Benj,
Where were you in 1973? I was working in Brasil and closely followed Allende’s attempt to communize Chile. Your presentation is so completely one-sided that I must conclude that you are a Marxist. You failed to mention 1) that Allende defied thousands of judicial decisions that he didn’t like, 2)that he smuggled weapons from Cuba to arm communist paramilitaries http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_packages, 3)that by 1970 Castro (not so bad since he hadn’t yet been a dictator for 40 years)killed thousands of small farmers who resisted his collectivization, and 4)that not-so-bad Castro had liquidated thousands as soon as he took power in 1959. The Chilean military knew what awaited them and they shot first. Well done.