North American Congress On Latin America - Salvador Allende, The 1980s Central American Wars, and Impunity of The 1990s

Salvador Allende, The 1980s Central American Wars, and Impunity of The 1990s

The next decade produced further research of U.S. involvement in the 1973 overthrow of Salvador Allende's elected government in Chile corroborated by the "fears" of socialism succeeding in America. That year, the NACLA Report called "Facing the Blockade" documented the Nixon Administration's "invisible blockade" of denying Allende and his regime's "credit arrangements necessary for export-import operations." Salvador Allende responded to NACLA's book called New Chile in his speech to the UN by saying "If you want to know how the U.S. has affected Chile, just read New Chile by NACLA."

NACLA's reporting was later dominated by the U.S. role in the Central American Wars of the 1980s. NACLA activists traveled frequently to El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, and brought the truths that they learned there back to the U.S. and to the movement to end the government’s involvement in those conflicts. In the 1990s, NACLA uncovered the truth about the culture of impunity so pervasive in Latin America’s “new” democracies; brought the military consequences of the Drug War to light; and was in the forefront of critical coverage of the neoliberal revolution being imposed on Latin America by U.S.-backed elites and institutions. NACLA impacted activists and leaders in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well. Rubén Zamora, a presidential candidate for the leftist Democratic Convergence in El Salvador, has said that he regards NACLA as responsible for the better part of his political formation. And during the darkest part of Haiti's military rule in the early 1990s, President Aristide's ambassador-in-exile to the United States, Jean Casimir, wrote to “express my gratitude to NACLA for its unflinching solidarity during this important period of our history.”