Now To Ruin Everyone's Monday By Discussing Imperialism

James Petras and Morris Morley's The United States and Chile: Imperialism and the Overthrow of the Allende Government is about exactly what the title says. How the United States' imperialist motivations led it to overthrow a democratically elected government, which ended up sticking Chile Augusto Pinochet as leader for about 15 years. As to why I read it, I was curious and the library was selling it for 10 cents.

Since the book was published in 1975 it doesn't discuss Pinochet himself much. Mostly it focuses on how the U.S. attempted to influence elections to Allende (who was Marxist) from being elected. Once that failed, the U.S. ceased loaning Chile any money, exerted pressure on international financial organizations to do likewise, and demanded Allende's government pay off all the debts to the U.S. the previous governments had racked up.

This was largely because Allende was trying to nationalize the holding of various corporations, including some copper mining operations owned by U.S. companies. This was frowned upon because it pissed off American businessmen who no doubt helped several politicians get elected, and because the Allende government determined that based on the excess profits those companies had made (and not reinvested in Chile) they weren't owed any compensation from the Chilean government, and because if Chile could distance itself from a reliance on American capital, it made start a chain reaction of such things in Latin America and the U.S. couldn't have that. Oh, and because Allende was a Marxist and it was the Cold War, of course. Never mind he'd rebuffed the Soviets overtures of financial help, knowing - just as with the U.S. - there'd be strings attached.

It's certainly not a pro-U.S. book, but there's really no reason for it to be one, is there? I did feel that Chile was a little lacking in the book. It deals with the fate of that country, but mostly by talking about what the United States did to it. There aren't nearly as many quotes about policy or the political climate from Chilean government officials as from U.S. ones. Maybe the records were burned in the coup, or Petras and Morely felt they weren't essential, since their book is about the stronger country using its power to bully the weaker one until it falls in line.