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With a promise to nationalize Chile's copper mines, banks, and largest industries, as well as break up its landed estates, Salvador Allende won less than 37 percent of the vote in a thee-way 1970 presidential race. Although opposed by almost two-thirds of the voters, he was still expected to occupy Chile's White House, the Moneda: Chilean law called for the Congress to select the president when no candidate had won a clear majority. And historically, the legislature always voted for the man who had garnered the most votes. Thus, Allende, leading a leftist coalition, the Unidad Popular, would win.

Fearing that Allende might convert Chile into a bastion of Marxism, the vehemently anticommunist U.S. president, Richard M. Nixon, ordered Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, to do something. Kissinger complied: Without informing Edward Korry, the U.S. ambassador to Chile, he encouraged the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to prevent Allende's inauguration. One plan called for the United States to bribe the Christian Democratic legislators into voting for Jorge Alessandri, the man who had placed second in the 1970 election. Alessandri had promised that if elected, he would resign, thus allowing the outgoing president, Eduardo Frei, to seek office again. Frei, fearing that Allende's followers might rebel if their candidate did not take office, refused. The CIA then tried another tact: It encouraged a putsch that would begin with the kidnapping of General René Schneider, the commander of the Chilean army. But Korry, noting that the proposed coup's leader, General Roberto Viaux, was too unstable, insisted that Washington scuttle the plan. The CIA did withdraw, but Viaux's men persevered and in their attempt to capture Schneider, they mortally wounded the general. The military plot collapsed and the Christian Democrats voted for Allende, who then became president.

Allende's economic policies proved disastrous. He froze prices while increasing salaries, thus unleashing inflation. When his followers, in contravention of existing laws, seized farm and urban land in addition to factories, both agricultural and industrial productivity plummeted. After the U.S.-owned copper mines were nationalized, without compensation, the United States reduced its economic assistance while trying to prevent Chile from borrowing money from international banks. Allende, however, easily found other nations willing to lend him funds.

By 1973 inflation had reached 1 percent a day. Meanwhile, a series of strikes, as well as the leftist seizures of property and factories, paralyzed the economy. The opposition could do nothing: Allende's party possessed enough congressional seats to prevent his impeachment. Still, the collapse of the economy, a surge in violence, including assassinations, the armed resistance to the military's attempts to disarm worker groups, an abortive naval mutiny supported by an Allende ally, and the threat of creating armed militias convinced the normally apolitical military to rebel on September 11, 1973.

Pinochet Regime

The rebellious armed forces' intelligence services, particularly the army's Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA), arrested and sometimes tortured those whom they suspected of opposing the regime. Approximately 3,000 people, including 132 policemen and servicemen, died during the military's rule: About half of these, 1,205, perished in the last four months of 1973; another 1,216 died between 1974 and 1977. Some of these prisoners died from torture; some were executed. Various individuals fled, although exile, whether self-imposed or not, did not always guarantee safety: DINA agents tracked down and killed the army's former commander, General Carlos Prats, and his wife in Argentina. The government, sometimes in concert with foreign terrorist organizations, pursued others—such as the Christian Democratic politician Bernardo Leighton, whom they shot in Rome. To destroy or intimidate exiled foes, the Chilean authorities launched Operation Condor, under which Chile cooperated with the dictatorial regimes of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay to capture, kill, or in some cases repatriate suspected terrorists.

During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, elected in 1976, the United States ceased lending Chile money as well as providing it with either humanitarian or military assistance. It also pressured the Pinochet regime to become less repressive. In response, Pinochet promised to restore elected and constitutional government to Chile; he even abolished DINA, although he replaced it with another equally sinister organization, the Centro Nacional de Informaciones (CNI). In early 1978 he ended the state of siege, replacing it with a state of national emergency; a constitution, which the public supposedly ratified by plebiscite, was promulgated in 1980.

The September 1976 assassination of Orlando Letelier, former ambassador to the United States and a prominent left-wing critic of the Pinochet regime, as well as Ronni Moffit, an American, in Washington, D.C., dramatically altered U.S. policy vis-à-vis Chile. Infuriated by this blatant violation of its sovereignty, the United States ordered an investigation that soon proved Michael Townley, an American living in Santiago, together with Cuban exiles and Chilean army officers had murdered Letelier. Washington demanded that Chile extradite Townley who, receiving a lighter sentence in return for his cooperation, implicated not only his Cuban accomplices but also explained his participation in the assassination of Prats and the attempted murder of Leighton. Townley and the Cubans would go to jail, but the Pinochet regime refused to extradite the Chilean army officers whom Townley named and an American court indicted. (One of the officers voluntarily came to the United States, where he stood trial and was incarcerated.) In retaliation, Carter reduced the American presence in Chile in addition to opposing loans to Santiago. A Chilean court subsequently sentenced General Manuel Contreras, the head of DINA, to jail. The Chilean government also awarded the families of Letelier and Moffit approximately $2.5 million to settle their wrongful death claims.

The Pinochet regime's economic policies, which produced enormous hardship, and its political repression eventually galvanized the opposition. Led by the Roman Catholic Church and their revived political parties, Chileans demanded that the government hold an election, as stipulated by the 1980 constitution, to determine if Pinochet could succeed himself in office. Aided by a clever public relations campaign, funded in part by U.S. human rights foundations, the anti-Pinochet forces triumphed: A resounding 54 percent refused to give Pinochet another term of office. Under pressure from the armed forces, he resigned from office in 1989.

Return to Democracy

Patricio Aylwin, the newly elected president of Chile, convened the National Commission of Truth and Reconciliation to determine what precisely had occurred during the Pinochet regime. The commission, however, did not possess prosecutorial powers: A 1978 amnesty, which the armed forces and Pinochet regime had demanded and received in return for lifting the state of siege, pardoned the military and police for any illegal acts they might have committed between 1973 and 1978.

Obviously, the amnesty would not stop foreign governments from prosecuting any official who killed any Chilean holding dual citizenship. The first to fall afoul of a foreign court was Pinochet, whom British authorities detained in England when in 1998 a Spanish judge, Baltazar Garzón, demanded his extradition. Chile's foreign minister, José Miguel Insulza, himself an exile during the Pinochet regime, petitioned the British to release the general: Only Chile, he argued, had jurisdiction. Eventually, England's foreign minister overruled the courts that had voted to extradite Pinochet: The general, he stated, was too feeble to stand trial. Pinochet did return to Chile, but his arrest demonstrated his vulnerability. In increasingly declining health, he has become almost superfluous. The commission, however, continues to investigate the crimes committed under Pinochet's aegis and Chileans still have to accept and move beyond this heritage of abuse.

SEE ALSO Immunity; Pinochet, Augusto; Torture; United States Foreign Policies Toward Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

William F. Sater