Consequences of the coup
Despite the fact that the Pinochet dictatorship ended more than 30 years ago, the impact of the coup and the 17 years of the Pinochet regime still reverberate in Chilean society and in the world.
The coup in Chile was unexpected. Unlike what happened with other socialist governments in the world, Allende did not come to power through arms but through the ballot box.
“Chile had a much more understood and strong constitutional tradition than many European countries. The reaction, especially in clothing, was that if a coup of this type could occur in Chile, then it could occur almost anywhere ”, indicates Alan Angell, an academic at the University of Oxford, in an article for the magazine Politics, from the University of Chile.
In addition, the imagery used by the Chilean Military Junta has been replicated in other coups, such as that of Egypt in 2013.
“I think that what caused this military coup that took power lasted for a long time. It consolidated a path for Chile in such a way that even now, what we see in Chile is the result of what happened in 1973, ”Palestinian diplomat Fasi Elhusseini told BBC Mundo.
Chile became in those years the laboratory of the theories of the American economist Milton Friedman, of a neoliberal nature, that is, privileging the market and private investment over the State. Nothing more opposed to Allende’s classic Marxism.
Many of these principles were enshrined in the 1980 constitution, still in force in the country. Although many of its more conservative elements have been reformed, many Chileans see in the constitution the origin of the economic inequality that persists in the country and that culminated in the social outbreak of 2019.
Currently, a constituent convention is writing the new constitution. Next year, it must be approved in a mandatory voting plebiscite. Only then will we know if Chile can bury, once and for all, the shadow of Pinochet and the coup.