On the night of September 10-11, 1973, ships of the Chilean Navy that participated in joint maneuvers with the United States shelled the port and the city of Valparaiso before it was captured by the coup plotters. Radio stations controlled by the coup plotters broadcast a message at 8.42:XNUMX a.m. about the creation of a junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet and Admiral Jose Merino. They announced that their goal was to "liberate Chile" from the "Marxist yoke". Early in the morning in the capital of Chile, Santiago, coup plotters seized the television center and several strategic facilities.
At 9.10:XNUMX a.m., the president of Chile, Salvador Allende, addressed "those who will be persecuted" for the last time through the only radio station in the country, which was not yet controlled by the rebels: "I am ready to pay with my life for the trust of the people... Other Chileans will survive this dark and bitter the hour when power was stolen by treachery. Know that the day is not far, the day is near when a wide road will be opened again for a worthy man to build a better society..."
36-03...the coup plotters bomb the presidential palace La Moneda;...
At 9.15:40 a.m., the coup plotters began firing from tanks at the La Moneda presidential palace, which had been abandoned by police and carabinieri units; it was defended by about 47 members of Allende's security and his supporters armed with assault rifles together with Salvador Allende himself in a tweed jacket and holding an AK-XNUMX (a gift from Cuban leader Fidel Castro).
Around noon there are two hunters Hawker Hunter fired 18 missiles at La Monedo. Realizing the hopelessness of the situation, Allende forced his associates to surrender and went to the presidential office. When the army occupied La Moneda at 14.20:XNUMX p.m., Allende was dead.
Chile Dictatorship 50 Years Photo Gallery...carrying out the body of the assassinated president of Chile
The official version was that Allende committed suicide by firing two bullets into the skull from a submachine gun he held between his knees. But, 13 bullets were taken out of his body, which means that the coup plotters sifted through his dead body.
ALLENDE AND BALMASEDA
People close to Allende did not accept this version. They referred to Allende's words: "I will leave La Moneda only dead, but I will die fighting." I will not commit suicide like Balmaseda."
That name is reminiscent of another coup in Chilean history that hides a similar background. José Manuel Balmaceda Fernández (1840–1891) was the president of Chile: he killed himself after the civil war that broke out when on January 7, 1891, then-Vice President of the Senate Valdo Silva and Speaker of the House of Representatives Ramón Barros Luco boarded one of the ships of the Chilean Navy in Valparaiso... The London "Times" wrote on May 23, 1891 that "it is impossible to deny that the instigators of behind-the-scenes intrigues and financial sponsors of the so-called revolution were also the other English or Anglo-Chilean owners of nitrate deposits". Namely, President Balmaceda implemented a program to eliminate the monopoly of English capitalists in saltpeter mines.
The main goal of the 1973 coup was to remove the USSR-backed socialist president from power and replace him with a person who would return nationalized enterprises to their previous owners (including American corporations) and to steer Chile's political course toward the United States .
On September 24, 1973, "Time" magazine wrote under the title "The Bloody End of the Marxist Dream" that the Chilean military junta succeeded in its basic goal of getting rid of Allende, but the real question is: at what cost.
"As a spiritual inspiration to the left, Allende may prove more powerful dead than alive. It is certain that this decent, godless man will never be forgotten by the poor of Chile who considered him a secular savior. Which means that the next time a popular Marxist leader appears in Chile, his path to power may not be so smooth…”
Chile Dictatorship 50 Years Photo Gallery...
ARISTOCRAT, A MARXIST, MASON
Salvador Guillermo Allende Gosens grew up in a Chilean aristocratic liberal family. At the lyceum in his hometown of Valparaíso, as a young man who until then was involved in sports, loved horses and shooting, he met an old Italian anarchist living in Chile, Juan Demarchi. He let him read Marx's works and they "captured" him.
When Chilean President Gonzalez Videla, under the influence of the United States, signed the Law on the Defense of Democracy in 1948, the Communist Party was banned based on it. Socialists supported it, and Allende left his party in protest and created the People's Socialist Party.
The Chilean communists cooperated with him, although in their communication they expressed unflattering characteristics about him: arrogant, vain, likes to be in the center of attention, demagogue, weak and inconsistent politician, under the influence of stronger personalities inclined to Maoism, a Mason and the grandson of the head of the Masonic lodge, a womanizer , has many bourgeois habits – likes good wine, collects expensive works of art and sews custom suits…
After a short military career, he graduated in medicine in 1932 and a year later participated in the founding of the Socialist Party of Chile. In 1937, he was elected to the National Congress; at the age of 31, he became the Minister of Health and held that position from 1939 to 1942. He was a member of the Chilean Senate for a quarter of a century.
He said that on his grave will be written: "Here lies the candidate for the president of Chile", because he unsuccessfully ran for the head of state three times - in 1952, 1958 and 1964.
UNDER THE SCOPE OF THE 303 COMMITTEE
From the documents on the interference in the Chilean elections, which were declassified in the United States in 2004, it can be seen that as early as 1958, the Americans did not like the support that the socialist Allende was receiving, and that already in April 1962, at the suggestion of Richard Goodwin, assistant to the president John F. Kennedy, and US Ambassador to Chile Charles Colbilly authorized covert CIA operations. They were directed by "Special Group 5412", later renamed "Committee 303".
The "successor" of that Committee 303 was Committee 40, chaired by Henry Kissinger, whose members included Attorney General John Mitchell, CIA Director Richard Helms, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Thomas Moorer, State Department representative Alexis Johnson and Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard. .
It was activated after already in 1968 American analysts began to claim that a candidate of the left had a chance to win the presidential elections in 1970. The committee designed covert CIA operations to thwart the victory of Salvador Allende by propagandizing against him and sponsoring rivals with CIA funds placed anonymously through private companies. , but so that it is known who the US supports, and that they can "convincingly disprove" it. About half of the funds were allocated by the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation (ITT), which Allende described as an outpost of American imperialism.
On the other hand, the Communist Party of Chile received more Soviet aid than any other Communist Party in Latin America. In the 1970 elections, the Chilean communists intended to propose the Nobel laureate poet Pablo Neruda as a presidential candidate - he once called President Videla a puppet of the United States in the Senate. Because of this, he was accused of high treason, deprived of his parliamentary mandate and went underground.
In 1970, the leadership of the Communist Party of Chile abandoned the candidacy of Pablo Neruda and supported Allende, which the Soviets also supported. In the documents of the KGB, Allende is mentioned under the pseudonym "Leader", but not as an agent, but as a confidential informant, writes the Petrograd "Kommersant", referring to the book by the British historian Christopher Andrews "The world went our way: the KGB and the battle for the third world”. It was written on the basis of the documents of the USSR KGB, and they were secretly copied by the former employee of the archive department of the First Main Administration of the KGB, the defector Vasily Mitrokhin.
"CUBA IS NOT ALONE! "
In the September 4, 1970 election, Salvador Allende narrowly won with 1.070.334 voters (36,61 percent). Jorge Alessandri took second place with 1.031.159 votes (35,27 percent). Since no one got more than 50 percent of the vote, the president was elected in the Parliament in which Allende's National Unity had only 80 seats out of 200. The Socialists had to enter into an alliance with the Christian Democrats (75 seats), so they gave them a series of promises - on for example, preserving the market economy, freedom of speech and assembly.
The Americans tried to fight the confirmation of Allende as president on two fronts - by bribing congressmen and promoting a military coup. President Richard Nixon, furious when he learned the results of the Chilean election, reportedly told his National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms that even if there was a 0,1 chance that Allende would not be confirmed as president , every effort should be made to "save" Chile from communism.
Nixon's pressure failed, Allende, as the strongest candidate, was elected by the constitution for the president of Chile. On October 19, 1970, the news magazine "Time" published a portrait of Salvador Allende on the front page and a text emphasizing that Chile had chosen a revolutionary path. The "New York Times" of November 1, 1970, under the headline "Chileans have chosen a revolution," describes Allende with obvious sympathy: "Unlike most communist union leaders and parliamentarians with their rough manners, boring to speak and wearing dubious business suits, Allende there is something about a dandy and a man who pleases the ladies.”
However, the "New York Times" emphasized that analysts in the United States reject the possibility of a military coup directed against Allende. They believe that this will only be possible if President Allende breaks the constitution and follows through on his promises to turn Chile into a socialist country.
Allende, contrary to the wishes of the Americans, nationalized the largest American-owned mining companies, Kennecott, Anaconda and Cerro Mining (although they were already partially nationalized under President Freya - 1969).
Private banks, industrial companies, railways and land holdings of latifundists were also nationalized and partially distributed to peasants.
Of course, the Americans did not miss the fact that "Cuba is not alone!" was written on a graffiti in Santiago. Allende established diplomatic relations with socialist Cuba and became close to Fidel Castro. The latter wrote him six confidential letters between 1971 and 1973, warning him of the conspiracy and, "as a second weapon", gave him the aforementioned fatal AK 47 assault rifle...
US President Richard Nixon, in a conversation with his national security adviser Henry Kissinger, CIA chief Richard Helms and Attorney General John Mitchell, gave the order: "Make the Chilean economy scream!"
Washington cut off support for Santiago, pressured international financial institutions to stop lending to Chile, and placed barriers on copper exports, which until then had brought about 70 percent of foreign exchange earnings to Chile's coffers. A US bank has stopped servicing credit lines for Chilean businessmen.
ANNOUNCEMENTS OF A MILITARY STRIKE
In 1972, there was a collapse of copper prices on the world market, which led to the devaluation of the dollar, on whose exchange rate Chile's export economy depended. Chile went bankrupt in November 1972.
During the visits to Moscow on 6–9 In December 1972, Allende failed to get a new loan from the USSR. Christopher Andrew's book quotes a memorandum written by KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov in 1972: “Latin America is an area of special interest to the United States. The US allowed us to work in Poland and Czechoslovakia. We must remember this. Our policy in Latin America must be cautious."
Since the financial panic that gripped Chile as early as Monday, September 7, the first working day after the election, inflation has been rampant throughout Allende's mandate. In 1970, Chile was ranked second in the world for inflation (after South Vietnam). It amounted to 36,1 percent, and then increased: 1971 - 22 percent, 1972 - 260,5 percent, 1973 - 605,1 percent.
It overshadowed Allende's successes in reducing unemployment and significantly increasing wages, and one of his undeniable merits in educational reform, which opened the way to university for Chilean children.
In October 1972, there was a wave of protest marches, demonstrations of women banging on empty pans, and strikes by workers in copper mines and other strategic points. The Confederation of Truck Owners received money from the American Transport Union and launched a truck drivers' strike on October 9, 1972, which practically paralyzed Chile because this country, due to its "elongated" geography, is vitally dependent on truck transport.
Salvador Allende declared a state of emergency and nationalized the trucks. The government fell and a new one was formed on November 3, 1972: General Carlos Prats became Minister of the Interior; Rear Admiral Ismael Huerta Minister of Public Works; Aviation Brigadier General Claudio Sepulveda Minister of Mining.
In the summer of 1973, the country found itself on the brink of civil war. The radical Left revolutionary movement, perhaps encouraged from the outside, was dissatisfied with Allende's "soft" politics. Right-wing radicals from the organization Patria y libertad (Fatherland and Freedom), also with the financial help of the CIA, in less than a month carried out about 500 terrorist attacks on various strategic facilities, 700 attacks on trucks and buses, and dozens of murders of left-wing activists.
On June 29, 1973, the organization Fatherland and Freedom supported the rebellion of the tank regiment. It was suppressed mainly thanks to General Carlos Prats and the then commander of the ground forces, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. Soon after, Pratts was placed under house arrest on charges of corruption, and Pinochet was promoted to commander of all armed forces and waited for his hour.
Although Kissinger claimed that, based on his "knowledge and belief," the CIA had nothing to do with the coup, recently released CIA documents indicate that on May 2, 1973, the CIA was already convinced, according to the released documents, that that a coup is inevitable and that Salvador Allende "will not last more than 30 days in his position".
It lasted for two and a half months, until Pinochet's attack on La Monde on September 11, 1973.
Chile Dictatorship 50 Years Photo GalleryTHE YEARS OF TERROR OF THE MILITARY JUNTA: General Augusto Pinochet;…
Pinochet, "THE CHICAGO BOYS" AND THE CHILEAN MIRACLE
After the power fell into the hands of Pinochet, the difficult economic situation only worsened. Unemployment reached 30 percent. Hyperinflation flared up (in 1973 and 1974 – 352,8 percent and 504,7 percent, so the Chilean escudo was so devalued that in 1975 it was replaced by returning to the old currency, the peso.
To save the economy, a neoliberal program based on the theories of Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger, founder of the Chicago School of Economics, was chosen. In 1975, the Ministry of Finance was headed by Friedman's disciple Jorge Cauas: he reduced government spending, privatized the public sector (with the exception of copper mining, Chile's main export resource), increased taxes and diversified exports. The results were not immediately visible - in 1975, inflation was 374,7 percent, and GDP fell by 12 percent.
Better results were achieved during 1976, when copper prices began to rise, which provided serious support to the budget. Borrowing channels abroad are also open. After Allende, Chile owed $4 billion to external creditors. Under Pinochet, the foreign debt reached 27 billion dollars.
By the end of the 70s, the economy was growing at a rate of 6 percent per year. Based on that, Chile has been described by many as an "economic miracle", a model country of successful "authoritarian modernization" and a possible "example of transition that should be followed" from the 80's until today.
For example, in Russia, according to "Kommersant", the attitude towards August Pinochet went from extreme hatred in the Soviet era to almost all-forgiving love in the early 90s, when Pinochet was honored with the title of "father of economic reforms" which is the late Soviet and early Russian paved the way for the reformers to transition from a socialist to a market economy.
At that time, Prime Minister Yegor Gajdar implemented the so-called shock therapy mainly according to the prescription of Milton Friedman's Chicago school. In April 1991, four Soviet economists - Vitaly Naishul, Konstantin Kagalovsky, Boris Lvin and Sergey Glazyev - visited Chile to exchange experiences. Then they were personally received by General Pinochet. Later, for example, the "Afghan" presidential candidate, General Aleksandar Lebed, gave a high rating to the Chilean dictator.
And in the first years of Vladimir Putin's rule, writes "Kommersant", there was more than one talk about the fact that it would be good for the new Russian president to use the experience of the Chilean dictator. "Pinochet brought stability to the country - he had very specific goals," said, for example, the founder of the Russian Alfa Bank, Pyotr Aven.
Chile Dictatorship 50 Years Photo Gallery...hunt without mercy for leftists and supporters of Allende
THE PRICE OF THE CHILEAN MIRACLE
Those and similar estimates do not take into account the social cost of Chile's economic rise: in the ten years from 1973 to 1983, the real value of wages in Chile fell by a third compared to the previous decade. Until the early 90s, about 40 percent of Chileans were below the poverty line, with huge income inequality, ranking Chile second in Latin America, behind Brazil.
The price in the blood of the "Chilean miracle" was much higher. Sailors and officers who refused to participate in the coup were shot in the first hours of the rebellion, and their corpses were thrown into the sea.
Already on the evening of September 11, 1973, the country's Constitution was abolished, the National Congress was dissolved, and all left-wing parties were banned. On the day of the coup alone, five to six thousand people were detained who were suspected of being associated with the Allende government or sympathizing with the socialists. The National Stadium in Santiago was already turned into a kind of concentration camp on September 12. About 1961 people reportedly passed through the Dignidad colony (founded in 4,5 by former Nazi corporal Paul Schaefer) and Villa Grimaldi.
Members of the "Death Caravan" special penal unit, headed by General Serđo Areljan, searched for political opponents of the ruling regime in prisons and killed them with particular cruelty. In 1975, the Directorate of the National Intelligence Service (DINA), together with the political police of the dictatorial regimes of Argentina and Brazil, carried out Operation Colombo in order to eliminate 119 prominent opponents of the regime among emigrants.
General Carlos Prats, a close associate of Salvador Allende who fled to Argentina, was killed in 1974 as part of Operation Condor by blowing up a car in the center of Buenos Aires. The poet, singer and political activist Viktor Jara died in one of the camps - he was tortured for four days and then riddled with 44 bullets.
Equally symbolic was the death on September 23 of the 69-year-old Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda – he was suffering from cancer and could not bear the searches of his home and other ill-treatment by the military. In 2023, an international commission investigated whether he was poisoned by bacteria, as his relatives suspected. Clostridium botulinum by being introduced into his body from the outside, like some bacteriological weapon.
The number of victims is difficult to determine in the fog of the military dictatorship. The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, established in 1990 to study the number of victims of the regime after Augusto Pinochet left the presidency, had by 1991 identified 2920 documented cases of massacre. Later those figures were increased. About 1000 missing persons are still being searched for.
THE AUTUMN OF CAUDILLA
At the referendum on October 5, 1988, it was decided whether Pinochet (until then ruled for seven years without an election) should be declared "constitutional president for eight years with the right to re-election for the next eight years". Everyone dissatisfied with the state of the country saw it as a decisive battle. 44,01 percent voted for the extension of August Pinochet's mandate, 55,99 percent voted against.
In the presidential elections on December 14, 1989, the Democrat Patricio Aylvin won, receiving 51,17 percent of the votes, while the former head of the Ministry of Finance (1985-1989), one of the main authors of the new wave of neoliberal reforms according to the recipe of the new team of "boys from Chicago", Hernán Bucci, received 29,40 percent of the vote - although during his new liberal reform, Chile's GDP increased in 1988 by 6,8 percent, and next year by 9,3 percent.
Augusto Pinochet left the presidency on March 11, 1990, but until March 10, 1998, he retained the position of Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces. After leaving this position as well, he became a senator for life with the protection provided by the amnesty law.
When he went to London for treatment, he still received an international arrest warrant issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garçon, who spent two years investigating the murders of 91 Spaniards as part of Pinochet's Operation Condor. Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher defended him; in a letter to the "Times" she asked for the release of a "good friend" of the British who supported them during the Falklands War in 1982.
Members of the British House of Lords first decided in 1998 that Augusto Pinochet did not have immunity from prosecution, and an appeal was filed, so in March 1999 the Lords made a typically British decision: Augusto Pinochet does not have immunity from prosecution for crimes against humanity, but he is it cannot try crimes committed before 1988 when Britain acceded to the International Convention against Torture.
On March 2, 2000, the head of the British Home Office, Jack Straw, decided to allow Augusto Pinochet to fly to Chile after 16 months in captivity.
Chile Dictatorship 50 Years Photo GalleryDISAPPEARANCES, TORTURE, MURDER: Women demand the truth from their sons and husbands in Santiago ten years after the military coup
The appeals court in Chile revoked the lifelong immunity of the former dictator and senator Pinochet, who was subsequently declared either "unable to bear responsibility for his actions due to health reasons" during investigations into various crimes, or, on the contrary, "able to answer for the crimes he committed." committed by the military junta he led".
Augusto Pinochet was hospitalized and died on December 10, 2006. President Michelle Bachelet, herself imprisoned in Pinochet's dungeons in her youth, refrained from making any official statements. There was no state funeral either.
In the 2021 presidential election, Gabriel Borich campaigned under slogans about the need to end General Pinochet's legacy, while his right-wing opponent Jose Antonio Caste claimed: "If Pinochet was alive, he would vote for me." As a result, in the second round, 55,87 percent of voters voted for Gabriel Borich, who seeks to make Chile a constitutionally defined welfare state with a wide range of state obligations to the population. This is reminiscent of Allende's program.
In a survey conducted by CERC-MORI in May 2023, 36 percent of respondents agreed with the thesis "Pinoche freed Chile from Marxism", and 42 percent chose the option "He destroyed democracy". 22 percent were undecided and those who refused to answer. Is it some new trend of amnestying that caudillo, considering that in the 2013 survey, only 18 percent of respondents praised him, and 63 percent condemned him?
A new movie will be released on the Netflix platform on September 15 Count Chilean director Pablo Laren. As the "Guardian" writes, this work "with its gothic monochrome alternative history imagines the murderous dictator General Pinochet as a vampire called El Conde (The Count), who has lived (and therefore sucks all the blood from everyone around him) for 250 years..."
