Venezuela Next?

The Battle of Chile

Directed by Patricio Guzman

The Battle of Chile is an amazing three part documentary of the overthrow of Salvador Allende's popular socialist government of Chile in the 1970s. Sadly, very few Chileans have ever seen the film. It is available to libraries and institutions from First Run/Icarus Films. In this masterpiece, we see Chile's right wing factions being funded, organized and trained by the CIA to overthrow a very democratic and legitimately elected government. What makes this movie noteworthy is not that Dr. Allende is betrayed despite bending over backwards to work with all the parties in power, including the ultra-conservative Christian Democrats. It's because we have a documentary of how events unfolded and a blueprint for coup d'etat that the CIA is trying to follow in Venezuela at the present time. We witness how the CIA fails at first in Chile, but then regroups and finally creates a coup wherein Allende is murdered and the traitorous General Auguste Pinochet is put in power.

Following a common trend in US foreign policy, Pinochet becomes a puppet ruler whom the US State Department can use to further the interests of multinational corporations in Chile.

In the 1997 follow up film, Chile: Obstinate Memory, Guzman returns to Chile, interviewing survivors of Pinochet's dictatorship. The 2002 film The Pinochet Case also directed by Guzman, studies the torture and murders inflicted by Pinochet, and the legal battle to bring him to justice.

It is sobering to watch The Battle of Chile knowing that the same outcome is planned for Venezuela. The US-supported Venezuelan oil worker strike, was uncannily similar to the trucker strike in Chile. Another important and historically accurate film on the period is It's Raining on Santiago directed by Helvio Soto, 1974. This film fills in several of the areas lacking adequate coverage in The Battle of Chile.

WWW Washington Free Press