Augusto Pinochet regime (Chile, 1973–90)
On September 11, 1973, the Chilean Armed Forces staged a military coup. President Salvador Allende Gossens died during an infantry-tank assault on the La Moneda presidential palace, and a junta composed of three generals and an admiral, with General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte as president, was installed.
At the beginning the junta received the support of the oligarchy and of a sizable part of the middle class. This support by moderate political parties, including many Christian Democrats, can be explained by their belief that a military government represented a transitional stage necessary to restoring Chilean democracy as it had been before 1970.
Very soon they were to discover that the military had their own political objectives, including the repression of all left-wing and guerrilla forces. The Christian Democratic, National, and Radical Democracy parties were declared to be in “indefinite recess,” and the Communists, Socialists, and Radicals were outlawed. In 1977 the traditional parties were dissolved, and a private enterprise economy was instated.
National plebiscite
The policies of the military government, though encouraging the development of free enterprise and a new entrepreneurial class, resulted in worldwide condemnation, causing unemployment, a decline of real wages, and, as a consequence, a worsening of the standard of living of the lower and middle classes. Political and social conditions were complicated by the global economic crisis. In 1981 a new constitution, as well as an eight-year extension of Pinochet’s presidential term, was enacted after a tightly controlled plebiscite was held in 1980. The document included specific provisions for a transition to civilian government over the same eight-year period and mandated that a referendum be held in 1988 on whether the ruling junta’s president was to remain in office.
Civilian unrest
Large-scale popular protests erupted in 1983, and several opposition parties, the Christian Democratic Party being the largest, formed a new centre-left coalition, the Democratic Alliance (Alianza Democrática or AD). The Roman Catholic Church also began openly to support the opposition. In August 1984, 11 parties of the right and centre signed an accord, worked out by the archbishop of Santiago, Raúl Cardinal Silva Henríquez, calling for elections to be scheduled before 1989. Additional pressure came from the Jimmy Carter presidency and other countries that had supported Chile economically but now showed signs of impatience with Pinochet’s regime and with the numerous reports of human rights violations attributed to his military crackdown.
Pinochet's detention
Chile became embroiled in an unprecedented controversy in 1998. While visiting Great Britain, Pinochet was detained when Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón requested his extradition in connection with the torture of Spanish citizens in Chile during his military regime. The case caused the United States and other countries to release documents relating to those who had “disappeared” in Chile under Pinochet’s rule. In January 2000 Pinochet with the help of Baroness Margaret Thatcher won an appeal on medical grounds and was permitted to return home, but Chilean authorities continued to investigate numerous charges of earlier human rights abuses. Stripped of the immunity from prosecution he had enjoyed as a former president, Pinochet was indicted later that year, though the case was later dismissed. In January 2005, however, Chile’s Supreme Court upheld another indictment of Pinochet, who was once again without immunity (which is removed on a case-by-case basis under Chilean law).
