NACLA and Chile: What Road to Change?
With the election of Allende's Popular Unity coalition (UP), hopes for a "democratic road" to socialism ran high; fears that the United States wouldn't allow an elected socialist government...
...antiwar movement...
...T' were certain people we never m our office...
...wings: It we were discussing...
...We had a sense of E caution that was exaggerated i U.S...
...There was, on the other hand, a very strong section of NACLA that was sympathetic to the Chilean Left Revolutionary Movement (MIR), a group that considered itself to be to the left of Allende's UP...
...While debates embroiled NACLA from within, another form of pressure came from the outside...
...We were hugely in that NACLA despair over what was happening in Latin America...
...In the wake of the coup the entire Chile solidarity movement had been rent by the same question, reflecting the split in Chile between leftists who foresaw a gradual return to elected government and the MIR's revolutionary attempt to overthrow the military government...
...interviewed the managers at the bank established our checking account and phones were tapped...
...We worked in this semi-secretiv ell-known by its into which we brought very few people," remembers "m "Watergate" Hellman...
...For some, the lesson learned was that any genuine social transformation would have to be won and defended by an armed revolutionary movement...
...What would it mean to declare that we supported the MIR...
...The administration had an active domestic counterintelligence program w acronym COINTELPRO, and the ter reminded everyone that one didn't hav outside the mainstream to be a target of and disruption...
...The MIR argued that socialism had to be won, built, defended and protected by armed struggle...
...At the same time, notes Farnsworth, the situation in Chile "was like the Spanish Civil War...
...source of ten- There is a turning inward and that's when the 'partye environment building' issues emerge...
...Where was the line between propaganda and research...
...How could we help to convert the anti-war movement to an anti-imperialist movement...
...Some member given that the NACLA office-like offices-was bugged and resolved should simply go about its business board...
...Others were more cautious, a response to the bugging became another sion...
...We saw ourselves as part of the New Left," says migration scholar Josh DeWind, who came to NACLA in 1972, the height of the U.S...
...All the issues that engaged the commitments of NACLA were at play in Chile's domestic and international political conflicts and in its unfolding tragedy...
...The strength of Chile's democratic institutions and the presence of a powerful, well-organized Chilean left seemed for many to bolster the argument that a nonviolent, democratic transition to socialism could be put on the historical agenda...
...Should NACLA get involved in political organizing...
...it's looking pretty dismal...
...Part of it was imported from Latin America," where military and many civilian governments kept a constant watch on their populations: "A sort o 'styling' of our attitude came a h from those of us who had lived Latin America: We took care abc talking on the phone, in talking Chileans, Nicaraguans, Cubans...
...The Report, 60C NIACLAES LATIN AJMERICA & EMPIRE REPORT written by staff member Elizabeth Farnsworth together with co-authors Richard Feinberg and Eric Leenson, was incorporated into the book New Chile, which was published just months before the coup in 1973...
...In the wake of the U.S.-backed coup, however, the "democratic transition to socialism" became a more problematic proposition, with different people drawing different conclusions from the experience...
...Many of the pages are bl much of what is visible is trivial, but "i Volk, "they were all over our case...
...government eavesdroppi: activities...
...We had three types of meet...
...Indeed, in the early 1990s, NACLA obtained its FBI files through the Free dom of Information Act: a boxload of menting U.S...
...fears that the United States wouldn't allow an elected socialist government to succeed in the Americas ran even higher...
...has affected Chile, just read New Chile by NACLA...
...context...
...More so, I always thought, eavesdropping than absolutely necessary, but it was a sign of the ve sense of sur- times...
...that such a transformation, if it took place too quickly, would inevitably engender the opposition of powerful enemies, and that defending against the counterattack of those enemies would inevitably require a degree of violence and repression that could well compromise the goals and values of democracy and socialism...
...How could we demonstrate that there was a systematic relationship between the United States and other parts of the world that underpinned what the Vietnam War was all about...
...For Farnsworth, Allende's UP represented a "non-Leninist way out of poverty...
...And before the coup, Salvador Allende, in response to questions from the press after his historic 1973 speech before the UN, remarked: "If you want to know how the U.S...
...totally above These are the years of repression...
...It places...
...The way out of poverty and oppression, argued those who held this position, would therefore have to be gradual and relatively inclusive of the "old regime...
...And there were questions about how most effectively to present the material NACLA produced...
...The years from around 1975-78 are our time all movement in the wilderness," says Volk...
...Is the reformist force of Allende, limited in its revolutionary ambitions, nonetheless a real challenge to imperialism...
...Beyond the MIR-UP conflict, the debates led to renewed questions about the role of NACLA, questions that would carry through the next decade: Should NACLA confine itself to research, or were there other ways to serve the movement...
...For others, the lesson to be learned from Allende's overthrow was that even 51% of the vote was not sufficient to effect a genuinely democratic transformation of society...
...If the political import was deemed 'heavy' we met in someone's material docu- apartment and we spoke carefully...
...After the coup, both positions had their defenders around NACLA...
...Mike Locker remembers the debates at NACLA East: "We went through a very sectarian period around the Chilean coup," he says...
...Would it be a service to the Chilean people...
...The questions we pondered were: What can we do to deepen the movement's understanding of U.S...
...It resonated internationally, but not in the same way for everyone, even on the left, with all sides finding a mirror image or an object lesson in the conflict...
...The "Facing the Blockade" Report was painstakingly researched, and represented a high point in NACLA's developing tradition of "scholarly propaganda...
...It was translated into Spanish and had a significant circulation in Latin America after the coup...
...non-sensitive matters we w w would meet in the NACLA office, which we assumed to be bugged...
...Indeed, in the late 1960s, defenders of armed struggle and guerrilla warfare had argued strongly that all democratic attempts to build regimes of social justice in Latin America were bound to be frustrated by the imperial powers...
...This was very much a period in you didn't dare suggest to somethat his phone wasn't tapped for of insulting him...
...People mead what they were doing and how ortant their work was pretty ch by whether they thought the I had a file on them...
...The hopes for overnd NACLA's turning dictatorships fade...
...We lived with a vervasi veillance," says Steven Volk...
...We were running an organization that had a re to be too far clandestine aspect to it...
...And as a sequence of these dangers, real d exaggerated, it was a very sular kind of setup...
...Before you would actually bring somebody )ver to the office to meet the other staff members or to talk to the group or to consult our archives you had to clear it with the rest of the group...
...A common position around NACLA was that it was a mistake to get caught up in the mystique of armed struggle, and an especially egregious mistake to blame the UP government for allowing itself to be overthrown...
...During the period of Allende's government, there was only modest support for the MIR among the NACLA community, but after the coup the attempt to understand Allende's overthrow led to growing support for the thesis that any revolutionary transformation must be armed...
...The Nixon era was a time of widespread infiltration and spying in U.S...
...where we had The secretiveness turned the organization inward for we knew our a while, especially during the bleak years of the mid rs took it as a 1970s...
...If the matter at ng on NACLA hand was extremely sensitive, like our relations with backed out and the [radical U.S.-Puerto Rican] Young Lords or some t's clear," says revolutionary group, we would meet on one of the We know they traffic islands along Broadway...
...that historically, all such attempts had been undermined or overthrown...
...The Miristas [within NACLA] put tremendous pressure on people, broke up friendships...
...often didn't use their real nan didn't know their real names...
...But just because the o1 precautions we took were in part Latin American affectations doesn't mean we should not have been careful...
...involvement overseas as being not simply a mistaken war policy but as part of imperialism...
...Should we declare ourselves one way or the other...
...An influential January 1973 NACLA Report called "Facing the Blockade" carefully documented the Nixon administration's "invisible blockade" against Allende's constitutional regime by denying Chile "the normal credit arrangements necessary for most export-import operations...
...political life...
Vol. 36 • November 2002 • No. 3
