1973 Chilean coup d'état

The Chilean coup d'état of 1973 is a landmark in the history of Chile and the Soviet-American Cold War. On 11 September 1973, the government of President Salvador Allende was overthrown by the military in a coup d’état.

The coup occurred two months after a first failed attempt, the Tanquetazo — Tank putsch — and a month after the Chamber of Deputies (with an Opposition majority) condemned President Allende’s alleged breaches of the Constitution. President Allende died during the coup, the cause of his death remains disputed.

U.S. intervention in Chilean internal politics and support of right-wing opponents of President Allende — including presidential assassination — are documented in the declassified (1998) documents about Project FUBELT. The Soviet Union was sympathetic to Allende, but did not assist him because they believed he was "weak" for refusing to use force against the opposition.^[1] General Augusto Pinochet assumed power after deposing President Salvador Allende, establishing an anti-communist military dictatorship that ruled until until 1990. This right-wing military deposition of an elected Socialist president by a U.S.-sponsored caudillo — Man on a White Horse — licenced the U.S.S.R. to retract from Russo-American détente in pursuit of foreign policy ambitions in the Third World.

Chilean politics before the coup d'état

Main article: Chile under Allende

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Chilean coup d'état

Political scandals

When Salvador Allende Gossens won the 1970 Chilean presidential election, Chilean society was wracked by politically intractable economic difficulties; slow growth, inflation, unequal income distribution, and the concentration of economic power to the few. Most of the populace were poor. The first year of the Socialist Allende Government registered economic improvement; the GDP increased 8.6 per cent, inflation decreased from 34.9 percent in 1970 to 22.1 per cent, and industrial production increased 12 per cent. ^[2] Mr Allende's Socialist socioeconomic government agenda was opposed by the rich and the U.S., which exerted diplomatic, economic, and covert pressure upon Chile's elected socialist government. ^[3]

At the end of 1971, Cuban President Fidel Castro visited Chile in a four-week state visit giving credence to the Right Wing belief that the Chilean Way to Socialism placed Chile en route to Cuban Socialism, i.e. soviet Communism. ^[4]

In 1972, the monetary policies increasing the amount of circulating currency, adopted by economics minister Pedro Vuskovic, devalued the escudo, provoking inflation to 140 per cent in 1972 and engendering a black market economy. ^[2] The Allende Government acted against the black market with organised distribution of basic products. In October 1972, Chile suffered the first of many socially confrontational strikes — led by the Chilean rich — openly supported by U.S. President Richard Nixon via the CIA.

On 9 October 1972, as part of the U.S.'s September Plan, a truck-owners strike (funded with US$2 million), began; it was led by the ^[5] Confederación Nacional del Transporte (The National Confederation of Transport), presided by León Vilarín, also the leader of the far-right-wing paramilitary group Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Liberty). ^[5] The Confederation, comprising 165 truck-owners' trade unions of 40,000 members and 56,000 vehicles, declared an indefinite strike to paralyze the country.

Soon, small-scale businessmen, some professional unions, and student groups joined the strike. Its leaders — Vilarín, Jaime Guzmán, Rafael Cumsille, Guillermo Elton, Eduardo Arriagada — expected to so depose the elected government. Other than damaging the national economy, the principal effect of the twenty-four-day strike was drawing Army head, Gen. Carlos Prats, into the government as Interior Minister, an appeasement to the right wing. ^[2] Gen. Prats succeeded Gen. René Schneider after his assassination on 24 October 1970, by the groups of Gen. Roberto Viaux and Gen. Camilo Valenzuela whom the CIA financed and logistically supported. Moreover, Gen. Prats supported the legalist Schneider Doctrine and refused military involvement in a coup d'état against President Allende.

Despite the declining economy, President Allende's Popular Unity coalition increased its vote to 43.2 percent in the March 1973 parliamentary elections, however, by then, the informal alliance between Popular Unity and the Christian Democrats ended. ^[6] The Christian Democrats allied with the right-wing National Party, oppose Allende's Socialist government; the two right-wing parties forming the Confederación Democrática (CODE) (The Democratic Coalition). The internecine parliamentary conflict, between legislature and the executive branch paralyzed practical government. ^[7] To destabilise the Allende Government, the CIA paid some U.S.$8 million to right-wing opposition groups to "create pressures, exploit weaknesses, magnify obstacles" and hasten President Allende's deposition. ^[5] The CIA report released in 2000 records some U.S. $6.8 million spent for the deposition. ^[8]

Crisis

Main article: Tanquetazo

On 29 June 1973, Colonel Roberto Souper surrounded the La Moneda presidential with his tank regiment and failed to depose the Allende Government. ^[9] That failed coup d’état — known as the Tanquetazo tank putsch — organised by the fascist Patria y Libertad paramilitary group, was followed by a general strike at the end of July that included the copper miners of El Teniente.

In August 1973, a constitutional crisis occurred, and the Supreme Court publicly complained about the Allende Government's inability to enforce the law of the land, and, on 22 August, the Chamber of Deputies (with the Christian Democrats united with the National Party) accused the Allende Government of unconstitutional acts and called upon the military to enforce constitutional order. ^[7]

For months, the Allende Government had feared calling upon the Carabineros (Carabineers) national police, suspecting them disloyal to the Constitution. On 9 August, President Allende appointed Gen. Carlos Prats as Minister of Defence, who was forced to resign both as defence minister and as the Army Commander-in-chief on 24 August 1973, embarrassed by the Alejandrina Cox incident and a public protest of the wives of his generals before his house. Gen. Augusto Pinochet replaced him as Army commander-in-chief the same day. ^[7]

Supreme Court's resolution

On 26 May 1973, Chile’s Supreme Court unanimously denounced the Allende régime’s disruption of the legality of the nation in its failure to uphold judicial decisions, because of its continual refusal to permit police execution of judicial resolutions contradicting the Government's measures.

Chamber of Deputies' resolution

On 22 August 1973 the Christian Democrats and the National Party members of the Chamber of Deputies voted 81 to 47, the resolution titled Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy that asked the military to put an immediate end to breach[es of] the Constitution . . . with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the Constitutional order of our Nation, and the essential underpinnings of democratic co-existence among Chileans.

The resolution declared that the Allende Government sought . . . to conquer absolute power with the obvious purpose of subjecting all citizens to the strictest political and economic control by the State . . . [with] the goal of establishing a totalitarian system, claiming it had made violations of the Constitution . . . a permanent system of conduct. Essentially, most of the accusations were about the Socialist Government disregarding the separation of powers, and arrogating legislative and judicial prerogatives to the executive branch of government.

Specifically, the Socialist Government of President Allende was accused of:

• ruling by decree, thwarting the normal legislative system
• refusing to enforce judicial decisions against its partisans; not carrying out sentences and judicial resolutions that contravene its objectives
• ignoring the decrees of the independent General Comptroller's Office
• sundry media offences; usurping control of the National Television Network and applying ... economic pressure against those media organizations that are not unconditional supporters of the government...
• allowing its socialist supporters to assemble armed, preventing the same by its right wing opponents
• . . . supporting more than 1,500 illegal ‘takings’ of farms...
• illegal repression of the El Teniente miners’ strike
• illegally limiting emigration

Finally, the resolution condemned the creation and development of government-protected [socialist] armed groups, which . . . are headed towards a confrontation with the armed forces. President Allende's efforts to re-organize the military and the police forces, politically untrustworthy and disloyal in their current forms, were characterised as notorious attempts to use the armed and police forces for partisan ends, destroy their institutional hierarchy, and politically infiltrate their ranks.

President Allende's response

Two days later, on 24 August 1973, President Allende responded, ^[10] characterising the Congress's declaration as destined to damage the country’s prestige abroad and create internal confusion, predicting It will facilitate the seditious intention of certain sectors. He noted that the declaration (passed 81-47 in the Chamber of Deputies) had not obtained the two-thirds Senate majority constitutionally required to convict the president of abuse of power: essentially, the Congress were invoking the intervention of the armed forces and of Order against a democratically-elected government and subordinat[ing] political representation of national sovereignty to the armed institutions, which neither can nor ought to assume either political functions or the representation of the popular will.

Mr Allende argued he had obeyed constitutional means for including military men to the cabinet at the service of civic peace and national security, defending republican institutions against insurrection and terrorism. In contrast, he said that Congress was promoting a coup d’état or a civil war with a declaration full of affirmations that had already been refuted before-hand and which, in substance and process (directly handing it to the ministers rather than directly handing it to the President) violated a dozen articles of the (then-current) Constitution. He further argued that the legislature was usurping the government's executive function.

President Allende wrote: Chilean democracy is a conquest by all of the people. It is neither the work nor the gift of the exploiting classes, and it will be defended by those who, with sacrifices accumulated over generations, have imposed it . . . With a tranquil conscience . . . I sustain that never before has Chile had a more democratic government than that over which I have the honor to preside . . . I solemnly reiterate my decision to develop democracy and a state of law to their ultimate consequences . . . Parliament has made itself a bastion against the transformations . . . and has done everything it can to perturb the functioning of the finances and of the institutions, sterilizing all creative initiatives.

Adding that economic and political means would be needed to relieve the country's current crisis, and that the Congress were obstructing said means; having already paralyzed the State, they sought destroy it. He concluded by calling upon the workers, all democrats and patriots to join him in defending the Chilean Constitution and the revolutionary process.

Military coup d'état

On 11 September 1973, by 7.00 A.M., the Navy captured Valparaíso, strategically stationing ships and marine infantry in the central coast and closed radio and television networks. The Province Prefect informed President Allende of the Navy's actions; immediately, the president went to the presidential palace, La Moneda, with his bodyguards, the Grupo de Amigos Personales (GAP) (Group of Personal Friends). By 8:00 AM, the Army had closed most radio and television stations in Santiago city; the Air Force bombed the remaining active stations; the President received incomplete information, and was convinced that only a sector of the Navy conspired against him and his government.

President Allende and Defence minister Orlando Letelier failed to communicate with the military leaders. Admiral Montero, the Navy's commander and an Allende loyalist was rendered incommunicado when his telephone service was cut and his cars sabotaged before the coup d’état, ensuring he did not thwart them. Leadership of the Navy was transferred José Toribio Merino, planner of the coup d’état and executive officer to Adm. Montero. Augusto Pinochet, General of the Army, and Gustavo Leigh, General of the Air Force, did not answer President Allende's telephone calls to them. The General Director of the Carabineros (uniformed police), José María Sepúlveda, and the head of the Investigations Police (plain clothes detectives), Alfredo Joignant did answer President Allende's calls and immediately went to the La Moneda presidential palace. When Defence minister Letelier arrived to the Ministry of Defense, controlled by Adm. Patricio Carvajal, he was arrested: the first prisoner of the coup d’état.

Despite evidence that the treason encompassed all of the Chilean armed forces, President Allende hoped some remained loyal to the government. He was convinced of Gen. Pinochet's loyalty, telling a reporter that the coup d’état leaders must have imprisoned Pinochet. Only at 8:30 AM, when the armed forces declared their control of Chile, and that President Allende was deposed, did the President grasp the magnitude of the military's rebellion, yet refused to resign the presidency to which he was elected.

By 9:00 AM, the armed forces controlled Chile, except for the city centre of the capital, Santiago. President Allende refused to surrender, despite the military's declaring they would bomb the La Moneda presidential palace if he resisted deposition. The Socialist Party proposed to Allende that he escape to the San Joaquín industrial zone in southern Santiago, to later re-group and lead a counter-coup d’état; the president rejected the proposition. The military rebels attempted negotiations with President Allende, but he refused to resign, citing his constitutional duty to remain president, in the palace. Finally, President Allende gave a potent farewell speech telling the nation of the coup d’état and his refusal to resign his elected office under threat.

Annoyed with negotiating, Gen. Leigh ordered the presidential palace bombed, but was told the Hawker Hunter jet aeroplanes would take forty minutes to arrive and bomb down town Santiago. Meanwhile, Gen. Pinochet ordered an armour and infantry assault upon the La Moneda presidential palace and kill the government. The Chilean army met no resistance en route to the government's house; at the palace, the socialist defenders were out-gunned, over-powered, and killed. Finally, at mid-day, the air force arrived to bomb the elected Socialist president from office, ending with the death of Salvador Allende.

The worst of the military's violent purging from society of thousands of Chilean Leftists and suspected Leftists — by killing or forced disappearance — occurred in the first months after the U.S.-sponsored coup d’état. The military imprisoned 40,000 of their political enemies in the National Stadium of Chile; among the tortured and killed desaparecidos was U.S. citizen Charles Horman and song-writer Víctor Jara, and the 70 political killings by the death squad, Caravan of Death (Caravana de la Muerte) in October 1973.

Some 130,000 people were arrested in a three-year period; the dead and disappeared numbered thousands in the first months of military dictatorship. Those include the British physician Sheila Cassidy, who later brought awareness to the UK public of human rights violations in Chile. Among those detained was Alberto Bachelet (father of incumbent Chilean President Michelle Bachelet), an air force official; he was tortured and died on 12 March 1974, ^{[11][12][13][14][15]}. The right-wing newspaper, El Mercurio (The Mercury), ^[16] reported that Mr Bachelet died after a basketball game, citing his poor cardiac health. Michelle Bachelet and her mother were imprisoned and tortured in the Villa Grimaldi detention and torture centre on 10 January 1975. ^{[17][18][19][20][11][12][21][22][23][24][15][25]}

After Gen. Pinochet lost the election in the 1988 plebiscite, the Rettig Commission, a multi-partisan truth commission, in 1991 reported the location of torture and detention centers — Colonia Dignidad, Esmeralda ship and Víctor Jara Stadium — and that some 2,700 people were killed or disappeared by the military régime for seventeen years, from 1973 to 1990. Later, in November 2004, the Valech Report confirmed the number as less than 3,000 killed and reduced the number of cases of forced disappearance; some 28,000 people were arrested, imprisoned, and tortured. Afterwards, many were exiled abroad as political refugees — especially to Argentina — however, the DINA (National Intelligence Directorate) secret police followed them abroad to spy upon and kill them, activities that were part of Operation Condor, which linked South American dictatorships against liberal, leftist, communist, socialist political opponents.

In El día decisivo (The Decisive Day), Gen. Pinochet recounts the coup d’état, affirming he was the leading plotter, and that he co-ordinated, from his army commander office, the deposition of President Salvador Allende. Recently, high military officials from the time said Pinochet reluctantly participated, following the lead of Adm. Merino and air force Gen. Leigh.

Casualties

The 11th of September itself was relatively bloodless. Fewer than forty individuals died as a direct result of fighting on that day.

According to official reports prepared after the return of the democracy, at La Moneda only two people died: President Allende and the journalist Augusto Olivares (both by suicide). Two more were injured, Antonio Aguirre and Osvaldo Ramos, both members of President Allende's entourage; they would later be allegedly kidnapped from the hospital and disappeared. In November 2006, the Associated Press noted that more than fifteen bodyguards and aides were taken from the palace during the coup and are still unaccounted for; in 2006 Augusto Pinochet was indicted for two of their deaths ^[26].

On the military side, there were 5 deaths: two sergeants, a corporal, an army private, and a transit policeman. A press photographer also died in the crossfire while attempting to cover the event. In the rest of Santiago, the deaths in battle were also very few: 10 policemen, one MIR and two Socialist fighters, 5 workers and two housewives.

While fatalities due to battle during the coup might have been relatively small, tens of thousands of people were arrested during the coup and held in the National Stadium^[27]. This was because the plans for the coup called for the arrest of every man, woman and child on the streets the morning of September 11. Of these approximately 40,000 to 50,000 perfunctory arrests, several hundred individuals would later be detained, questioned, tortured, and in some cases murdered. While these deaths did not occur before the surrender of Allende's forces, they occurred as a direct result of arrests and round-ups during the coup's military action.

Allende's death

Main article: Allende's death

President Allende died in La Moneda during the coup. The junta officially declared that he committed suicide with an AK47 assault rifle given to him by Fidel Castro, and an autopsy labelled his death as suicide. Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal, one of the primary instigators of the coup, claimed that "Allende committed suicide and is dead now." At the time few of his supporters accepted the explanation; today it is still not universally^[28] accepted. One of the primary pieces of evidence used are statements given by two doctors from the La Moneda Palace infirmary who say that they witnessed the suicide.^[29]

Aftermath

Main article: Government Junta of Chile (1973)

On September 13, the Junta dissolved Congress.^[30] At the same time, it outlawed the parties that had been part of the Popular Unity coalition, and all political activity was declared "in recess." ^[31]

Initially, there were four leaders of the junta: In addition to General Augusto Pinochet, from the Army, there were General Gustavo Leigh Guzmán, of the Air Force; Admiral José Toribio Merino Castro, of the Navy (who replaced Constitutionalist Admiral Raúl Montero); and General Director César Mendoza Durán, of the National Police (Carabineros de Chile) (who replaced Constitutionalist General Director José María Sepúlveda). Coup leaders soon decided against a rotating presidency and named General Pinochet permanent head of the junta^[32]

Debate

The participants in the coup d’état and their civil supporters argue that the deposition of Salvador Allende Gosssens, the elected president of Chile, was essential for preserving freedom, democracy, and prosperity, claiming that the Socialist Allende Government sought to establish a Cuban-style dictatorship that would have destroyed human rights and economic prosperity. Therefore, the forcible, violent deposition of President Allende was a necessary, justified course of action. Right-wing supporters also contend that the subsequent Miracle of Chile economic boom of the late 1980s and 1990s directly resulted from Gen. Pinochet’s economic policies.

Countering the right-wing justification, opponents of the coup d’état assert that the succeeding military government was a repressive dictatorship that committed thousands of documented cases of torture and forced disappearance. That Chile had no elected civil government for seventeen years, and, that in the early years of Gen. Pinochet’s dictatorship, unemployment increased, real wages decreased, and the poverty gap between rich and poor widened, decreasing the average Chilean’s prosperity.

Later, many right-wing people and organisations, who supported the military coup d’état when it occurred, criticised the Pinochet régime. They considered the Allende presidency illegal, justifying the coup d’état, yet complained that the General did not restore the promised democracy..

U.S. Role in the 1973 military coup d’état

Main article: U.S. intervention in Chile

The U.S. Government’s hostility to the elected Socialist President Salvador Allende government is substantiated ^[33] in the documents declassified during the Clinton administration; U.S. President R.M. Nixon ordered the CIA to depose President Allende in 1970 — immediately after assuming office — with Project FUBELT; direct American involvement in the coup d’état is substantiated in The Trial of Henry Kissinger (2001), by Christopher Hitchens; (U.S. efforts to prevent Allende from assuming office in 1970 are discussed in the entry “1970 Chilean presidential election”.) The U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of Chile was a foreign policy meant to worsen the economic crisis that President Allende faced — in order to propitiate a right-wing coup d’état. ^[34].

State Terrorism

Main article: Allegations of state terrorism by the United States

Internationally, the U.S. stands accused of State Terrorism for having instigated the coup d’état against elected Socialist President Salvador Allende of Chile. ^[35] In The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression, Prof. Michael Stohl writes: In addition to non-terroristic strategies . . . the United States embarked on a program to create economic and political chaos in Chile . . . After the failure to prevent Allende from taking office, efforts shifted to obtaining his removal. Money for the CIA's destabilization of Chilean society, included, financing and assisting opposition groups and right-wing terrorist paramilitary groups such as Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Liberty).

Prof. Gareau writes: Washington's training of thousands of military personnel from Chile, who later committed state terrorism, again makes Washington eligible for the charge of accessory before the fact to state terrorism. The CIA’s close relationship, during the height of the terror to Contreras, Chile's chief terrorist (with the possible exception of Pinochet himself), lays Washington open to the charge of accessory during the fact. Prof. Gareau argues that the fuller extent involved the U.S. co-ordinating counterinsurgency warfare among all Latin American countries: Washington's service as the overall co-ordinator of state terrorism in Latin America demonstrates the enthusiasm with which Washington played its role as an accomplice to state terrorism in the region. It was not a reluctant player. Rather it not only trained Latin American governments in terrorism and financed the means to commit terrorism; it also encouraged them to apply the lessons learned to put down what it called “the communist threat”. Its enthusiasm extended to co-ordinating efforts to apprehend those wanted by terrorist states who had fled to other countries in the region . . . The evidence available leads to the conclusion that Washington’s influence over the decision to commit these acts was considerable. ^[36] Given that they knew about the terrorism of this régime, what did the élites in Washington during the Nixon and Ford administrations do about it? The élites in Washington reacted by increasing U.S. military assistance and sales to the state terrorists, by covering up their terrorism, by urging U.S. diplomats to do so also, and by assuring the terrorists of their support, thereby becoming accessories to state terrorism before, during, and after the fact. ^[37]

Scholars identify Chile as an example of open State Terrorism without a civilian governance façade. In State Terrorism and Latin America: Chile, Argentina, and International Human Rights, history professor Thomas Wright argues: unlike their Brazilian counterparts, they did not embrace state terrorism as a last recourse; they launched a wave of terrorism on the day of the coup. In contrast to the Brazilians and Uruguayans, the Chileans were very public about their objectives and their methods; there was nothing subtle about rounding up thousands of prisoners, the extensive use of torture, executions following sham court-marshal, and shootings in cold blood. After the initial wave of open terrorism, the Chilean armed forces constructed a sophisticated apparatus for the secret application of state terrorism that lasted until the dictatorship’s end . . . The impact of the Chilean coup reached far beyond the country’s borders. Through their aid in the overthrow of Allende and their support of the Pinochet dictatorship, President Richard Nixon and his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, sent a clear signal to all of Latin America that anti-revolutionary régimes employing repression, even state terrorism, could count on the support of the United States. The U.S. government, in effect, gave a green light to Latin America’s right wing and its armed forces to eradicate the Left, and use repression to erase the advances that workers — and in some countries, campesinos — had made through decades of struggle. This ‘September 11 effect’ was soon felt around the hemisphere. ^[38]

Prof. Gareau concludes: The message for the populations of Latin American nations, and particularly the Left opposition, was clear: the United States would not permit the continuation of a Socialist government, even if it came to power in a democratic election and continued to uphold the basic democratic structure of that society.^[39]

Justifying quotations

• "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves." — Henry Kissinger

• "Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty." — Edward M. Korry, U.S. Ambassador to Chile, upon hearing of Allende's election.

• "Make the economy scream [in Chile to] prevent Allende from coming to power or to unseat him" — Richard Nixon, orders to CIA director Richard Helms on September 15, 1970

• "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to October 24 [1970] but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date. We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden..." — A communique to the CIA base in Chile, issued on October 16, 1970

• "[Military rule aims] to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of entrepreneurs." — Augusto Pinochet^[40]

• "We didn't do it. I mean we helped them. [Garbled] created the conditions as great as possible. — Henry Kissinger conversing with President Nixon about the coup. Telephone call from Kissinger to Nixon

Additional information

See also

Media

• Chile - Toad the Wet Sprocket
• The Ballad of Victor Jara - Rod MacDonald
• Missing
• Machuca
• The Black Pimpernel
• La Faute à Fidel (Blame it on Fidel, 2007)
• La Batalla de Chile (The Battle of Chile, three-part documentary)
• 20 Years Of Silence (40 minute documentary broadcasted on CBC)

External links

• The site of the Chilean Anti-Communist League with facts and pictures of that time.
• CIA acknowledges involvement in Allende's overthrow Pinochet's rise, CNN.
• La Tercera, Chilean newspaper, September 11, 1973 (Spanish)
• La Tercera, El Once, includes news of different newspaper of days previous to the coup (Spanish)
• Las 24 horas que estremecieron a Chile. Detailed minute-by-minute account of the events of September 11, 1973 by historian Ascanio Cavallo, on the site of La Tercera. (Spanish)
• Cronología, Salvador-Allende.cl, originally published in Archivo Salvador Allende, number 14. An extensive Spanish-language site providing a day-by-day chronology of the Allende era. This is clearly a partisan, pro-Allende source, but the research and detail are enormous. (Spanish)
• Resolution of August 22, 1973 "Declaration of the Breakdown of Chile’s Democracy." (Wikisource)
• Alternate source of the Resolution of August 22, 1973, on the site of José Piñera. (English) (German) (Spanish) (French) (Polish)
• "Never Again: An essay about the breakdown of democracy in Chile" by José Piñera, a former Minister of Pinochet (examination of events leading up to, and implications regarding, the Resolution of August 22, 1973. (English) (Spanish) (Italian) (Mirror site)
• Allende's August 24, 1973 response to the Chamber of Deputies' declaration, on the site of José Piñera.
• National Security Archive's Chile Documentation Project which provides documents obtained from FOIA requests regarding U.S. involvement in Chile, beginning with attempts to promote a coup in 1970 and continuing through U.S. support for Pinochet
• Sources on the coup
• Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970-1976, GWU
• US Dept. of State FOIA Church Report (Covert Action in Chile)

Footnotes and references

References

• Simon Collier & William F. Sater (1996). A History of Chile: 1808-1994. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Julio Faundez (1988). Marxism and democracy in Chile: From 1932 to the fall of Allende, New Haven: Yale University Press.
• Ignacio González Camus, ed. (1988). El día en que murió Allende (The day that Allende Died), Chilean Institute of Humanistic Studies (ICHEH) / CESOC.
• Anke Hoogvelt (1997). Globalisation and the postcolonial world, London: Macmillan.
• Thomas Karamessines (1970). Operating guidance cable on coup plotting in Chile, Washington: National Security Council.
• Jeane Kirkpatrick (1979). "Dictatorships and Double Standards", Commentary, November, pp 34-45.
• Henry Kissinger (1970). National Security Decision 93: Policy Towards Chile, Washington: National Security Council.
• Richard Norton-Taylor (1999). "Truth will out: Unearthing the declassified documents in America which give the lie to Lady Thatcher's outburst", The Guardian, July 8, 1999, London: Guardian Newspapers Ltd.
• Alec Nove (1986). Socialism, Economics and Development, London: Allen & Unwin.
• James F. Petras & Morris H. Morley (1974). How Allende fell: A study in U.S.–Chilean relations, Nottingham: Spokesman Books.
• Sigmund, P.E. (1986). "Development Strategies in Chile, 1964-1983: The Lessons of Failure", Chapter 6 in I.J. Kim (Ed.), Development and Cultural Change: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, New York: Paragon House Publishers, pp. 159-178.
• Valenzuela, J.S., & Valenzuela, A. (1993). "Modernisation and Dependency: Alternative Perspectives in the Study of Latin-American Underdervelopment", in M.A. Seligson & J.T. Pass-Smith (Eds.), Development and Underdevelopment: The Political Economy of Inequality, Boulder: Lynnes Rienner, pp. 203-216.