There are countless secondary sources on the topic of US involvement in Chile. However, The Chilean Moment in the Global Cold War: International Reactions to Salvador Allende’s Victory in the Presidential Election of 1970 by Sebastian Hurtado-Torres, Covert Action in Chile: 1963-1973, and The Alliance for Progress and Chile’s “Revolution in Liberty,” 1964-1970 are very strong examples covering three major subjects of the period: reactions to the success of Salvador Allende, the extent of covert action in Chile, and the effects of major overt action during the Frei administration. They primarily relate to each other through the sources available to each, which greatly vary between documents due to who is writing them and when they were written.
The Chilean Moment in the Global Cold War: International Reactions to Salvador Allende’s Victory in the Presidential Election of 1970 compiles international reactions, representing countries from all around the world and in both the capitalist and communist camp, to the election of Salvador Allende and gives four major reasons as to why this event is so important in the grand scale of the Cold War. The first reason given is that Chilean political culture mirrored the political culture and ideology of the Cold War as a whole. The second surrounds Allende’s desire to begin or reopen connections with communist and socialist countries, as well as cut ties with current diplomatic allies. Third is that Chile’s republic was highly regarded as a democracy, so a socialist winning a presidential election there had a stronger impact internationally than it would’ve in a democracy that was perceived to have less integrity. The fourth reason given is that this election gave opportunity to a possible major erosion of western power in Latin America, which would have been devastating for countries such as the United States on a tangible and ideological level.
Sebastian Hurtado-Torres is a professor of history at Universidad San Sebastian. He seems to be in his 40s, meaning he grew up in the second decade of the Pinochet regime. This could’ve had a major impact on his opinions and interests in history, assuming the estimate is right. A lot of primary sources are telegrams and memoranda, and secondary sources are books and articles. Many of his primary sources are from NARA record group 59, which is currently exclusively analog and appears to be a treasure trove of primary sources on the late 60s and 70s. He pulls from both English and Spanish language sources. The sources are exclusively text-based for this article. The article combines the sources into a relatively full picture of international reactions, the subject of the article.
There doesn’t seem to be many biases or assumptions in the writing. The author comes off as a relatively liberal or progressive person, but his arguments also don’t really require him to choose sides, as he’s arguing about the reactions, the impact, not the cause.
This journal article is very strong. The numerous primary sources and secondary sources he uses, 87 in total, help him back up the four arguments he’s making with ease, along with his generally strong writing ability. On the opposite side, many of his primary source choices are inaccessible to readers. This is due to his usage of the aforementioned NARA record group 59, which is currently not digitized. This means the only way to access them is to make a FOIA request, which has a very slow turnaround time, assuming the request gets granted.
The arguments and conclusions are supported thoroughly. His interpretation of the large number of primary sources in use reinforce the four arguments he made at the start of the paper.
Covert Action in Chile: 1963-1973 is part of the Church Report, created in 1975, a series of documents that resulted from the investigations of the Church Committee, a senate committee that was tasked with investigating the CIA and oversight of CIA after a New York Times article revealed a whole host of illegal activity domestically and internationally. It’s a complicated document to use as a secondary source, as in many ways it’s a primary source. However, the decision was made due to its wealth of information being an overview of the time period after the events took place, and examples of covert action throughout the report are not specific documents, which is what I was aiming for in my primary sources. If there is an argument, it’d be that these actions shouldn’t have been taken without congress’ knowledge of them.
The Church Committee was chaired by Senator Frank Church, with Senator John Tower as the Vice Chair. The only particularly recognizable member of the committee outside of those roles is Senator Barry Goldwater, a very influential conservative politician. It is notable that the committee was created to be as balanced as possible. The Senate Majority and Minority leaders “…carefully selected committee
members, balancing experienced lawmakers with junior members and ensuring that members
represented a variety of political viewpoints.”1 The tone of the writing is professional, and generally lack an argument due to the nature of it being a report.
Due to the nature of the committee, there are no citations of the evidence, but the documents they would’ve been looking at are from the CIA and included the series of internal reports on misdeeds known as the “Family Jewels.” Many of the documents they used are still not declassified today.
The strength of this document lies in the extraordinary detail of the report. It essentially can function as a primer for the subject. It also was helpful in finding a few sources, namely the Time Magazine article, which is specifically mentioned on page 24.
Due to the weird nature of the report as a secondary source, there aren’t really arguments to be made. Interpretation is up to reader and isn’t particularly suggested by the writers, unless someone is outright denying US involvement in other countries affairs. But that’s an extreme hypothetical.
The topic of The Alliance for Progress and Chile’s “Revolution in Liberty,” 1964-1970 is the relationship between the Alliance for Progress and Eduardo Frei’s Revolution in Liberty. Michaels is arguing that there were inherent contradictions in the Revolution in Liberty that led to the undermining of the Alliance for Progress.
It is unclear if Albert L. Michaels is still a professor at SUNY Buffalo, it’s not even clear if he’s alive at this point. Given the age of the article, it avoids dense language in a way that was certainly uncommon in 1976. He uses almost exclusively secondary sources, save a news article or to. There is a complete lack of government documents, which reflects the publishing year of 1976 very strongly. The sources are used to articulate the narrative he is asserting.
Its strength lies in the syntax of the writing. Abundant details and accessible language make it a decent read for the average person. The weakness lies in the lack of primary sources, but that is likely not Michaels’ fault. The argument Michaels makes about both programs weakening each other is very strong. The supply of evidence is hard to ignore, and his equal criticism of both programs is well developed.
Each document is covering a different portion and issue of the subject at hand, though there is overlap between the writing of Hurtado-Torres and the Church Committee due to discussion of Track II. Their arguments differ not just because of their personal opinions, but because of the primary, and to a lesser extent secondary sources available to them at the time. In 1976, very few government documents are going to be available to someone who doesn’t have clearance. This is because the closer primary sources get towards 1970, the more likely it is that they’re classified, and declassification wasn’t an option until much later. Some documents from the period on the subject are still classified. An article in 2018 has a much greater selection to choose from, even if it isn’t the full scope of documents. This is reflected in Hurtado-Torres’ writing through the heavy presence of primary sources. The Church Committee report has the greatest selection of documents as a product of it being a federal investigation, and until all the documents in the 1958-1970 and 1970-73 period are declassified, this will remain the case.
It is evident that in the scholarly realm, the passage of time correlates with an increase in document choices, while this doesn’t apply to a federal investigation not even two years after the period being investigated ended. It is also evident that it greatly effects what each writer could write about. As it currently stands, it has been 50 years since Allende’s election, and there is slightly less than a year until the 50th anniversary of the 1973 coup, and there are still classified or heavily redacted documents. That is an extremely long time for documents to stay classified, especially when the United States government’s involvement is undeniable and to some degree has been admitted. Is freedom of information really being considered a right if obscuring of history such as this is still occurring
Hurtado-Torres, Sebastián. “The Chilean Moment in the Global Cold War: International
Reactions to Salvador Allende’s Victory in the Presidential Election of 1970.” Journal of Cold
War Studies 21, no. 3 (August 2019): 26–55. https://doi.org/10.1162/jcws_a_00892.
Michaels, Albert L. “The Alliance for Progress and Chile’s ‘Revolution in Liberty,’ 1964-1970.”
Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs 18, no. 1 (February 1976): 74–99.
https://doi.org/10.2307/174817.
U.S. Senate. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to
Intelligence Committees. Covert Action in Chile 1963-1973. 94th Cong., 1st sess., 1975.
Committee Print 63-372.
1. The United States Senate Historical Office. “A History of Notable Senate Investigations prepared by the United States Senate Historical Office.” https://www.senate.gov/about/resources/pdf/church-committee-full-citations.pdf
