But it must be understood also that the Allende government was felt to be an intolerable threat to the U.S. political and corporate system in Latin America--an even greater threat to that system than Cuba. In part this was because it was the first elected socialist regime in Latin America, and so aroused the fear that if it was successful there might be a domino effect throughout the Latin American states. Also there was the direct involvement in Chile of such giant U.S. corporations as ITT and Anaconda, both of which have recently negotiated large financial settlements with the Chilean junta: $125 million to ITT, $253 million to Anaconda.

But beyond these political and economic considerations, the military coup in Chile represents a violent attack upon our entire concept of human rights. The whole world is horrified by the brutality with which the junta has operated, its widespread use of imprisonment without charges or trials, its beatings, rape, torture and murder of prisoners.

All of us know of the murder of President Allende, the beating to death of the great Chilean folk singer Victor Jara, the jailings, beatings and torture of former members and supporters of the Allende government.

But there is also a continuing brutal oppression of vast numbers of nameless and unknown workers and peasants, whose only crime was to try to improve their condition, to relieve their awful poverty, ignorance and want. This oppression extends to all who try to help the Chilean masses--doctors, nurses, health workers, intellectuals from many fields--all of whom now are made to feel the unrestrained violence of the military junta.

We call upon all men of good will to protest these brutalities. Henry Kissinger has suggested that human rights are an internal matter; but human rights are never an internal matter. They concern us all.

We who are Americans have the special task to see to it that our country begins again, as at its birth, to represent peace and democracy throughout the world; that it insist upon human rights and decency everywhere; and that such subversion and intervention as our recent U.S. administrations have practiced in Chile must never happen again.

Finally, we must ask our friends abroad to realize that the American people are their fellow victims of U.S. imperialism; that there exists a domestic U.S. imperialism to match that practiced abroad. The same corporations and banks that exploit the Third World also exploit the American people. Even the CIA, as we know now, practices its secret activities on Americans as it does on others.

So in speaking for the Chilean people, in protesting the crimes of the Chilean junta, we can speak together, as people facing a common enemy, united for peace, human rights, justice and human dignity.