thedemsocialist:

The Overthrow of Democratic Chile Part 1 (Salvador Allende)

 

The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a watershed event in the history of Chile and the Cold War. On 11 September 1973, the democratically elected President Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'état organised by the Chilean military. A military junta took control of the government, composed of the heads of the Air Force, Navy, Carabineros (police force) and the Army led by General Augusto Pinochet.[1] Pinochet later assumed power and ended Allende’s democratically elected Popular Unity government.[2][3]

During the air raids and ground attacks that preceded the coup, Allende gave his last speech where he vowed to stay in the presidential palace.[4] Direct witness accounts of his death agree that he committed suicide in the presidential palace.[5][6] After the coup Pinochet established a military dictatorship that ruled Chile until 1990 and that was marked by severe human rights violations. A weak insurgence movement against the Pinochet government was maintained inside Chile by elements sympathetic to the former Allende government.