Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent

by Eduardo Galeano

The strategy for the crime was planned in Washington. Kissinger and the intelligence services were carefully preparing the fall of Allende ever since 1970. Millions of dollars were distributed among enemies of the legal Popular Unity government. That, for example, was how the truck owners in 1973 could keep going their long strike which paralyzed much of the country’s economy. The assurance of impunity loosens tongues. When the coup took place against Goulart, the United States had in Brazil its largest embassy anywhere on earth. Lincoln Gordon, the ambassador, admitted to a journalist thirteen years later that his government had long been financing the forces opposing the reforms. “What the hell,” said Gordon, “that was more or less a habit in those days.… The CIA used to dole out political funds.”6 In the same interview Gordon explained that when the coup took place the Pentagon had a huge aircraft carrier and four supply ships stationed off the Brazilian coast “in case the anti-Goulart forces should ask for our help.” That help, he