Kissinger's unwavering support for brutal regimes still haunts Latin America

[Judi Lynn]

By DANIEL POLITI and PATRICIA LUNA Associated Press DECEMBER 2, 2023 — 11:04PM

SANTIAGO, Chile — In Chile, leftists were tortured, tossed from helicopters and forced to watch relatives be raped. In Argentina, many were ''disappeared'' by members of the brutal military dictatorship that held detainees in concentration camps.

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As tributes poured in for the towering figure who was the top U.S. diplomat under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, the mood was decidedly different in South America, where many countries were scarred deeply during the Cold War by human rights abuses inflicted in the name of anti-communism and where many continue to harbor a deep distrust of their powerful neighbor to the north.

''I don't know of any U.S. citizen who is more deplored, more disliked in Latin America than Henry Kissinger,'' said Stephen Rabe, a retired University of Texas at Dallas history professor who wrote a book about Kissinger's relationship with Latin America. ''You know, the reality is, if he had traveled once democracy returned to Argentina, to Brazil, to Uruguay — if he had traveled to any of those countries he would have been immediately arrested.''

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Kissinger was seemingly unaffected by tales of suffering at the hands of military officers, even though his own family arrived in the U.S. as refugees who had to flee Nazi Germany in his teens. ''By the end of 1976, State Department aides were telling Henry Kissinger, a Jew, that Jews were being targeted in Argentina,'' Rabe said. ''And Kissinger just didn't do anything.''

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https://www.startribune.com/kissingers-unwavering-support-for-brutal-regimes-still-haunts-latin-america/600324051/