Kissinger’s obsession with Chile enabled a murderous dictatorship that still haunts the country

Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet greets U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1976. Bettmann/Getty Images by Jorge Heine, Boston University Noticing my nonappearance at the start of a black-tie dinner at the Johannesburg home of Harry Oppenheimer, a mining magnate and Africa’s richest man, the host assumed I was boycotting the event on principle. It was a reasonable assumption: I was the Chilean ambassador to South Africa, and Henry Kissinger was the chief guest. By then, a quarter century had passed since the military coup that toppled the democratically elected Chilean President Salvador Allende – an event that gave rise to Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s brutal 17-year-long military dictatorship – but the issue still lingered. Many Chileans bitterly remembered the role of the U.S. government, and of Kissinger in particular, in the breakdown of Chilean democracy. It was something Kissinger himself acknowledged during that dinner – which I did attend, just late due to encountering a hailstorm. Kissinger explained that he always declined invitations to visit my home country out of fear over what “Allende Chileans” would do to him. Plenty of Chileans still despise Kissinger. On news of his death at the age of 100 on Nov. 29, 2023, Juan...