Chilean coup of 1973
Encyclopedia
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event of the Cold War
and the history of Chile
. Following an extended period of political unrest between the conservative-dominated Congress of Chile and the socialist-leaning President
Salvador Allende
, discontent culminated in the latter's downfall in a coup d’état organised by the Chilean military and unofficially endorsed by the Nixon administration
and the CIA, which had covertly worked to spread discontent and opposition against the government. A military junta led by Allende's Commander-in-Chief
Augusto Pinochet
eventually took control of the government, composed of the heads of the Air Force, Navy, Carabineros (police force) and the Army. Pinochet later assumed power and ended Allende's democratically elected Popular Unity government, instigating a campaign of terror on its supporters which included the murder of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier
. Before Pinochet's rule, Chile had for decades been hailed as a beacon of democracy and political stability in a South America hoarding military juntas and Caudillismo.
During the air raids and ground attacks that preceded the coup, Allende gave his last speech, in which he vowed to stay in the presidential palace
, denouncing offers for safe passage should he choose exile over confrontation. Direct witness accounts of his death
agree that he committed suicide in the palace.
After the coup, Pinochet established a military dictatorship
that ruled Chile until 1990
; it was marked by numerous human rights violations. A weak insurgent
movement against the Pinochet government was maintained inside Chile by elements sympathetic to the former Allende government.
of the Christian Democratic Party. Allende received 36.6% of the vote (around 1,070,334 votes). Alessandri was a very close second with 35.3%, and Tomic third with 28.1%. In total, 2,954,799 people voted. Although Allende received the highest number of votes, according to the Chilean constitution because none of the candidates won by an absolute majority, the National Congress had to decide among the candidates. Alessandri announced on 9 September that if Congress decided on him, he would resign – which would then require another election. Congress then decided on Allende. Soon after hearing news of his win, Allende signed a Statute of Constitutional Guarantees, which stated that he would follow the constitution during his presidency.
The United States feared "an irreversible Marxist regime in Chile" and exerted diplomatic, economic, and covert pressure upon Chile's elected socialist government. During his presidency, Allende nationalized US copper firms (in July 1971), nationalized banks and other large industries such as Purina, and sped up land distribution (by 1972, peasants lived in approximately 1700 rural properties). Total expenditures for social programs increased from $562.8 million to $828.5 million under Allende’s rule; this included health, education, housing, child assistance, and social assistance. Between 1967–1969 and 1973, employment in mines increased by 45% – but, per capita production decreased by 28%. The Allende administration faced other disappointments in its programs.
By 1973, the amount of land in Chile under cultivation fell by 20%. Allende installed a price freeze and increased wages in the industry, which resulted in Chile spending 56% of its export earnings on food (the country was producing 2/3 of what Chileans consumed). Also, Chile’s trade deficit increased from $18 million to $255 million from 1971–1972. Exports fell by 25%, and imports increased by 40%, which caused an economic imbalance. Inflation became another problem during Allende’s rule, due to Allende’s wage increases and increase in spending. Inflation doubled in 1972, and the cost of living increased by nearly 50%. Allende had to deal with labor troubles as well: in 1972, a group of truckers went on strike due to his plan to create a state transportation enterprise. At its peak, 23,000 trucks were stopped. The truckers' strike ignited others all over Chile.
At the end of 1971, the Cuban President Fidel Castro
made a four-week state visit to Chile, alarming Western observers worried about the Chilean Way to Socialism yielding to Cuban Socialism, i.e. Soviet Communism.
In 1972, the economics minister Pedro Vuskovic
adopted monetary policies that increased the amount of circulating currency and devalued the escudo
, which increased inflation to 140 percent in 1972 and engendered a black market economy. The Allende Government acted against the black market with organised distribution of basic products.
In October 1972, Chile suffered the first of many strikes. Among the participants were small-scale businessmen, some professional unions, and student groups. Its leaders – Vilarín, Jaime Guzmán
, Rafael Cumsille, Guillermo Elton, Eduardo Arriagada – expected to depose the elected government. Other than damaging the national economy, the principal effect of the twenty-four-day strike was drawing Army head, Gen. Carlos Prats
, into the government as Interior Minister, an appeasement to the right wing. Gen. Prats succeeded Gen. René Schneider
after his assassination on 24 October 1970 by the groups of Gen. Roberto Viaux
and Gen. Camilo Valenzuela
, whom the CIA financed and logistically supported. Moreover, Gen. Prats supported the legalist Schneider Doctrine
and refused military involvement in a coup d'état against President Allende.
Despite the declining economy, President Allende's Popular Unity
coalition increased its vote to 43.2 percent in the March 1973 parliamentary elections; but, by then, the informal alliance between Popular Unity and the Christian Democrats ended. The Christian Democrats allied with the right-wing National Party, who were opposed to Allende's Socialist government; the two right-wing parties forming the Confederación Democrática (CODE) (The Democratic Coalition). The internecine parliamentary conflict, between the legislature and the executive branch, paralyzed the activities of government. To destabilise the Allende Government, the CIA paid some U.S. $8 million to right-wing opposition groups to "create pressures, exploit weaknesses, magnify obstacles" and hasten Allende's deposition. The CIA report released in 2000 records some U.S. $6.8 million spent to depose Allende.
surrounded the La Moneda presidential palace with his tank regiment and failed to depose the Allende Government. That failed coup d’état – known as the Tanquetazo
tank putsch – organized by the nationalist Patria y Libertad paramilitary group, was followed by a general strike at the end of July that included the copper miners of El Teniente.
In August 1973, a constitutional crisis occurred; the Supreme Court
publicly complained about the Allende Government's inability to enforce the law of the land. On 22 August, the Chamber of Deputies (with the Christian Democrats united with the National Party) accused the Allende Government of unconstitutional acts and called upon the military to enforce constitutional order.
For months, the Allende Government had feared calling upon the Carabineros
(Carabineers) national police, suspecting them to be disloyal. On 9 August, Allende appointed Gen. Carlos Prats as Minister of Defence. He was forced to resign both as defence minister and as the Army Commander-in-chief
on 24 August 1973, embarrassed by the Alejandrina Cox incident
and a public protest of the wives of his generals before his house. Gen. Augusto Pinochet replaced him as Army commander-in-chief the same day. In late August 1973, 100,000 Chilean women congregated at Plaza de la Constitución to vent their rage against the rising cost and increasing shortages of food, but they were dispersed with tear gas.
The resolution declared that the Allende Government sought ". . . to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the State . . . [with] the goal of establishing a totalitarian system", claiming it had made "violations of the Constitution . . . a permanent system of conduct." Essentially, most of the accusations were about the Socialist Government disregarding the separation of powers, and arrogating legislative and judicial prerogatives to the executive branch of government.
Specifically, the Socialist Government of President Allende was accused of:
Finally, the resolution condemned the creation and development of government-protected [socialist] armed groups, which . . . are headed towards a confrontation with the armed forces. President Allende's efforts to re-organize the military and the police forces were characterised as notorious attempts to use the armed and police forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks .
Allende argued he had obeyed constitutional means for including military men to the cabinet at the service of civic peace and national security, defending republican institutions against insurrection and terrorism. In contrast, he said that Congress was promoting a coup d’état or a civil war with a declaration full of affirmations that had already been refuted before-hand and which, in substance and process (directly handing it to the ministers rather than directly handing it to the President) violated a dozen articles of the (then-current) Constitution. He further argued that the legislature was usurping the government's executive function.
President Allende wrote: Chilean democracy is a conquest by all of the people. It is neither the work nor the gift of the exploiting classes, and it will be defended by those who, with sacrifices accumulated over generations, have imposed it . . . With a tranquil conscience . . . I sustain that never before has Chile had a more democratic government than that over which I have the honor to preside . . . I solemnly reiterate my decision to develop democracy and a state of law to their ultimate consequences . . . Parliament has made itself a bastion against the transformations . . . and has done everything it can to perturb the functioning of the finances and of the institutions, sterilizing all creative initiatives.
Adding that economic and political means would be needed to relieve the country's current crisis, and that the Congress were obstructing said means; having already paralyzed the State, they sought to destroy it. He concluded by calling upon the workers, all democrats and patriots to join him in defending the Chilean Constitution and the revolutionary process.
, the KGB
and the Cuban Intelligence Directorate launched a disinformation campaign
following the coup.
It is reported that Salvador Allende had a long-lasting relationship with the KGB and the Cuban packages scandal
had revealed arms smuggling from Cuba.
On the other hand sources suggest that the Soviet Union
was sympathetic to Allende, but did not assist him because they believed he was "weak" for refusing to use force against the opposition.
According to Allende’s KGB file, Allende "was made to understand the necessity of reorganizing Chile's army and intelligence services, and of setting up a relationship between Chile’s and the Soviet Union
's intelligence services".
It has been argued that the USSR refused to finance Allende mainly because of his unwillingness of forming a Soviet-type bureaucratic system
.
. The CIA inserted covert operatives in Chile, in order to prevent a Socialist government from arising, and conducted propaganda operations which were designed to push the Chilean president Eduardo Frei to support "a military coup which would prevent Allende from taking office on 3 November." While U.S. government hostility to the Allende government is unquestioned, the nature of the U.S. role in the coup is highly controversial. Claims of the direct US involvement in the coup have not been supported by publicly available documentary evidence.
In 1970, the U.S. manufacturing company ITT Corporation
owned of 70% of Chitelco, the Chilean Telephone Company, and funded El Mercurio
, a Chilean right-wing
newspaper. Declassified documents released by the CIA in 2000 suggest that ITT financially helped opponents of Salvador Allende
's government prepare a military coup.
In 1972 the newspaper columnist Jack Anderson disclosed a memo of ITT's Washington lobbyist, Dita Beard, which revealed a relationship between ITT's providing funds for the Republican National Convention
and a Justice Department
settlement of an antitrust suit favorable to ITT. On 28 September 1973, ITT's headquarters in New York City, was bombed by the Weather Underground for the alleged involvement of the company in the overthrow of Allende.
Immediately after assuming office, the new U.S. President Richard Nixon
ordered the CIA to depose President Allende in 1970, approving Project FUBELT
. The U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Chile was a foreign policy meant to worsen the economic crisis that President Allende faced – in order to propitiate a right-wing coup d’état. In a document dated 15 September 1970, Nixon orders CIA director Richard Helms
to "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him."
Agustín Edwards Eastman, one of the wealthiest men in Chile at the time, played a critical role in convincing the U.S. to “lend a helping hand.” After Allende received 36.3% of popular vote in a three-way election and was chosen by the Chilean congress as president, Edwards almost immediately opposed him (Kinzer 170). Edwards consulted the U.S. ambassador to Chile to ask if the U.S. would “do anything militarily, directly or indirectly?”(Kinzer 170). After the ambassador (Edward Korry) rejected his request, Edwards went to the CEO of Pepsi-Cola, who had direct access to President Nixon. Edwards’ friend from Pepsi-Cola notified Nixon of the “problem” in Chile and from that point on, “he (Nixon) had been triggered into action,” as Henry Kissinger
said. In addition, ITT offered up to $1 million dollars to support any action by the U.S. to oppose Salvador Allende. ITT had set up shop in Chile and was at risk because “the Chilean telephone system was high on Allende’s list for nationalization.” (Kinzer 171)
, strategically stationing ships and marine infantry in the central coast and closed radio and television networks. The Province Prefect informed President Allende of the Navy's actions; immediately, the president went to the presidential palace, La Moneda, with his bodyguards, the Grupo de Amigos Personales (GAP) (Group of Personal Friends). By 8:00 am, the Army had closed most radio and television stations in Santiago city; the Air Force bombed the remaining active stations; the President received incomplete information, and was convinced that only a sector of the Navy conspired against him and his government.
President Allende and Defence minister Orlando Letelier
were unable to communicate with military leaders. Admiral Montero, the Navy's commander and an Allende loyalist, was rendered incommunicado; his telephone service was cut and his cars were sabotaged before the coup d’état, to ensure he could not thwart the opposition. Leadership of the Navy was transferred to José Toribio Merino
, planner of the coup d’état and executive officer to Adm. Montero. Augusto Pinochet
, General of the Army, and Gustavo Leigh
, General of the Air Force, did not answer Allende's telephone calls to them. The General Director of the Carabineros (uniformed police), José María Sepúlveda, and the head of the Investigations Police (plain clothes detectives), Alfredo Joignant answered Allende's calls and immediately went to the La Moneda presidential palace. When Defence minister Letelier arrived at the Ministry of Defense, controlled by Adm. Patricio Carvajal
, he was arrested as the first prisoner of the coup d’état.
Despite evidence that all branches of the Chilean armed forces were involved in the coup, Allende hoped that some units remained loyal to the government. Allende was convinced of Pinochet's loyalty, telling a reporter that the coup d’état leaders must have imprisoned the general. Only at 8:30 am, when the armed forces declared their control of Chile and that Allende was deposed, did the president grasp the magnitude of the military's rebellion. Despite the lack of any military support, Allende refused to resign his office.
By 9:00 am, the armed forces controlled Chile, except for the city centre of the capital, Santiago. Allende refused to surrender, despite the military's declaring they would bomb the La Moneda presidential palace if he resisted being deposed. The Socialist Party proposed to Allende that he escape to the San Joaquín industrial zone in southern Santiago, to later re-group and lead a counter-coup d’état; the president rejected the proposition. The military rebels attempted negotiations with Allende, but the President refused to resign, citing his constitutional duty to remain in office. Finally, Allende gave a potent farewell speech, telling the nation of the coup d’état and his refusal to resign his elected office under threat.
Annoyed with negotiating, Leigh ordered the presidential palace bombed, but was told the Air Force's Hawker Hunter
jet aircraft would take forty minutes to arrive. Pinochet ordered an armoured and infantry force under General Sergio Arellano to advance upon the La Moneda presidential palace. When the troops moved forward, they were forced to retreat after coming under fire from GAP snipers perched on rooftops. General Arellano called for helicopter gunship support from the commander of the Chilean Army Puma helicopter squadron and the troops were able to advance again. Chilean Air Force aircraft soon arrived to provide close air support for the assault (by bombing the Palace), but the defenders did not surrender until nearly 2:30 pm. First reports said the 65-year-old president had died fighting troops, but later police sources reported he had committed suicide.
In the first months after the coup d’état, the military killed thousands of Chilean Leftists, both real and suspected, or forced their "disappearance
". The military imprisoned 40,000 political enemies in the National Stadium of Chile
; among the tortured and killed desaparecidos (disappeared) were the U.S. citizens Charles Horman
, and Frank Teruggi
.
In October 1973, the Chilean song-writer Víctor Jara
, and 70 other political killings were perpetrated by the death squad, Caravan of Death
(Caravana de la Muerte).
The government arrested some 130,000 people in a three-year period; the dead and disappeared numbered thousands in the first months of the military government. Those include the British physician Sheila Cassidy
, who survived to publicize to the UK the human rights violations in Chile. Among those detained was Alberto Bachelet (father of former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet
), an air force official; he was tortured and died on 12 March 1974,. The right-wing newspaper, El Mercurio
(The Mercury), reported that Mr Bachelet died after a basketball game, citing his poor cardiac health. Michelle Bachelet and her mother were imprisoned and tortured in the Villa Grimaldi
detention and torture centre on 10 January 1975.
After Gen. Pinochet lost the election in the 1988 plebiscite, the Rettig Commission, a multi-partisan truth commission, in 1991 reported the location of torture
and detention
centers: Colonia Dignidad
, Esmeralda ship
and Víctor Jara Stadium. It said that some 2,700 people were killed or disappeared by the military régime for seventeen years, from 1973 to 1990. Later, in November 2004, the Valech Report
confirmed the number as less than 3,000 killed, and reduced the number of cases of forced disappearance; but some 28,000 people were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured.
Critics of the Valech Report
say that families are falsely claiming that their relatives went missing during the 1973–1990 military regime, as there have been reports since 2000 that four people listed as killed or missing, were alive or had died in unrelated circumstances. The cases have raised questions about the system of verification of victims of dictatorships. The Age newspaper has reported that the number of people killed or reported missing and presumed dead is a total of 1,183 people, and that their names appear on a special memorial at the General Cemetery of Santiago. Clive Foss, in The Tyrants: 2500 years of Absolute Power and Corruption, estimates that 1,500 Chileans were killed or disappeared during the Pinochet regime. Nearly 700 civilians disappeared in the 1974–1977 period, after being detained by the Chilean military and police. In October 1979, the New York Times reported that Amnesty International
had documented the disappearance of approximately 1,500 Chileans since 1973.
In El día decisivo (The Decisive Day), Pinochet recounts the coup d’état, affirming he was the leading plotter. He said that he co-ordinated from his army commander office the deposition of President Salvador Allende. Recently, high military officials from the time said Pinochet was at first a reluctant participant and followed the lead of Adm. Merino and air force Gen. Leigh.
and GAP continued to fight the following day. In all, 46 of Allende's praetorian guard (the GAP, Grupo de Amigos Personales, including ex-Chilean Special Forces Black Beret Mario Melo) were killed, some of them in combat with the soldiers that took the Moneda. Allende's praetorian guard under Cuban-trained commando Ariel Fontana would have had about 300 elite commando-trained GAP fighers at the time of the coup, but the use of brute military force, especially the use of Hawker Hunter
s, may have handicapped many GAP fighters from further action.
According to official reports prepared after the return of the democracy, at La Moneda only two people died: President Allende and the journalist Augusto Olivares (both by suicide). Two more were injured, Antonio Aguirre and Osvaldo Ramos, both members of President Allende's entourage; they would later be allegedly kidnapped from the hospital and disappeared. In November 2006, the Associated Press noted that more than fifteen bodyguards and aides were taken from the palace during the coup and are still unaccounted for; in 2006 Augusto Pinochet was indicted for two of their deaths .
On the military side, there were 34 deaths: two army sergeants, three army corporals, four army privates, 2 navy lieutenants, 1 navy corporal, 4 naval cadets, 3 navy conscripts and 15 carabineros. In Mid-September, the Chilean military junta claimed its troops suffered another 16 dead and 100 injured by gunfire in mop-up operations against Allende supporters, and Pinochet said "sadly there are still some armed groups who insist on attacking, which means that the military rules of wartime apply to them." A press photographer also died in the crossfire while attempting to cover the event. On 23 October 1973, 23-year-old Army Corporal Benjamín Alfredo Jaramillo Ruz, who was serving with the Cazadores, became the first fatal casualty of the counterinsurgency operations in the mountainous area of Alquihue in Valdivia after being shot by a sniper. The Chilean Army suffered twelve killed in various clashes with MIR guerrillas and GAP fighters in October 1973.
While fatalities in the battle during the coup might have been relatively small, the Chilean security forces sustained 162 dead in the three following months as a result of continued resistance
and tens of thousands of people were arrested during the coup and held in the National Stadium. This was because the plans for the coup called for the arrest of every man, woman and child on the streets the morning of 11 September. Of these approximately 40,000 to 50,000 perfunctory arrests, several hundred individuals would later be detained, questioned, tortured, and in some cases murdered. While these deaths did not occur before the surrender of Allende's forces, they occurred as a direct result of arrests and round-ups during the coup's military action.
, two doctors from the infirmary of La Moneda stated that they witnessed the suicide, and an autopsy labelled Allende's death a suicide. Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal
, one of the primary instigators of the coup, claimed that "Allende committed suicide and is dead now."
At the time, few of Allende's supporters believed the explanation that Allende had killed himself. Even today, the explanation is still largely contested.
On 13 September, the Junta dissolved Congress. At the same time, it outlawed the parties that had been part of the Popular Unity coalition, and all political activity was declared "in recess".
Initially, there were four leaders of the junta: In addition to General Augusto Pinochet, from the Army, there were General Gustavo Leigh Guzmán
, of the Air Force; Admiral José Toribio Merino Castro
, of the Navy (who replaced Constitutionalist Admiral Raúl Montero); and General Director César Mendoza Durán
, of the National Police (Carabineros de Chile) (who replaced Constitutionalist General Director José María Sepúlveda). Coup leaders soon decided against a rotating presidency and named General Pinochet permanent head of the junta
The newspaper La Tercera published on its front page a photograph showing prisoners at the Quiriquina Island Camp who had been captured during the fighting in Concepcion. The photograph's caption stated that some of the detained were local leaders of the "Unidad Popular" while others were "extremists who had attacked the armed forces with firearms". The photo is reproduced in Docuscanner. This is consistent with reports in newspapers and broadcasts in Concepción about the activities of the Armed Forces, which mentioned clashes with "extremists" on several occasions from 11 to 14 September. Nocturnal skirmishes took place around the Hotel Alonso De Ercilla in Colo Colo and San Martino Street, one block away from the Army and military police administrative headquarters. A recent published testimony about the clashes in Concepcion offers several plausible explanations for the reticence of witnesses to these actions.
, decided to take actions against the police station in Neltume as a first step to defend the Unidad Popular government. The idea of the MRC was to take control of the building, have the police surrender, make them join the revolt, and seize any weapons to be found there. People from MRC gathered all the weapons they could find, four rifles and some shotguns, and prepared dozens of molotov cocktail
s and home-made grenade
s. The assault was launched at 02.00 in the night, 12 September. The attackers numbered between 60 and 80 men.
Jorge Durán Delgado, a former MIR militant who was 19 years old when he participated in the assault on the police station, remembers these moments: "Pepe
shouted at them to surrender, not to fear for their lives; to [surrender and] fight together with us to defend the government of Allende
". Benito Carrasco Riffo, by then commandant of the police station, said that they shouted back: "We won't surrender, carabiniers do not surrender mierda!"
The four carabiniers inside the police station had two SIG automatic rifle
s and two carbine
s with which they answered the fire from the MRC. The police station was a rustic tree building but was enough to resist the weak fire power
of the assailants and rain prevented the molotov cocktails to put the structure on fire. Inside the police station were also the wives and children of the carabiniers. Corporal Juan Campos in the police station asked for help to the police station in Choshuenco
some 20 km west and shouted desperately though the radio: "Send the aerial cavalry!"
At around 03.00 a reinforcement
of four carabiniers arrived on a pickup truck
. These reinforcements erroneously fired at carabiniers at first, and by the time they had arrived, the attack was almost over and the MRC assailants had retired.
After the coup, left-wing organizations tried to set up resistance groups against the regime. Many activists created groups of resistance from refugees abroad, while the Communist Party of Chile
set up an armed wing, which became in 1983 the FPMR (Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez). In the first three months of military rule, the Chilean forces recorded 162 military deaths. A total of 756 servicemen and police are reported to have been killed or wounded in guerrilla incidents. The Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria
(Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR) founded at the University of Concepción suffered heavy casualties in the coup's immediate aftermath, and most of its members fled the country. Among the killed and disappeared during the military regime were 440 MIR guerrillas. Many guerrillas confessed under torture and several hundred other young men and women, sympathetic to the guerrillas, were detained and tortured and often killed. Nearly 700 civilians disappeared in the 1974–1977 period, after being detained by the Chilean military and police. In 1976 there had been plans to infiltrate 1,200 Marxist guerrillas from Argentina into Chile in an operation christened Plan Boomerang Rojo (Red Boomerang Plan), but the infiltration failed to materialize due to the cooperation with Argentine authorities. Chilean officials reported 100 of the "Red Boomerang" guerrillas succeeded in infiltrating into Chile, but that 14 were captured.
On the fighting reported to have taken place in Concepcion from 11–14 September, the newspaper La Tercera published a frontpage article about the prisoners being held at the Quiriquina Island Camp. In an accompanying photograph it is reported that the detainees being held under guard, were largely local leaders of the "Unidad Popular" and "extremists that have attacked the armed forces with firearms". A recent account by a MIR leader explains that the sheer brutality of the military forces, especially the spectacular bombing of La Moneda, may have dissuaded many Allende sympathizers from taking action.
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
and the history of Chile
History of Chile
The territory of Chile has been populated since at least 2,000 BC. By the 16th century, Spanish conquistadors began to subdue and colonize the region of present-day Chile, and the territory became a colony from 1540 to 1818, when it gained independence from Spain...
. Following an extended period of political unrest between the conservative-dominated Congress of Chile and the socialist-leaning President
President of Chile
The President of the Republic of Chile is both the head of state and the head of government of the Republic of Chile. The President is responsible of the government and state administration...
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
, discontent culminated in the latter's downfall in a coup d’état organised by the Chilean military and unofficially endorsed by the Nixon administration
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and the CIA, which had covertly worked to spread discontent and opposition against the government. A military junta led by Allende's Commander-in-Chief
Commander-in-Chief
A commander-in-chief is the commander of a nation's military forces or significant element of those forces. In the latter case, the force element may be defined as those forces within a particular region or those forces which are associated by function. As a practical term it refers to the military...
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
eventually took control of the government, composed of the heads of the Air Force, Navy, Carabineros (police force) and the Army. Pinochet later assumed power and ended Allende's democratically elected Popular Unity government, instigating a campaign of terror on its supporters which included the murder of former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier
Orlando Letelier
Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
. Before Pinochet's rule, Chile had for decades been hailed as a beacon of democracy and political stability in a South America hoarding military juntas and Caudillismo.
During the air raids and ground attacks that preceded the coup, Allende gave his last speech, in which he vowed to stay in the presidential palace
Palacio de La Moneda
Palacio de La Moneda , or simply La Moneda, is the seat of the President of the Republic of Chile. It also houses the offices of three cabinet ministers: Interior, General Secretariat of the Presidency and General Secretariat of the Government...
, denouncing offers for safe passage should he choose exile over confrontation. Direct witness accounts of his death
Death of Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende, President of Chile, reportedly committed suicide during the Chilean coup of 1973. Since that time, there has been great controversy between supporters and detractors of Allende on the circumstances of his death, since the military junta's version of his suicide was discounted by...
agree that he committed suicide in the palace.
After the coup, Pinochet established a military dictatorship
Chile under Pinochet
Chile was ruled by a military dictatorship headed by Augusto Pinochet from 1973 when Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'etat until 1990 when the Chilean transition to democracy began. The authoritarian military government was characterized by systematic suppression of political parties and...
that ruled Chile until 1990
Chilean transition to democracy
The Chilean transition to democracy began when a Constitution establishing a transition itinerary was approved in a plebiscite. From March 11, 1981 to March 11, 1990, several organic constitutional laws were approved leading to the final restoration of democracy...
; it was marked by numerous human rights violations. A weak insurgent
Insurgent
Insurgent, insurgents or insurgency can refer to:* The act of insurgency-Specific insurgencies:* Iraqi insurgency, uprising in Iraq* Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir, uprising in India* Insurgency in North-East India...
movement against the Pinochet government was maintained inside Chile by elements sympathetic to the former Allende government.
Antecedent politics
Allende contested the 1970 election with Jorge Alessandri Rodriguez of the National Party and Radomiro TomicRadomiro Tomic
Radomiro Tomic Romero was a Chilean politician of Croatian origin. He was one of the most prominent leaders of that country's Christian Democrat Party....
of the Christian Democratic Party. Allende received 36.6% of the vote (around 1,070,334 votes). Alessandri was a very close second with 35.3%, and Tomic third with 28.1%. In total, 2,954,799 people voted. Although Allende received the highest number of votes, according to the Chilean constitution because none of the candidates won by an absolute majority, the National Congress had to decide among the candidates. Alessandri announced on 9 September that if Congress decided on him, he would resign – which would then require another election. Congress then decided on Allende. Soon after hearing news of his win, Allende signed a Statute of Constitutional Guarantees, which stated that he would follow the constitution during his presidency.
The United States feared "an irreversible Marxist regime in Chile" and exerted diplomatic, economic, and covert pressure upon Chile's elected socialist government. During his presidency, Allende nationalized US copper firms (in July 1971), nationalized banks and other large industries such as Purina, and sped up land distribution (by 1972, peasants lived in approximately 1700 rural properties). Total expenditures for social programs increased from $562.8 million to $828.5 million under Allende’s rule; this included health, education, housing, child assistance, and social assistance. Between 1967–1969 and 1973, employment in mines increased by 45% – but, per capita production decreased by 28%. The Allende administration faced other disappointments in its programs.
By 1973, the amount of land in Chile under cultivation fell by 20%. Allende installed a price freeze and increased wages in the industry, which resulted in Chile spending 56% of its export earnings on food (the country was producing 2/3 of what Chileans consumed). Also, Chile’s trade deficit increased from $18 million to $255 million from 1971–1972. Exports fell by 25%, and imports increased by 40%, which caused an economic imbalance. Inflation became another problem during Allende’s rule, due to Allende’s wage increases and increase in spending. Inflation doubled in 1972, and the cost of living increased by nearly 50%. Allende had to deal with labor troubles as well: in 1972, a group of truckers went on strike due to his plan to create a state transportation enterprise. At its peak, 23,000 trucks were stopped. The truckers' strike ignited others all over Chile.
At the end of 1971, the Cuban President Fidel Castro
Fidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
made a four-week state visit to Chile, alarming Western observers worried about the Chilean Way to Socialism yielding to Cuban Socialism, i.e. Soviet Communism.
In 1972, the economics minister Pedro Vuskovic
Pedro Vuskovic
Pedro Vuskovic Bravo was a Chilean economist of Croatian descent, political figure, minister and author of the economic plan implemented by Salvador Allende during his government.-Life:...
adopted monetary policies that increased the amount of circulating currency and devalued the escudo
Chilean escudo
The escudo was the currency of Chile between 1960 and 1975, divided into 100 centésimos. It replaced the peso at a rate of 1 escudo = 1000 pesos and was itself replaced by a new peso, at a rate of 1 peso = 1000 escudos...
, which increased inflation to 140 percent in 1972 and engendered a black market economy. The Allende Government acted against the black market with organised distribution of basic products.
In October 1972, Chile suffered the first of many strikes. Among the participants were small-scale businessmen, some professional unions, and student groups. Its leaders – Vilarín, Jaime Guzmán
Jaime Guzmán
Jaime Jorge Guzmán Errázuriz was a Chilean lawyer and senator, member and doctrinal founder of the conservative Independent Democrat Union party. He opposed Marxist President Salvador Allende and later became a close advisor to dictator Augusto Pinochet. A professor of Constitutional Law, he...
, Rafael Cumsille, Guillermo Elton, Eduardo Arriagada – expected to depose the elected government. Other than damaging the national economy, the principal effect of the twenty-four-day strike was drawing Army head, Gen. Carlos Prats
Carlos Prats
General Carlos Prats González was a Chilean Army officer, a political figure, minister and Vice President of Chile during President Salvador Allende's government, and General Augusto Pinochet's predecessor as commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army...
, into the government as Interior Minister, an appeasement to the right wing. Gen. Prats succeeded Gen. René Schneider
René Schneider
General René Schneider Chereau was the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army at the time of the 1970 Chilean presidential election, when he was assassinated during a botched kidnapping attempt. His murder virtually assured Salvador Allende's eventual overthrow and death in a coup three years later...
after his assassination on 24 October 1970 by the groups of Gen. Roberto Viaux
Roberto Viaux
Roberto Urbano Viaux Marambio was a Chilean Army General and the primary planner in two failed coup d'état attempts in Chile in 1969 and 1970...
and Gen. Camilo Valenzuela
Camilo Valenzuela
Camilo Valenzuela was a Chilean General and chief of the garrison in Santiago de Chile. In 1970 he led a group that with intent to stop the newly elected Salvador Allende from being inaugurated as president, tried to kidnap constitutionalist Army Commander-in-Chief René Schneider...
, whom the CIA financed and logistically supported. Moreover, Gen. Prats supported the legalist Schneider Doctrine
Schneider Doctrine
Schneider Doctrine was a political doctrine originally espoused by Chilean General René Schneider, which allowed the election of Salvador Allende as President of Chile, and was the main ideological obstacle to a military coup d'état against him.-Background:...
and refused military involvement in a coup d'état against President Allende.
Despite the declining economy, President Allende's Popular Unity
Popular Unity
Unidad Popular was a coalition of left wing, socialist and communist political parties in Chile that stood behind the successful candidacy of Salvador Allende for the 1970 Chilean presidential election....
coalition increased its vote to 43.2 percent in the March 1973 parliamentary elections; but, by then, the informal alliance between Popular Unity and the Christian Democrats ended. The Christian Democrats allied with the right-wing National Party, who were opposed to Allende's Socialist government; the two right-wing parties forming the Confederación Democrática (CODE) (The Democratic Coalition). The internecine parliamentary conflict, between the legislature and the executive branch, paralyzed the activities of government. To destabilise the Allende Government, the CIA paid some U.S. $8 million to right-wing opposition groups to "create pressures, exploit weaknesses, magnify obstacles" and hasten Allende's deposition. The CIA report released in 2000 records some U.S. $6.8 million spent to depose Allende.
Crisis
On 29 June 1973, Colonel Roberto SouperRoberto Souper
Lt. Colonel Roberto Federico Souper Onfray was a Chilean military officer who launched an unsuccessful coup d'état against the regime of Salvador Allende, surrounding the presidential palace with a tank regiment....
surrounded the La Moneda presidential palace with his tank regiment and failed to depose the Allende Government. That failed coup d’état – known as the Tanquetazo
Tanquetazo
El Tanquetazo or El Tancazo of 29 June 1973 are the names used to refer to the failed coup attempt in Chile led by Army Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Souper against the government of Socialist president Salvador Allende. It is called such because the rebelling officers primarily used tanks...
tank putsch – organized by the nationalist Patria y Libertad paramilitary group, was followed by a general strike at the end of July that included the copper miners of El Teniente.
In August 1973, a constitutional crisis occurred; the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of Chile
The Supreme Court of Chile is the highest court in Chile. It also administrates the lower courts in the nation. It is located in the capital Santiago....
publicly complained about the Allende Government's inability to enforce the law of the land. On 22 August, the Chamber of Deputies (with the Christian Democrats united with the National Party) accused the Allende Government of unconstitutional acts and called upon the military to enforce constitutional order.
For months, the Allende Government had feared calling upon the Carabineros
Carabineros de Chile
thumb|250px|Carabineros de Chile, patrolling a street in [[Santiago, Chile|Santiago]]The Carabiniers of Chile, are the uniformed Chilean national police force and gendarmerie, created on April 27, 1927. Their mission is to maintain order and create public respect for the laws of the country...
(Carabineers) national police, suspecting them to be disloyal. On 9 August, Allende appointed Gen. Carlos Prats as Minister of Defence. He was forced to resign both as defence minister and as the Army Commander-in-chief
Chilean Army
The Chilean Army is the land arm of the Military of Chile. This 45,000-person army is organized into seven divisions, a special operations brigade and an air brigade....
on 24 August 1973, embarrassed by the Alejandrina Cox incident
Alejandrina Cox incident
The Alejandrina Cox incident was a traffic incident involving General Carlos Prats, then Minister of the Interior for President Salvador Allende, that altered the course of Chilean history by helping launch to the Chilean coup of 1973.-Incident:...
and a public protest of the wives of his generals before his house. Gen. Augusto Pinochet replaced him as Army commander-in-chief the same day. In late August 1973, 100,000 Chilean women congregated at Plaza de la Constitución to vent their rage against the rising cost and increasing shortages of food, but they were dispersed with tear gas.
Supreme Court's resolution
On 26 May 1973, Chile’s Supreme Court unanimously denounced the Allende régime’s disruption of the legality of the nation in its failure to uphold judicial decisions. It refused to permit police execution of judicial resolutions that contradicted the Government's measures.Chamber of Deputies' resolution
On 22 August 1973, with the support of the Christian Democrats and National Party members, the Chamber of Deputies passed 81–47 a resolution that asked "the President of the Republic, Ministers of State, and members of the Armed and Police Forces" to "put an immediate end" to "breach[es of] the Constitution . . . with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the Constitutional order of our Nation, and the essential underpinnings of democratic co-existence among Chileans."The resolution declared that the Allende Government sought ". . . to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the State . . . [with] the goal of establishing a totalitarian system", claiming it had made "violations of the Constitution . . . a permanent system of conduct." Essentially, most of the accusations were about the Socialist Government disregarding the separation of powers, and arrogating legislative and judicial prerogatives to the executive branch of government.
Specifically, the Socialist Government of President Allende was accused of:
- ruling by decree, thwarting the normal legislative system
- refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its partisans; not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravene its objectives
- ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller's Office
- sundry media offences; usurping control of the National Television Network and applying ... economic pressure against those media organizations that are not unconditional supporters of the government...
- allowing its socialist supporters to assemble armed, preventing the same by its right wing opponents
- . . . supporting more than 1,500 illegal ‘takings’ of farms...
- illegal repression of the El Teniente miners’ strike
- illegally limiting emigration
Finally, the resolution condemned the creation and development of government-protected [socialist] armed groups, which . . . are headed towards a confrontation with the armed forces. President Allende's efforts to re-organize the military and the police forces were characterised as notorious attempts to use the armed and police forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks .
President Allende's response
Two days later, on 24 August 1973, President Allende responded, characterising the Congress's declaration as destined to damage the country’s prestige abroad and create internal confusion, predicting It will facilitate the seditious intention of certain sectors. He noted that the declaration had not obtained the two-thirds Senate majority constitutionally required to convict the president of abuse of power: essentially, the Congress were invoking the intervention of the armed forces and of Order against a democratically elected government and subordinat[ing] political representation of national sovereignty to the armed institutions, which neither can nor ought to assume either political functions or the representation of the popular will.Allende argued he had obeyed constitutional means for including military men to the cabinet at the service of civic peace and national security, defending republican institutions against insurrection and terrorism. In contrast, he said that Congress was promoting a coup d’état or a civil war with a declaration full of affirmations that had already been refuted before-hand and which, in substance and process (directly handing it to the ministers rather than directly handing it to the President) violated a dozen articles of the (then-current) Constitution. He further argued that the legislature was usurping the government's executive function.
President Allende wrote: Chilean democracy is a conquest by all of the people. It is neither the work nor the gift of the exploiting classes, and it will be defended by those who, with sacrifices accumulated over generations, have imposed it . . . With a tranquil conscience . . . I sustain that never before has Chile had a more democratic government than that over which I have the honor to preside . . . I solemnly reiterate my decision to develop democracy and a state of law to their ultimate consequences . . . Parliament has made itself a bastion against the transformations . . . and has done everything it can to perturb the functioning of the finances and of the institutions, sterilizing all creative initiatives.
Adding that economic and political means would be needed to relieve the country's current crisis, and that the Congress were obstructing said means; having already paralyzed the State, they sought to destroy it. He concluded by calling upon the workers, all democrats and patriots to join him in defending the Chilean Constitution and the revolutionary process.
Soviet role
According to the Mitrokhin ArchiveMitrokhin Archive
The Mitrokhin Archive is a collection of notes made secretly by KGB Major Vasili Mitrokhin during his thirty years as a KGB archivist in the foreign intelligence service and the First Chief Directorate...
, the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
and the Cuban Intelligence Directorate launched a disinformation campaign
Operation TOUCAN (KGB)
Operation TOUCAN was a KGB/DGI public relations and disinformation campaign directed at the military government of Chile led by Augusto Pinochet. According to former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin, the plot was originally conceived by Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov...
following the coup.
It is reported that Salvador Allende had a long-lasting relationship with the KGB and the Cuban packages scandal
Cuban packages
The Cuban packages was a Chilean smuggling scandal, involving President Salvador Allende, his Minister of the Interior, Hernán del Canto and the Director of the Civil Police Eduardo Paredes. It was cited by the authors of the Chamber of Deputies' Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy...
had revealed arms smuggling from Cuba.
On the other hand sources suggest that the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
was sympathetic to Allende, but did not assist him because they believed he was "weak" for refusing to use force against the opposition.
According to Allende’s KGB file, Allende "was made to understand the necessity of reorganizing Chile's army and intelligence services, and of setting up a relationship between Chile’s and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
's intelligence services".
It has been argued that the USSR refused to finance Allende mainly because of his unwillingness of forming a Soviet-type bureaucratic system
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
.
U.S. role
The U.S. Government’s hostility to the election of Socialist President Salvador Allende government was substantiated in documents declassified during the Clinton administrationBill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
. The CIA inserted covert operatives in Chile, in order to prevent a Socialist government from arising, and conducted propaganda operations which were designed to push the Chilean president Eduardo Frei to support "a military coup which would prevent Allende from taking office on 3 November." While U.S. government hostility to the Allende government is unquestioned, the nature of the U.S. role in the coup is highly controversial. Claims of the direct US involvement in the coup have not been supported by publicly available documentary evidence.
In 1970, the U.S. manufacturing company ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation
ITT Corporation is a global diversified manufacturing company based in the United States. ITT participates in global markets including water and fluids management, defense and security, and motion and flow control...
owned of 70% of Chitelco, the Chilean Telephone Company, and funded El Mercurio
El Mercurio
El Mercurio is a conservative Chilean newspaper with editions in Valparaíso and Santiago. Its Santiago edition is considered the country's paper-of-record and its Valparaíso edition is the oldest daily in the Spanish language currently in circulation. El Mercurio is owned by El Mercurio S.A.P...
, a Chilean right-wing
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
newspaper. Declassified documents released by the CIA in 2000 suggest that ITT financially helped opponents of Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
's government prepare a military coup.
In 1972 the newspaper columnist Jack Anderson disclosed a memo of ITT's Washington lobbyist, Dita Beard, which revealed a relationship between ITT's providing funds for the Republican National Convention
Republican National Convention
The Republican National Convention is the presidential nominating convention of the Republican Party of the United States. Convened by the Republican National Committee, the stated purpose of the convocation is to nominate an official candidate in an upcoming U.S...
and a Justice Department
United States Department of Justice
The United States Department of Justice , is the United States federal executive department responsible for the enforcement of the law and administration of justice, equivalent to the justice or interior ministries of other countries.The Department is led by the Attorney General, who is nominated...
settlement of an antitrust suit favorable to ITT. On 28 September 1973, ITT's headquarters in New York City, was bombed by the Weather Underground for the alleged involvement of the company in the overthrow of Allende.
Immediately after assuming office, the new U.S. President Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
ordered the CIA to depose President Allende in 1970, approving Project FUBELT
Project FUBELT
Project FUBELT is the code name for the secret Central Intelligence Agency operations that were to prevent Salvador Allende rise to power before his confirmation, and promote a military coup in Chile....
. The U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Chile was a foreign policy meant to worsen the economic crisis that President Allende faced – in order to propitiate a right-wing coup d’état. In a document dated 15 September 1970, Nixon orders CIA director Richard Helms
Richard Helms
Richard McGarrah Helms was the Director of Central Intelligence from 1966 to 1973. He was the only director to have been convicted of lying to the United States Congress over Central Intelligence Agency undercover activities. In 1977, he was sentenced to the maximum fine and received a suspended...
to "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him."
Agustín Edwards Eastman, one of the wealthiest men in Chile at the time, played a critical role in convincing the U.S. to “lend a helping hand.” After Allende received 36.3% of popular vote in a three-way election and was chosen by the Chilean congress as president, Edwards almost immediately opposed him (Kinzer 170). Edwards consulted the U.S. ambassador to Chile to ask if the U.S. would “do anything militarily, directly or indirectly?”(Kinzer 170). After the ambassador (Edward Korry) rejected his request, Edwards went to the CEO of Pepsi-Cola, who had direct access to President Nixon. Edwards’ friend from Pepsi-Cola notified Nixon of the “problem” in Chile and from that point on, “he (Nixon) had been triggered into action,” as Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
said. In addition, ITT offered up to $1 million dollars to support any action by the U.S. to oppose Salvador Allende. ITT had set up shop in Chile and was at risk because “the Chilean telephone system was high on Allende’s list for nationalization.” (Kinzer 171)
Military action
By 7:00 am on 11 September 1973, the Navy captured ValparaísoValparaíso
Valparaíso is a city and commune of Chile, center of its third largest conurbation and one of the country's most important seaports and an increasing cultural center in the Southwest Pacific hemisphere. The city is the capital of the Valparaíso Province and the Valparaíso Region...
, strategically stationing ships and marine infantry in the central coast and closed radio and television networks. The Province Prefect informed President Allende of the Navy's actions; immediately, the president went to the presidential palace, La Moneda, with his bodyguards, the Grupo de Amigos Personales (GAP) (Group of Personal Friends). By 8:00 am, the Army had closed most radio and television stations in Santiago city; the Air Force bombed the remaining active stations; the President received incomplete information, and was convinced that only a sector of the Navy conspired against him and his government.
President Allende and Defence minister Orlando Letelier
Orlando Letelier
Marcos Orlando Letelier del Solar was a Chilean economist, Socialist politician and diplomat during the presidency of Socialist President Salvador Allende...
were unable to communicate with military leaders. Admiral Montero, the Navy's commander and an Allende loyalist, was rendered incommunicado; his telephone service was cut and his cars were sabotaged before the coup d’état, to ensure he could not thwart the opposition. Leadership of the Navy was transferred to José Toribio Merino
José Toribio Merino
José Toribio Merino Castro was one of the principal coup leaders of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, along with General Augusto Pinochet of the Army, General Gustavo Leigh of the Air Force, and General Mendoza of the "Carabineros"...
, planner of the coup d’état and executive officer to Adm. Montero. Augusto Pinochet
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte, more commonly known as Augusto Pinochet , was a Chilean army general and dictator who assumed power in a coup d'état on 11 September 1973...
, General of the Army, and Gustavo Leigh
Gustavo Leigh
Air General Gustavo Leigh Guzmán was a Chilean general, who represented the Air Force in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and, for a time, in the ruling junta that followed. Leigh was forced out of the military government in 1978.-Biography:Leigh was born in Santiago, son of Hernán Leigh Bañados and...
, General of the Air Force, did not answer Allende's telephone calls to them. The General Director of the Carabineros (uniformed police), José María Sepúlveda, and the head of the Investigations Police (plain clothes detectives), Alfredo Joignant answered Allende's calls and immediately went to the La Moneda presidential palace. When Defence minister Letelier arrived at the Ministry of Defense, controlled by Adm. Patricio Carvajal
Patricio Carvajal
Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal Prado , was a Chilean admiral, several times Minister and one of the principal leaders of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état that ousted President Salvador Allende....
, he was arrested as the first prisoner of the coup d’état.
Despite evidence that all branches of the Chilean armed forces were involved in the coup, Allende hoped that some units remained loyal to the government. Allende was convinced of Pinochet's loyalty, telling a reporter that the coup d’état leaders must have imprisoned the general. Only at 8:30 am, when the armed forces declared their control of Chile and that Allende was deposed, did the president grasp the magnitude of the military's rebellion. Despite the lack of any military support, Allende refused to resign his office.
By 9:00 am, the armed forces controlled Chile, except for the city centre of the capital, Santiago. Allende refused to surrender, despite the military's declaring they would bomb the La Moneda presidential palace if he resisted being deposed. The Socialist Party proposed to Allende that he escape to the San Joaquín industrial zone in southern Santiago, to later re-group and lead a counter-coup d’état; the president rejected the proposition. The military rebels attempted negotiations with Allende, but the President refused to resign, citing his constitutional duty to remain in office. Finally, Allende gave a potent farewell speech, telling the nation of the coup d’état and his refusal to resign his elected office under threat.
Annoyed with negotiating, Leigh ordered the presidential palace bombed, but was told the Air Force's Hawker Hunter
Hawker Hunter
The Hawker Hunter is a subsonic British jet aircraft developed in the 1950s. The single-seat Hunter entered service as a manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, and later operated in fighter-bomber and reconnaissance roles in numerous conflicts. Two-seat variants remained in use for training and secondary...
jet aircraft would take forty minutes to arrive. Pinochet ordered an armoured and infantry force under General Sergio Arellano to advance upon the La Moneda presidential palace. When the troops moved forward, they were forced to retreat after coming under fire from GAP snipers perched on rooftops. General Arellano called for helicopter gunship support from the commander of the Chilean Army Puma helicopter squadron and the troops were able to advance again. Chilean Air Force aircraft soon arrived to provide close air support for the assault (by bombing the Palace), but the defenders did not surrender until nearly 2:30 pm. First reports said the 65-year-old president had died fighting troops, but later police sources reported he had committed suicide.
In the first months after the coup d’état, the military killed thousands of Chilean Leftists, both real and suspected, or forced their "disappearance
Forced disappearance
In international human rights law, a forced disappearance occurs when a person is secretly abducted or imprisoned by a state or political organization or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organization, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the...
". The military imprisoned 40,000 political enemies in the National Stadium of Chile
Estadio Nacional de Chile
The Estadio Nacional Julio Martínez Prádanos is the national stadium of Chile, and is located in the Ñuñoa district of Santiago). It is the largest stadium in Chile with an official capacity of 47,000, and is part of a 62 ha sporting complex which also features tennis courts, an aquatics center, a...
; among the tortured and killed desaparecidos (disappeared) were the U.S. citizens Charles Horman
Charles Horman
Charles Horman was an American journalist and was one of the victims of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet, that deposed the socialist president, Salvador Allende, after bombing the Chilean presidential palace on September 11, 1973...
, and Frank Teruggi
Frank Teruggi
Frank Teruggi, Jr. was an American student and journalist who became one of the victims of the American-backed General Augusto Pinochet's military shortly after the September 11, 1973 Pinochet coup d'etat against Socialist President Salvador Allende....
.
In October 1973, the Chilean song-writer Víctor Jara
Víctor Jara
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez was a Chilean teacher, theatre director, poet, singer-songwriter, political activist and member of the Communist Party of Chile...
, and 70 other political killings were perpetrated by the death squad, Caravan of Death
Caravan of Death
The Caravan of Death was a Chilean Army death squad that, following the Chilean coup of 1973, flew by helicopters from south to north of Chile between September 30 and October 22, 1973. During this foray, members of the squad ordered or personally carried out the execution of at least 75...
(Caravana de la Muerte).
The government arrested some 130,000 people in a three-year period; the dead and disappeared numbered thousands in the first months of the military government. Those include the British physician Sheila Cassidy
Sheila Cassidy
Dr. Sheila Cassidy is an English doctor, known for her work in the hospice movement, as a writer and as someone who, by publicising her own history as a torture survivor, drew attention to human rights abuse in Chile in the 1970s.-Early life:Cassidy grew up in Sydney, and attended the Our Lady of...
, who survived to publicize to the UK the human rights violations in Chile. Among those detained was Alberto Bachelet (father of former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet
Michelle Bachelet
Verónica Michelle Bachelet Jeria is a Social Democrat politician who was President of Chile from 11 March 2006 to 11 March 2010. She was the first woman president of her country...
), an air force official; he was tortured and died on 12 March 1974,. The right-wing newspaper, El Mercurio
El Mercurio
El Mercurio is a conservative Chilean newspaper with editions in Valparaíso and Santiago. Its Santiago edition is considered the country's paper-of-record and its Valparaíso edition is the oldest daily in the Spanish language currently in circulation. El Mercurio is owned by El Mercurio S.A.P...
(The Mercury), reported that Mr Bachelet died after a basketball game, citing his poor cardiac health. Michelle Bachelet and her mother were imprisoned and tortured in the Villa Grimaldi
Villa Grimaldi
Villa Grimaldi was a complex of buildings used for the interrogation and torture of political prisoners by DINA, the Chilean secret police, during the government of Augusto Pinochet. The complex was located in Peñalolén, in the outskirts of Santiago, and was in operation from mid-1974 to mid-1978...
detention and torture centre on 10 January 1975.
After Gen. Pinochet lost the election in the 1988 plebiscite, the Rettig Commission, a multi-partisan truth commission, in 1991 reported the location of torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and detention
Detention (imprisonment)
Detention is the process when a state, government or citizen lawfully holds a person by removing their freedom of liberty at that time. This can be due to criminal charges being raised against the individual as part of a prosecution or to protect a person or property...
centers: Colonia Dignidad
Colonia Dignidad
Villa Baviera , formerly known as Colonia Dignidad is a hamlet in Parral Commune, Linares Province, Maule Region, Chile. Located in an isolated area of central Chile, it lies 35 km southeast of the city of Parral, on the north bank of the Perquilauquén River. It was founded by a group of German...
, Esmeralda ship
Esmeralda (BE-43)
Esmeralda is a steel-hulled four-masted barquentine tall ship of the Chilean Navy, currently the second tallest and longest sailing ship in the world.- Construction :The ship is the sixth to carry the name Esmeralda...
and Víctor Jara Stadium. It said that some 2,700 people were killed or disappeared by the military régime for seventeen years, from 1973 to 1990. Later, in November 2004, the Valech Report
Valech Report
The Valech Report was a record of abuses committed in Chile between 1973 and 1990 by agents of Augusto Pinochet's military regime. The report was published on November 29, 2004 and detailed the results of a six-month investigation. A revised version was released on June 1, 2005...
confirmed the number as less than 3,000 killed, and reduced the number of cases of forced disappearance; but some 28,000 people were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured.
Critics of the Valech Report
Valech Report
The Valech Report was a record of abuses committed in Chile between 1973 and 1990 by agents of Augusto Pinochet's military regime. The report was published on November 29, 2004 and detailed the results of a six-month investigation. A revised version was released on June 1, 2005...
say that families are falsely claiming that their relatives went missing during the 1973–1990 military regime, as there have been reports since 2000 that four people listed as killed or missing, were alive or had died in unrelated circumstances. The cases have raised questions about the system of verification of victims of dictatorships. The Age newspaper has reported that the number of people killed or reported missing and presumed dead is a total of 1,183 people, and that their names appear on a special memorial at the General Cemetery of Santiago. Clive Foss, in The Tyrants: 2500 years of Absolute Power and Corruption, estimates that 1,500 Chileans were killed or disappeared during the Pinochet regime. Nearly 700 civilians disappeared in the 1974–1977 period, after being detained by the Chilean military and police. In October 1979, the New York Times reported that Amnesty International
Amnesty International
Amnesty International is an international non-governmental organisation whose stated mission is "to conduct research and generate action to prevent and end grave abuses of human rights, and to demand justice for those whose rights have been violated."Following a publication of Peter Benenson's...
had documented the disappearance of approximately 1,500 Chileans since 1973.
In El día decisivo (The Decisive Day), Pinochet recounts the coup d’état, affirming he was the leading plotter. He said that he co-ordinated from his army commander office the deposition of President Salvador Allende. Recently, high military officials from the time said Pinochet was at first a reluctant participant and followed the lead of Adm. Merino and air force Gen. Leigh.
Casualties
Fewer than sixty individuals died as a direct result of fighting on 11 September although the MIRRevolutionary Left Movement (Chile)
Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...
and GAP continued to fight the following day. In all, 46 of Allende's praetorian guard (the GAP, Grupo de Amigos Personales, including ex-Chilean Special Forces Black Beret Mario Melo) were killed, some of them in combat with the soldiers that took the Moneda. Allende's praetorian guard under Cuban-trained commando Ariel Fontana would have had about 300 elite commando-trained GAP fighers at the time of the coup, but the use of brute military force, especially the use of Hawker Hunter
Hawker Hunter
The Hawker Hunter is a subsonic British jet aircraft developed in the 1950s. The single-seat Hunter entered service as a manoeuvrable fighter aircraft, and later operated in fighter-bomber and reconnaissance roles in numerous conflicts. Two-seat variants remained in use for training and secondary...
s, may have handicapped many GAP fighters from further action.
According to official reports prepared after the return of the democracy, at La Moneda only two people died: President Allende and the journalist Augusto Olivares (both by suicide). Two more were injured, Antonio Aguirre and Osvaldo Ramos, both members of President Allende's entourage; they would later be allegedly kidnapped from the hospital and disappeared. In November 2006, the Associated Press noted that more than fifteen bodyguards and aides were taken from the palace during the coup and are still unaccounted for; in 2006 Augusto Pinochet was indicted for two of their deaths .
On the military side, there were 34 deaths: two army sergeants, three army corporals, four army privates, 2 navy lieutenants, 1 navy corporal, 4 naval cadets, 3 navy conscripts and 15 carabineros. In Mid-September, the Chilean military junta claimed its troops suffered another 16 dead and 100 injured by gunfire in mop-up operations against Allende supporters, and Pinochet said "sadly there are still some armed groups who insist on attacking, which means that the military rules of wartime apply to them." A press photographer also died in the crossfire while attempting to cover the event. On 23 October 1973, 23-year-old Army Corporal Benjamín Alfredo Jaramillo Ruz, who was serving with the Cazadores, became the first fatal casualty of the counterinsurgency operations in the mountainous area of Alquihue in Valdivia after being shot by a sniper. The Chilean Army suffered twelve killed in various clashes with MIR guerrillas and GAP fighters in October 1973.
While fatalities in the battle during the coup might have been relatively small, the Chilean security forces sustained 162 dead in the three following months as a result of continued resistance
and tens of thousands of people were arrested during the coup and held in the National Stadium. This was because the plans for the coup called for the arrest of every man, woman and child on the streets the morning of 11 September. Of these approximately 40,000 to 50,000 perfunctory arrests, several hundred individuals would later be detained, questioned, tortured, and in some cases murdered. While these deaths did not occur before the surrender of Allende's forces, they occurred as a direct result of arrests and round-ups during the coup's military action.
Allende's death
President Allende died in La Moneda during the coup. The junta officially declared that he committed suicide with a revolver (an AK 47 according to the link 'death of Salvador Allende) given to him by Fidel CastroFidel Castro
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz is a Cuban revolutionary and politician, having held the position of Prime Minister of Cuba from 1959 to 1976, and then President from 1976 to 2008. He also served as the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from the party's foundation in 1961 until 2011...
, two doctors from the infirmary of La Moneda stated that they witnessed the suicide, and an autopsy labelled Allende's death a suicide. Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal
Patricio Carvajal
Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal Prado , was a Chilean admiral, several times Minister and one of the principal leaders of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état that ousted President Salvador Allende....
, one of the primary instigators of the coup, claimed that "Allende committed suicide and is dead now."
At the time, few of Allende's supporters believed the explanation that Allende had killed himself. Even today, the explanation is still largely contested.
Aftermath
Initially, there were four leaders of the junta: In addition to General Augusto Pinochet, from the Army, there were General Gustavo Leigh Guzmán
Gustavo Leigh
Air General Gustavo Leigh Guzmán was a Chilean general, who represented the Air Force in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état and, for a time, in the ruling junta that followed. Leigh was forced out of the military government in 1978.-Biography:Leigh was born in Santiago, son of Hernán Leigh Bañados and...
, of the Air Force; Admiral José Toribio Merino Castro
José Toribio Merino
José Toribio Merino Castro was one of the principal coup leaders of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, along with General Augusto Pinochet of the Army, General Gustavo Leigh of the Air Force, and General Mendoza of the "Carabineros"...
, of the Navy (who replaced Constitutionalist Admiral Raúl Montero); and General Director César Mendoza Durán
César Mendoza
General César Leonidas Mendoza Durán was a member of the Government Junta which ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990, representing the country-wide police force, the Carabineros de Chile....
, of the National Police (Carabineros de Chile) (who replaced Constitutionalist General Director José María Sepúlveda). Coup leaders soon decided against a rotating presidency and named General Pinochet permanent head of the junta
The newspaper La Tercera published on its front page a photograph showing prisoners at the Quiriquina Island Camp who had been captured during the fighting in Concepcion. The photograph's caption stated that some of the detained were local leaders of the "Unidad Popular" while others were "extremists who had attacked the armed forces with firearms". The photo is reproduced in Docuscanner. This is consistent with reports in newspapers and broadcasts in Concepción about the activities of the Armed Forces, which mentioned clashes with "extremists" on several occasions from 11 to 14 September. Nocturnal skirmishes took place around the Hotel Alonso De Ercilla in Colo Colo and San Martino Street, one block away from the Army and military police administrative headquarters. A recent published testimony about the clashes in Concepcion offers several plausible explanations for the reticence of witnesses to these actions.
Assault on the Neltume police station
After hearing the news about the 11 September coup MRC (Spanish acronym for Revolutionary Campesino Movement), a group formed with help of MIRMir
Mir was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, at first by the Soviet Union and then by Russia. Assembled in orbit from 1986 to 1996, Mir was the first modular space station and had a greater mass than that of any previous spacecraft, holding the record for the...
, decided to take actions against the police station in Neltume as a first step to defend the Unidad Popular government. The idea of the MRC was to take control of the building, have the police surrender, make them join the revolt, and seize any weapons to be found there. People from MRC gathered all the weapons they could find, four rifles and some shotguns, and prepared dozens of molotov cocktail
Molotov cocktail
The Molotov cocktail, also known as the petrol bomb, gasoline bomb, Molotov bomb, fire bottle, fire bomb, or simply Molotov, is a generic name used for a variety of improvised incendiary weapons...
s and home-made grenade
Grenade
A grenade is a small explosive device that is projected a safe distance away by its user. Soldiers called grenadiers specialize in the use of grenades. The term hand grenade refers any grenade designed to be hand thrown. Grenade Launchers are firearms designed to fire explosive projectile grenades...
s. The assault was launched at 02.00 in the night, 12 September. The attackers numbered between 60 and 80 men.
Jorge Durán Delgado, a former MIR militant who was 19 years old when he participated in the assault on the police station, remembers these moments: "Pepe
José Gregorio Liendo
José Gregorio Liendo Vera , also known as compañero Pepe, comandante Pepe or loco Pepe was a Chilean political activist and member of the Revolutionary Left Movement who participated in the land occupations of 1970s in Neltume and led the MIR-MCR attack on the police station of Neltume on...
shouted at them to surrender, not to fear for their lives; to [surrender and] fight together with us to defend the government of Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
". Benito Carrasco Riffo, by then commandant of the police station, said that they shouted back: "We won't surrender, carabiniers do not surrender mierda!"
The four carabiniers inside the police station had two SIG automatic rifle
Automatic rifle
Automatic rifle is a term generally used to describe a semi-automatic rifle chambered for a rifle cartridge, capable of delivering both semi- and full automatic fire...
s and two carbine
Carbine
A carbine , from French carabine, is a longarm similar to but shorter than a rifle or musket. Many carbines are shortened versions of full rifles, firing the same ammunition at a lower velocity due to a shorter barrel length....
s with which they answered the fire from the MRC. The police station was a rustic tree building but was enough to resist the weak fire power
Fire power
Firepower is the military capability to direct force at an enemy. It is not to be confused with the concept of rate of fire, which describes cycling of the firing mechanism in a weapon system. It involves the whole range of potential weapons...
of the assailants and rain prevented the molotov cocktails to put the structure on fire. Inside the police station were also the wives and children of the carabiniers. Corporal Juan Campos in the police station asked for help to the police station in Choshuenco
Choshuenco
Choshuenco is a village on the eastern edge of Panguipulli Lake in Panguipulli's commune, Chile. It lies about 4 km south of the 203-CH route that goes from Lanco to Huahum Pass into Argentina....
some 20 km west and shouted desperately though the radio: "Send the aerial cavalry!"
At around 03.00 a reinforcement
Reinforcement
Reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for the process of increasing the rate or probability of a behavior in the form of a "response" by the delivery or emergence of a stimulus Reinforcement is a term in operant conditioning and behavior analysis for the process of...
of four carabiniers arrived on a pickup truck
Pickup truck
A pickup truck is a light motor vehicle with an open-top rear cargo area .-Definition:...
. These reinforcements erroneously fired at carabiniers at first, and by the time they had arrived, the attack was almost over and the MRC assailants had retired.
Guerrilla resistance
Communist Party of Chile
The Communist Party of Chile is a Chilean political party inspired by the thoughts of Karl Marx and Lenin. It was founded in 1922, as the continuation of the Socialist Workers Party, and in 1934 it established its youth wing, the Communist Youth of Chile .In the last legislative elections in Chile...
set up an armed wing, which became in 1983 the FPMR (Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez). In the first three months of military rule, the Chilean forces recorded 162 military deaths. A total of 756 servicemen and police are reported to have been killed or wounded in guerrilla incidents. The Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria
Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)
Revolutionary Left Movement is a Chilean political party and former left-wing guerrilla organization founded on October 12, 1965...
(Revolutionary Left Movement, MIR) founded at the University of Concepción suffered heavy casualties in the coup's immediate aftermath, and most of its members fled the country. Among the killed and disappeared during the military regime were 440 MIR guerrillas. Many guerrillas confessed under torture and several hundred other young men and women, sympathetic to the guerrillas, were detained and tortured and often killed. Nearly 700 civilians disappeared in the 1974–1977 period, after being detained by the Chilean military and police. In 1976 there had been plans to infiltrate 1,200 Marxist guerrillas from Argentina into Chile in an operation christened Plan Boomerang Rojo (Red Boomerang Plan), but the infiltration failed to materialize due to the cooperation with Argentine authorities. Chilean officials reported 100 of the "Red Boomerang" guerrillas succeeded in infiltrating into Chile, but that 14 were captured.
On the fighting reported to have taken place in Concepcion from 11–14 September, the newspaper La Tercera published a frontpage article about the prisoners being held at the Quiriquina Island Camp. In an accompanying photograph it is reported that the detainees being held under guard, were largely local leaders of the "Unidad Popular" and "extremists that have attacked the armed forces with firearms". A recent account by a MIR leader explains that the sheer brutality of the military forces, especially the spectacular bombing of La Moneda, may have dissuaded many Allende sympathizers from taking action.
Quotations
- "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." – Henry KissingerHenry KissingerHeinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
- "Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." – Edward M. KorryEdward M. KorryEdward Malcolm Korry was an American diplomat during the administrations of Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon.Korry, a native of New York, was U.S. Ambassador to Ethiopia and to Chile . Upon hearing the news that Salvador Allende had been elected president of Chile, he proclaimed that "not a...
, U.S. Ambassador to Chile, upon hearing of Allende's election.
- "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him" – Richard Nixon
- "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October [1970] but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden..."
- "[Military rule aims] to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of entrepreneurs." – Augusto Pinochet
- "We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [Garbled] created the conditions as great as possible. – Henry Kissinger conversing with President Nixon about the coup.
See also
- 1970 Chilean presidential election
- TanquetazoTanquetazoEl Tanquetazo or El Tancazo of 29 June 1973 are the names used to refer to the failed coup attempt in Chile led by Army Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Souper against the government of Socialist president Salvador Allende. It is called such because the rebelling officers primarily used tanks...
- Government Junta of Chile (1973)Government Junta of Chile (1973)Government Junta of Chile was the military junta established to rule Chile during the military dictatorship that followed the overthrow of President Salvador Allende in the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. It was the executive and legislative branch of government until December 17, 1974...
- Operation TOUCAN (KGB)Operation TOUCAN (KGB)Operation TOUCAN was a KGB/DGI public relations and disinformation campaign directed at the military government of Chile led by Augusto Pinochet. According to former KGB officer Vasili Mitrokhin, the plot was originally conceived by Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov...
– secret KGB operations in Chile - Cuban packagesCuban packagesThe Cuban packages was a Chilean smuggling scandal, involving President Salvador Allende, his Minister of the Interior, Hernán del Canto and the Director of the Civil Police Eduardo Paredes. It was cited by the authors of the Chamber of Deputies' Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy...
– arms smuggling from Cuba - Project FUBELTProject FUBELTProject FUBELT is the code name for the secret Central Intelligence Agency operations that were to prevent Salvador Allende rise to power before his confirmation, and promote a military coup in Chile....
– secret CIA operations to unseat Allende. - U.S. intervention in Chile
- List of Chilean coup d'étatsChilean coup d'étatThis is a list of the coups d'état that have taken place in Chile during its independent history:-1780s:...
- Valech ReportValech ReportThe Valech Report was a record of abuses committed in Chile between 1973 and 1990 by agents of Augusto Pinochet's military regime. The report was published on November 29, 2004 and detailed the results of a six-month investigation. A revised version was released on June 1, 2005...
Media
- MissingMissing (film)Missing is a 1982 American drama film directed by Costa Gavras, and starring Jack Lemmon, Sissy Spacek, Melanie Mayron, John Shea, Charles Cioffi and Janice Rule...
- MachucaMachucaMachuca is a 2004 Chilean film written and directed by Andrés Wood. Set in 1973 Santiago during Salvador Allende's socialist government and shortly before General Augusto Pinochet's military coup in 1973, the film tells the story of two friends, one of them the very poor Pedro Machuca who is...
- The Black PimpernelThe Black PimpernelThe Black Pimpernel is a Swedish drama film directed by Ulf Hultberg and starring Michael Nyqvist and Lisa Werlinder...
- The House of the SpiritsThe House of the SpiritsThe House of the Spirits is the debut novel by Isabel Allende. Initially, the novel was rejected by several Spanish-language publishers, but became an instant best seller when published in Barcelona in 1982. The novel was critically acclaimed around the world, and catapulted Allende to literary...
Further reading
- Simon Collier & William F. Sater (1996). A History of Chile: 1808–1994. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Julio Faundez (1988). Marxism and democracy in Chile: From 1932 to the fall of Allende, New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Ignacio González Camus, ed. (1988). El día en que murió Allende (The day that Allende Died), Chilean Institute of Humanistic Studies (ICHEH) / CESOC.
- Anke Hoogvelt (1997). Globalisation and the postcolonial world, London: Macmillan.
- Thomas Karamessines (1970). Operating guidance cable on coup plotting in Chile, Washington: National Security CouncilUnited States National Security CouncilThe White House National Security Council in the United States is the principal forum used by the President of the United States for considering national security and foreign policy matters with his senior national security advisors and Cabinet officials and is part of the Executive Office of the...
. - Jeane KirkpatrickJeane KirkpatrickJeane Jordan Kirkpatrick was an American ambassador and an ardent anticommunist. After serving as Ronald Reagan's foreign policy adviser in his 1980 campaign and later in his Cabinet, the longtime Democrat-turned-Republican was nominated as the U.S...
(1979). "Dictatorships and Double Standards", Commentary, November, pp 34–45. - Henry KissingerHenry KissingerHeinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
(1970). National Security Decision 93: Policy Towards Chile, Washington: National Security Council. - Richard Norton-Taylor (1999). "Truth will out: Unearthing the declassified documents in America which give the lie to Lady Thatcher's outburst", The GuardianThe GuardianThe Guardian, formerly known as The Manchester Guardian , is a British national daily newspaper in the Berliner format...
, 8 July 1999, London. - Alec Nove (1986). Socialism, Economics and Development, London: Allen & Unwin.
- James F. Petras & Morris H. Morley (1974). How Allende fell: A study in U.S.–Chilean relations, Nottingham: Spokesman Books.
- Sigmund, P.E. (1986). "Development Strategies in Chile, 1964–1983: The Lessons of Failure", Chapter 6 in I.J. Kim (Ed.), Development and Cultural Change: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, New York: Paragon House Publishers, pp. 159–178.
- Valenzuela, J.S., & Valenzuela, A. (1993). "Modernisation and Dependency: Alternative Perspectives in the Study of Latin-American Underdervelopment", in M.A. Seligson & J.T. Pass-Smith (Eds.), Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Inequality, Boulder: Lynnes Rienner, pp. 203–216.
External links
- CIA acknowledges involvement in Allende's overthrow Pinochet's rise, CNN.
- Cronología, Salvador-Allende.cl, originally published in Archivo Salvador Allende, number 14. An extensive Spanish-language site providing a day-by-day chronology of the Allende era. This is clearly a partisan, pro-Allende source, but the research and detail are enormous.
- National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project which provides documents obtained from FOIA requests regarding U.S. involvement in Chile, beginning with attempts to promote a coup in 1970 and continuing through U.S. support for Pinochet
- US Dept. of State FOIA Church Report (Covert Action in Chile)
- September 11, 1973, When US-Backed Pinochet Forces Took Power in Chile – video report by Democracy Now!Democracy Now!Democracy Now! and its staff have received several journalism awards, including the Gracie Award from American Women in Radio & Television; the George Polk Award for its 1998 radio documentary Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, on the Chevron Corporation and the deaths of...