An
authoritarian
Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political ''status quo'', and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and ...
military dictatorship
A military dictatorship, or a military regime, is a type of dictatorship in which Power (social and political), power is held by one or more military officers. Military dictatorships are led by either a single military dictator, known as a Polit ...
ruled
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...
for seventeen years, between 11 September 1973 and 11 March 1990. The dictatorship was established after the
democratically elected socialist government of
Salvador Allende was overthrown in a
coup d'état
A coup d'état (; ; ), or simply a coup
, is typically an illegal and overt attempt by a military organization or other government elites to unseat an incumbent leadership. A self-coup is said to take place when a leader, having come to powe ...
backed by the
United States
The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...
on 11 September 1973. During this time, the country was ruled by a
military junta
A military junta () is a system of government led by a committee of military leaders. The term ''Junta (governing body), junta'' means "meeting" or "committee" and originated in the Junta (Peninsular War), national and local junta organized by t ...
headed by General
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean military officer and politician who was the dictator of Military dictatorship of Chile, Chile from 1973 to 1990. From 1973 to 1981, he was the leader ...
. The military used the breakdown of democracy and the economic crisis that took place during Allende's presidency to justify its seizure of power. The dictatorship presented its mission as a "national reconstruction". The coup was the result of multiple forces, including pressure from conservative groups, certain political parties, union strikes and other domestic unrest, as well as international factors.
The regime was characterized by the systematic suppression of political parties and the persecution of dissidents to an extent unprecedented in the
history of Chile. Overall, the regime left over 3,000 dead or missing, tortured tens of thousands of prisoners,
and drove an estimated 200,000 Chileans into exile. The dictatorship's effects on Chilean political and economic life continue to be felt. Two years after its ascension,
neoliberal
Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for free-market capitalism, which became dominant in policy-making from the late 20th century onward. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is most often used pej ...
economic reforms were implemented in sharp contrast to Allende's leftist policies. The government was advised by the
Chicago Boys, a team of free-market economists educated in the United States. Later, in 1980, the regime replaced the
1925 Constitution with a
new constitution in a
controversial referendum. This established a series of provisions that would eventually lead to the
1988 Chilean national plebiscite
A referendum on whether Augusto Pinochet, the head of a Military dictatorship of Chile (1973–90), military dictatorship, should become president for eight years under resumed civilian rule was held in Chile on 5 October 1988. The "No" side won ...
on October 5 of that year.
In that plebiscite, 55% of voters rejected the proposal of extending Pinochet's presidency for another eight years. Consequently, democratic
presidential and parliamentary elections were held the following year. The military dictatorship ended in 1990 with the election of
Christian Democrat candidate
Patricio Aylwin
Patricio Aylwin Azócar (; 26 November 1918 – 19 April 2016) was a Chilean politician from the Christian Democratic Party of Chile, Christian Democratic Party, lawyer, author, professor and former senator. He was the 30th president of Chil ...
. However, the military remained out of civilian control for several years after the junta itself had lost power.
Rise to power
There has been a large amount of debate over the extent of US government involvement in destabilising the Allende government. Recently declassified documents show evidence of communication between the Chilean military and United States officials, suggesting covert US involvement in assisting the military's rise to power indirectly. According to the historian Sebastián Hurtado, there isn't documentary evidence to support that the United States Government acted actively in the coordination and execution of the September 11 coup actions by the Chilean Armed Forces, however, Richard Nixon's interest from the beginning was that the Allende government would not be consolidated and acted actively and decisively in the campaign to destabilize his government.
Some key figures in the
Nixon administration, such as
Henry Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 56th United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and the 7th National Security Advisor (United States), natio ...
, used the
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
(CIA) to mount a major destabilization campaign.
As the CIA revealed in 2000, "In the 1960s and the early 1970s, as part of the US Government policy to try to influence events in Chile, the CIA undertook specific covert action projects in Chile ... to discredit Marxist-leaning political leaders, especially Dr. Salvador Allende, and to strengthen and encourage their civilian and military opponents to prevent them from assuming power". The CIA worked with right-wing Chilean politicians, military personnel, and journalists to undermine socialism in Chile. One reason for this was financial, as many US businesses had investments in Chile, and Allende's socialist policies included the nationalization of Chile's major industries. Another reason was the propagandized fear of the spread of communism, which was particularly important in the context of the Cold War. The rationale was that US feared that Allende would promote the spreading of Soviet influence in their 'backyard'. As early as 1963, the U.S. via the CIA and U.S. multinationals such as ITT intervened in Chilean politics using a variety of tactics and millions of dollars to interfere with elections, ultimately helping plan the coup against Allende.
On 15 April 1973, workers from the
El Teniente mining camp had ceased working, demanding higher wages. The strike lasted 76 days and cost the government severely in lost revenues. One of the strikers, Luis Bravo Morales, was shot dead in
Rancagua city. On June 29, the Blindados No. 2 tank regiment under the command of Colonel
Roberto Souper, attacked
La Moneda, Chile's presidential palace. Instigated by the
neo-fascist organization
Fatherland and Liberty, the armoured cavalry soldiers hoped other units would be inspired to join them. Instead, armed units led by generals
Carlos Prats and
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean military officer and politician who was the dictator of Military dictatorship of Chile, Chile from 1973 to 1990. From 1973 to 1981, he was the leader ...
quickly put down the coup attempt. In late July, 40,000 truckers, squeezed by price controls and rising costs, tied up transportation in a nationwide strike that lasted 37 days, costing the government US$6 million a day. Two weeks before the coup, public dissatisfaction with rising prices and food shortages led to protests like the one at the Plaza de la Constitución which had been dispersed with tear gas. Allende also clashed with Chile's largest circulation newspaper, the CIA-funded ''
El Mercurio''. The newspaper was investigated for tax evasion and its director arrested and interviewed. The Allende government found it impossible to control inflation, which grew to more than 300 percent by September, further dividing Chileans over the Allende government and its policies.
Upper- and middle-class right-wing women also played a role in the opposition against the Allende government. They co-ordinated two prominent opposition groups called ''
El Poder Feminino'' ("''female power''"), and ''Solidaridad, Orden y Libertad'' ("''solidarity, order, and freedom''"). The women carried out the �
March of the Empty Pots and Pans�� in December 1971.
On August 22, 1973, the
Chamber of Deputies
The chamber of deputies is the lower house in many bicameral legislatures and the sole house in some unicameral legislatures.
Description
Historically, French Chamber of Deputies was the lower house of the French Parliament during the Bourb ...
passed, by a vote of 81 to 47, a resolution calling for President Allende to respect the constitution. The measure failed to obtain the two-thirds majority in the
Senate
A senate is a deliberative assembly, often the upper house or chamber of a bicameral legislature. The name comes from the ancient Roman Senate (Latin: ''Senatus''), so-called as an assembly of the senior (Latin: ''senex'' meaning "the el ...
constitutionally required to convict the president of abuse of power, but the resolution still represented a challenge to Allende's legitimacy. The military viewed themselves as guarantors of the constitution and elements within the armed forces considered that Allende had lost legitimacy as Chile's leader. As a result, reacting to demand for intervention from opponents of the government, the military began planning for a military coup which would ultimately take place on September 11, 1973. Contrary to popular belief, Pinochet was not the mastermind behind the coup. It was, in fact, naval officers who first decided that military intervention was necessary to remove President Allende from power. Army generals were unsure of Pinochet's allegiances, as he had given no prior indication of disloyalty to Allende, and thus was only informed of these plans on the evening of 8 September, just three days before the coup took place. On 11 September 1973, the military launched a coup, with troops surrounding La Moneda Palace. Allende died that day of
suspected suicide.
The military installed themselves in power as a
Military Government Junta, composed of the heads of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Carabineros (police). Once the Junta was in power, General
Augusto Pinochet
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean military officer and politician who was the dictator of Military dictatorship of Chile, Chile from 1973 to 1990. From 1973 to 1981, he was the leader ...
soon consolidated his control over the government. Since he was the commander-in-chief of the oldest branch of the military forces (the Army), he was made the titular head of the junta, and soon after
President of Chile
The president of Chile (), officially the president of the Republic of Chile (), is the head of state and head of government of the Republic of Chile. The president is responsible for both Government of Chile, government administration and s ...
. Once the junta had taken over, the United States immediately recognized the new regime and helped it consolidate power.
Dictatorship's crimes against humanity
Suppression of political activity
On September 13, the junta dissolved the Congress and outlawed or suspended all political activities in addition to suspending the
1925 constitution. All political activity was declared "in recess". The Government Junta immediately banned the socialist, Marxist and other
leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy either as a whole or of certain social hierarchies. Left-wing politi ...
parties that had constituted former President Allende's
Popular Unity coalition and began a systemic campaign of imprisonment, torture, harassment and/or murder against the perceived opposition.
Eduardo Frei, Allende's predecessor as president, initially supported the coup along with his Christian Democratic colleagues. However, they later assumed the role of a
loyal opposition to the military rulers. During 1976–77, this repression even reached independent and Christian Democrat labour leaders who had supported the coup, several were exiled. Christian Democrats like
Radomiro Tomic were jailed or forced into exile. Retired military personnel were named rectors of universities and they carried out vast purges of suspected left-wing sympathisers. With such strong repression, the Catholic church became the only public voice allowed within Chile. By 1974, the Commission of Peace had established a large network to provide information to numerous organisations regarding human rights abuses in Chile. As a result of this,
Manuel Contreras, Director of DINA, threatened Cardinal Silva Henriquez that his safety could be at risk if the Church continued to interfere which in turn resulted in death threats and intimidation from agents of the regime.
A key provision of the new constitution of 1980 aimed at eliminating leftist factions, “outlawed the propagation of doctrines that attack the family or put forward a concept of society based on the class struggle”. Pinochet maintained strict command over the armed forces and could depend on them to help him censor the media, arrest opposition leaders and repress demonstrations. This was accompanied by a complete shutting down of civil society with curfews, prohibition of public assembly, press blackouts, draconian censorship and university purges.
Human rights violations
The military rule was characterized by systematic suppression of all political dissidence. Scholars later described this as a "
politicide
Political cleansing of a population is the elimination of categories of people in specific areas for political reasons. The means may vary and include forced migration, ethnic cleansing and population transfers.
Genocide Convention
Under the G ...
" (or "political genocide"). Steve J. Stern spoke of a politicide to describe "a systematic project to destroy an entire way of doing and understanding politics and governance".
Estimates of figures for victims of state violence vary.
Rudolph Rummel cited early figures of up to 30,000 people killed. However, these high estimates have not held to later scrutiny.
In 1996, human rights activists announced they had presented another 899 cases of people who had disappeared or been killed during the dictatorship, taking the total of known victims to 3,197, of whom 2,095 were reported killed and 1,102 missing. Following the return to democracy with the Concertacion government, the
Rettig Commission, a multipartisan effort by the Aylwin administration to discover the truth about the human-rights violations, listed a number of torture and detention centers (such as
Colonia Dignidad,
the ship ''Esmeralda'' or
Víctor Jara Stadium), and found that at least 3,200 people were killed or disappeared by the regime. Later, the 2004
Valech Report confirmed the figure of 3,200 deaths but reduced the estimated number of disappearances. It tells of some 28,000 arrests in which the majority of those detained were incarcerated and in a great many cases tortured. In 2011, the Chilean government officially recognized 36,948 survivors of torture and political imprisonment, as well as 3,095 people killed or disappeared at the hands of the military government.
The worst violence occurred within the first three months of the coup, with the number of suspected leftists killed or "
disappeared" (''desaparecidos'') reaching several thousand. In the days immediately following the coup, the Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs informed
Henry Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 56th United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and the 7th National Security Advisor (United States), natio ...
that the
National Stadium was being used to hold 5,000 prisoners. Between the day of the coup and November 1973, as many as 40,000 political prisoners were held there
and as late as 1975, the CIA was still reporting that up to 3,811 were imprisoned there. 1,850 of them were killed, another 1,300 are still missing to this day.
Some of the most famous cases of ''desaparecidos'' are
Charles Horman, a U.S. citizen who was killed during the coup itself, Chilean songwriter
Víctor Jara
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez (; 28 September 1932 – 16 September 1973) was a Chilean teacher, theatre director, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and PCCh, Communist political activist. He developed Chilean theater by directing a bro ...
, and the October 1973
Caravan of Death (''Caravana de la Muerte'') wherein at least 70 people were killed.
Leftist guerrilla groups and their sympathizers were also hit hard during the military regime. The MIR commander,
Andrés Pascal Allende, has stated that the Marxist guerrillas lost 1,500–2,000 fighters that were either killed or had simply disappeared. Among the people that were killed or had disappeared during the military regime were at least 663 MIR guerrillas.
The Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front stated that 49 FPMR guerrillas were killed, and hundreds tortured.
According to the Latin American Institute on Mental Health and Human Rights, 200,000 people were affected by "extreme trauma"; this figure includes individuals executed, tortured, forcibly exiled, or having their immediate relatives put under detention. 316 women have reported to having been subjected to rape by soldiers and agents of the dictatorship, however the number is believed to be much larger due to the preference of many women to avoid talking about this. Twenty pregnant women have declared to have suffered abortion due to torture. In the words of
Alejandra Matus detained women were doubly punished, first for being "leftists" and second for not conforming to their ideal of women usually being called "perra" (lit. "bitch").

In addition to the violence experienced within Chile, many people fled from the regime, while others have been forcibly exiled, with some 30,000 Chileans being deported from the country.
[Chile en el umbral de los noventa: quince años que condicionan el futuro, Jaime Gazmuri & Felipe Agüero, p. 121, Planeta, 1988] particularly to
Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
, however,
Operation Condor, which linked South American dictatorships together against political opponents, meant that even these exiles could be subject to violence. Some 20,000–40,000 Chilean exiles were holders of passports stamped with the letter "L" (which stood for ''lista nacional''), identifying them as ''persona non grata'' and had to seek permission before entering the country. According to a study in Latin American Perspectives,
at least 200,000 Chileans (about 2% of Chile's 1973 population) were forced into exile. Additionally, hundreds of thousands left the country in the wake of the economic crises that followed the military coup during the 1970s and 1980s.
In 2003, an article published by the
International Committee of the Fourth International claimed that "Of a population of barely 11 million, more than 4,000 were executed or 'disappeared', hundreds of thousands were detained and tortured, and almost a million fled the country".
There were also internal exiles who due to a lack of resources could not escape abroad.
In the 1980s a few left-wing sympathisers hid in
Puerto Gala and
Puerto Gaviota, Patagonian fishing communities with a reputation of lawlessness. There they were joined by delinquents who feared torture or death by the authorities.
[
Several scholars including Paul Zwier,] Peter Winn and human rights organizations have characterized the dictatorship as a police state
A police state describes a state whose government institutions exercise an extreme level of control over civil society and liberties. There is typically little or no distinction between the law and the exercise of political power by the exec ...
exhibiting "repression of public liberties, the elimination of political exchange, limiting freedom of speech, abolishing the right to strike, freezing wages".
Fake combats
Starting in the late 1970s the regime began to use a tactic of faking combats, usually known by its Spanish name: "falsos enfrentamientos". This meant that dissidents who were murdered outright had their deaths reported in media as if they had occurred in a mutual exchange of gunfire. This was done with support of journalists who "reported" the supposed events; in some cases, the fake combats were also staged. The faked combat tactic ameliorated criticism of the regime implicitly putting culpability on the victim. It is thought that the killing of the MIR
''Mir'' (, ; ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russia, Russian Federation. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to ...
leader Miguel Enríquez in 1974 could be an early case of a faked combat. The faked combats reinforced the dictatorship narrative on the existence of an "internal war" which it used to justify its existence. A particular fake combat event, lasting from September 8 to 9 1983, occurred when forces of the CNI lobbed grenades into a house, detonating the structure and killing the two men and a woman who were in the building. The agents would later state, with help from the Chilean press, that the people in the house had fired on them previously from their cars and had escaped to the house. The official story became that the three suspects had caused the explosion themselves by trying to burn and destroy incriminating evidence. Such actions had the effect of justifying the existence of heavily armed forces in Chile and the dictatorship's conduct against such "violent" offenders.
Politics and power within the dictatorship
Pinochet–Leigh conflict
During the 1970s, junta members Gustavo Leigh and Augusto Pinochet clashed on several occasions, dating back from the beginning of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état () was a military overthrow of the democratic socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity (Chile), Popular Unity coalition government. Allende, who has been described as the first Marxist ...
. Leigh criticized Pinochet for having joined the coup very late and then subsequently pretending to keep all power for himself. In December 1974, Leigh opposed the proposal to name Pinochet president of Chile. Leigh recalls from that moment that, "Pinochet was furious: he hit the board, broke the glass, injured his hand a little and bled. Then, Merino and Mendoza told me I should sign, because if not the junta would split. I signed." Leigh's primary concern was Pinochet's consolidation of the legislative and executive branches of government under the new government, in particular, Pinochet's decision to enact a plebiscite without formally alerting the other junta members.[Ensalaco, Mark. 2000. Chile Under Pinochet : Recovering the Truth. Pennsylvania Studies in Human Rights. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.] Leigh, although a fervent supporter of the regime and hater of Marxist ideology, had already taken steps to separate the executive and legislative branches. Pinochet was said to have been angered by Leigh's continued founding of a structure to divide the executive and legislative branches, eventually leading to Pinochet consolidating his power and Leigh being removed from the regime. Leigh tried to fight his dismissal from the military and government junta but on July 24, 1978, his office was blocked by paratroopers. In accordance with legal rights established by the junta government, its members could not be dismissed without evidence of impairment, hence Pinochet and his ally junta members had declared Leigh to be unfit. Airforce General Fernando Matthei replaced Leigh as junta member.[25 Chilean Soldiers Arrested in Burning of US Resident]
/ref>
Another dictatorship member critical of Pinochet, Arturo Yovane, was removed from his post as minister of mining in 1974 and appointed ambassador at the new Chilean embassy in Tehran
Tehran (; , ''Tehrân'') is the capital and largest city of Iran. It is the capital of Tehran province, and the administrative center for Tehran County and its Central District (Tehran County), Central District. With a population of around 9. ...
.
Civilian collaborators
Over time the dictatorship incorporated civilians into the government. Many of the Chicago boys joined the government, and Pinochet was largely sympathetic to them. This sympathy, scholar Peter Winn explains, was indebted to the fact that the Chicago boys were technocrats and thus fitted Pinochet's self-image of being "above politics".[Winn, Peter (ed.). ''Victims of the Chilean miracle'', pp. 26–27.] Pinochet was impressed by their assertiveness as well as by their links to the financial world of the United States.[
Another group of civilians that collaborated extensively with the regime were the Gremialists, whose movement started in 1966 in the ]Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (UC Chile; ) is a traditional private university based in Santiago, Chile. It is one of the thirteen Catholic universities existing in Chilean university system and one of the two pontifical univ ...
. The founder of the Gremialist movement, lawyer Jaime Guzmán, never assumed any official position in the military dictatorship but he remained one of the closest collaborators with Pinochet, playing an important ideological role. He participated in the design of important speeches of Pinochet and provided frequent political and doctrinal advice and consultancy. Guzmán declared to have a "negative opinion" of National Intelligence Directorate (DINA) director Manuel Contreras. According to him this lead him into various "inconviniencies and difficulties". From its side DINA identified Guzmán as an intelligent and manipulative actor in a secret 1976 memorandum. The same document posits Guzmán manipulated Pinochet and sought ultimately to displace him from power, to lead himself a government in collaboration with Jorge Alessandri.[ DINA spied on Guzmán and kept watch on his everyday activities.][ According to Oscar Contardo Guzmán was identified as gay within a portfolio held by the DINA.
According to scholar Carlos Huneeus, the Gremialists and the Chicago Boys shared a long-term power strategy and were linked to each other in many ways.][
In Chile it has been very hard for the outside world to fully understand the role that everyday civilians played in keeping Pinochet's government afloat, partly because there has been scant research into the topic and partly because those who did help the regime from 1973 to 1990 have been unwilling to explore their own part. One of the exemptions is a Univision interview with Osvaldo Romo Mena, a civilian torturer in 1995 recounting his actions. Osvaldo Romo died while incarcerated for the murder of three political opponents. For the most part, civilian collaborators with Pinochet have not broken the code of silence held by the military of the 1970s to 1990s.
]
Constitution of 1980
Establishing a new constitution was a core issue for the dictatorship since it provided a mean of legitimization.[ For this purpose the junta selected notable civilians willing to join the Ortúzar Commission which prepared a preliminary draft that was subsequently reviewed by the ]Council of State
A council of state is a governmental body in a country, or a subdivision of a country, with a function that varies by jurisdiction. It may be the formal name for the cabinet or it may refer to a non-executive advisory body associated with a head ...
and the Government Junta. Dissidents to the dictatorship were not represented in the commission.
Chile's new constitution
A constitution is the aggregate of fundamental principles or established precedents that constitute the legal basis of a polity, organization or other type of entity, and commonly determines how that entity is to be governed.
When these pri ...
was approved in a national plebiscite
A referendum, plebiscite, or ballot measure is a direct vote by the electorate (rather than their representatives) on a proposal, law, or political issue. A referendum may be either binding (resulting in the adoption of a new policy) or adv ...
held on September 11, 1980. The constitution was approved by 67% of voters under a process which has been described as "highly irregular and undemocratic",[Hudson, Rex A., ed. "Chile: A Country Study." GPO for the Library of Congress. 1995. March 20, 2005 ] and was neither free nor fair. Critics of the 1980 Constitution argue that the constitution was created not to build a democracy, but to consolidate power within the central government while limiting the amount of sovereignty allowed to the people with little political presence. The constitution came into force on March 11, 1981.
Removal of César Mendoza
In 1985, due to the Caso Degollados scandal ("case of the slit throats"), General César Mendoza resigned and was replaced by General Rodolfo Stange.
Youth policy
One of the first measures of the dictatorship was to set up a Secretaría Nacional de la Juventud (SNJ, National Youth Office). This was done on October 28, 1973, even before the Declaration of Principles of the junta made in March 1974. This was a way of mobilizing sympathetic elements of the civil society in support for the dictatorship. SNJ was created by advice of Jaime Guzmán, being an example of the dictatorship adopting a Gremialist thought. Some right-wing student union leaders like Andrés Allamand were skeptical to these attempts as they were moulded from above and gathered disparate figures such as Miguel Kast, Antonio Vodanovic and Jaime Guzmán. Allamand and other young right-wingers also resented the dominance of the gremialist in SNJ, considering it a closed gremialist club.
From 1975 to 1980 the SNJ arranged a series of ritual
A ritual is a repeated, structured sequence of actions or behaviors that alters the internal or external state of an individual, group, or environment, regardless of conscious understanding, emotional context, or symbolic meaning. Traditionally ...
ized rallies in Cerro Chacarillas reminiscent of Francoist Spain
Francoist Spain (), also known as the Francoist dictatorship (), or Nationalist Spain () was the period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death i ...
. The policy towards the sympathetic youth contrasted with the murder, surveillance and forced disappearances the dissident youth faced from the regime. Most of the documents of the SNJ were reportedly destroyed by the dictatorship in 1988.[
]
Women during the dictatorship
In 1962 under the presidency of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva, the women's section expanded pre-existing neighbourhood 'mothers' centres' (which initially helped women to purchase their own sewing machines) to help garner support for their social reforms amongst the poorer sections. By the end of the 1960s, there were 8,000 centres involving 400,000 members. Under Allende they were reorganised under the rubric National Confederation of Mothers' Centres (Confederación Nacional de Centros de Madres, COCEMA) and leadership of his wife, Hortensia Bussi, to encourage community initiatives and implement their policies directed at women.
Opposition
Attacks on military personnel
One of the first armed groups to oppose the dictatorship was the MIR
''Mir'' (, ; ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russia, Russian Federation. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to ...
, Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria. Immediately after the coup MIR-aligned elements in Neltume, southern Chile, unsuccessfully assaulted the local Carabineros station. Subsequently, MIR conducted several operations against the Pinochet government until the late 1980s. MIR assassinated the head of the Army Intelligence school, Lieutenant Roger Vergara, with machine gun fire in the late 1970s. The MIR also executed an attack on the base of the Chilean Secret Police (Central Nacional de Informaciones, CNI), as well as several attempts on the lives of carabineros officials and a judge of the Supreme Court in Chile. Throughout the beginning years of the dictatorship the MIR was low-profile, but in August 1981 the MIR successfully killed the military leader of Santiago, General Carol Urzua Ibanez. Attacks on Chilean military official increased in the early 1980s, with the MIR killing several security forces personnel on a variety of occasions through extensive use of planted bombs in police stations or machine gun use.
Representing a major shift in attitudes, the CPCh founded the FPMR on 14 December 1983, to engage in a violent armed struggle against the junta. Most notably the organisation attempted to assassinate Pinochet on the 7 September 1986 under 'Operation XX Century' but were unsuccessful. The group also assassinated the author of the 1980 Constitution, Jaime Guzmán on 1 April 1991. They continued to operate throughout the 1990s, being designated as a terrorist organisation the U.S. Department of State and MI6
The Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), commonly known as MI6 ( Military Intelligence, Section 6), is the foreign intelligence service of the United Kingdom, tasked mainly with the covert overseas collection and analysis of human intelligenc ...
, until supposedly ceasing to operate in 1999.
Church opposition to human rights violations
The Catholic Church, which at first expressed its gratitude to the armed forces for saving the country from the horrors of a "Marxist dictatorship" became, under the leadership of Cardinal Raúl Silva Henríquez
Raúl Silva Henríquez Salesians of Don Bosco, SDB (27 September 1907 – 9 April 1999) was a Chilean prelate of the Catholic Church, a Cardinal (Catholic Church), cardinal from 1962. He served as Archbishop of Roman Catholic Archdiocese of San ...
, the most outspoken critic of the regime's social and economic policies.
The Catholic Church was symbolically and institutionally powerful within Chile. Domestically, it was the second most powerful institution, behind Pinochet's government. While the Church remained politically neutral, its opposition to the regime came in the form of human rights advocacy and through the social movements that it gave a platform to. It achieved this through the establishment of the Cooperative Committee for Peace in Chile (COPACHI) and Vicariate of Solidarity. COPACHI was founded by Cardinal Raul Silve Henriquez, Archbishop of Santiago, as an immediate response to the repression of the Pinochet regime. It was apolitical in a spirit of collaboration rather than conflict with the government. Pinochet developed suspicion of COPACHI, leading to its dissolution in late 1975. In response Silva founded the Vicariate in its place. Historian Hugo Fruhling's work highlights the multifaceted nature of Vicaria. Through developments and education programs in the shantytown area of Santiago, the Vicaria had mobilised around 44,000 people to join campaigns by 1979. The Church published a newsletter called ''Solidarity'' published in Chile and abroad and supplied the public with information through radio stations. Vicaria pursued a legal strategy of defending human rights, not a political strategy to re-democratise Chile.
Jornadas de Protesta Nacional
The Days of National Protest ( Jornadas de Protesta Nacional) were days of civil demonstrations that periodically took place in Chile in the 1980s against the military junta. They were characterized by street demonstrations in the downtown avenues of the city in the mornings, strikes during the day, and barricades and clashes in the periphery of the city throughout the night. The protests were faced with increased government repression from 1984, with the biggest and last protest summoned in July 1986. The protests changed the mentality of many Chileans, strengthening opposition organizations and movements in the 1988 plebiscite.
Economy and free market reforms
After the military took over the government in 1973, a period of dramatic economic changes began. The Chilean economy was still faltering in the months following the coup. As the military junta itself was not particularly skilled in remedying the persistent economic difficulties, it appointed a group of Chilean economists who had been educated in the United States at the University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, or UChi) is a Private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Its main campus is in the Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood on Chicago's South Side, Chic ...
. Given financial and ideological support from Pinochet, the U.S., and international financial institutions, the Chicago Boys advocated ''laissez-faire
''Laissez-faire'' ( , from , ) is a type of economic system in which transactions between private groups of people are free from any form of economic interventionism (such as subsidies or regulations). As a system of thought, ''laissez-faire'' ...
'', free-market
In economics, a free market is an economic system in which the prices of goods and services are determined by supply and demand expressed by sellers and buyers. Such markets, as modeled, operate without the intervention of government or any ot ...
, neoliberal
Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for free-market capitalism, which became dominant in policy-making from the late 20th century onward. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is most often used pej ...
, and fiscally conservative policies, in stark contrast to the extensive nationalization
Nationalization (nationalisation in British English)
is the process of transforming privately owned assets into public assets by bringing them under the public ownership of a national government or state. Nationalization contrasts with p ...
and centrally planned economic programs supported by Allende. Chile was drastically transformed from an economy isolated from the rest of the world, with strong government intervention, into a liberalized, world-integrated economy, where market forces were left free to guide most of the economy's decisions.
From an economic point of view, the era can be divided into two periods. The first, from 1975 to 1982, corresponds to the period when most of the reforms were implemented. The period ended with the international debt crisis and the collapse of the Chilean economy. At that point, unemployment was extremely high, above 20 percent, and a large proportion of the banking sector had become bankrupt. The following period was characterized by new reforms and economic recovery. Some economists argue that the recovery was due to an about-face turnaround of Pinochet's free market policy, since he nationalized many of the same industries that were nationalized under Allende and fired the Chicago Boys from their government posts.
1975–81
Chile's main industry, copper mining, remained in government hands, with the 1980 Constitution declaring them "inalienable",[Spanish pdf.]
Italian pdf.
but new mineral deposits were open to private investment.[ Capitalist involvement was increased, the Chilean pension system and healthcare were privatized, and Superior Education was also placed in private hands. One of the junta's economic moves was fixing the exchange rate in the early 1980s, leading to a boom in imports and a collapse of domestic industrial production; this together with a world recession caused a serious economic crisis in 1982, where GDP plummeted by 14%, and unemployment reached 33%. At the same time, a series of massive protests were organized, trying to cause the fall of the regime, which were efficiently repressed.
]
1982–83
In 1982-1983 Chile witnessed a severe economic crisis with a surge in unemployment and a meltdown of the financial sector. 16 out of 50 financial institutions faced bankruptcy.[Karin Fischer: "The Influence of Neoliberals in Chile before, during, and after Pinochet." In: P. Mirowski, D. Plehwe (Hrsg.): ''The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective'', Harvard University Press, Cambridge/London 2009, S. 305–346, hier S. 329.] In 1982 the two biggest banks were nationalized to prevent an even worse credit crunch
A credit crunch (a credit squeeze, credit tightening or credit crisis) is a sudden reduction in the general availability of loans (or credit) or a sudden tightening of the conditions required to obtain a loan from banks. A credit crunch generally ...
. In 1983 another five banks were nationalized and two banks had to be put under government supervision. The central bank took over foreign debts. Critics ridiculed the economic policy of the Chicago Boys as "Chicago way to socialism".
1984–90
After the economic crisis, Hernán Büchi became Minister of Finance from 1985 to 1989, introducing a return to a free market economic policy. He allowed the peso to float and reinstated restrictions on the movement of capital in and out of the country. He deleted some bank regulation
Banking regulation and supervision refers to a form of financial regulation which subjects banks to certain requirements, restrictions and guidelines, enforced by a financial regulatory authority generally referred to as banking supervisor, wit ...
s and simplified and reduced the corporate tax. Chile went ahead with privatizations, including public utilities and the re-privatization of companies that had briefly returned to government control during the 1982–83 crisis. From 1984 to 1990, Chile's gross domestic product grew by an annual average of 5.9%, the fastest on the continent. Chile developed a good export economy, including the export of fruits and vegetables to the northern hemisphere when they were out of season, and commanded high export prices.
Evaluation
Initially the economic reforms were internationally praised. Milton Friedman
Milton Friedman (; July 31, 1912 – November 16, 2006) was an American economist and statistician who received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory and ...
wrote in his ''Newsweek'' column on 25 January 1982 about the Miracle of Chile. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
credited Pinochet with bringing about a thriving, free-enterprise economy, while at the same time downplaying the junta's human rights record, condemning an "organised international Left who are bent on revenge".
With the economic crises of 1982 the "monetarist experiment" was regarded by critics a failure.
The pragmatic economic policy after the crises of 1982 is appreciated for bringing constant economic growth. It is questionable whether the radical reforms of the Chicago Boys contributed to post-1983 growth. According to Ricardo Ffrench-Davis, economist and consultant of the , the 1982 crises as well as the success of the pragmatic economic policy after 1982 proves that the 1975–1981 radical economic policy of the Chicago Boys actually harmed the Chilean economy.
Social consequences
The economic policies espoused by the Chicago Boys and implemented by the junta initially caused several economic indicators to decline for Chile's lower classes. Between 1970 and 1989, there were large cuts to incomes and social services. Wages decreased by 8%. Family allowances in 1989 were 28% of what they had been in 1970 and the budgets for education, health and housing had dropped by over 20% on average. The massive increases in military spending and cuts in funding to public services coincided with falling wages and steady rises in unemployment, which averaged 26% during the worldwide economic slump of 1982–85 and eventually peaked at 30%.
In 1990, the LOCE act on education initiated the dismantlement of public education
A state school, public school, or government school is a primary school, primary or secondary school that educates all students without charge. They are funded in whole or in part by taxation and operated by the government of the state. State-f ...
.[ According to Communist Party of Chile member and economist Manuel Riesco Larraín:
]Overall, the impact of neoliberal policies has reduced the total proportion of students in both public and private institutions in relation to the entire population, from 30 per cent in 1974 down to 25 per cent in 1990, and up only to 27 per cent today. If falling birth rates have made it possible today to attain full coverage at primary and secondary levels, the country has fallen seriously behind at tertiary level, where coverage, although now growing, is still only 32 per cent of the age group. The figure was twice as much in neighbouring Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
and Uruguay
Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...
, and even higher in developed countries—South Korea
South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...
attaining a record 98 per cent coverage. Significantly, tertiary education for the upper-income fifth of the Chilean population, many of whom study in the new private universities, also reaches above 70 per cent.
The junta relied on the middle class, the oligarchy, domestic business, foreign corporations, and foreign loans to maintain itself. Under Pinochet, funding of military and internal defence spending rose 120% from 1974 to 1979.[Remmer, 1989] Due to the reduction in public spending, tens of thousands of employees were fired from other state-sector jobs. The oligarchy recovered most of its lost industrial and agricultural holdings, for the junta sold to private buyers most of the industries expropriated by Allende's Popular Unity government.
Financial conglomerates became major beneficiaries of the liberalized economy and the flood of foreign bank loans. Large foreign banks reinstated the credit cycle, as the Junta saw that the basic state obligations, such as resuming payment of principal and interest installments, were honored. International lending organizations such as the World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans and Grant (money), grants to the governments of Least developed countries, low- and Developing country, middle-income countries for the purposes of economic development ...
, the International Monetary Fund
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a major financial agency of the United Nations, and an international financial institution funded by 191 member countries, with headquarters in Washington, D.C. It is regarded as the global lender of las ...
, and the Inter-American Development Bank
The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB or IADB) is an international development finance institution headquartered in Washington, D.C., United States of America. It serves as one of the leading sources of development financing for the countri ...
lent vast sums anew.
Many foreign multinational corporations such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), Dow Chemical
The Dow Chemical Company is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Midland, Michigan, United States. The company was among the three largest chemical producers in the world in 2021. It is the operating subsidiary of Dow Inc., ...
, and Firestone, all expropriated by Allende, returned to Chile.
Social policies
Health
One of the most abrupt changes affecting sanitation in the country was in the realm of drinking water and sanitation in Chile. In 1977, all state-owned companies in this sector were merged into the National Sanitary Works Service (SENDOS), which led to a major restructuring process and gradual outsourcing of services to private companies. Consequently, there was an exponential, widespread increase in the connection to drinking water
Drinking water or potable water is water that is safe for ingestion, either when drunk directly in liquid form or consumed indirectly through food preparation. It is often (but not always) supplied through taps, in which case it is also calle ...
and sewerage
Sewerage (or sewage system) is the infrastructure that conveys sewage or surface runoff ( stormwater, meltwater, rainwater) using sewers. It encompasses components such as receiving drains, manholes, pumping stations, storm overflows, and scr ...
systems, both urban and rural. While in 1974 only 35% of urban dwellings had access to sewerage services, by 1990 this coverage had reached 75%. Meanwhile, urban household access to drinking water rose from 60% to 95% in the same period. This allowed a large part of the population to have a private bathroom in their homes, thus replacing latrines in “pozos negros,” which were commonly used by lower-income households.
In 1978, the regime established the National Immunization Program, which provided a universal and free schedule of vaccinations from birth against the infectious diseases most prevalent among Chileans, aiming to minimize contagion and morbidity. The following year, the state-run health insurance was consolidated into the National Health Fund. Previously, there was a distinction between public or private employees (civil servant
The civil service is a collective term for a sector of government composed mainly of career civil service personnel hired rather than elected, whose institutional tenure typically survives transitions of political leadership. A civil service offic ...
s), who were covered by the National Medical Service for Employees (SERMENA), and workers plus the rest of the population, who were attended by the National Health Service (SNS).
Housing
With the establishment of a liberal economic policy, there was a strong defense of private property
Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental Capacity (law), legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity, and from Collective ownership ...
in all areas of Chilean national economic life, which also influenced public policy regarding social housing. The State considerably reduced its direct construction of houses and apartments, delegating that task to private construction companies, which built housing financed by a “housing subsidy” system for low-income families. Thus, the right to housing
The right to housing (occasionally right to shelter) is the economic, social and cultural right to adequate house, housing and shelter (building), shelter. It is recognized in some Economic, social and cultural rights#National constitutions, nat ...
was acknowledged, but only if families made a minimum savings
Wealth is the abundance of valuable financial assets or physical possessions which can be converted into a form that can be used for transactions. This includes the core meaning as held in the originating Old English word , which is from an ...
contribution beforehand in order to qualify for these state benefits. Between 1979 and 1989, the State granted 502,767 definitive social housing titles to sole owners.
In a 1987 interview, Pinochet himself stated that his intention was “to make Chile a country of property owners and not proletarians.”
The cost of housing in Chile was deregulated, leaving it to free-market criteria. Likewise, beginning in the 1980s, there was a mass relocation of residents from informal settlements in large cities, known in Chile as " poblaciones callampa", moving families to designated areas. In the case of Gran Santiago, they were transferred to the city’s peripheral zones, to neighborhoods built specifically to meet their basic needs, as well as the irregular residents along the banks of the Mapocho River
The River Mapocho () ( Mapudungun: ''Mapu chuco'', "water that penetrates the land") is a river in Chile. It flows from its source in the Andes mountains onto the west and divides Chile's capital Santiago in two.
Course
The Mapocho begins at the ...
, who were relocated to higher and less humid areas, one of the most notable cases being Cerro 18 in Lo Barnechea
Lo Barnechea is a commune located in the northeastern zone of Santiago de Chile, northeastern sector of the province of Santiago. Its urban boundaries include Los Andes, Chile, Los Andes of the Valparaíso Region, Valparaíso region to the north, ...
.
Public works
One of the main objectives set by the military dictatorship was to increase the country’s connectivity, improving the road network for economic reasons (transport of people and goods) as well as for military logistical strategy. Its most notable project was the Carretera Austral
The Carretera Austral (CH-7, ''in English: Southern Way'') is the name given to Chile's Route 7. The highway runs south for about from Puerto Montt to Villa O'Higgins, passing through rural Patagonia.
Carretera Austral provides road access to ...
, initially focused on rerouting the road to directly connect the cities of Chaitén
Chaitén (, ) is a Chilean List of towns in Chile, town, Communes of Chile, commune and former capital of the Palena Province in Los Lagos Region. The town is north of the mouth of Yelcho River, on the east coast of the Gulf of Corcovado. The town ...
and Coyhaique
Coyhaique (), also spelled Coihaique in Patagonia, is the Capital (political), capital List of cities in Chile, city of both the Coyhaique Province and the Aysén Region of Chile. Founded by settlers in 1929, it is a young city. Until the twentiet ...
. The large-scale plan for the region stemmed from studies that Pinochet had conducted in 1956, when he was a professor at the Army War Academy, as mentioned in his geopolitics book.
Indigenous peoples
The land policy regarding Indigenous peoples in Chile
Indigenous peoples in Chile or Native Chileans () form about 13% of the Demographics of Chile, total population of Chile. According to the 2017 census, almost 2,200,000 people declare having Indigenous peoples of South America, Indigenous origin ...
began to be regulated under DL No. 2,568 of 1979, which introduced the possibility of individual land ownership by single titleholders—rather than collective ownership—belonging to the country’s native ethnic groups. This took place under a special scheme known as “tierra indígena,” whereby there was a restriction on transferring the property (through sale, conveyance, or exchange) for a minimum period of 25 years, while allowing inheritance by rightful indigenous heirs in the event of the owner’s death. In 1976, the Regional Council and the Communal Mapuche Councils were created for the La Araucanía Region, serving as advisory bodies to the regional intendant in Temuco
Temuco () is a List of cities in Chile, city and Communes of Chile, commune, capital (political), capital of the Cautín Province and of the Araucanía Region in southern Chile. The city is located south of Santiago de Chile, Santiago. The cit ...
.
In February 1989, the Junta General de Loncos y Caciques de Nueva Imperial, belonging to the Mapuche
The Mapuche ( , ) also known as Araucanians are a group of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging e ...
people, designated Augusto Pinochet as "Ulmen F’ta Lonco" (an honorary title meaning “Great Authority”), to express gratitude for the favorable relations they had with the Executive Branch during the dictatorship.
Migration policy
Decree Law No. 1,094 of 1975 was conceived as a key tool within the ideological framework of the National Security Doctrine. Drafted during the early years of the dictatorship, it reflected a concern about preserving "internal order" in the face of perceived ideological and political threats. Its primary goal was to prevent the entry of individuals considered potential "agitators" or "subversives", who could challenge the country’s political or social system, and to expel those already present in Chile. Among its most controversial provisions, the decree granted broad powers to the Executive to ban entry, expel foreigners, and restrict rights on grounds of "national interest" or "security". It also incorporated mechanisms that allowed authorities to act at their discretion, facilitating the expulsion of immigrants. Under this Decree Law, the Immigration and Migration Department was established, along with duties and obligations for immigrants arriving in Chile.
Foreign relations
Having risen to power on an anti-Marxist agenda, Pinochet found common cause with the military dictatorships of Bolivia
Bolivia, officially the Plurinational State of Bolivia, is a landlocked country located in central South America. The country features diverse geography, including vast Amazonian plains, tropical lowlands, mountains, the Gran Chaco Province, w ...
, Brazil
Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
, Paraguay
Paraguay, officially the Republic of Paraguay, is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the Argentina–Paraguay border, south and southwest, Brazil to the Brazil–Paraguay border, east and northeast, and Boli ...
, Uruguay
Uruguay, officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay, is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast, while bordering the Río de la Plata to the south and the A ...
, and later, Argentina
Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...
. The six countries eventually formulated a plan known as Operation Condor, in which the security forces of participating states would target active left-wing militants, guerrilla fighters, and their alleged sympathizers in the allied countries. Pinochet's government received tacit approval and material support from the United States. The exact nature and extent of this support is disputed. (''See'' U.S. role in 1973 Coup, U.S. intervention in Chile and Operation Condor for more details.) It is known, however, that the American Secretary of State at the time, Henry Kissinger, practiced a policy of supporting coups in nations which the United States viewed as leaning toward Communism.
The new junta quickly broke diplomatic relations with Cuba
Cuba, officially the Republic of Cuba, is an island country, comprising the island of Cuba (largest island), Isla de la Juventud, and List of islands of Cuba, 4,195 islands, islets and cays surrounding the main island. It is located where the ...
and North Korea
North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders China and Russia to the north at the Yalu River, Yalu (Amnok) an ...
, which had been established under the Allende government. Shortly after the junta came to power, several communist countries, including the Soviet Union
The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...
, North Vietnam
North Vietnam, officially the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV; ; VNDCCH), was a country in Southeast Asia from 1945 to 1976, with sovereignty fully recognized in 1954 Geneva Conference, 1954. A member of the communist Eastern Bloc, it o ...
, East Germany
East Germany, officially known as the German Democratic Republic (GDR), was a country in Central Europe from Foundation of East Germany, its formation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with West Germany (FRG) on ...
, Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...
, Czechoslovakia
Czechoslovakia ( ; Czech language, Czech and , ''Česko-Slovensko'') was a landlocked country in Central Europe, created in 1918, when it declared its independence from Austria-Hungary. In 1938, after the Munich Agreement, the Sudetenland beca ...
, Hungary
Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...
, Bulgaria
Bulgaria, officially the Republic of Bulgaria, is a country in Southeast Europe. It is situated on the eastern portion of the Balkans directly south of the Danube river and west of the Black Sea. Bulgaria is bordered by Greece and Turkey t ...
, and Yugoslavia
, common_name = Yugoslavia
, life_span = 1918–19921941–1945: World War II in Yugoslavia#Axis invasion and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, Axis occupation
, p1 = Kingdom of SerbiaSerbia
, flag_p ...
, severed diplomatic relations with Chile however, Romania
Romania is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern and Southeast Europe. It borders Ukraine to the north and east, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Bulgaria to the south, Moldova to ...
and the People's Republic of China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. With population of China, a population exceeding 1.4 billion, it is the list of countries by population (United Nations), second-most populous country after ...
both continued to maintain diplomatic relations with Chile. Pinochet nurtured the relationship with China. The government broke diplomatic relations with Cambodia
Cambodia, officially the Kingdom of Cambodia, is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. It is bordered by Thailand to the northwest, Laos to the north, and Vietnam to the east, and has a coastline ...
in January 1974 and with South Vietnam
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam (RVN; , VNCH), was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975. It first garnered Diplomatic recognition, international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the ...
in March 1974. Pinochet attended the funeral of General Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (born Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general and dictator who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces i ...
, dictator of Spain from 1936 to 1975, in late 1975.
In 1980, Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos
Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr. (September 11, 1917 – September 28, 1989) was a Filipino lawyer, politician, dictator, and Kleptocracy, kleptocrat who served as the tenth president of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986. He ruled the c ...
had invited the entire Junta (consisting at this point of Pinochet, Merino, Matthei, and Mendoza) to visit the country as part of a planned tour of Southeast Asia in an attempt to help improve their image and bolster military and economic relations with the Philippines, Japan, South Korea, and Hong Kong. Due to intense U.S. pressure at the last minute (while Pinochet's plane was halfway en route over the Pacific), Marcos cancelled the visit and denied Pinochet landing rights in the country. Pinochet and the junta were further caught off guard and humiliated when they were forced to land in Fiji to refuel for the planned return to Santiago, only to be met with airport staff who refused to assist the plane in any way (the Fijian military was called in instead), invasive and prolonged customs searches, exorbitant fuel and aviation service charges, and hundreds of angry protesters who pelted his plane with eggs and tomatoes. The usually stoic and calm Pinochet became enraged, firing his Foreign Minister Hernán Cubillos, several diplomats, and expelling the Philippine Ambassador. Relations between the two countries were restored only in 1986 when Corazon Aquino
María Corazón "Cory" Sumulong Cojuangco-Aquino (; January 25, 1933 – August 1, 2009) was a Filipino politician who served as the 11th president of the Philippines and the first woman president in the country, from Presidency of Corazon ...
assumed the presidency of the Philippines after Marcos was ousted in a non-violent revolution, the People Power Revolution
The People Power Revolution, also known as the EDSA Revolution or the February Revolution, were a series of popular Demonstration (people), demonstrations in the Philippines, mostly in Metro Manila, from February 22 to 25, 1986. There was a ...
.
Argentina
President of Argentina Juan Perón
Juan Domingo Perón (, , ; 8 October 1895 – 1 July 1974) was an Argentine military officer and Statesman (politician), statesman who served as the History of Argentina (1946-1955), 29th president of Argentina from 1946 to Revolución Libertad ...
condemned the 1973 coup as a "fatality for the continent" stating that Pinochet represented interests "well known" to him. He praised Allende for his "valiant attitude" and took note of the role of the United States in instigating the coup by recalling his familiarity with coup-making processes.[ On 14 May 1974 Perón received Pinochet at the Morón Airbase. Pinochet was heading to meet ]Alfredo Stroessner
Alfredo Stroessner Matiauda (; 3 November 1912 – 16 August 2006) was a Paraguayan politician, army general and Military dictatorship, military dictator who ruled as the 42nd president of Paraguay from 15 August 1954 until his overthrow in 19 ...
in Paraguay so the encounter at Argentina was technically a stopover. Pinochet and Perón are both reported to have felt uncomfortable during the meeting. Perón expressed his wishes to settle the Beagle conflict and Pinochet his concerns about Chilean exiles in Argentina near the frontier with Chile. Perón would have conceded on moving these exiles from the frontiers to eastern Argentina, but he warned "Perón takes his time, but accomplishes" (''Perón tarda, pero cumple''). Perón justified his meeting with Pinochet stating that it was important to keep good relations with Chile under all circumstances and with whoever might be in government. Perón died in July 1974 and was succeeded by his wife, Isabel Perón
Isabel Martínez de Perón (, born María Estela Martínez Cartas; 4 February 1931) is an Argentine politician who served as the 41st president of Argentina from 1974 to 1976. She was one of the List of elected and appointed female heads of s ...
, who was overthrown in 1976 by the Argentine military who installed themselves as a new dictatorship in Argentina.
Chile was on the brink of being invaded by Argentina, as the Argentina junta initiated Operation Soberanía on 22 December 1978 because of the strategic Picton, Lennox and Nueva islands at the southern tip of South America on the Beagle Channel
Beagle Channel (; Yahgan language, Yahgan: ''Onašaga'') is a strait in the Tierra del Fuego, Tierra del Fuego Archipelago, on the extreme southern tip of South America between Chile and Argentina. The channel separates the larger main island of I ...
. A full-scale war was prevented only by the calling off of the operation by Argentina for military and political reasons. But the relations remained tense as Argentina invaded the Falklands ( Operation Rosario). Chile along with Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...
, were the only countries in South America to criticize the use of force by Argentina in its war with the UK over the Falkland Islands
The Falkland Islands (; ), commonly referred to as The Falklands, is an archipelago in the South Atlantic Ocean on the Patagonian Shelf. The principal islands are about east of South America's southern Patagonian coast and from Cape Dub ...
. Chile actually helped the United Kingdom during the war. The two countries (Chile and Argentina) finally agreed to papal mediation over the Beagle Channel that finally ended in the Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1984 between Chile and Argentina (''Tratado de Paz y Amistad''). Chilean sovereignty over the islands and Argentinian east of the surrounding sea is now undisputed.
United States
The U.S. government had been interfering in Chilean politics since 1961, and it spent millions trying to prevent Allende from coming to power, and subsequently undermined his presidency through financing opposition. Declassified Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA; ) is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States tasked with advancing national security through collecting and analyzing intelligence from around the world and ...
(CIA) documents reveal U.S. knowledge and alleged involvement in the coup. They provided material support to the military regime after the coup, although criticizing it in public. A document released by the CIA in 2000, titled "CIA Activities in Chile", revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta during and 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.[Peter Kornbluh]
CIA Acknowledges Ties to Pinochet’s Repression Report to Congress Reveals U.S. Accountability in Chile
, Chile Documentation Project, National Security Archive, September 19, 2000. Accessed online November 26, 2006.
The U.S. continued to give the ''junta'' substantial economic support between the years 1973–79, despite concerns from more liberal Congressmen, as seen from the results of the Church Committee. U.S. public stance did condemn the human rights violations, however declassified documents reveal such violations were not an obstacle for members of the Nixon and Ford administrations. Henry Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 56th United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and the 7th National Security Advisor (United States), natio ...
visited Santiago in 1976 for the annual conference of the Organisation of American States. During his visit he privately met with Pinochet and reassured the leader of internal support from the U.S. administration.
The U.S. went beyond verbal condemnation in 1976, after the murder of Orlando Letelier in Washington D.C., when it placed an embargo on arms sales to Chile that remained in effect until the restoration of democracy in 1989. This more aggressive stance coincided with the election of Jimmy Carter
James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924December 29, 2024) was an American politician and humanitarian who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party ...
who shifted the focus of U.S. foreign policy towards human rights.
The U.S. arms embargo served to kickstart the Chilean weapons industry, with the military aviation company ENAER standing out as the military manufacturer that developed the most following the embargo. On the contrary, the naval manufacturer ASMAR was the least impacted by the embargo.[
]
United Kingdom
Britain's initial reaction to the overthrowing of Allende was one of caution. The Conservative government recognised the legitimacy of the new government but didn't offer any other declarations of support.
Under the Labour government of 1974–1979
Labour or labor may refer to:
* Childbirth
Childbirth, also known as labour, parturition and delivery, is the completion of pregnancy, where one or more Fetus, fetuses exits the Womb, internal environment of the mother via vaginal delivery o ...
, while Britain
Britain most often refers to:
* Great Britain, a large island comprising the countries of England, Scotland and Wales
* The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a sovereign state in Europe comprising Great Britain and the north-eas ...
regularly condemned the junta at the United Nations for its human rights abuses, bilateral relations between the two were not affected to the same degree. Britain continued to sell and deliver arms and warships previously commissioned by the Chilean government, despite strong internal opposition from some Labour politicians. Britain formally withdrew its Santiago ambassador in 1974, however reinstated the position in 1980 under the Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
government.
Chile was neutral during the Falkland War, but its Westinghouse long-range radar deployed at Punta Arenas, in southern Chile, gave the British task force early warning of Argentinian air attacks, which allowed British ships and troops in the war zone to take defensive action. Margaret Thatcher said that the day the radar was taken out of service for overdue maintenance was the day Argentinian fighter-bombers bombed the troopships ''Sir Galahad'' and ''Sir Tristram'', leaving approximately 50 dead and 150 wounded. According to Chilean Junta and former Air Force commander Fernando Matthei, Chilean support included military intelligence gathering, radar surveillance, British aircraft operating with Chilean colours and the safe return of British special forces, among other things. In April and May 1982, a squadron of mothballed RAF Hawker Hunter fighter bombers departed for Chile, arriving on 22 May and allowing the Chilean Air Force to reform the No. 9 "Las Panteras Negras" Squadron. A further consignment of three frontier surveillance and shipping reconnaissance Canberras left for Chile in October. Some authors suggest that Argentina might have won the war had she been allowed to employ the VIth and VIIIth Mountain Brigades, which remained guarding the Andes mountain chain. Pinochet subsequently visited Margaret Thatcher
Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher (; 13 October 19258 April 2013), was a British stateswoman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1979 to 1990 and Leader of the Conservative Party (UK), Leader of th ...
for tea on more than one occasion. Pinochet's controversial relationship with Thatcher led Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party (UK), Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He was Leader ...
to mock Thatcher's Conservatives
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy and ideology that seeks to promote and preserve traditional institutions, customs, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilizati ...
as "the party of Pinochet" in 1999.
France
Although France received many Chilean political refugees, it also secretly collaborated with Pinochet. French journalist Marie-Monique Robin has shown how Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing (, ; ; 2 February 19262 December 2020), also known as simply Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981.
After serving as Ministry of the Economy ...
's government secretly collaborated with Videla's junta in Argentina and with Pinochet's regime in Chile.
Green
Green is the color between cyan and yellow on the visible spectrum. It is evoked by light which has a dominant wavelength of roughly 495570 nm. In subtractive color systems, used in painting and color printing, it is created by a com ...
deputies Noël Mamère, Martine Billard and Yves Cochet on September 10, 2003, requested a Parliamentary Commission on the "role of France in the support of military regimes in Latin America from 1973 to 1984" before the Foreign Affairs Commission of the National Assembly, presided by Edouard Balladur. Apart from ''Le Monde
(; ) is a mass media in France, French daily afternoon list of newspapers in France, newspaper. It is the main publication of Le Monde Group and reported an average print circulation, circulation of 480,000 copies per issue in 2022, including ...
'', newspapers remained silent about this request. However, deputy Roland Blum, in charge of the commission, refused to hear Marie-Monique Robin, and published in December 2003 a 12 pages report qualified by Robin as the summum of bad faith. It claimed that no agreement had been signed, despite the agreement found by Robin in the '' Quai d'Orsay.''
When then Minister of Foreign Affairs Dominique de Villepin traveled to Chile in February 2004, he claimed that no cooperation between France and the military regimes had occurred.
Peru
Reportedly one of Juan Velasco Alvarado
Juan Francisco Velasco Alvarado (June 16, 1910 – December 24, 1977) was a Peruvian Army general, general who served as the President of Peru after a successful 1968 Peruvian coup d'état, coup d'état against Fernando Belaúnde's presidency ...
's main goals was to militarily reconquer the lands lost by Peru to Chile in the War of the Pacific
The War of the Pacific (), also known by War of the Pacific#Etymology, multiple other names, was a war between Chile and a Treaty of Defensive Alliance (Bolivia–Peru), Bolivian–Peruvian alliance from 1879 to 1884. Fought over Atacama Desert ...
.["La veces que Pinochet casi Ataca al Perú de Sorpresa"]
. caretas.com. June 3, 2004. It is estimated that from 1970 to 1975 Peru spent up to US$2 Billion (roughly US$20 Billion in 2010's valuation) on Soviet armament.[ According to various sources Velasco's government bought between 600 and 1200 T-55 Main Battle Tanks, APCs, 60 to 90 Sukhoi 22 warplanes, 500,000 assault rifles, and even considered the purchase of the British light fleet carrier .]
The enormous amount of weaponry purchased by Peru caused a meeting between former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger
Henry Alfred Kissinger (May 27, 1923 – November 29, 2023) was an American diplomat and political scientist who served as the 56th United States secretary of state from 1973 to 1977 and the 7th National Security Advisor (United States), natio ...
and Pinochet in 1976.[ Velasco's military plan was to launch a massive sea, air, and land invasion against Chile.][ In 1999, Pinochet claimed that if ]Peru
Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...
had attacked Chile during 1973 or even 1978, Peruvian
Peruvians (''/peruanas'') are the citizens of Peru. What is now Peru has been inhabited for several millennia by cultures such as the Caral before the Spanish conquest in the 16th century. Peruvian population decreased from an estimated 5–9 ...
forces could have penetrated deep south into Chilean territory, possibly military taking the Chilean city of Copiapó
Copiapó () is a List of cities in Chile, city and communes of Chile, commune in northern Chile, located about 65 kilometers east of the coastal List of towns in Chile, town of Caldera, Chile, Caldera. Founded on December 8, 1744, it is the capi ...
located halfway to Santiago
Santiago (, ; ), also known as Santiago de Chile (), is the capital and largest city of Chile and one of the largest cities in the Americas. It is located in the country's central valley and is the center of the Santiago Metropolitan Regi ...
. The Chilean Armed Forces considered launching a preventive war
A preventive war is an armed conflict "initiated in the belief that military conflict, while not imminent, is inevitable, and that to delay would involve greater risk." The party which is being attacked has a latent threat capability or it has sh ...
to defend itself. Though, Pinochet's Chilean Air Force General Fernando Matthei opposed a preventive war and responded that "I can guarantee that the Peruvians would destroy the Chilean Air Force in the first five minutes of the war". Some analysts believe the fear of attack by Chilean and US officials as largely unjustified but logical for them to experience, considering the Pinochet dictatorship had come into power with a coup against democratically elected president Salvador Allende. According to sources, the alleged invasion scheme could be seen from the Chilean's government perspective as a plan for some kind of leftist counterattack. While acknowledging the Peruvian plans were revisionistic scholar Kalevi J. Holsti claim more important issues were behind the "ideological incompatibility" between the regimes of Velasco Alvarado and Pinochet and that Peru would have been concerned about Pinochet's geopolitical
Geopolitics () is the study of the effects of Earth's geography on politics and international relations. Geopolitics usually refers to countries and relations between them, it may also focus on two other kinds of states: ''de facto'' independen ...
views on Chile's need of naval hegemony
Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one State (polity), state over other states, either regional or global.
In Ancient Greece (ca. 8th BC – AD 6th c.), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of ...
in the Southeastern Pacific.
Spain
Francoist Spain
Francoist Spain (), also known as the Francoist dictatorship (), or Nationalist Spain () was the period of Spanish history between 1936 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death i ...
had enjoyed warm relations with Chile while Allende was in power.[ Pinochet admired and was very much influenced by ]Francisco Franco
Francisco Franco Bahamonde (born Francisco Paulino Hermenegildo Teódulo Franco Bahamonde; 4 December 1892 – 20 November 1975) was a Spanish general and dictator who led the Nationalist faction (Spanish Civil War), Nationalist forces i ...
, but Franco's successors had a cold attitude towards Pinochet as they did not want to be linked to him. When Pinochet traveled to the funeral of Francisco Franco in 1975, the President of France Valéry Giscard d'Estaing
Valéry René Marie Georges Giscard d'Estaing (, ; ; 2 February 19262 December 2020), also known as simply Giscard or VGE, was a French politician who served as President of France from 1974 to 1981.
After serving as Ministry of the Economy ...
pressured the Spanish government to refuse Pinochet to be at the crowning of Juan Carlos I of Spain
Juan Carlos I (; Juan Carlos Alfonso Víctor María de Borbón y Borbón-Dos Sicilias, born 5 January 1938) is a member of the Spanish royal family who reigned as King of Spain from 22 November 1975 until Abdication of Juan Carlos I, his abdic ...
by letting Spanish authorities know that Giscard would not be there if Pinochet was present. Juan Carlos I personally called Pinochet to let him know he was not welcome at his crowning.
While in Spain Pinochet is reported to have met with Stefano Delle Chiaie in order to plan the killing of Carlos Altamirano, the Secretary General of the Socialist Party of Chile
The Socialist Party of Chile (, or PS) is a centre-left to Left-wing politics, left-wing political party founded in 1933. Its historic leader was President of Chile Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a 1973 Chilean coup d'état, coup d'état by ...
.
From 1974 to 1977 General Francisco Gorigoitía Herrera, a staunch supporter of Franco, was the Chilean ambassador to Spain.[
In 1978 Spain voted in the ]United Nations General Assembly
The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA or GA; , AGNU or AG) is one of the six principal organs of the United Nations (UN), serving as its main deliberative, policymaking, and representative organ. Currently in its Seventy-ninth session of th ...
condemning human rights abuses in Chile.
With democracy restored in Spain and Felipe González
Felipe González Márquez (; born 5 March 1942) is a retired Spanish politician who was Prime Minister of Spain from 1982 to 1996 and leader of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party from 1974 to 1997. He is the longest-serving democratically- ...
elected prime minister in 1982, Spain took a special interest in the incipient process of the Chilean transition to democracy.
Foreign aid
The previous drop in foreign aid during the Allende years was immediately reversed following Pinochet's ascension; Chile received US$322.8 million in loans and credits in the year following the coup. There was considerable international condemnation of the military regime's human rights record, a matter that the United States expressed concern over as well after Orlando Letelier's 1976 assassination in Washington DC.( Kennedy Amendment, later ''International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act of 1976'').
Cuban involvement
After the Chilean military coup in 1973, Fidel Castro promised Chilean revolutionaries' far-reaching aid. Initially Cuban support for resistance consisted of clandestine distribution of funds to Chile, human rights campaigns at the UN to isolate the Chilean dictatorship, and efforts to undermine US-Chilean bilateral relations. Eventually Cuba's policy changed to arming and training insurgents. Once their training was completed, Cuba helped the guerrillas return to Chile, providing false passports and false identification documents. Cuba's official newspaper, Granma, boasted in February 1981 that the "Chilean Resistance" had successfully conducted more than 100 "armed actions" throughout Chile in 1980. By late 1980, at least 100 highly trained MIR
''Mir'' (, ; ) was a space station operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, first by the Soviet Union and later by the Russia, Russian Federation. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to ...
guerrillas had reentered Chile and the MIR began building a base for future guerrilla operations in Neltume, a mountainous forest region in southern Chile. In a massive operation spearheaded by Chilean Army Para-Commandos, security forces involving some 2,000 troops, were forced to deploy in the Neltume mountains from June to November 1981, where they destroyed two MIR bases, seizing large caches of munitions and killing a number of MIR commandos. In 1986, Chilean security forces discovered 80 tons of munitions, including more than three thousand M-16 rifles and more than two million rounds of ammunition, at the tiny fishing harbor of Carrizal Bajo, smuggled ashore from Cuban fishing trawlers off the coast of Chile. The operation was overseen by Cuban naval intelligence, and also involved the Soviet Union. Cuban Special Forces had also instructed the FPMR guerrillas that ambushed Augusto Pinochet's motorcade on 8 September 1986, killing five bodyguards and wounding 10.
Cultural life
Influenced by Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Francesco Gramsci ( , ; ; 22 January 1891 – 27 April 1937) was an Italian Marxist philosophy, Marxist philosopher, Linguistics, linguist, journalist, writer, and politician. He wrote on philosophy, Political philosophy, political the ...
's work on cultural hegemony
In Marxist philosophy, cultural hegemony is the dominance of a culturally diverse society by the ruling class who shape the culture of that society—the beliefs and explanations, perceptions, values, and mores—so that the worldview of the rul ...
, proposing that the ruling class can maintain power by controlling cultural institutions, Pinochet clamped down on cultural dissidence. This brought Chilean cultural life into what sociologist Soledad Bianchi has called a "cultural blackout".[Morris, Nancy. 1986. Canto Porque es Necesario Cantar: The New Song Movement in Chile, 1973-1983. '' Latin American Research Review'', Vol. 21, pp. 117–136.] The government censored non-sympathetic individuals while taking control of mass media.[
]
Music scene
The military dictatorship sought to isolate Chilean radio listeners from the outside world by changing radio frequencies to middle wavelengths.[ This together with the shutdown of radio stations sympathetic to the former Allende administration impacted music in Chile.][ The music catalog was censored with the aid of '' listas negras'' (blacklists) but little is known on how these were composed and updated.][ The formerly thriving Nueva canción scene suffered from the exile or imprisonment of many bands and individuals.][ A key musician, ]Víctor Jara
Víctor Lidio Jara Martínez (; 28 September 1932 – 16 September 1973) was a Chilean teacher, theatre director, theater director, poet, singer-songwriter and PCCh, Communist political activist. He developed Chilean theater by directing a bro ...
, was tortured and killed by elements of the military.[ According to Eduardo Carrasco of ]Quilapayún
Quilapayún () are a folk music group from Chile and among the longest lasting and most influential ambassadors of the ''Nueva canción, Nueva Canción Chilena'' movement and genre. Formed during the mid-1960s, the group became inseparable with t ...
in the first week after the coup, the military organized a meeting with folk musicians where they announced that the traditional instruments charango
The charango is a small Andes, Andean stringed instrument of the lute family, from the Quechua people, Quechua and Aymara people, Aymara populations in the territory of the Altiplano in post-Colonial times, after European stringed instruments we ...
and quena were banned.[ The curfew imposed by the dictatorship forced the remaining Nueva Canción scene, now rebranded as ''Canto Nuevo'', into "semiclandestine peñas, while alternative groove disseminated in juvenile ''fiestas''".] A scarcity of records and the censorship imposed on part of the music catalog made a " cassette culture" emmerge among the affected audiences.[ The proliferation of ]pirate
Piracy is an act of robbery or criminal violence by ship or boat-borne attackers upon another ship or a coastal area, typically with the goal of stealing cargo and valuable goods, or taking hostages. Those who conduct acts of piracy are call ...
cassettes was enabled by tape recorders, and in some cases this activity turned commercial as evidenced by the pirate cassette brand ''Cumbre y Cuatro''.[ The music of ]Silvio Rodríguez
Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez (born 29 November 1946) is a Cuban musician, and leader of the Nueva Trova movement.
He is widely considered as Cuba's best folk singer and arguably one of Latin America's greatest singer-songwriters. Known for his ...
became first known in Chile this way.[ Cassettes aside, some music enthusiasts were able to supply themselves with rare or suppressed records with help of relatives in exile abroad.][
The dictatorship controlled the ]Viña del Mar International Song Festival
The Viña del Mar International Song Festival () is an annual international music festival held every third week of February in Viña del Mar, Chile. Started in 1960 it is the oldest and largest music festival in Latin America, and one of the long ...
and used it promote sympathetic artists, in particular those that were part of the Acto de Chacarillas in 1977.
In the first years of dictatorship Pinochet was a common guest at the festival. Pinochet's advisor Jaime Guzmán was also spotted on occasion at the festival.[ Festival presenter Antonio Vodanovic publicly praised the dictator and his wife Lucia Hiriart on one occasion on behalf of "the Chilean youth".][ Supporters of the dictatorship appropriated the song '' Libre'' of Nino Bravo, and this song was performed by Edmundo Arrocet in the first post-coup edition while Pinochet was present in the public. From 1980 onward when the festival begun to be aired internationally the regime used it to promote a favourable image of Chile abroad.][ For that purpose in 1980 the festival spent a big budget on bringing popular foreign artist including ]Miguel Bosé
Miguel Bosé (born Luis Miguel Dominguín Bosé; 3 April 1956) is a Spanish-Italian Pop music, pop singer and actor.
Early life
Bosé was born in San Fernando Hospital in Panama City, Panama, the son of Italian actress Lucia Bosè (1931–202 ...
, Julio Iglesias
Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva (; born 23 September 1943) is a Spanish singer and songwriter. Iglesias is recognized as the most commercially successful Spanish singer in the world and one of the top List of best-selling music artists, reco ...
and Camilo Sesto
Camilo Blanes Cortés (16 September 1946 – 8 September 2019), known professionally as Camilo Sesto, was a Spanish singer, songwriter and music producer. There are various sales figures for him, ranging from 70 to 200 million records sold, and ...
.[ The folk music contest of the Viña del Mar International Song Festival had become increasingly politicized during the Allende years and was suspended by organizers from the time of coup until 1980.][
Elements of military distrusted Mexican music which was widespread in the rural areas of south-central Chile.] There are testimonies of militaries calling Mexican music "communist".[ Militaries dislike of Mexican music may be linked to the Allende administration's close links with Mexico, the " Mexican revolutionary discourse" and the over-all low prestige of Mexican music in Chile.][ The dictatorship, however, didn’t suppress Mexican music as a whole but distinguished different strands, some of which were actually promoted.][
Cueca and Mexican music coexisted with similar levels of popularity in the Chilean countryside in the 1970s.][ Being distinctly Chilean the cueca was selected by the military dictatorship as a music to be promoted.][ The cueca was named the national dance of Chile due to its substantial presence throughout the history of the country and announced as such through a public decree in the Official Journal (Diario Oficial) on November 6, 1979. Cueca specialist Emilio Ignacio Santana argues that the dictatorship's appropriation and promotion of cueca harmed the genre.][ The dictatorship's endorsement of the genre meant according to Santana that the rich landlord huaso became the icon of the cueca and not the rural labourer.][
The 1980s saw an invasion of Argentine rock bands into Chile. These included Charly García, the Enanitos Verdes, G.I.T. and Soda Stereo among others.
Contemporary Chilean rock group Los Prisioneros complained against the ease with which Argentine Soda Stereo made appearances on Chilean TV or in Chilean magazines and the ease they could obtain musical equipment for concerts in Chile.][Fuentes, Jorge]
La histórica rivalidad de Los Prisioneros y Soda Stereo, ¿quién ganó?
, retrieved on December 12, 2012. Soda Stereo was invited to Viña del Mar International Song Festival
The Viña del Mar International Song Festival () is an annual international music festival held every third week of February in Viña del Mar, Chile. Started in 1960 it is the oldest and largest music festival in Latin America, and one of the long ...
while Los Prisioneros were ignored despite their popular status. This situation was because Los Prisioneros were censored by media under the influence of the military dictatorship. Los Prisioneros' marginalization by the media was further aggravated by their call to vote against the dictatorship on the plebiscite of 1988.
Theater and literature
Experimental theatre groups from Universidad de Chile and Pontifical Catholic University of Chile
The Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (UC Chile; ) is a traditional private university based in Santiago, Chile. It is one of the thirteen Catholic universities existing in Chilean university system and one of the two pontifical univ ...
were restricted by the military regime to performing only theatre classics. Some established groups like ''Grupo Ictus'' were tolerated while new formations like ''Grupo Aleph'' were repressed. This last group had its members jailed and forced into exile after performing a parody on the 1973 Chilean coup d'état
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état () was a military overthrow of the democratic socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity (Chile), Popular Unity coalition government. Allende, who has been described as the first Marxist ...
.[ In the 1980s a ]grassroots
A grassroots movement is one that uses the people in a given district, region or community as the basis for a political or continent movement. Grassroots movements and organizations use collective action from volunteers at the local level to imp ...
street theatre movement emerged.[
The dictatorship promoted the figure of Nobel laureate Gabriela Mistral who was presented as a symbol of "summission to the authority" and "social order".
]
Plebiscite and the return to democracy
1988 plebiscite
Following the approval of the 1980 Constitution, a plebiscite was scheduled for October 5, 1988, to vote on a new eight-year presidential term for Pinochet.
The Constitution, which took effect on 11 March 1981, established a "transition period," during which Pinochet would continue to exercise executive power and the junta's legislative power, for the next eight years. Before that period ended, a candidate for president was to be proposed by the Commanders-in-Chief of the Armed Forces and Carabinero Chief General for the following period of eight years. The candidate then was to be ratified by registered voters in a national plebiscite. On 30 August 1988 Pinochet was declared to be the candidate.
The Constitutional Court of Chile ruled that the plebiscite should be carried out as stipulated by Article 64 in the Constitution. That included a programming slot in television (''franja electoral'') during which all positions, in this case, two, ''Sí'' (yes), and ''No'', would have two free slots of equal and uninterrupted TV time, simultaneously broadcast by all TV channels, with no political advertising outside those spots. The allotment was scheduled in two off-prime time slots: one before the afternoon news and the other before the late-night news, from 22:45 to 23:15 each night (the evening news was from 20:30 to 21:30, and primetime from 21:30 to 22:30). The opposition ''No'' campaign, headed by Ricardo Lagos, produced colorful, upbeat programs, telling the Chilean people to vote against the extension of the presidential term. Lagos, in a TV interview, pointed his index finger towards the camera and directly called on Pinochet to account for all the "disappeared" persons. The ''Sí'' campaign did not argue for the advantages of extension, but was instead negative, claiming that voting "no" was equivalent to voting for a return to the chaos of the UP government.
Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros provided advice to the "No" campaign, according to Máximo Pacheco Matte. The support was reflected "in carrying out studies and obtaining data that gave us information that had been hidden from us for 17 years (...) What we learned there was crucial for the preparation of the famous television program for the 'No' campaign and for the victory in the plebiscite."
Likewise, the organization created by the United States Congress, '' National Endowment for Democracy'' and linked to the CIA together with the '' National Democratic Institute for International Affairs'' contributed one million dollars to the "No" campaign and sent observers to the plebiscite and established a parallel counting system in conjunction with German think tanks and the "Committee for Free Elections". Furthermore, David Altman notes that Pinochet allowed "a certain degree of freedom to carry out a mobilization campaign against the regime."
Pinochet lost the 1988 referendum, where 56% of the votes rejected the extension of the presidential term, against 44% for "''Sí''", and, following the constitutional provisions, he stayed as president for one more year. The presidential election was held in December 1989, at the same time as congressional elections that were due to take place. Pinochet left the presidency on March 11, 1990, and transferred power to his political opponent Patricio Aylwin
Patricio Aylwin Azócar (; 26 November 1918 – 19 April 2016) was a Chilean politician from the Christian Democratic Party of Chile, Christian Democratic Party, lawyer, author, professor and former senator. He was the 30th president of Chil ...
, the new democratically elected president. Due to the same transitional provisions of the constitution, Pinochet remained as Commander-in-Chief of the Army, until March 1998.
1989 general elections
From the 1989 elections onwards, the military had officially left the political sphere in Chile. Pinochet did not endorse any candidate publicly. Former Pinochet economic minister Hernán Büchi ran for president as the candidate of the two right-wing parties RN and UDI. He had little political experience and was relatively young and credited with Chile's good economic performance in the second half of the 1980s. The right-wing parties faced several problems in the elections: there was considerable infighting between RN and UDI, Büchi had only very reluctantly accepted to run for president and right-wing politicians struggled to define their position towards the Pinochet regime. In addition to this right-wing populist Francisco Javier Errázuriz Talavera ran independently for president and made several election promises Büchi could not match.[
The centre-left coalition Concertación was more united and coherent. Its candidate ]Patricio Aylwin
Patricio Aylwin Azócar (; 26 November 1918 – 19 April 2016) was a Chilean politician from the Christian Democratic Party of Chile, Christian Democratic Party, lawyer, author, professor and former senator. He was the 30th president of Chil ...
, a Christian Democrat, behaved as if he had won and refused a second television debate with Büchi. Büchi attacked Aylwin on a remark he had made concerning that inflation rate of 20% was not much and he also accused Aylwin of making secret agreements with the Communist Party of Chile, a party that was not part of Concertación.[ Aylwin spoke with authority about the need to clarify human rights violations but did not confront the dictatorship for it; in contrast, Büchi, as a former regime minister, lacked any credibility when dealing with human right violations.][
Büchi and Errázuriz lost to ]Patricio Aylwin
Patricio Aylwin Azócar (; 26 November 1918 – 19 April 2016) was a Chilean politician from the Christian Democratic Party of Chile, Christian Democratic Party, lawyer, author, professor and former senator. He was the 30th president of Chil ...
in the election. The electoral system meant that the largely Pinochet-sympathetic right was overrepresented in parliament in such a way that it could block any reform to the constitution. This over-representation was crucial for UDI in obtaining places in parliament and securing its political future. The far-left and the far-right performed poorly in the election.[
]
Presidential election results
Legacy
Following the restoration of Chilean democracy and the successive administrations that followed Pinochet, the Chilean economy has increasingly prospered. Unemployment stood at 7% as of 2007, with poverty estimated at 18.2% for the same year, both relatively low for the region. However, in 2019 the Chilean government faced public scrutiny for its economic policies. In particular, for the long-term effects of Pinochet's neoliberal
Neoliberalism is a political and economic ideology that advocates for free-market capitalism, which became dominant in policy-making from the late 20th century onward. The term has multiple, competing definitions, and is most often used pej ...
policies. Mass protests broke out throughout Santiago, due to increasing prices of the metro ticket. For many Chileans this highlighted the disproportionate distribution of wealth amongst Chile.
The "Chilean Variation" has been seen as a potential model for nations that fail to achieve significant economic growth. The latest is Russia, for whom David Christian warned in 1991 that "dictatorial government presiding over a transition to capitalism seems one of the more plausible scenarios, even if it does so at a high cost in human rights violations".
A survey published by pollster CERC on the eve of the 40th anniversary commemorations of the coup gave some idea of how Chileans perceived the dictatorship. According to the poll, 55% of Chileans regarded the 17 years of dictatorship as either bad or very bad, while 9% said they were good or very good. In 2013, the newspaper El Mercurio asked Chileans if the state had done enough to compensate victims of the dictatorship for the atrocities they suffered; 30% said yes, 36% said no, and the rest were undecided. In order to keep the memories of the victims and the disappeared alive, memorial sites have been constructed throughout Chile, as a symbol of the country's past. Some notable examples include Villa Grimaldi, Londres 38, Paine Memorial and the Museum of Memory and Human Rights. These memorials were built by family members of the victims, the government and ex-prisoners of the dictatorship. These have become popular tourist destinations and have provided a visual narrative of the atrocities of the dictatorship. These memorials have aided in Chile's reconciliation process, however, there is still debate amongst Chile as to whether these memorials do enough to bring the country together.
The relative economic success of the Pinochet dictatorship has brought about some political support for the former dictatorship. In 1998, then-Brazilian congressman and retired military officer Jair Bolsonaro
Jair Messias Bolsonaro (; born 21 March 1955) is a Brazilian politician and former military officer who served as the 38th president of Brazil from 2019 to 2023. He previously served as a member of Brazil's Chamber of Deputies (Brazil), Chamb ...
praised Pinochet, saying his regime "should have killed more people".
Every year on the anniversary of the coup protests can be seen throughout the country.
The indictment and arrest of Pinochet occurred on 10 October 1998 in London. He returned to Chile in March 2000 but was not charged with the crimes against him. On his 91st birthday on 25 November 2006, in a public statement to supporters, Pinochet for the first time claimed to accept "political responsibility" for what happened in Chile under his regime, though he still defended the 1973 coup against Salvador Allende. In a statement read by his wife Lucia Hiriart, he said, ''Today, near the end of my days, I want to say that I harbour no rancour against anybody, that I love my fatherland above all. ... I take political responsibility for everything that was done''.
See also
* Negationism of the military dictatorship of Chile
Notes
References
Bibliography and further reading
* Bawden, JR. (2016). ''The Pinochet Generation: The Chilean Military in the Twentieth Century'', Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press.
* Christian, D. (1992). "Perestroika and World History", ''Australian Slavonic and East European studies'', 6 (1), pp. 1–28.
* Falcoff, M. (2003). "Cuba: The Morning After", p. 26. AEI Press, 2003.
* Petras, J., & Vieux, S. (1990). "The Chilean 'Economic Miracle': An Empirical Critique", ''Critical Sociology'', 17, pp. 57–72.
* Roberts, K.M. (1995). "From the Barricades to the Ballot Box: Redemocratization and Political Realignment in the Chilean Left", ''Politics & Society'', 23, pp. 495–519.
* Schatan, J. (1990). "The Deceitful Nature of Socio-Economic Indicators". ''Development'', 3–4, pp. 69–75.
* Sznajder, M. (1996). "Dilemmas of economic and political modernisation in Chile: A jaguar that wants to be a puma", ''Third World Quarterly'', 17, pp. 725–736.
* Valdes, J.G. (1995). ''Pinochet's economists: The Chicago School in Chile'', Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
* Steve Anderso
Body of Chile's Former President Frei May Be Exumed
''The Santiago Times'', April 5, 2005
External links
Literature and Torture in Pinochet's Chile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Military Government Of Chile (1973-90)
1973 establishments in Chile
1990 disestablishments in Chile
Chile
Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...
States and territories established in 1973
States and territories disestablished in 1990
Authoritarianism