Chilean coup of 1973

The 1973 Chilean coup d'état took place on 11 September 1973, when the armed forces of Chile overthrew the elected socialist president Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity government. Allende died in the besieged presidential palace, La Moneda, and a military junta led by General Augusto Pinochet took power. The coup ended more than four decades of uninterrupted constitutional government and opened a dictatorship that lasted until 1990.

In the three-way presidential election of 1970, Allende, a Marxist, won 36.6 per cent of the vote, narrowly ahead of the conservative Jorge Alessandri. Because no candidate had an absolute majority, Congress had to choose, and it confirmed Allende after he signed a statute promising to respect the constitution. The economy deteriorated badly under his government: the budget deficit soared, and inflation, which rose by 225 per cent in 1972, reached about 600 per cent in 1973. A long truckers' strike in October 1972 and further strikes and protests deepened shortages.

The United States government of Richard Nixon was hostile to Allende from the start. Documents later declassified show that in 1970 the CIA tried both to stop Congress confirming him and to encourage a military coup, and that it later funded opposition parties, newspapers and strikes. A 2000 US intelligence report concluded that the CIA did not instigate the 1973 coup, but knew of the plotting, had contacts with some plotters and probably appeared to condone it. Historians disagree on how far American pressure shaped events: some, such as Peter Winn and Peter Kornbluh, stress Washington's role in creating the conditions for the coup, while others find no evidence that it directed the military action itself. On the other side, Fidel Castro's Cuba supplied weapons to left-wing groups, and Soviet archives smuggled out by Vasili Mitrokhin indicate that Moscow gave money to Allende.

In the March 1973 congressional elections Popular Unity won 43.2 per cent, which was not enough to break the deadlock with the opposition-controlled Congress. On 29 June a tank regiment attacked La Moneda in a failed rising known as the Tanquetazo. On 23 August the Chamber of Deputies passed a resolution, by 81 votes to 47, accusing the government of breaking the constitution and calling on the armed forces to restore legal order. The next day General Carlos Prats, the army commander who had opposed military intervention, resigned under pressure, and Pinochet replaced him.

Early on 11 September the navy seized the port of Valparaíso. The armed forces quickly took control of radio stations and most of the country. Allende went to La Moneda with his bodyguards, refused offers of safe passage into exile, and made a final radio address expressing faith in Chile's future. Troops attacked the palace, and air force jets bombed it. The defenders surrendered in the early afternoon, and Allende was found dead inside. The junta announced that he had killed himself; a forensic investigation after his body was exhumed in 2011 reached the same conclusion, although some experts and supporters have disputed it.

The junta of the army, navy, air force and police dissolved Congress, banned the Popular Unity parties, suspended political activity and took control of the media. Tens of thousands of people were arrested, many held in Santiago's National Stadium, and the singer Víctor Jara was among those killed. Pinochet soon emerged as the dominant figure and became president. A later official commission, the Valech Report of 2004, put the number killed at fewer than 3,000 and found that some 28,000 people had been arrested, imprisoned and tortured. At least 200,000 Chileans are estimated to have left the country between 1973 and 1990.

Pinochet lost a plebiscite in 1988 and handed over to an elected government in 1990. The coup became one of the defining events of the Cold War in Latin America, and because it fell on the same date as the attacks of 2001 it is sometimes called "the other 9/11".

Chile's borders were unchanged by the coup; our 1960 map shows the country before Allende's presidency, and the 1985 map shows it under the military government.