SANTIAGO – Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated Thursday in Chile that it used to be crucial for the United States to declassify documents that would shed mild on 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 along Camila Vallejo, the spokesperson for the left-leaning govt 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 move to Colombia, either one of which might be additionally dominated by way of left-leaning governments.
The objective of the travel used to be to “start to change … the relationships between the United States and Chile and the region, Latin America as a whole,” Ocasio-Cortez instructed out of doors the Museum of Memory and Human Rights that recalls the sufferers 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 offered regulation to declassify documents comparable to Chile’s coup and Vallejo stated a identical request have been made by way of the Chilean govt.
“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 talk over with to the museum in Santiago that it used to be 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 reporters, “to acknowledge the truth, to begin a new future.”
U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro from Texas stated the talk over with to the museum used to be a reminder that it used to be 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 backed by way of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a Washington-based suppose tank.
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Politi reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
