At the End of Influence: The Letelier Assassination, Human Rights, and Rethinking Intervention in US-Latin American Relations

Abstract

The assassination of Orlando Letelier, former Chilean ambassador to the United States, by Chilean agents on the streets of Washington, DC, in September 1976 became a rallying point for human rights advocates against the Chilean junta led by Augusto Pinochet. By 1979, ongoing conflicts over Letelier’s assassination — part of the Carter administration’s larger campaign to promote human rights — brought US-Chilean relations to their nadir. Further, the administration’s handling of the crisis alienated some of its strongest domestic supporters, calling into question its commitment to human rights. Letelier’s assassination thus reveals the tensions and paradoxes that marked the Carter administration’s human rights agenda in Latin America and beyond: tensions between effecting change and respecting sovereignty, between high expectations and limited influence, between public affirmation of principle and competing national interests. This article examines how the Carter administration sought to use human rights to move away from the US legacy of intervention and hegemony in the Western Hemisphere, as well as the limits of such a policy.