Documenting U.S. Role in Democracy’s Fall and Dictator’s Rise in Chile

Chile — An old rotary phone rings insistently.

Visitors at a new exhibition at the Museum of Memory and Human Rights here in Santiago who pick up the receiver hear two men complain bitterly about the liberal news media “bleating” over the military coup that had toppled Salvador Allende, the Socialist president of Chile, five days earlier.

“Our hand doesn’t show on this one, though,” one says.

“We didn’t do it,” the other responds. “I mean, we helped them.”

The conversation took place on a Sunday morning in September 1973 between former President Richard M. Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. The two men were discussing football — and the violent overthrow of a democratically elected government 5,000 miles away with their assistance.

For the exhibition, two Spanish-speaking actors re-enacted the taped phone call based on a declassified transcript.