.

The Chilean military, one of the most professional in Latin America, initially took a strictly hands-off attitude, trusting in the institutions of government to work and with the idea that these would act as a brake on Allende’s radicalism.  They soon found they were gravely mistaken.

When the United States quite properly refused to play ball with what was quickly becoming a Soviet/Cuban satellite (this was the height of the Cold War, Vietnam was just winding down in a humiliating loss for the U.S.) the liberal press screamed about the injustice being dealt to this “democratically-elected” Communist state.

In the meantime, the CIA became involved in a comic opera coup attempt that fizzled out and included the killing of a Chilean general, a thoughtless opportunist who had thrown his support to Allende out of stupidity and personal ambition.  Remember that!  Just as there were dozens of senior U.S. generals eager to advance their careers by sucking up to Obama, so it was in Chile, their country be damned.

The Chilean Congress and the Chilean Supreme Court eventually woke from their slumber and tried to control Allende, who was wrecking the economy and imposing a police state.  They essentially declared Allende an outlaw.  Allende ignored them.  His supporters spit in the faces of these weaklings who, after all, had allowed this disaster to happen in the first place.

Senior military officers began to realize that their institutions – not to mention their lives and those of their families – were at risk if things continued down this road.  They knew all too well the fate of the officers of the pre-revolutionary Cuban Army once Fidel Castro had total power in his hands.  They knew they had to act and act fast.

The die was cast when military intelligence learned of a plot by the MIR and their worker militia friends to decapitate the regular military, infiltrating military units with revolutionaries, murdering the officers and their families, and eliminating the last threat to the Communist regime.

In an incredibly well-planned operation the military quietly set the stage for the removal of Allende.  In a clever move the Chilean navy (a formidable force in the Latin American context) set sail for its annual war games with the U.S. Navy (Allende was still trying to maintain a show of normal relations and, in any case, preferred to have the navy sailing around the Pacific).  The fleet sailed over the horizon – and waited.

Early in the morning the army struck and the navy sailed back to port.  The Chilean Air Force took out key communications facilities.

Allende, stuck in the Moneda Palace, fretted and ran around with a silly helmet on his head, a submachinegun (a present from Castro) cradled in his arms.  He was surrounded by his GAP, a group of heavily armed thugs from the MIR.  He was also accompanied by Cuban intelligence officers.

Allende, no doubt prodded by the MIR and the Cubans, refused an offer of safe passage out of the country.  Considering that Allende’s henchmen had planned to massacre the military officers and their families, this was an exceedingly generous offer.  The refusal was met with precision bombing of the palace, an amazing feat as it is located in downtown Santiago.

Allende would die that morning with a bullet to the head, either a suicide and an accident.  It is possible he was executed by the Cubans in order to ensure that the portly old pervert (the army later found his personal residence stuffed with porno and sex toys) would become a martyr.

The military made short work of the worker’s militias and began to round up the main Communist hotheads, Jara among them.  A couple of American Communist “revolutionary tourists, including Charles Horman, were swept up in the dragnet.

It is estimated that about 2,500 Communists were summarily executed.  Jara took 44 rounds, or so it is said.  Others spent long years in intensive re-education in the cold, barren south of Chile.  The coup leader, General Augusto Pinochet, erred by extending mercy to a great number of Communists who were allowed to go into exile.  He should have hanged all of them for treason.  These “exiles” would form the hard-core of dozens of Latin American terrorist organizations in the coming years.

With Pinochet in power, Chile soon became the economic powerhouse of that region.  The radical left was all but extinguished.  When Pinochet left power years later these Communists had learned their lesson.  They had largely dropped their violent tendencies and had accepted to play by constitutional and democratic rules.  These reformed Reds are now part of a responsible and democratic reborn Chilean political system.

I knew one of these former Chilean terrorists, still a leftist but dedicated now to the rule of law and a free enterprise economy.  He expressed grudging respect for Pinochet and shuddered to think what would have happened to his country had he and his friends gained total power.  He is a wiser and more thoughtful man now.

Revolution and civil war are not games.  All of the leftist Democrats screaming about Trump and threatening to bring down our country should consider that carefully the next time they feel the urge to pen their mouths or punch a Trump supporter.  Things may not turn out the way they want them to.

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