Differential Effects of American Destabilization Policy in Chile in the 1970s and Cuba in the 1990s

Differential Effects of American Destabilization Policy in Chile in the 1970s and Cuba in the 1990s

Just three years after taking office in 1970, Chile’s military removed the leftist President Salvador Allende from power. In Cuba, nearly forty years after his ascension to power in 1959, Fidel Castro continues to control a communist regime. In Chile in the early 1970s and in Cuba in the early 1990s, the United States exasperated severe economic crises. In addition, the United States attempted to foster political opposition to create ‘coup climates’ to overthrow both leaders. The similarities in these histories end there. Chile’s open, democratic political system allowed the U.S. to polarize the nation, paving the way for Pinochet’s U.S. backed military regime. In Cuba, however, thirty years of tight communist control negated the effectiveness of America’s effort to sow political dissent. This paper explores the impact of explicit American policy to overthrow both leaders, and proposes that divergent political, economic, and military structures contributed to vastly different outcomes.

The Nixon administration sought to uphold a “cool but correct” diplomatic stance toward Chile. The fact that Allende was democratically elected forced the Nixon administration to be less explicitly aggressive about their role in Chile, causing them to turn to economics as a primary method for destabilizing the nation. The U.S. sought to “isolate, weaken and destabilize Chile until the country was ungovernable” in order to create a ‘coup climate.’ Essentially, the U.S. began a long term strategy to destabilize the Chilean government economically, politically, and militarily, looking to exploit all possible weaknesses.

Chile wa...

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