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Thirty five years ago today Chile’s democratically elected government of Salvador Allende was overthrown. On September 11th, 1973 General Augusto Pinochet headed a violent US-backed military coup that was followed by the detention, torture, exile and disappearance of thousands of government supporters. Three years before the coup, Allende had became the first freely elected Marxist president ever in history. Over the course of his presidency, Chile’s main export, copper, was nationalized and many social programs were enacted for the country’s poor. Here in the US, the Nixon administration, fearful of Allende’s example to the world, destabilized the country by sponsoring truck owners’ strikes, infiltrating Chilean media, and enacting an “invisible blockade” in order to lay the groundwork for the fascist military coup that eventually toppled Allende. Today we remember that “other” 9-11 tragedy with an excerpt from the latest edition of From the Vault, a weekly program of the Pacifica Radio Archives. The show focusing on the September 11th 1973 Allende coup is produced, written, and hosted by Uprising’s Gabriel San Roman.

You can find out more about From the Vault at www.fromthevaultradio.org and order the entire program on CD at 1800-735-0230 x 262.