We speak to Congressmember Greg Casar of Texas, who has just returned from a congressional trip to meet with newly left-leaning governments in Brazil, Colombia and Chile ahead of the 50th anniversary of the U.S.-backed Chilean coup, which overthrew democratically elected President Salvador Allende and installed a 17-year military dictatorship led by Augusto Pinochet. Casar was joined by other progressive Latinx members of Congress, including New York’s Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and fellow Texan Joaquin Castro. During the trip, the lawmakers called for the Biden administration to declassify more documents revealing the U.S. role in the coup. It was the first time an all-Latinx American congressional delegation traveled to Latin America, Casar says, and marked a “historic” attempt by young, progressive lawmakers to break from Cold War-era American interventionism on the continent and to move toward a relationship “based on mutual respect and supporting democracy.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.