Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (51 page)

[W]e want to be sure the paper record doesn’t look bad. No matter what we do [in Chile] it will probably end up dismal. So our paper work should be done carefully.

—William Rogers to Kissinger, 14 September 1970.
¹

As one scholar warned not long ago in
Diplomatic History
, “mono-national research tends to produce mono-national explanations and to ignore the role of players from countries other than those whose words are examined.”
²
This book is an explicit effort to avoid such a pitfall. Although uncovering other angles and perspectives has not been straightforward, it has not been impossible either, and in presenting one chapter of the inter-American Cold War, I am consciously suggesting there are many more multinational narratives to write. Indeed, thanks to the New Cold War History, we now have a better idea of how the world was viewed from the East, but the view from the South, and Latin America in particular, is comparatively less clear. In the future, instead of numerous studies on U.S. policy toward individual Latin American countries—invaluable as they are—it is thus hoped that scholars will pay attention to the multisided dynamics of relationships within and between inter-American states. As Thomas Blanton recently argued, “the opportunities for Cold War scholarship based on newly recovered archives in Latin America and the United States are immense.”
³
I would go further: the opportunity is not only in the documents available but in asking different questions when we look at them.

Writing an international history of Allende’s Chile that brings Chile, Cuba, inter-American affairs, and global developments to the forefront of its analysis was possible in this case thanks to the exciting range of newly available historical sources in Latin America, the United States, and Europe. Of utmost importance was the declassification of documents at Chile’s Foreign Ministry archives and, in particular, the availability of miscellaneous memorandum files as well as records of secret, confidential, and ordinary correspondence between Santiago and Chile’s embassies abroad.
⁴
A further collection of the Chilean Embassy in Havana’s files from this period that was not transferred
back to Santiago after the coup can also be found at Casa Memorial Salvador Allende in Havana. In addition, Orlando Letelier’s papers—recently opened to researchers at the National Archives in Santiago—are rich in information pertaining to the internal decision-making processes within the UP. Over the past decade, General Augusto Pinochet’s arrest in London and the thirtieth anniversary of Allende’s presidency and the Chilean coup also reawakened interest in the period. Subsequently, Chilean, Cuban, and other Latin American protagonists added important new testimonies to an already rich collection of memoirs pertaining to the subject. And, as well as these sources, this book makes use of recent collections of Chilean left-wing sources and Soviet archival documents published by the Centro de Estudios Publicos in Santiago.
⁵

Outside Chile, Brazil’s Foreign Ministry Archive has also partially released files related to the period (though confidential and secret files remain classified at the time of writing). In an effort to find more information on the Cuban and Chilean sides of the story, and with the invaluable help of Anita Prazmowska and Laura Wiesen, I was able to incorporate key insights from Polish and East German Foreign Ministry Archives in Berlin and Warsaw. However, beyond these, it is clear that the documents of the former Soviet bloc remain a veritable treasure trove waiting to be opened by Latin Americanists who seek to understand how their left-wing subjects interacted with the East and presented their policies to their allies.

By far the most extensive (albeit scattered) collection of archival material this book has drawn on is in the United States. In addition to the thousands of documents relating to U.S. covert intervention and human rights abuses in Chile released in the late 1990s as part of the online “Chile Declassification Project,” the Nixon administration’s National Security Council files, presidential materials, and State Department records are also now open at the U.S. National Archives II in College Park, Maryland, online at the National Archives and Records Administration Archival Database, and partially published in
Foreign Relations of the United States
document collections.
⁶

Last but by no means least, this book benefits from the author’s extensive interviews with key protagonists of the story. In Chile, Allende’s personal physician; his representatives in New York and Cuba; his nephew, Andrés Pascal Allende; and his ambassador in Buenos Aires were among those who shared their recollections with me. In the United States, State Department official John H. Crimmins and Kissinger’s assistant on Latin American affairs, Viron Pete Vaky, also shared their views. In Mexico City, former Mexican ambassador to Chile Gonzalo Martínez Corbalá agreed to an interview. And in Havana, Cubans such as Ulises Estrada, a senior intelligence official in charge of Cuba’s embassy in Santiago on the day of the coup, and Luis Fernández Oña,
Allende’s Cuban son-in-law, engaged in hours of exclusive conversations. And during a final research trip to Chile in March and April 2010, I was also lucky enough to have many more hours of informal conversations with Oña, during which he shared yet more information in a patient, collaborative, sincere, and open way.

Unfortunately, however, there are many sources that are still not available to researchers. On the Chilean side, not only do historians not have access to Allende’s presidential papers and the UP parties’ confidential files, but there is widespread agreement that most of these papers were destroyed either immediately before and/or during the Chilean coup by the Left itself or by the military when it seized power.
⁷
Despite my numerous requests for at least partial access to Cuban documents, Havana’s archives also remain firmly closed. In 2008 there was a small glimmer of hope in regard to the Cuban side of the story when, on the centenary of Allende’s birth, Fidel Castro published theretofore unseen letters that he sent to the Chilean president between 1970 and 1973 (excerpts of which are included in this book). But as Castro tantalizingly said at the time, “Much remains to be said about what [the Cubans] were willing to do for Allende.”
⁸
Sadly, one of the key players in the story of Cuba’s Latin American policy, Manuel Piñeiro, died in 1998 just before he was due to offer his testimony on the subject.
⁹
Questions also remain regarding the relationship between Cuba and the Soviet Union and their policies toward Chile’s revolutionary process, but until Havana and Moscow declassify their documents, the relationship cannot be fully clarified.
¹⁰

The main problem with not having more access to Chilean and Cuban sources is that scholars are forced to rely on interviews, memoirs, and the documentary record pertaining to others’ intelligence sources at the time (and intelligence, as we know, is not always the same as fact). Indeed, while Piero Gleijeses was struck by how close the CIA and the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research were in understanding the motives behind Cuban activities in Africa, there is surprisingly little information on Cuban activities in Chile in U.S. records. There are two explanations for this: one is that the documents remain classified and/or destroyed, and the other is that the United States simply did not have good information. As with most of these things, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. Certainly the information that exists on the Cuban personnel operating in Chile or Cuban training of Chilean parties offers only partial and inconclusive analysis of what was happening. There is no mention of Estrada in any of the U.S. or British documents I have seen, for example. Furthermore, as Kristian Gustafson has observed as a result of his interviews with U.S. covert operatives in Chile, Washington’s task of collecting intelligence in Chile after Allende came to power became considerably
more difficult (one CIA operative’s recollection of the number of Cubans in Chile being over a thousand is a case in point).
¹¹
It appears that this got easier, and that the United States had many more informants within left-wing parties as well as the military by the time of the coup. But the intelligence Washington had—or that we know it had—is far too little to base a detailed historical study of Allende’s relationship with the Cubans or the Chilean Left on.

Obviously, these circumstances have implications for methodology. It means that scholars have to cast the net wide and be assiduous in cross-referencing the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle that they have. It also means that the balance of sources is not what it might be. And it means having to write a first draft of history in the knowledge that it may well be improved upon with the benefit of new materials in future years. Oral history sources that I have drawn on for the purposes of writing this book are by no means 100 percent accurate or the last word on Cuban involvement in Chile, but in an effort to ensure information gained through them was as accurate as possible, I conducted numerous separate interviews with the individuals involved and utilized documents found elsewhere to jog memories and clarify ambiguities. Whatever their limitations, these sources are also the first significant contribution to understanding the rise and fall of Allende’s Chile from Cuban perspectives.

On the other side of the Cold War divide, where scholars have access to a comparative mountain of material, there are also substantial gaps in the U.S. documentary record. While I was fortunate to be given some information about Vernon Walters’s personal diaries, for example, their full contents are blocked by the Pentagon for the time being. Many other documents—or redacted parts of documents—relating to Washington’s covert operations and the Pentagon’s links to military leaders in Latin America are also unavailable, and details of covert operations, ample as they are, still do not tell the full extent of the story. One frustrating aspect of information on U.S. covert operations to contain Chile’s influence in Latin America is that we do not have more information about the disinformation and propaganda campaign that was launched through the press. When shifting through Chilean and Brazilian press sources, therefore, we do not know for sure where opinions or information are coming from. While alarmist newspaper reports quoting a Brazilian official as warning that Allende’s election would be followed by Russian flotillas arriving at Valparaiso, for example, must be treated with caution in these circumstances, they can equally not be disregarded as Washington’s viewpoint alone until we have more information.
¹²
Indeed, to fall into the trap of ascribing every negative piece of reporting on Allende to the CIA is to misunderstand the hostility that
both
Brazilian and American officials felt toward Chilean
events, something that I have found is evident in private Brazilian records, in recently declassified U.S. transcripts of conversations with Brazilian officials, and in Chilean diplomatic correspondence between Santiago and Brasilia during these years (and after).

Overall, then, there is still much to learn from U.S. and Latin American archives. When they are fully opened, it is hoped this book will act as a springboard for further research in two key areas. First, beyond “the Chile chapter,” Castro’s policies toward Latin America, and Cuba’s interaction with hemispheric developments, clearly need further examination and explanation. Second, historians need more information about the other extremity of the inter-American Cold War, namely the Latin American right-wing military leaders who took up arms against the Left and the relationships between them. (Both the Cubans and the Americans that led foreign policy toward Latin America during this period witnessed a clear solidarity between military leaders in the hemisphere founded on a mutual distrust for civilian politicians and a shared analysis of the region’s threats.)
¹³

For now, though, the challenge is to work with what we have—always, of course, being wary that what Americans might write down and what Cubans might recall years later is not necessarily the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Indeed, one interesting feature of the international history of Allende’s Chile is the extent to which actors across political divides of this story put a premium on how their story would be told in future generations, and then how the effort to conceal that history has come back to haunt key participants involved. This effort notwithstanding, the view is now at least far clearer than it was.

AMRE

Archivo General Histórico, Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores, Santiago, Chile

AMRE-Brasilia

Arquivo Histórico, Ministério das Relações Exteriores, Brasilia, Brazil

AMSZ

Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych, Warsaw, Poland

CDP-CIA

Chile Declassification Project, Freedom Of Information Act Reading Room, Department of State, CIA Documents

CDP-DOD

Chile Declassification Project, Freedom Of Information Act Reading Room, Department of State, Department of Defense Documents

CDP-NARA

Chile Declassification Project, Freedom Of Information Act Reading Room, Department of State, NARA Documents

CDP-NSC

Chile Declassification Project, Freedom Of Information Act Reading Room, Department of State, NSC Documents

CMSA

Casa Memorial Salvador Allende, Havana, Cuba

COS

Chief of Station

CREST/NARA

Central Intelligence Agency Records Search Tool, NARA

CSD

Castro Speech Database

DCI

Director of Central Intelligence

DOS

Department of State

DOS/CFP

Department of State, Central Foreign Policy Files, NARA

E.

Enviados (Sent)

EEUU

Estados Unidos (United States)

FBIS

Foreign Broadcast Information Service

FCO

Foreign and Commonwealth Office (United Kingdom)

FD

Frontline Diplomacy

FHSC

Fondo Hernán Santa Cruz, AMRE

FJTM

Fondo José Toribio Merino, Centro de Investigación y Documentación en Historia de Chile Contemporáneo, Universidad Finis Terrae, Santiago, Chile

FOL

Fondo Orlando Letelier, National Archive, Chile

FRUS

Foreign Relations of the United States

HAK

Henry A. Kissinger

HQ

Headquarters

MfAA

Ministerium für Auswärtige Angelegenheiten, Berlin, Germany

MRE/MINREL

Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores (Chilean Foreign Ministry)

NARA

National Archives and Record Administration

NIE

National Intelligence Estimate

NPMP

Nixon Presidential Materials Project

NSA

National Security Archive

NSCF

National Security Council Files

NSCIF

National Security Council Institutional Files

OE-SA

V. Pey et al., eds.
Salvador Allende, 1908–1973: Obras Escogidas
. Santiago: Centro de Estudios Políticos Latino Americanos Simon Bolivar, 1992.

R.

Recibidos (Received)

RG

Record Group

SAPMO

Stiftung Archiv der Parteien und Massenorganisationen der DDR im Bundesarchiv, Berlin, Germany

TNA

The National Archives, Kew, London

WHD

Western Hemisphere Division (CIA)

WHT

White House Tapes