Walden Bello: The roles of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Chilean elites, the Chicago Boys, and the Chilean military in the coup that overthrew Allende and the neoliberal transformation of Chile under Pinochet have been well-documented and widely studied. There have, however, been few studies, apart from my thesis, on the role of the middle class as the mass base of the counterrevolution. Yet this angry middle-class mob was one of the central features of the Chilean political scene leading up to the coup.
The reality, however, was that, contrary to the prevailing explanations of the coup, which attributed Pinochet’s success to U.S. intervention and the CIA, the counterrevolution was already there prior to the U.S. destabilization efforts; that it was largely determined by internal class dynamics; and that, even without the help of Washington, the Chilean elites found a formidable ally in the middle-class sectors terrified by the prospect of poor sectors rising up with their agenda of justice and equality.
the irony is that it was not only the workers and peasants that were devastated by the economic policies of the Chicago Boys but the middle class that had mobilized against Allende as well.