The United States ambassador to Chile, Brandon Judd, specified this Wednesday, after being summoned by the Chilean Ministry of Foreign Affairs for statements in which he attributed the disorders of the social outbreak of 2019 to "leftist activists," that his assertions are based on conclusions from U.S. Intelligence developed from information coming from the Chilean Congress, the academic world, and the police forces.
"We did not conduct an independent investigation; what we did was review the information that came from Chile," he stated before the press, according to the newspaper 'La Tercera,' after meeting with the country's Foreign Minister, Francisco Pérez Mackenna.
Judd was called to the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry after, in an interview with CNN, he stated that "without a doubt, the evidence points to leftist activists as those who perpetrated" the disturbances that shook Chile in 2019.
"In 2019, what our Intelligence tells us is that, categorically, it came from leftist organizations or leftist ideology," the diplomatic representative of Washington in Santiago insisted at that time, although he specified that the Intelligence agencies had limited themselves to "analyzing" the available information and had not traveled to Chilean territory to conduct their own investigations.
As a result of these statements, and after emphasizing that this information had not been handed over to the Chilean Justice, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the ambassador in order to "request information regarding the background related to the episodes of violence that occurred on October 18, 2019, and in the following days."
According to a report from the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), during 2019 various groups attacked private properties, places of worship, public infrastructure, and media outlets. The organization also concluded that security forces acted "disproportionately" and that there was "excessive use of force" by the State, then led by Sebastián Piñera, who declared a state of emergency and a curfew to try to contain the protests.