By Pablo Navarrete

For most people in Britain, 11th September marks the anniversary of the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centres in New York.

In Chile, the date resonates for another reason.

On 11th September 1973, a military coup was launched against Chile’s socialist president, Salvador Allende. That morning, British-made Hawker Hunter jets bombed La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, while tanks patrolled the surrounding streets of Santiago.

By the end of the day, Allende was dead and the Chilean military had taken power. What followed was a 17-year-long military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet, under which thousands of civilians were killed, and tens of thousands more were tortured. This September marked 50 years since the military coup, Chile’s 9/11.

The US government’s role in the Chilean coup is well known. US President Richard Nixon infamously ordered the CIA to “make the economy scream” in Chile and launched a series of covert operations against Allende’s government.

However, the UK government’s role in the death of Chile’s democracy and the rise of the Pinochet regime is less known. 

In June this year, I travelled to Chile with the investigative journalist John McEvoy to film for Britain and the Other 9/11, a documentary we are making together that explores the secret history of British interference in Chile’s democracy, the friendship that emerged between Margaret Thatcher and Pinochet, and the New Labour government’s decision to allow the Chilean dictator to evade justice for crimes against humanity.

The film will draw on years of archival research and Freedom of Information work by John.

In Chile we spoke to relatives of British nationals who were killed by the Pinochet regime, torture survivors, award-winning Chilean journalists and former Chilean officials. We also spoke with Pablo Sepúlveda Allende, Salvador Allende’s grandson, about Britain’s hidden hand in Chile.

Pablo was born to Allende’s oldest daughter, Carmen Paz, in Mexico in 1976. His family were exiled there having fled Chile after the coup. He has now returned to live in Chile and is a qualified doctor working in mental health. In April 2020, a few months after the eruption of mass anti-government protests in Chile in October 2019, Pablo was detained while providing medical treatment to those on the streets rallying against neoliberalism and police brutality in Chile – both remnants of the Pinochet dictatorship. When we met in June, the hard-right government of Sebastian Piñera has given way to the ostensibly left-wing government of Gabriel Boric, in power since March 2022.

I spoke to Pablo about the past and present of Chilean politics, including his grandfather’s government and legacy, while John’s interview with him for our documentary focused on the UK’s machinations in Chile and what his investigations had uncovered.

This was the first time that Pablo had heard about the UK government’s hidden hand in sabotaging his grandfather’s political project, but he was not surprised.

“I didn’t have much information about the actions of the British government against Allende in Chile,” he says. “But, as you know, given the role of the US, it’s not surprising. From an Anglo-Saxon point of view, the US and Britain act as one in many respects.”

Pablo relates this effort to wider colonial practices of seeking to prevent the economic development of smaller countries: “The colonialist countries in general have collaborated, let’s say, so that the decolonised countries can’t become independent, so that they don’t have any real economic or political independence.”

These colonialist practices the UK state has unleashed on countries such as Chile are largely hidden from public view in Britain but the public here deserves to know what the UK government does in its name, while the Chilean public deserve to know the full extent of foreign meddling in its country.

As we mark the 50-year anniversary of the coup, the UK government is still refusing to release key documents on Chile, while many others have been destroyed.

Our film will peel back a layer of official secrecy, using John’s extensive archival research and Freedom of Information work, plus the interviews with key actors that we have done. We are now filming in the UK and plan to release the documentary in early 2024.

The film will include revelations, including new information on MI6 activities in Chile, covert propaganda operations against Allende, secret support for the Pinochet regime, and the Anglo-Chilean machinations which allowed Pinochet to escape justice for crimes against humanity.

The documentary will also highlight the human cost of British foreign policy in Chile through interviews with British and Chilean citizens who were persecuted by the Pinochet dictatorship.

For more information on the film and to help us tell this story, click here.

Pablo Navarrete is a British-Chilean journalist and documentary filmmaker. He is the founding editor of Alborada.net, an independent voice on Latin American politics, media and culture. He is also runs Alborada Films, a social issue video production company.

Inset image: From left to right: Pablo Navarrete, Andreas Jakob (cameraman), John McEvoy