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1973 Chilean coup d'état

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The Chilean coup d'état of 11 September 1973 was a watershed event in the history of Chile. Historians and partisans alike have wrangled over its implications ever since.

In Chile's 1970 presidential election, in accordance with the constitution, Congress resolved the 3-way split — between Salvador Allende (with 36.3% of the vote), conservative (and former president) Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez (35.8%), and the Christian Democrat Radomiro Tomic (27.9%) — by voting to approve Allende's narrow plurality. Various sectors of Chilean society still opposed his presidency, as did the United States, which placed diplomatic and economic pressure on the government. On September 11, 1973 the Chilean armed forces overthrew Allende, who died during the coup. A junta led by Augusto Pinochet assumed power.

Opposing views

Those who favor the coup d'état argue that it was essential for preserving democracy and prosperity in Chile. They claim that Salvador Allende wanted to establish a Cuba-style dictatorship, which in their view would have destroyed human rights as well as economic prosperity, and therefore they insist that the forcible removal of the elected president was a necessary and justified course of action.

Those who oppose the coup argue that it represented an unprecedented and inexcusable outrage against democracy. They cite several thousand documented cases of torture as well as "disappearances". They often point to the rise of unemployment and the fall of real wages (as well as the growing rich/poor divide) under Pinochet, to support their assertion that the coup damaged Chile's economic prosperity, rather than strengthening it as Pinochet's supporters allege. Finally, they deplore the fact that a democratically elected leader was overthrown despite having a clear mandate from the people, and they argue that the notion of preserving democracy by instituting a dictatorship is ridiculous and hypocritical.

Situation before the coup

Allende becomes president

Main article: 1970 Chilean presidential election

There are generally two views of the voting in 1970. Those who opposed Salvador Allende point out that he received only a plurality of 36.3% of the vote. Those who supported him point instead to the fact that leftist forces clearly won a majority: in addition to Allende, running with the Unidad Popular (UP or Popular Unity) coalition, Christian Democrat Radomiro Tomic won 27.9% with a very similar platform to Allende's. Conservative former president Jorge Alessandri received slightly under 35.8% of the vote.

   Candidate   Votes %
Allende 1,066,372  36.29% 
 Alessandri  1,050,863 35.76%
Tomic 821,350 27.95%
Total    2,943,561    Source: PDBA

According to the constitution, Congress had to decide between the two candidates who had received the most votes. The precedent set on the three previous occasions this situation had arisen since 1932 was for Congress simply to choose the candidate with the largest number of votes; indeed, former president Alessandri had been elected in 1958 with 31.6% of the popular vote.

In this case, however, there was an active campaign against Allende's confirmation by Congress, and his presidency was ratified only after he signed a "Statute of Constitutional Guarantees".

It has been argued than given that less than the majority of the voters voted for him, Allende did not have a clear "mandate" to embark in the wide reforms put forward on his program. But the legality of the election itself is not in dispute.

The Allende years

In office, Allende pursued a policy he called "La vía chilena al socialismo" ("The Chilean Way to Socialism"). This included nationalization of certain large-scale industries (notably copper), reform of the health care system, a continuation of his predecessor Eduardo Frei Montalva's reforms of the educational system, a program of free milk for children, and an attempt at agrarian reform. [1]

The government's efforts to pursue these reforms led to strong opposition by landowners, some middle-class sectors, the rightist National Party, the Roman Catholic Church (which was displeased with the direction of the educational reforms [2]), and eventually the Christian Democrats.

In the first year of Allende's term, the short-term economic results of Minister of the Economics Pedro Vuskovic's expansive monetary policy were unambiguously favorable: 12% industrial growth and an 8.6% increase in GDP, accompanied by major declines in inflation (down from 34.9% to 22.1%) and unemployment (down to 3.8%). However, these results were not sustained and in 1972 the Chilean escudo had runaway inflation of 140%. The combination of inflation and government-mandated price-fixing led to the rise of black markets in rice, beans, sugar, and flour, and a "disappearance" of such basic commodities from supermarket shelves. [3]

Towards the end of 1971, Fidel Castro toured Chile extensively during a four-week visit. [4] This gave credence to the belief of those on the right that "The Chilean Way to Socialism" was nothing more than an effort to put Chile on the same path as Cuba.

October 1972 saw the first of what were to be a wave of confrontational strikes by some of the historically well-off sectors of Chilean society. A strike by owners of trucks was joined by small businesmen, some (mostly professional) unions, and some student groups. Other than the inevitable damage to the economy, the chief effect of the 24-day strike was to bring the head of the army, general Carlos Prats, into the government as Interior Minister. [5]

In the parliamentary elections of March 1973, Allende's Popular Unity coalition actually slightly increased its vote to 43 percent. However, by this point what had started as an informal alliance with the Christian Democrats [6] was anything but: the Christian Democrats now leagued with the right-wing National Party to oppose Allende's government, the two parties calling themselves the Confederación Democrática (CODE). The conflict between the executive and legislature paralyzed initiatives from either side. [7]

A failed coup on June 29, 1973 was followed by a further strike at the end of July, joined this time by the copper miners of El Teniente as well. On August 9, General Prats was made Minister of Defense, but this decision proved so unpopular with the military that on August 22 he was forced to resign not only this position but his role as Commander-in-Chief of the Army; he was replaced in the latter role by Pinochet. [8]

For some months now, the government had been afraid to call upon the national police known as the carabineros, for fear of their lack of loyalty. In August 1973, a constitutional crisis was clearly in the offing: the Supreme Court publicly complained about the government's inability to enforce the law of the land and on August 22 the Chamber of Deputies (with the Christian Democrats now firmly uniting with the National Party) accused Allende's government of unconstitutional acts and called on the military ministers to assure the constitutional order. [9]

In early September 1973, Allende floated the idea of resolving the crisis with a plebiscite.

The failed coup of June 1973

On June 29, 1973, a tank regiment under the command of Colonel Roberto Souper surrounded the presidential palace (la Moneda) in a violent but unsuccessful coup attempt. [10]

The Chamber of Deputies calls on the military

As mentioned above, on August 22, 1973 the Christian Democrats and the National Party members of the Chamber of Deputies called on the military to "put an immediate end" to what they described as "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 coexistence among Chileans."

Although this document was invoked to justify the September 11 coup, it is clear that the agenda of the coup was something other than restoration of the constitutional order.

The document [11] accused the Allende government of seeking "...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," and claimed that it had made "violations of the Constitution" into "a permanent system of conduct." Many of the charges came down to disregarding the separation of powers and arrogating the prerogatives of both the legislature and judiciary within the executive.

Among other particulars, the regime was accused of:

  • ruling by decree, thus thwarting the normal system of adopting legislation.
  • refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its own partisans and "not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravene its objectives."
  • ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller’s Office.
  • various offenses related to the media, including 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 supporters to assemble even when armed, while preventing legal assembly by its opponents.
  • "...supporting more than 1,500 illegal 'takings' of farms..."
  • illegal repression of the El Teniente strike.
  • illegally limiting emigration.

Last, but certainly not least, it was accused of a "breakdown of the Rule of Law by means of the creation and development of government-protected armed groups which... are headed towards a confrontation with the Armed Forces." Allende's efforts to re-organize the military and police (which he clearly had reason to fear in their then-current forms) were characterized as "notorious attempts to use the Armed and Police Forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks."

Allende responds

Two days later (August 24, 1973), Allende responded [12], characterizing Congress's declaration as "destined to damage the country's prestige abroad and create internal confusion," and predicting that "It will facilitate the seditious intention of certain sectors." He pointed out that the declaration had failed to obtain the required two-thirds majority constitutionally required to bring an accusation against the president: essentially, they 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 politicial functions or the representation of the popular will."

Allende argued that he had followed constitutional means in bringing members of the military into 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 or a civil war, using a declaration "full of affirmations that had already been refuted beforehand" and which, in substance and process (handing it directly to the various ministers rather than delivering to the president) violated a dozen articles of the then-current constitution. Further, he argued that the legislature was trying to usurp the executive role.

"Chilean democracy," he wrote, "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."

He went on to argue that the parliamentarians used the expression "Estado de Derecho" ("state of law", but also "state of rightness") to refer to "a situation which presupposes economic and social injustice... which our people have rejected." Strong economic and political means, he said, would be needed to get the country out of its current crisis, and Congress was obstructing these means; having already "paralyzed" the state, they were now seeking to "destroy" it.

He concluded by calling upon "the workers, all democrats and patriots" to join him in defense of the constitution and of the "revolutionary process."

Military coup of 1973

File:Allende-Pinochet.jpg
Pinochet and Allende in 1973

General Pinochet came to power in a military coup d'état on September 11, 1973, in which rebels bombed the Presidential Palace with British-made Hawker Hunter fighter jets. During this coup, Allende died. The nature of his death is unclear: His personal doctor said that he committed suicide with a machine gun given to him by Fidel Castro, while others say that he was murdered by Pinochet's military forces while defending the palace. Historians generally agree that he committed suicide.

Initially there were four leaders of the junta: besides Pinochet from the Infantry, there were Gustavo Leigh Guzmán of the Air Force, José Toribio Merino Castro of the Navy, and César Mendoza Durán of the Gendarmerie. Coup leaders named Pinochet head of the victorious junta's governing council.

Pinochet moved to crush Chile's left-wing opposition. On September 13, the junta dissolved the Congress and outlawed the parties that had been part of Popular Unity. The National Stadium was temporarily converted into an immense prison. Approximately 130,000 individuals were arrested in a three-year period, with the number of "disappeared" reaching into the thousands within the first few months.

In his memoirs, Pinochet affirms that he was the leading plotter of the coup and used his position as Commander of the Army to coordinate a far-reaching scheme that was coordinated with the other branches of the military. In recent years, however, high military officials from the time have said that Pinochet only reluctantly got involved in the coup a few days before it was scheduled to occur.

Once the Junta was in power, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the Junta (originally agreed to be rotated among all members), and he was proclaimed the President of the Republic.

US role in 1973 coup

File:Pinochetjunta.jpg
Pinochet (sitting) as Chairman of the Junta following the coup (1973)

The scope of the U.S. role in the coup itself has not been established. The CIA was notified by contacts of the impending Pinochet coup two days in advance, but contends it "played no direct role in" the coup. [13]. After Pinochet assumed power, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told U.S. President Richard Nixon that the U.S. "didn't do it" (referring to the coup itself) but had "created the conditions as great as possible." [14]

A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000 titled "CIA Activities in Chile" revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende and that it made many of Pinochet's officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses [15]. The CIA's publicly announced policies on paid informants have since been modified to exclude those involved in such abuses, but at the time they were evaluated on a case-by-case basis and measured with the value of the information they provided.

Documents declassified during the Clinton administration show that the United States government and the CIA had sought the overthrow of Allende in 1970, immediately after he took office ("Project FUBELT"), but claims of their direct involvement in the actual coup are neither proven nor contradicted by publicly available documentary evidence; many potentially relevant documents still remain classified. Regarding Pinochet's rise to power, the CIA undertook a comprehensive analysis of its records and individual memoirs as well as conducting interviews with former agents, and concluded in a report issued in 2000 that the CIA "did not assist Pinochet to assume the Presidency". [16]

The documents produced by various U.S. agencies were provided by the US State Department in October 1999. The collection of 1,100 documents dealt with the years leading up to the military coup. One of these documents establishes that U.S. military aid was raised dramatically between the coming to power of Allende in 1970, when it amounted to USD $800,000 annually, to $10.9 million in 1972. The U.S. government supported Pinochet's government after he came to power.

Documents declassified in 2000 show that after the 1970 election the CIA had supported an attempt to kidnap Chile's army chief of staff, in the hope of preventing the congressional confirmation of Allende as president. U.S. President Richard Nixon expressed his determination to "do everything we can to bring Allende down". The CIA provided funding and propaganda support to Chilean opponents of Allende in the 1964 and 1970 elections, and during the Allende administration.

On September 10, 2001, a suit was filed by the family of General René Schneider, once head of the Chilean general staff, accusing former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger of arranging Schneider's 1970 murder because he would have opposed a military coup [17]. However, CIA documents indicate that while the CIA had sought his kidnapping, his killing, which was committed by an military group that had been in contact with the CIA, was never intended.

In a 2003 interview on the U.S. Black Entertainment Television network, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked about why the United States saw itself as the "moral superior" in the Iraq conflict, citing the Chilean coup as an example of U.S. intervention that went against the wishes of the local population. Powell responded: "With respect to your earlier comments about Chile in the 1970s and what happened with Mr. Allende, it is not a part of American history that we're proud of." Chilean newspapers hailed the news as the first time the U.S. government had conceded a role in the affair.

Articles about Allende/Pinochet coup d'état in Chile

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