This project illustrates the covert and overt actions of the United States in influencing Chilean democracy between the 1958 and 1970 Presidential election cycles. That time period, while not unstudied, is understudied in comparison to and overshadowed by the November 1970 to September 1973 period leading up to the September 11 1973 military coup. The project is meant to highlight how that period, consisting of Salvador Allende’s presidency and the coup that overthrew his government do not exist in a vacuum, and that the prior decade has an enormous impact on the shape of those three years, in no small part due to the heavy US involvement that was going on beforehand, not just the activity during that time. I used a variety of primary sources, mostly memoranda and other US government messages, but also speeches in transcript and audio form when possible. A few outliers were sources from American newspapers and magazines. My analysis used the sources and their context to explain their significance, and the analysis was furthered by comparing documents with related events. The 1973 coup still haunts Chile to this day and should really bother the present-day United States more than it does in practice, given the egregiousness of the US government’s actions. The events leading up to it, especially the 1958-1973 period, are underrepresented in English sources in general, especially outside of academic journals and books.
