Lessons from the Pinochet coup in Chile?

On September 11,1973, Chile was rocked by a military coup. Led by General Augusto Pinochet, the Chilean military toppled the socialist government of President Salvador Allende and established a dictatorship. Pinochet ruled Chile for 17 years. During that period, the military junta committed numerous crimes, violated human rights, banned political parties, suppressed unions, and persecuted, tortured, and murdered leftists and supporters of the Allende government. What lessons can the Chilean left and the left elsewhere draw from the military coup? What do the events tell us about the relation between liberal democracy and the repressive apparatus of the capitalist state?

BRICS is a a geopolitical and economic alliance between Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. Formed in 2010, the group encompasses more than a quarter of the world's land surface, over 40 percent of the global population, around 30 percent of global GDP, about 20 percent of international trade and 50 percent of the world's foreign exchange reserves. In August 2023, the BRICS announced that Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates would become full members in 2024. Around 20 other countries have shown interest in joining the bloc.

Over the past years, Ecuador has become a major battlefield in the transnational drug war. On August 9, presidential hopeful Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead at a campaign rally in Quito. Villavicencio was a member of the National Assembly and spoke out against organized crime and corruption. His murder marked the culmination of Ecuador’s worsening security crisis and of an unprecedented cycle of violence unleashed by criminal organizations operating in the country. Ecuador was once one of Latin America’s most peaceful countries. Between 2020 and 2022, the country’s homicide rate jumped by 245 percent. Ecuador sits in a strategic geopolitical position for the global cocaine trade. It is nestled between the world’s two biggest cocaine suppliers, Colombia and Peru. With cocaine production booming in Colombia, national gangs and foreign drug cartels are increasingly turning Ecuador into an international cocaine transit hub.