A Deadly Mix

Mohammed Mossadegh

The Pope speaks of the “globalization of indifference” and Bernie Sanders who recently visited the Vatican talks about a “moral economy”and one political pundit recently reiterated the old saw that “the only mistake you can make in politics is to tell the truth.” Geopolitical indifference and moral economics are like oil and water. They don’t mix any better than realpolitik and moral economics. But “geopolitical indifference” and realpolitik make a perfect and delicious cocktail if you look at life as a game in which there are winning and losing teams and you’re going to do everything in the book to make sure that your team wins. That’s the kind of thinking that caused the United States to overthrow Mossadegh regime Iran and later Allende in Chile. The Cold War was still in full swing and the theory behind these two coup d’etats was that that the United States wanted to install friendly regimes that were not potentially aligned with the Soviet Block. The doctrine of “spheres of influence” was influential during this period when a socialist regime in a country like Chile was viewed as a potential Cuba. In its zeal to create allies the United States found itself on the wrong side of the fence, just as Israel does today, when it courts favor from conservative elements in the United States in its need to strengthen its own security. You purchase a certain amount of military capital at the expense of certain principles and ideals that end up having hemispheric repercussions. In the case of Israel the courting of the right (some of whom may tacitly or overtly support the Israeli settlers) runs the risk of undermining the prospects for a Two State solution. There are always consequences and the problem with the free market or laissez faire approach to international relations which depends on a mixture of indifference and the notion of duplicity as public policy (what competitor wants to tell his opponent the truth) are the costs that accrue. The Shah was a US client in much the same way that Assad is a client of the Russia's today. Our contentious relationship with Iran has been the casualty of the same kind of mentality that continues to seek greatness and pre-eminence over a more holistic view of foreign affairs.

Chile Journal VII: The Museum of Memory and Human Rights

9/11/73 was the day that military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet overthrew the first democratically elected Marxist government in the history of South America. Those who believe there are no coincidences might place this in the category of the paranormal, but actually on a bread and butter level it’s not hard to see why the country’s ruling elite supported the reign of terror that followed. Nationalization was anathema to the wealthy while for the United States, which clandestinely supported the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s government, Chile was another potential Soviet satellite in the mold of Cuba. The doctrine of spheres of influence trumped any concern for principles, a tip of the hat to realpolitik which had been applied in Viet Nam and elsewhere and whose results were even more impoverished than the rationalizations behind them. When you enter the Museo de la Memoria y los Derechos Humanos (The Museum of Memory and Human Rights), a dramatic green box cantilevered over two huge concrete supports, that’s right across the street from Santiago’s Quinta Normal Park, you have the opportunity to descend into an installation called La Geometria de la Conciencia (The Geometry of Conscience) created by the artist Alfredo Jaar. While the museum itself is a documentation of the horrors of the Pinochet regime (amongst the displays are electric shock devices used in torture together with video testaments from survivors), the installation attempts to create the feeling of confinement and terror that victims faced. You are led into a cement cavern and the lights are turned off. There is a button  which can be pushed to exit, but you don’t want to become an accomplice to your own fear. The lights return to reveal a wall composed of sillouettes of the dead and the living, victims and survivors. Then darkness descends again. In l988 the people of Chile famously voted “El No” to the dictatorship. The country of the Nobel Prize winning poet and statesman Pablo Neruda and of the artist Roberto Matta, both supporters of the Allende’s principles, was free again.

Chile Journal: Prologue

The North American who hasn’t visited Latin America may feel a little like Candide arrrivng with Cunegonde in Buenos Aires and meeting the governor Don Fernando d’Ibarra y Figueroa, y Macacarens, y Lampourdos, y Souza. While Europe and even far away spots like China, India and Japan are familiar to many Americans, Latin America still has a certain exoticism, a certain mystique whose flames are fanned by magical realists like Marquez and sexual realists like Vargas Ilosa. Americans know about Rio with its reputation for Carnival, Venezuela, Oil, Columbia, drugs and Peru, the Shining Path. We are aware that Paraguay, which was once a place of refuge for Nazis, had a dictator named Stroessner and that Chile had Pinochet and Argentina, the legendary Eva Peron. But Argentina while also providing a place of refuge for Adolf Eichmann and others also became home for refugee Jews who were at home in a Latin American city that is particularly known for its European flavor. Buenos Aires still hosts a thriving psychoanalytic community, which evidences the kind of influences which still make it an outpost of European cosmopolitanism on the Latin American continent. You don’t need to travel to Latin America to participate in these generalizations and yet they along with the Andes and the Amazon, two of the most monumental natural wonders on earth carry an enormous sway in the  imagination.  Allende, the democratically elected president of Chile, was overthrown by Pinochet  Pork barrel politics obviously exist in Latin America as they do everywhere else on earth, but the result is more often than not a metaphoric boudin in which tantalizing scents emerge from the blood.