US Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday said in Chile that it was imperative for Washington to declassify documents that could shed light on its involvement in the South American country’s 1973 coup.
“The transparency of the United States could present an opportunity for a new phase in our relationship between the United States and Chile,” Ocasio-Cortez said in Spanish in a video posted on Instagram alongside Camila Vallejo, spokeswoman for the government of Chilean President Gabriel Boric.
The congresswoman from New York is part of a delegation of lawmakers who traveled to the capital, Santiago, ahead of the 50th anniversary of the coup against then-Chilean president Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973.
Photo: AP
The delegation had first traveled to Brazil and was to go on to Colombia.
The goal of the trip was to “start to change ... the relationships between the United States and Chile and the region, Latin America as a whole,” Ocasio-Cortez said outside the Museum of Memory and Human Rights, which remembers the people who were killed during the regime of former Chilean president Augusto Pinochet, who ruled from 1973 to 1990.
“It’s very important to frame the history of what happened here in Chile with Pinochet’s dictatorship. And also to acknowledge and reflect on the role of the United States in those events,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Ocasio-Cortez said that she has introduced legislation in the US to declassify documents related to Chile’s coup and Vallejo said a similar request had been made by the Chilean government.
“In Chile as well, a similar request was made ... that aims to declassify documents from the [former US president Richard] Nixon administration, particularly certain testimonies from the CIA director,” Vallejo said. “This is to attain a clearer understanding of what transpired and how the United States was involved in the planning of the civil and military coup, and the subsequent years that followed. This is very important for our history.”
US Representative Greg Casar said after the delegation’s approximately hour-long visit to the museum in Santiago that it was important to recognize the “truth” that “the United States was involved with the dictatorship and the coup.”
“So that’s why we’re here: to acknowledge the truth, to begin a new future,” Casar told reporters in Spanish.
US Representative Joaquin Castro said that the visit to the museum was a reminder that it was important “to make sure that a tragedy and a horror like this never, ever happens again in Chile or in Latin America or anywhere else around the world.”
Earlier in the day, the delegation also met with Santiago Mayor Iraci Hassler.
US representatives Nydia Velazquez and Maxwell Frost also traveled to South America as part of the delegation, which was sponsored by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington-based think tank.
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