Dictatorship Legacy and Neoliberal Profit Are the Common Grounds for Brazil and Chile

Maintaining the status quo enforced through dictatorship violence has become a key feature of both right wing governments in Brazil and Chile.

The Chilean protests which started in October 2019, triggered by a rise in metro fares and expanding to demand an overhaul of the dictatorship constitution, eroded the veneer of a so-called prosperous country, if the World Bank were to be taken seriously. One of the fastest growing economies that thrives upon social inequalities, Chile’s restricted affluence can be traced back to the neoliberal experiment unleashed upon the country on September 11, 1973.

The US-backed coup which ousted socialist President Salvador Allende and backed dictator Augusto Pinochet, embarked upon a terrifying operation to rid the country of any left-wing mobilization. Torture, murder and disappearances of dictatorship opponents in over 1,200 detention and torture centers ushered in the neoliberal phase for Chile.

An essay penned by Orlando Letelier who was assassinated in the US by the Chilean’s National Intelligence Directorate (DINA),  illustrates how the “Chicago Boys” – a group of Chilean economists trained by Milton Friedman, were involved in the dictatorship coup and supplemented the repression with neoliberal policies. An economic plan for Chile that was funded by the CIA.

Closer to home, the US-backed Brazilian dictatorship also played a role in Chile’s destabilization. The US perceived Brazil under dictatorship rule as a strategic partner for the US in Latin America, to “try and prevent new Allendes and Castros and try where possible to reverse these trends.” Brazil also made a first bid to lead the US-funded Operation Condor in Latin America which resulted in the killing of at least 60,000 people – a plan that sought to purge the region of left-wing influence, failing to take the helm only due to opposition from other countries, including Chile and Argentina.

Decades later, Chile and Brazil are still plagued by their right-wing history of repression, re-enacted in democratically elected governments which rely upon military tactics for population control, particularly the indigenous communities, which stand as a final bulwark against the exploitation of land and resources.

The Chilean experience may be somewhat ahead in terms of collective memory and human rights, but the military still holds sway over government and society. The right-wing in Chile has, for example, lobbied for clemency with regard to dictatorship-era agents and torturers serving life sentences, while the military continues to hold their archives away from scrutiny, thus leaving many gaps in dictatorship narratives, particularly when it comes to the disappeared, which number over 3000 people who were buried in mass graves or disposed of in the ocean through the death flights.

Brazil’s 1971 Amnesty Law, celebrated by the dictatorship fanatic Bolsonaro, has ensured that officers involved in dictatorship-era crimes continue to benefit from state impunity. The infiltration of dictatorship era officials occupying influential positions in government bolstered Bolsonaro’s militarization policies, heavily centered on agribusiness and multinational companies’ interest in the Amazon, making indigenous communities a prime target for violence. Refuting indigeneity to pave the way for industrialization was one way in which communities were silenced.

The ruralists in Brazil – a powerful agribusiness, right-wing lobby group – is one stronghold calling for the dispossession of the indigenous communities. Bolsonaro’s military strategy, based upon dictatorship tactics, has found allies in replicating a more refined strategy that is less conspicuous than the overt killing of over 8,000 indigenous people during the dictatorship era. If militarization to aid industrialization can achieve dispossession, the government’s violations will only be tied to the actual destruction of land.