SANTIAGO, Chile — Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated Thursday in Chile that it was crucial for the United States to declassify paperwork that might make clear Washington’s involvement within the South American nation’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 stated in Spanish in a video posted on Instagram alongside Camila Vallejo, the spokesperson for the left-leaning authorities of President Gabriel Boric.
The Democratic congresswoman from New York is a part of a delegation of lawmakers who traveled to the capital of Santiago forward of the fiftieth anniversary of the coup towards President Salvador Allende on Sept. 11, 1973.
The delegation had first traveled to Brazil and can now go to Colombia, each of that are additionally dominated by left-leaning governments.
The objective of the journey was to “start to change … the relationships between the United States and Chile and the region, Latin America as a whole,” Ocasio-Cortez instructed exterior the Museum of Memory and Human Rights that remembers the victims of the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who dominated 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 stated.
Ocasio-Cortez stated she has launched laws to declassify paperwork associated to Chile’s coup and Vallejo stated an analogous request had been made by the Chilean authorities.
“In Chile as well, a similar request was made … that aims to declassify documents from the Nixon administration, particularly certain testimonies from the CIA director. 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,” Vallejo stated. “This is very important for our history.”
U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, a Democrat from Texas, stated after the delegation’s roughly hourlong go to to the museum in Santiago that it was necessary to acknowledge the “truth” that “the United States was involved with the dictatorship and the coup.”
“So that’s why we’re here,” Casar stated in Spanish to journalists, “to acknowledge the truth, to begin a new future.”
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro from Texas stated the go to to the museum was a reminder that it was necessary “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 within the day, the delegation additionally met with Santiago Mayor Irací Hassler.
Reps. Nydia Velázquez of New York and Maxwell Frost of Florida additionally traveled to South America as a part of the delegation sponsored by the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington-based suppose tank.
• Politi reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
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