Spain declassifies and delivers to the OAS documents related to the coup d’état in Chile

Spain has also wanted to contribute its grain of sand to the recovery of democratic memory in Chile. This Tuesday he announced before the Organization of American States (OAS) the declassification and delivery of documents related to the 1973 coup d’état, on the 50th anniversary of the coup that deposed the socialist government of Salvador Allende and gave way to the military dictatorship. which Augusto Pinochet headed for 17 years.

At the ordinary meeting of the permanent council of the OAS, dedicated this Tuesday to the commemoration of the anniversary, the Spanish permanent observer Carmen Montón indicated that in a “gesture of affection and friendship” the documents that were kept were delivered to the Chilean representatives in the archive of the Spanish observer mission relating to the coup in 1973 and the Chilean mission in the OAS in the years 1972, 1973 and 1974.

“The figure of Salvador Allende continues to be a source of inspiration for progressive political forces that defend social justice, sustainable economic growth and democracy,” five decades after the death of the legitimate Chilean president, Montón stressed when making the announcement. . “The inalienable mandate to protect the social majority, the middle and working class, remains in force.”

“We want to contribute to recovering historical memory, to shed light on what happened with the purpose of helping to build a present and a future for all, filled with freedom, peace and prosperity,” indicated an emotional Montón in her speech before the permanent council. of the OAS.

Among the declassified documents is the moving farewell of the Allende Government’s ambassador to the OAS, Luis Herrera, on September 26, 1973, fifteen days after the coup. “History will tell if the approaches were fair or wrong, but we left with a clear conscience,” the ambassador said then as he left his post. “We believed in a spiritual unity of the Latin American continent, and we fought to achieve it,” he adds, as read in document 496.

For his part, the organization’s general secretary, Luis Almagro, has highlighted the figure of Allende and the “disastrous, devastating consequences” of resorting to a coup d’état to illicitly overthrow a democratic regime. These consequences “are paid by the people,” he recalled, when evoking the violations of human rights and the thousands of deaths and disappearances during the years of the dictatorship in Chile. “Nothing justifies, under any circumstances, the breakdown of the democratic institution in a State of Law,” the senior official stressed.

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The permanent representative of Chile to the OAS, Sebastián Kraljevich, highlighted in the session the serious impact of the coup d’état, first, and the dictatorship, later, throughout the American continent, “with consequences that are still present to this day in the most varied areas of social life, from politics and economics to culture and human rights.”

“Eight out of ten families of missing people are still looking for them,” he recalled. The effect of the coup “is also present in the challenges and turbulence that our imperfect democracies face, where autocratic views strain them every day,” he said.

The entrance door to the institution’s headquarters, in the heart of Washington, will from now on permanently bear “the name of President Salvador Allende Gossens,” the OAS has announced. The recognition is granted “in the same terms that have been applied to the historical figures of the hemisphere who are honored at the headquarters of the organization,” to whom tribute is paid by imposing their name on the different rooms.

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