“Magnificat” for Chile – Folha de S. Paulo, September 16, 1973
by Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
As I write this Friday morning, the smoldering in Chile seems to be ending. Rumors, spreading mainly from Buenos Aires, Havana, and Moscow, fail to persuade the general public. The newspapers present a contradictory picture from an emotional standpoint. Gestures of joy at the victory are mixed with sadness or even anger over the bloodshed.
The moment for cold, lucid reflection has arrived, and the general line of events is now clearly visible. A few words suffice to define it. The government of a great South American nation had fallen into the hands of a sect of fanatics, the Marxist-Socialist Party. This sect had decided to impose its materialistic, egalitarian, dirigiste, and anti-Christian doctrine on Chile at any cost. This ideological fact had multiple political and economic consequences. A series of socialist and confiscatory laws were enacted in the country despite public discontent. As a result, a political crisis began to shake the State’s very foundations. An economic crisis also unfolded in parallel with the political crisis, stemming from the same ideological factors.
Workers in cities and rural areas felt keenly that the government was the worst employer. Shortly after “benefiting” from socialization, they revolted against the misery descending upon them. Because it is a bad employer, the State is a bad producer. Poverty spread throughout the nation like gangrene. Together, the political and economic crises produced chaos. Massive strikes paralyzed the country. The country was on the verge of total annihilation.
Then the Armed Forces intervened, removed the sectarians from power, and are restoring the country to a state in which it can save itself.
This is the general outline of the facts, and in light of this, the only appropriate response is to applaud. For if it is true that the common good is the supreme law, the simple fact of saving a country that was sinking cannot fail to be supported.
To be consistent, leftists around the world who constantly proclaim the total supremacy of the common good should be speechless. But lo and behold, they suddenly become defenders of individual rights, close their eyes to public salvation, and begin to chant their secular and syrupy De profundis throughout the world, referring to the blood that was shed. The blood of leftists, of course, not that of soldiers!
* * *
We too deplore this bloodshed. How much we would have preferred that Chile’s ideological-political and ideological-economic trajectory had not led the country to the catastrophic rise of the Marxist sect to power. How much the Chilean TFP worked to warn its compatriots of the danger of “Catholic” progressivism and Christian Democracy, both of which surreptitiously pushed the nation toward the precipice from which it now rises, stained with blood. How much did the TFPs across the entire South American continent work to create international conditions that hindered collaboration in this process of ruin and death? Suffice it to recall, in this regard, the enormous and epic dissemination of Fábio Vidigal Xavier da Silveira’s bestseller, Frei, the Chilean Kerensky.
Nothing could prevent the Chilean “toads,” in collusion with the leftist clergy, from handing the country over to Allende.
Together, they sang a victory Te Deum in the Santiago Cathedral, with rabbis, Protestant pastors, communists, and terrorists. And then the tragedy began. It was immediately foreseeable that, since a Marxist never voluntarily surrenders power, it would either end in bloodshed or destroy Chile. It indeed ended in bloodshed and almost destroyed Chile. It is not difficult to identify those primarily responsible for this. They were the ones who sang the strange ecumenical Te Deum.
* * *
Free of obstacles and in possession of supreme power, the communist sect was like a lion unleashed in Chile. It set about devouring the nation’s members with furious impetus. Faced with threats from the country’s defenders, it neither relinquished power nor ceased its devastation. To save Chile, it was essential to spill the lion’s blood. I ask: if not this, what else could have been done? Let the country fall into the lion’s claws? This question can only be answered with a “yes” or a “no.” I ask the honeyed singers of the secular De profundis to tell me whether their answer is “yes.”
But one might ask whether, once the Marxist government had been deposed, it was absolutely essential to fire on the communist strongholds that were still resisting with arms in hand. The answer depends on a series of details the press has not yet reported and on moral considerations that there is no space to develop here. However, what is certain is that the militants of the communist resistance are criminally opposing the country’s salvation with arms in hand. Their fanaticism leads them to resist with bullets when all resistance is already futile. Thus, those primarily responsible for the blood now shed in Chile are those who intoxicated and fanaticized the resistance with Marxist doctrines. Impartial Christian history will always brand them as criminals.
History will also tell whether there have been, or are, excesses on the part of those restoring the nation, and censure them with equally Christian impartiality. Let us wait and see.
Impartial Christian history will never equate the blood of fanatics who die attacking the country with that of heroes who fell in its defense.
* * *
Presumably well-informed, Perón accepted as certain that Allende’s death was suicide and did not hesitate to describe the ill-fated president’s desperate act as a “brave attitude” by a man who felt humiliated and therefore “committed suicide.”
One might ask the octogenarian apologist for suicide whether he lacked courage and shame when, instead of committing suicide after being deposed in 1955, he went into his opulent exile in Madrid.
For my part, as a Catholic, I can only condemn the suicide of the stubborn communist leader and regret that the Bible Cardinal Silva Henriquez hastily offered him was of so little spiritual help.
* * *
In short, with the communist regime expelled from Chile, communism lost ground across South America. I rejoice as a Brazilian and a friend of Chile, and, without prejudging the details in my soul that God and history may not approve, I sing the Magnificat inwardly.
Yes, the Magnificat, which Cardinal Silva Henriquez will certainly not sing.
