'There is a graveyard smell to Chile, the fumes of democracy in decomposition,' wrote Edward Korry, the U.S. ambassador to Chile, soon after the 1970 election of the Socialist President Salvador Allende. The United States government, the Brazilian military, and Chilean elites spent the next three years working to destabilize Chile's left-wing government. Their efforts culminated in a military coup on September 11, 1973'50 years ago today'that deposed Allende and his democratically elected government, and plunged the country into dictatorship. That history made Chile a textbook case of Cold War anti-Communist machinations, but this perspective has tended to overshadow the ways in which Chile is also a study in resistance to autocracy. In 1988, after 17 years under the iron rule of General Augusto Pinochet, the country rose to shrug off the dictatorship through nonviolent mass protests and civil-society mobilization. After a major effort to register voters and restore electoral...
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