By Ricardo Pose – Sep 11, 2026As Chile commemorates the 1973 coup, the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro confirms that the US conspiracy against popular projects in Latin America has not stopped, it has merely changed its name.September 11, 1973, and January 3, 2026, will remain in history as the dates of the gravest attacks perpetrated by the United States and the national oligarchies of Chile and Venezuela against two legitimate and constitutional governments.On September 11, a military coup—supported and advised by the CIA and endorsed by the Chilean oligarchy—overthrew the socialist president of Chile, Salvador Allende. On January 3, 2026, a military attack by the United States, with the support of the Venezuelan far right, kidnapped President Nicolás Maduro and his wife, in the most severe aggression against the Bolivarian Revolution initiated by Commander Hugo Chávez.On September 4, 1970, the socialist politician Salvador Allende, leading the Popular Unity party, won the presidential elections in Chile. He promoted the nationalization of the principal mining industries, broadened the expropriations of large landholdings to carry out land reform, and initiated a set of social measures so that the Chilean people could have access to healthcare, education, housing, and decent wages.On December 6, 1998, Commander Hugo Chávez, candidate of the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), won the presidential elections of Venezuela and initiated the process of the Bolivarian Revolution. His program embodied the Venezuelan people’s administration and control of their natural resources—mainly oil—and a fair distribution of income and wealth, carried out through various social missions.With 28 years of difference between the two electoral victories, and in different historical contexts, access to government through electoral means was the political similarity that came to settle a long and profound strategic debate on the left in Latin America about the ways to access power.Both victories, each in its own context, were particular and unusual. Allende won the presidency through electoral means while in the rest of the continent’s political processes, the Cuban revolution remained the fundamental reference.Chávez, on the other hand, triumphed after a process of political accumulation that received a strong boost during El Caracazo, in a regional context where neoliberalism was being imposed politically and economically, while an incipient process of progressive governments was emerging.In both cases, the electoral victory was just the starting point, because each process tried to build popular power through the organization, participation, and decision-making capacity of the people.Use of blockade as a pressure toolWhen Allende won the presidency, the United States government had already been applying the method of blockade against the revolutionary government of Cuba for years. In the case of Chile, the Nixon administration—surely taking for granted the support of the local oligarchy—applied a blockade different from the one used against Cuba.This is how journalist Edgar Amílcar Morales describes it in an analysis published by Prensa Latina: “Chile suffered a phantom blockade, that is, one not officially declared as such, but with severe internal damage. Under the influence of Washington, international organizations such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank blocked credits to Chile, and private US entities cut off all financing channels. In this vein, loans for the purchase of machinery and key spare parts in copper mining, transportation, and industry, whose technology was substantially US-made, were canceled.”In Venezuela, that same pattern was repeated during the years of the economic blockade against the Bolivarian Revolution. According to Morales, large local business owners hid goods, including basic food items, while the powerful truckers’ union tied to the local oligarchy declared strikes to keep markets empty and create unrest and uncertainty among the population.Conspiracies and resistancesIn the case of Chile, the deputy director of Carabineros (armed police), General Jorge Urrutia, reported that on September 4, 1970, the presidential elections were held and the Popular Unity bloc narrowly defeated Jorge Alessandri. The result forced Congress to validate the elections within a period of 40 days.Shortly thereafter, from Washington, US President Richard Nixon, his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Richard Helms, began conspiring with sectors of the Chilean oligarchy to prevent Allende from taking office.Among the conspiracies implemented was the sending of weapons through the diplomatic pouch to arm groups responsible for clandestine criminal activities aimed at creating a climate of unrest in the country.In that context, the commander-in-chief of the Army, René Schneider, died in an attempted kidnapping in a plot that tried to provoke a coup d’état and prevent the electoral process from being completed. Yet the Chilean parliament ratified the election results, not yielding to the pressures to declare the second-place candidate, Jorge Alessandri, the winner.Allende assumed the presidency on November 3, 1970. Immediately, another stage of the conspiracy began against him, now focused on destroying the economy and thwarting the program known as “the Chilean way to socialism.”In the case of Venezuela, the conspiracy against the project initiated by Chávez suffered similar conspiracies, from the oil strike and coup in April 2002 to the violent guarimbas in 2014 and 2017. During Nicolás Maduro’s government, Washington has been weaving a military and judicial siege against the president for years, accusing him since 2020 of heading a non-existent narco-terrorist organization.That siege reached its final stage in the early hours of January 3, 2026. A little after 2:00 a.m., a series of bombings shook Caracas and the states of Miranda, Aragua, and La Guaira, while US military planes flew over the capital and a fire consumed a hangar at a Venezuelan base. The operation, carried out by United States Army special forces, caused power outages in various areas of the capital city.Hours later, US President Donald Trump himself confirmed on his social media that the United States had carried out “a large-scale attack on Venezuela” that ended with the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife, National Assembly Deputy Cilia Flores, and their transfer out of the country. Guarded by federal agents, they were transferred to the amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima before being taken to US territory, where the US attorney general formally charged them with conspiracy for drug trafficking and possession of restricted weaponry.The Venezuelan government rejected the charges and described the incident as a military aggression. Opposition sectors, on the other hand, celebrated the operation.Venezuela 2026, Argentina 1955, Chavismo and Peronismo: Towards a Movement to Confront the ProtectorateThe target of the riflesThe differences between the Chilean and Venezuelan armed forces—and the roles each played in their respective historical circumstances—are staggering.Salvador Allende’s electoral victory, which he called the peaceful path to power, led some sectors of the Chilean left, the Popular Unity, as well as the continent, to loyalty toward democratic institutions in the Chilean Armed Forces.However, some political sectors, such as the Chilean Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR), raised concerns about the attitude of officers trained at the School of the Americas in a continental context of military coups either consummated or underway, such as in Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina.In Chile, the coup conspiracy by the army and the oligarchy—monitored and reported to the United States by CIA agents stationed in the country, according to researcher Peter Kornbluh—became a reality on September 11, 1973, with a brutal attack on the government headquarters.On the other hand, the target of the rifles of the Bolivarian Armed Force—of which Hugo Chávez was a member, and which he himself transformed with his speech and action—never had the Venezuelan people as its target. Instead, a civic, popular, military, and police fusion was forged in Venezuela. Note: Peter Kornbluh is a US journalist, writer, and official. He works as an analyst at the National Security Archive and is the director of documentation projects on Chile and Cuba.(Telesur)Translation: Orinoco TribuneOT/SC/SF