Brazil was an accomplice of the US to overthrow Allende in Chile, according to intelligence documents

The Brazilian dictatorship intervened with the United States to overthrow the government of Salvador Allende in Chile, according to declassified intelligence documents released Wednesday by the Washington-based National Security Archive.

Various intelligence documents from the United States, Chile, and Brazil point out the role of the Brazilian regime in undermining democracy and supporting the coup d’état perpetrated by Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973 in Chile.

One of the outstanding documents is the memorandum of a meeting in December 1971 between the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, and the then leader of the Brazilian dictatorship, General Emílio Garrastazu Médici, at the White House, where they discussed the efforts to overthrow Allende, who came to power after the September 1970 elections.

Medici told Nixon that Allende was going to be deposed “for the same reason that (President Joao) Goulart had been overthrown in Brazil”.

Goulart was deposed by a military coup in 1964 – which marks 57 years this Wednesday – that established a dictatorship that lasted until 1985.

Another CIA intelligence document cited by the National Security Archive about a meeting between senior Brazilian officials notes that one of them believed that “the United States obviously wants us to Brazil ‘do the dirty work’ in South America ”.

The center also cited the work of the Brazilian researcher Roberto Simon, who in his book “Brazil against democracy: dictatorship, coup in Chile and the Cold War in South America ”he inquired about the subject.

According to Simon, “Brazil gave direct support and a model for the Pinochet dictatorship ”and the image of the military regime of Brasilia as a“ ‘Washington puppet’ completely aligned with the regional superpower is a myth and relegates to Brazil to a mere subsidiary role in the region ”.

For Simon, “the Brazilian dictatorship had its own motivations, strategic, ideological, economic and otherwise, to intervene in Chile.”