Fifty years ago, the world was going through one of the most problematic periods. During the Cold War, scenes of violence were built on all continents. A few weeks after Richard Nixon’s inauguration, the US signed a series of agreements to withdraw its troops from Vietnam, after nearly ten years of fighting with an arsenal vastly superior to that of its enemies. Opposition to the war, especially at home, made the decision possible in the context of the military failure of the intervention.

Another global event was the decision of the major oil countries, grouped in OPEC, to raise hydrocarbon prices by 200%. This circumstance caused a global financial upheaval, inflation and recession illustrated by the bankruptcy of hundreds of industrial companies and thousands of unemployed, which also affected peripheral economies dependent on exports to the markets of the industrialized north. OPEC’s policy expressed, at that time, the dissatisfaction of the poorest countries, the so-called The Third World (which became the “Global South”), with a hierarchical international order, which integrated them into different blocs, through relations of economic dependence.

fierce dictatorship

In Europe, armed violence has ravaged the societies of Northern Ireland, Italy and Spain. The military dictatorship in Greece was held in conflict with the population. In the same year, Egypt and Syria faced Israel in war. The world experienced days of turbulence on all continents.

In Latin America, Argentina experienced a spiral of uncontrolled conflict between armed political organizations, before and after the return of General Perón, an exiled caudillo in Spain who would end his days as president. The Uruguayan army enthroned a civilian as a dictator, Brazil lived under a de facto regime; but probably the most significant event of the time was the bloody overthrow of Chilean President Salvador Allende, democratically elected and overthrown in a military coup that began a long dictatorship. More than three thousand people, dead and missing, ceased to exist during the regime, and close to 40,000 human rights violations were recorded, including murders, illegal detentions, beatings, torture and persecution.

The importance of a state with three separate powers

The coup in Chile changed politics throughout Latin America. A flood of authoritarianisms, built as a political project, swept across the continent. Only countries like Colombia, Costa Rica, Mexico or Venezuela have retained civilian governments. The peculiarity of military regimes, especially in the southern cone and in Brazil, was the cruelty and ferocity with which the deployment of government instruments was directed against the adversary. Tens of thousands of people were victims of state violence. By commemorating fifty years of that past, remembering what happened helps to raise awareness of the fragility of modern democracies and the need to protect systems that guarantee, at least in theory, forms of representation, participation and responsibility that do not exist in dictatorships. . (OR)