Brazil helped raise Chile’s dictator Pinochet to power, according to declassified US documents

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Brazil helped to overthrow Chilean President Salvador Allende (1970-1973) and to raise dictator Augusto Pinochet to power, according to documents declassified Wednesday by the US National Security Archive.

This organization, founded by academics and investigative journalists, published on its website twelve secret documents on the occasion of the 57th anniversary of the military coup in Brazil, which show “the Brazilian regime’s effort to subvert democracy and support the dictatorship in Chile”.

Among those texts is a cable sent in March 1971 by the then Chilean ambassador to Brazil, Raul Rettig, to the Chilean Foreign Ministry, entitled “The Brazilian Armed Forces possibly (are) carrying out studies on guerrillas being introduced in Chile.”

At that time, several sources had informed the diplomatic legation that the Brazilian military regime evaluated how to instigate an insurrection to overthrow the Allende government.

They had also revealed to them the existence of an operations room in Brazil with maps of the Andes to plan how to infiltrate, according to this cable, classified at the time as “strictly confidential”.

According to Rettig, “the Brazilian armed forces apparently sent several secret agents to Chile, who would have entered the country as tourists, intending to gather more information on possible regions where a guerrilla movement could operate”.

However, the ambassador stressed that no date had yet been set for the start of this “armed movement”.

This telegram is part of hundreds of documents obtained by investigative journalist Roberto Simon for his book “O Brasil contra a democracia: A ditadura, o golpe no Chile e a Guerra Fria na América do Sul”, published last month in Brazil.

The work compiles archives from Brazil, Chile, and the U.S., exposing the role played by the Brazilian military regime in the September 11, 1973 coup that brought General Pinochet to power and its contribution to the repression in Chile.

Another of the documents, included in the book and declassified by the National Security Archive, portrays a scene in December 1971 at the White House between U.S. President Richard Nixon and General Emilio Garrastazu Médici, one of the leaders Brazil had during the military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985.

The two leaders discussed efforts to overthrow Allende.

Médici told Nixon that the Chilean should be deposed “for the same reasons that (Joao) Goulart (president of Brazil between 1961 and 1964) had been overthrown in Brazil”, and made it clear that his country was working towards this end.

For his part, the U.S. president responded that it was important for the U.S. and Brazil to work together “in this area” and offered “discreet assistance” to the Brazilian operations against the Allende government.

In the documents declassified on Wednesday, there is a CIA report on meetings with some Brazilian military officials, including one who thought that “the U.S. obviously wants Brazil to ‘do the dirty work’ in South America”.

Source: EFE