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Chileans face a stark choice in the second round of their presidential election – a far-right candidate who admires the legacy of Pinochet or a left-wing reformer pledging to tackle social inequality.

In Chile, as in the US, marches against poverty, the striving for racial equity, the call to address the ravages of climate desolation, the demand that funds be spent on people not war are aimed at the neo-liberal order first enacted by Pinochet.

Growing up in the U.S., September 11, 1973, was as important a date for my bi-national family as the 4th of July. My parents met through Chile Solidarity, the international movement to defend the Chilean people against its neoliberal dictatorship.

Reader Comments: Mourn RBG and Fight for the Living; Print your own ‘TRUMP 200,000; Bertolt Brecht on the Super-Rich; The Wages of Whiteness; lots of resources and announcements;

Fifty Years Ago, President Richard Nixon ordered the CIA to organize a coup against Chile's elected President Salvador Allende. Here is the story, with the just-declassified documents recording the genesis of this infamous directive.

Reader Comments: Could Trump Win-Is He Planning a Coup?; Women Given Hysterectomies Without Consent by ICE; There Cannot be Peace without Freedom-Thoughts on the "Peace Deal"; Scourge of Racism; Use Art to Raise Antiracist Kids; Lots of Announcements

Perspectives on left politics from Chile, UK and Germany, and reports from Mexico, Hong Kong, France, Bolivia, India and Kenya

Reader Comments: Trump Calls Out White Supremacists; Trump and Military Veterans; Billionaires Plunder Working Folks; Allende Remembered - the Other 9/11; Why Congress Must Act - COVID Jobs Losses Continues; Lots of Announcements; and more...

The death of Chilean democracy and inauguration of a reign of terror also turned the country into a ruthless laboratory for neoliberal economics, the same savage capitalism that is being vigorously contested in the United States today.

It is entirely fitting that Chile should be in the vanguard of protests in this Autumn of Discontent, since Chile served as the laboratory for the neoliberal transformation of economics and politics that has swept the world since the 1970's.