Hegemony, Culture and Imperialism

Abstract

Chapter 4 draws links among organized violence, interventionism, hegemony, culture and imperialism. It focuses on the important case of Chile, immediately preceding and following the coup d’état of 11 September 1973, when the democratically elected government was overthrown by a military coup and a repressive dictatorship was installed. The coup inaugurated, for the first time anywhere, what we have called the historical project of disciplinary neo-liberalism, although under unconstitutional conditions of authoritarian dictatorship. This reflected the political formula ‘freedom of enterprise under a strong state’. The coup in Chile therefore served to highlight the real strategic framework for progressive politics in Latin America during the latter part of the Cold War, and how this framework was determined by the relations of force — and specifically how covert action and military power in a transnational framework was immediately decisive in the massacre of the left.