Chile 1973: The other Sept 11

It is time to remember the other Sept 11, the one we have almost forgotten. In 1973, a whole world of hope and dreams, of idealism, came crashing down in Chile. The country's military, in conjunction with the Nixon administration in Washington, with the machinations of Henry Kissinger, went into the grisly job of overthrowing an elected government. On the streets, soldiers went swiftly into occupying government buildings. From the skies, the Chilean air force rained down fire on the presidential palace.

On Sept 11, 1973, a terrifying ignominy of darkness took hold of Chile.

In the early hours of the day, the country's armed forces, led by the newly appointed army chief Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, went into action to overthrow the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende Gossens. Three years earlier, in 1970,  Allende's electoral triumph had rattled Chile's rightwing, which was in cahoots with the men who governed in distant Washington. Much effort was expended by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger to undermine the election or to steal it. In the event, on Sept 4, 1970, Allende was elected to office with just 36.2 per cent of the vote.

Allende's words to his ecstatic supporters are yet remembered: 'Entrare a la Moneda y conmigo entrara el pueblo. Sere el Companero Presidente' — he would enter La Moneda, the presidential palace, in the company of the people, for he was going to be their President. It was, the historian Ariel Dorfman was to note later, a moment of baptism for Allende as Chile's leader. And yet the Nixon administration, through Henry Kissinger, had not given up its goal of creating problems for the new Chilean government. The Central Intelligence Agency went into the dirty job of organising protests against Allende, through recruiting agents in Santiago, and pumping in money to elements ready and willing to destabilise the administration. And with that went the insinuation that the Allende government was on a mission to turn democratic Chile into a fortress of Marxism.

President Allende was dismissive of all such intrigues, drawing public attention to the US-led campaign against the people of Chile. He employed all diplomatic means to explain to the outside world that democracy under socialism was safe in his country. He sent the young and articulate Orlando Letelier to Washington as ambassador in the hope that Letelier would be able to explain to Americans the causes behind the nationalisation programme underway in Santiago. To Paris, as ambassador, went his friend the acclaimed poet Pablo Neruda.

Yet Chile remained threatened by the wolves lurking in the woods. Funds made available by the CIA to Allende's enemies were a brazen hint of the lengths to which Washington was willing to go to destabilize and remove the President and his government. Moves were made to influence the Chilean military into taking a position, a clear act of treason, against the government. Economic destabilisation was encouraged by the US government and its agents in Santiago. Trade unions were drawn into the anti-Allende camp and truck drivers put a brake on all their activities and brought transport movement to a halt all across the country. The wives of Chile's military officers took the unprecedented step of confronting the army chief, General Carlos Prats, and berating him over his 'failure' to take action to 'save' the nation. Their target was of course President Allende. It was an incident that left Prats deeply troubled.

As paralysis seized the country, Prats resigned on 22 August 1973. He was replaced the next day by General Augusto Pinochet, considered an Allende loyalist. That appointment would be the biggest irony for Chileans, for no sooner had Pinochet taken control of the army than he went into the task of planning the coup against Allende. Over the next eighteen days, Pinochet and his fellow officers in the air force and police with alacrity went into working out a strategy to overthrow the President. As the military and the CIA finalised their plans to depose the government, President Allende waged a desperate struggle to keep his government from unravelling.

The coup got underway at 4 am on Sept 11 when various military units in the capital and other cities in Chile gathered to voice their support for Pinochet and his co-conspirators. As Chileans slept, soldiers went into action in the cities of Concepcion and Valparaiso. Before daybreak, the two cities passed under the absolute control of the military. In Santiago, at 6.20 a.m., President Allende was awakened with news that a coup led by his new army chief was in progress. Within the following hour, the military, by now rapidly fanning out to gain control of the city and seize La Moneda, sent a message to Allende offering to let him leave the country. The President spurned the offer with disdain.

The air force in various sorties strafed La Moneda and hit its targets with precision. By 9 a.m. Santiago passed into the hands of the army, units of which spread out to various parts of the city. A half hour later, President Allende made what would be his final broadcast to the nation. He was defiant and pledged to fight on to uphold constitutional government in Chile. Sometime later, he appeared on the balcony of La Moneda, an AK-47 in his hands and a helmet on his head. Moments later, he went back in. It was the last the world would see of Salvador Allende. By early afternoon, he was dead.

One of the President's aides, who had managed to escape from the presidential palace, would later tell the world that he had seen Allende place his gun between his feet and, as he ran from the place, had looked back to see the president's skull fly off his head. The more credible version of how Allende met his end came from other sources, who pointed out that soldiers had stormed into La Moneda and stabbed and shot the president to death. After an excuse of an autopsy, Allende's body was buried in his ancestral village. No stone or any other sign marked his grave. The coup leaders wanted no trace to be left of the dead President. Allende was 65 when his life drew to its violent end.

Chile became a by-word for organized state terror after the coup. Thousands of people were rounded up by the soldiers and detained in the local stadium. Many of them were murdered. Officially, the number for those who died from the excesses of the military regime was 3,192. Many more simply disappeared, courtesy of the military. Hundreds of Chileans, many of them prominent citizens, went into exile in neighbouring countries and in Europe. Carlos Prats left the country and moved to Argentina.

Orlando Letelier, the former envoy who had served as Allende's last defence minister, was seized on the morning of the coup and tortured over the next twelve months before being freed and allowed to leave Chile. He would eventually make his way to the United States. The Nobel-winning poet Pablo Neruda, ailing at the time of the coup, would be humiliated by soldiers ransacking his home. Within days of the coup, he would die. The popular singer Victor Jara, a vocal supporter of the Allende government, was picked up by the army and murdered in the very Santiago stadium where he had once roused his fans to ecstasy with his music.

Salvador Allende's widow made her way out of Chile. The dead president's cousin, the writer Isabel Allende, left the country and settled abroad. The Pinochet regime, having put a brutal system in place, would not, however, rest until it had dealt with its enemies, real or assumed. Agents of the Chilean intelligence organisation DINA murdered General Carlos Prats and his wife by blowing up their car in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Sept 30, 1974. Two years later, on Sept 21, 1976, Orlando Letelier, at the time marshalling support for Chile's democratic forces in the United States, was blown up in Washington by DINA agents acting with assistance from their American friends.

The post-1973 dictatorship kept a fearsome leash on Chile till 1990, when General Pinochet left office, albeit after ensuring immunity for himself and his men over the 1973 coup and subsequent other measures taken by his regime. In his later years, Pinochet became a target of human rights groups around the world. In 1998 he was arrested in London on a warrant served by the Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon.

Eventually permitted to return home by the British government, Pinochet saw a resurgent Chilean democracy strip him of his immunity and charge him with human rights violations committed during his years as dictator. He died unmourned, aged 91, in December 2006.

In 1990, the new democratically elected government of President Patricio Aylwin had Salvador Allende's remains disinterred from his unmarked grave. A funeral mass, following a sombre procession accompanying the coffin carrying the slain leader's remains through the streets of Santiago, was held at the national cathedral. Allende was then re-buried, with full state honours, in the cemetery housing the remains of Presidents who preceded Allende in office.

The day was Sept 4, 1990, the 20th anniversary of Salvador Allende's election as President of Chile in 1970.