With the Worst of Intentions: The CIA and Destruction of Chilean President Salvador Allende

In the previous episode, Episode 6 – The Voice of America, we diverted a bit and talked about how the VOA was used parallel to other media broadcasts run by the CIA to affect regime change in Latin American nations. One of those nations was Chile, where in 1973, the Nixon Administration used a variety of covert methods to destabilize the country. This ultimately led to a violent military coup that resulted in the death of democratically elected president Salvador Allende, and the installation of a brutal military dictatorship that lasted for over a decade.This week’s episode was originally a three-part podcast series that was a port of my capstone project for my History degree from California State University Channel Islands. All three parts are presented here. So, without further delay, let’s start with part one, which details the history behind Allende’s election, and the Nixon Administration’s attempt to thwart his election at the ballot box in 1970.The US culpability in the 1973 coup still casts a long shadow in Latin America. The United States does have the capacity to be a positive influence in Latin America, one that can create permanent alliances that would inevitably spawn from our acting as a partner in the region, instead of acting like a feudal lord robbing the serfs for its own benefit, but the US has yet to even release all the classified documents from the event, let alone make any attempt to atone for what transpired.Music by: Andrii Poradovskyi (lNPLUSMUSIC - Pixabay)Show Notes: www.rootsoftoday.blog