Chile Test
3/18/25
The Rule of Pinochet/ From Junta to Dictatorship
Recap: 9/11/73
Military overthrows Allende’s government
Allende commits suicide while La Moneda is surrounded
All political activities are suspended, military Junta rule established.
Initially the 4 major military branch leaders were to rotate power, Pinochet, commander of the largest and oldest branch, usurps power for himself
Congress is disbanded, though the Judiciary is allowed to remain (listens to Junta)
Thousands of left wing supporters are rounded up, arrested, and killed
Over 130,000 arrests in a four year period alone – those are the official numbers
Many more “disappeared”
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte
Pinochet was born in Valparaíso in 1915
Son of Augusto Pinochet Vera, a descendant of a French Breton immigrant from Lamballe, and Avelina Ugarte Martínez, a woman of Basque descent.
Most of his early military career successes came in various military academies. He worked his way up the ranks.
January 1971, Pinochet was promoted to division general, and was named General Commander of the Santiago Army Garrison.
At the beginning of 1972 he was appointed General Chief of Staff of the Army.
With rising domestic strife in Chile, after General Prats resigned his position, Pinochet was appointed commander-in-chief of the Army on 23 August 1973 by President Salvador Allende
just the day after the Chamber of Deputies of Chile approved a resolution asserting that the government was not respecting the Constitution.
Less than a month later, the Chilean military deposed Allende.
Pinochet’s “Presidency”
The junta members originally planned that the presidency would be held for a year by the commanders-in-chief of each of the four military branches in turn.
Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the military junta, and then proclaiming himself "Supreme Chief of the Nation" (de facto provisional president) on June 27 1974
He officially changed his title to "President" on 17 December 1974.
Gustavo Leigh, commander of the Air Force begins to break away from Pinochet, is forced to retire on July 24, 1978, following his opposition to Pinochet in the Consulta Nacional
Consulta Nacional – plebiscite (meeting) by the leaders of the military government on the direction that Chile should be taking
UN passed a resolution in May 1974 by the Economic and Social Council condemning Chile for human rights abuses taking place
President Pinochet
Pinochet organized a plebiscite on September 11 1980 to ratify a new constitution, replacing the 1925 Constitution
The new Constitution, partly drafted by Jaime Guzmán, a close adviser to Pinochet who later founded the right-wing party Independent Democratic Union (UDI), gave a lot of power to the President of the Republic—Pinochet.
It created some new institutions, such as the Constitutional Tribunal and the controversial National Security Council (COSENA).
It also prescribed an 8-year presidential period, and a single-candidate presidential referendum in 1988, where a candidate nominated by the Junta would be approved or rejected for another 8-year period.
The new constitution was approved by a margin of 67.04% to 30.19% according to official figures
the opposition, headed by ex-president Eduardo Frei (who had supported Pinochet's coup), denounced extensive irregularities such as the lack of an electoral register
the total number of votes reported to have been cast was very much larger than would be expected from the size of the electorate and turnout in previous elections.
Interviews after Pinochet's departure with people involved with the referendum confirmed that fraud had, indeed, been widespread
Suppression of Opposition Under Pinochet
Pinochet and the Chilean military government hunted down those who supported leftist ideal
The Rettig Report (1991) concluded 2,279 persons who disappeared during the military government were killed for political reasons or as a result of political violence. According to the later Valech Report (2011) approximately 38,000 were tortured and 1,300 exiled. The exiles were chased all over the world by the intelligence agencies.
In Latin America, this was made in the frame of Operation Condor, a cooperation plan between the various intelligence agencies of South American countries, assisted by United States CIA
Pinochet believed these operations were necessary in order to "save the country from communism“
Pinochet goes after direct opposition under the guise of Condor
Many other important officials of Allende's government were tracked down by the DINA. General Carlos Prats, Pinochet's predecessor and army commander under Allende, who had resigned rather than support the moves against Allende's government, was assassinated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974.
Operation Condor
Due to its nature, the precise number of deaths directly attributable to Operation Condor is highly disputed. Some estimates are that at least 60,000 deaths can be attributed to Condor
Victims included dissidents and leftists, union and peasant leaders, priests and nuns, students and teachers, intellectuals and suspected guerillas.
Condor's key members were the governments in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Brazil. The United States government provided technical support and supplied military aid to the participants during the Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan administrations. Such support was frequently routed through the Central Intelligence Agency.
Operation Condor
In the 1960s and early 1970s plans were developed among international security officials at the US Army School of the Americas and the Conference of American Armies to deal with perceived threats in South America from political dissidents.
School of the Americas: Still in operation today, but known as the: Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation
1961 was assigned the specific goal of teaching "anti-communist counterinsurgency training," a role which it would fulfill for the rest of the Cold War.
In this period, it educated several Latin American dictators, generations of their military and, during the 1980s, included the uses of torture in its curriculum. In 2000 the institute was renamed to WHINSEC
A declassified CIA document dated 23 June 1976, explains that "in early 1974, security officials from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia met in Buenos Aires to prepare coordinated actions against subversive targets”
Operation Condor
The program was developed following a series of government coups d'états by military groups, primarily in the 1970s:
General Alfredo Stroessner took control of Paraguay in 1954.
The Brazilian military overthrew the president João Goulart in 1964.
General Hugo Banzer took power in Bolivia in 1971 through a series of coups.
A civic-military dictatorship seized power in Uruguay on June 27 1973.
Forces loyal to General Augusto Pinochet bombed the presidential palace in Chile (La Moneda) on September 11 1973, overthrowing democratically elected president Salvador Allende.
A military junta headed by General Jorge Rafael Videla seized power in Argentina on March 24 1976.
Operation Condor
From 1976 onwards, the Chilean DINA and its Argentine counterpart, SIDE, were the operation's front-line troops.
The infamous "death flights," were widely used:
Government forces took victims by plane or helicopter out to sea, dropping them to their deaths and planned disappearances.
In late 1977, due to unusual storms, numerous corpses washed up on beaches south of Buenos Aires, producing evidence of some of the government's victims.
The dictatorships and their intelligence services were responsible for tens of thousands of killed and missing people in the period between 1975 and 1985.
Analyzing the political repression in the region during that decade, Brazilian journalist Nilson Mariano estimates the number of killed and missing people as 2,000 in Paraguay; 3,196 in Chile; 297 in Uruguay; 366 in Brazil; and 30,000 in Argentina.
According to Latin America historian John Henry Coatsworth, the number of victims in Latin America alone far surpassed that of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc during the period 1960 to 1990.
Operation Condor: Chile
Failed attempt to assassinate Carlos Altamirano, leader of the Chilean Socialist Party.
Chilean judge Juan Guzmán Tapia eventually established a precedent concerning the crime of "permanent kidnapping“
since the bodies of victims kidnapped and presumably murdered could not be found, he deemed that the kidnapping was thought to continue, rather than to have occurred so long ago that the perpetrators were protected by an amnesty decreed in 1978 or by the Chilean statute of limitations.
Pablo Neruda, Nobel-Prize winning poet, may have been assassinated – no conclusive evidence, although the Chilean government admitted it was a possibility in 2015
Operation Condor: Chile
General Carlos Prats and his wife were killed by a car bomb on 30 September 1974, in Buenos Aires, where they lived in exile. The Chilean DINA has been held responsible. In Chile, Judge Alejandro Solís terminated the prosecution of Pinochet in January 2005 after the Chilean Supreme court rejected his demand to revoke Pinochet's immunity from prosecution (as chief of state). The leaders of DINA, including chief Manuel Contreras, ex-chief of operations and retired general Raúl Itturiaga Neuman, his brother Roger Itturiaga, and ex-brigadiers Pedro Espinoza Bravo and José Zara, were charged in Chile with this assassination. DINA agent Enrique Arancibia Clavel has been convicted in Argentina for the murder.
Operation Condor: Chile
Bernardo Leighton, Christian Democratic Party Politician and leader, and his wife were severely injured by gunshots on 5 October 1976, while in exile in Rome.
According to declassified documents in the National Security Archive and Italian attorney general Giovanni Salvi, who led the prosecution of former DINA head Manuel Contreras, Stefano Delle Chiaie met with Michael Townley and Virgilio Paz Romero in Madrid in 1975 to plan the murder of Bernardo Leighton with the help of Franco's secret police
Operation Condor: Chile
Another target was Orlando Letelier, a former minister of the Chilean Allende government. Letelier was appointed the ambassador from Chile to the United States while Salvador Allende was in power. He was one of the first members of Allende's former government to be arrested by the Pinochet regime. However, he was released twelve months later due to pressure from Venezuela and the United States.
He was ordered to leave Chile, upon which he moved to Washington D.C. He then spend his time lobbying to Congress and other European governments against Pinochet's regime. For this reason he became the voice of Chile's resistance movement. He then got a job as the Director of Planning and Development at the Institute for Policy Studies.
On September 21, 1976 as Letelier a colleague and her husband were on their way to work, the car they were driving suddenly exploded.
Letelier and the collegue both later died at the hospital, while the husband, survived the blast.
Although it was not initially clear who had been responsible for the bombing, Letelier had showed up on DINA's radar since his move to the United States. It is also known that the Chilean government had revoked Letelier's citizenship in only several days before the explosion that killed him.
The United States government suspected Colonel Contreras as having a part in the assassination of Letelier and Moffitt, however, he divulged nothing to Harry Kissinger and the CIA.
Michael Townley, General Manuel Contreras (former head of the DINA), and Brigadier Pedro Espinoza Bravo (also formerly of DINA), were convicted of the murders.
In 1978, Chile agreed to transfer Townley to the U.S. in order to reduce the tension about Letelier's murder. Townley was freed and taken into the US witness protection program. The U.S. is still waiting for Manuel Contreras and Pedro Espinoza to be extradited, on charges of murder.
Michael Townley has accused Pinochet of being responsible for Letelier's death.
Townley confessed that he had hired five anti-Castro Cuban exiles to booby-trap Letelier's car.
Operation Colombo
Operation Colombo was an operation undertaken by the DINA (the Chilean secret police) in 1975 to make disappear political dissidents.
At least 119 people are alleged to have been abducted and later killed.
Pinochet’s Economic Policy
By mid-1975, the government set forth an economic policy of free-market reforms that attempted to stop inflation and collapse. Pinochet declared that he wanted "to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of proprietors."
To formulate the economic rescue, the government relied on the so-called Chicago Boys and a text called El ladrillo.
The Chicago Boys
The Chicago Boys were a group of Chilean economists prominent around the 1970s and 80s, the majority of whom trained at the Department of Economics of the University of Chicago
under Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger
Or at its affiliate in the economics department at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
Friedman received the 1976 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his research on consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and the complexity of stabilization policy.
Some of the “Chicago” Boys actually graduated from MIT and Harvard
Neoliberalism (neo-liberalism) refers primarily to the 20th century resurgence of 19th century ideas associated with laissez-faire economic liberalism.
These include
Extensive economic liberalization policies such as privatization, fiscal austerity, deregulation, free trade, and reductions in government spending in order to increase the role of the private sector in the economy
Economy Under Pinochet
Chile's nationalized main copper mines remained in government hands, with the 1980 Constitution later declaring them "inalienable”.
Thus making their control important to Chile
In 1976, Codelco was established to exploit them but new mineral deposits were opened to private investment.
Capitalist involvement was increased
The Chilean pension system and healthcare and education were privatized.
Overall, wages decreased by 8%.
Family allowances in 1989 were 28% of what they had been in 1970
The budgets for education, health and housing had dropped by over 20% on average
The junta relied on the middle class, the oligarchy, foreign corporations, and foreign loans to maintain itself.
Businesses recovered most of their lost industrial and agricultural holdings, for the junta returned properties to original owners who had lost them during expropriations, and sold other industries expropriated by Allende's Popular Unity government to private buyers. This period saw the expansion of business and widespread speculation.
Pinochet’s Economy
Financial conglomerates became major beneficiaries of the liberalized economy and the flood of foreign bank loans.
Large foreign banks reinstated the credit cycle, as the Junta saw that the basic state obligations, such as resuming payment of principal and interest installments, were honored.
International lending organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Inter-American Development Bank lent vast sums.
Many foreign multinational corporations such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), Dow Chemical, and Firestone, all expropriated by Allende, returned to Chile.
Pinochet's policies eventually led to substantial GDP growth, in contrast to the negative growth seen in the early years of his administration. Foreign debt also grew substantially under Pinochet, rising 300% between 1974 and 1988.
Pinochet’s Economy
His government implemented an economic model that had three main objectives: economic liberalization, privatization of state owned companies, and stabilization of inflation.
In 1985, the government started with a second round of privatization, it revised previously introduced tariff increases and gave a greater supervisory role for the Central Bank.
Some Economist argue the neoliberal economic policies of the Pinochet regime resulted in widening inequality and deepening poverty as they negatively impacted the wages, benefits and working conditions of Chile's working class.
According to Chilean economist Alejandro Foxley, by the end of Pinochet's reign around 44% of Chilean families were living below the poverty line.
By the late 1980s the economy had stabilized and was growing, but around 45% of the population had fallen into poverty while the wealthiest 10% saw their incomes rise by 83%
This does follow global trends of the wealthiest 10% seeing the majority of worldwide economic gains
1988 and the transition to Democracy
According to the transitional provisions of the 1980 Constitution, a referendum was scheduled for October 5th 1988, to vote on a new eight-year presidential term for Pinochet.
Confronted with increasing opposition, notably at the international level, Pinochet legalized political parties in 1987 and called for a vote to determine whether or not he would remain in power until 1997.
If the "YES" won, Pinochet would have to implement the dispositions of the 1980 Constitution, mainly the call for general elections, while he would himself remain in power as President.
If the "NO" won, Pinochet would remain President for another year, and a joint Presidential and Parliamentary election would be scheduled.
Majority of religious following in Chile is Catholic, So a 1987 visit of Pope John Paul II to Chile had an impact as well
Held a meeting with Pinochet during which they discussed a return to democracy. John Paul II allegedly pushed Pinochet to accept a democratic opening of his government, and even called for his resignation
Transition to Democracy
Political advertising was legalized in September of 1987
necessary element for the campaign for the "NO" to the referendum, which countered the official campaign
The Opposition, gathered into the Concertación de Partidos por el NO ("Coalition of Parties for NO"), organized a colorful and cheerful campaign under the slogan La alegría ya viene ("Joy is coming").
Formed by the Christian Democracy, the Socialist Party and the Radical Party, gathered in the Alianza Democrática (Democratic Alliance). In 1988, several more parties, including the Humanist Party, the Ecologist Party, the Social Democrats, and several Socialist Party splinter groups added their support.
Transition to Democracy… Failed at first
On 5 October 1988, the "NO" option won with 55.99% of the votes, against 44.01% of "YES" votes.
Pinochet accepted the result and the ensuing Constitutional process led to presidential and legislative elections the following year.
The Opposition Coalition changed its name to Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Coalition of Parties for Democracy) and put forward Patricio Aylwin, a Christian Democrat who had opposed Allende, as presidential candidate, and also proposed a list of candidates for the parliamentary elections.
The opposition and the Pinochet government made several negotiations to amend the Constitution and agreed to 54 modifications.
These amendments changed the way the Constitution would be modified in the future, added restrictions to state of emergency dispositions, the affirmation of political pluralism (that multiple parties can exist), and enhanced constitutional rights as well as the democratic principle and participation to political life.
In July 1989, a referendum on the proposed changes took place, supported by all the parties except the right-wing Southern Party and the instrumental Chilean Socialist Party (created by the dictatorship to confuse voters). The Constitutional changes were approved by 91.25% of the voters.
Transition to Democracy 1989
Aylwin won the December 1989 presidential election with 55% of the votes
30% for the right-wing candidate, Hernán Büchi, who had been Pinochet's Minister of Finances since 1985
third-party candidate, Francisco Javier Errázuriz, a wealthy aristocrat representing the extreme economic right, who garnered the remaining 15%.
Pinochet thus left the presidency on 11 March 1990 and transferred power to the new democratically elected president.
The Concertación also won the majority of votes for the Parliament. However, due to the "binomial" representation system included in the constitution, the elected senators did not achieve a complete majority in Parliament, a situation that would last for over 15 years.
This forced them to negotiate all law projects with the Alliance for Chile (originally called "Democracy and Progress" and then "Union for Chile"), a center-right coalition involving the Unión Demócrata Independiente (UDI) and Renovación Nacional (RN), parties composed mainly of Pinochet's supporters.
Pinochet Sticks around
Pinochet remained as Commander-in-Chief of the Army until March 1998.
He was then sworn in as a senator-for-life, a privilege granted by the 1980 constitution to former presidents with at least six years in office.
His senatorship and consequent immunity from prosecution protected him from legal action.
The attempted Prosecution of Pinochet
In March 2000 Congress approved a constitutional amendment creating the status of "ex-president," which granted its holder immunity from prosecution and a financial allowance; this replaced Pinochet's senatorship-for-life. 111 legislators voted for, and 29 against.
The Supreme Court ruled in favor of judge Juan Guzmán's request on August 2000, and Pinochet was indicted on 1 December 2000 for the kidnapping of 75 opponents in the Caravan of Death case.
Guzmán advanced the charge of kidnapping as the 75 were officially "disappeared": even though they were all most likely dead, the absence of their corpses made any charge of "homicide" difficult.
However, in July 2002, the Supreme Court dismissed Pinochet's indictment in the various human rights abuse cases, for medical reasons (vascular dementia). The debate concerned Pinochet's mental faculties, his legal team claiming that he was senile and could not remember, while others (including several physicians) claimed that he was only affected physically but retained all control of his faculties.
In May 2004, the Supreme Court overturned its precedent decision, and ruled that he was capable of standing trial.
In December 2004 he was charged with several crimes, including the 1974 assassination of General Prats and the Operation Colombo case in which 119 died, and was again placed under house arrest. He suffered a stroke on 18 December 2004. Questioned by his judges in order to know if, as President, he was the direct head of DINA, he answered: "I don't remember, but it's not true. And if it were true, I don't remember."
In January 2005 the Chilean Army accepted institutional responsibility for past human rights abuses.
In 2006 Pinochet was indicted for kidnappings and torture at the Villa Grimaldi detention center by judge Alejandro Madrid (Guzmán's successor), as well as for the 1995 assassination of the DINA biochemist Eugenio Berrios
The End of Pinochet
On 25 November 2006 Pinochet marked his 91st birthday by having his wife read a statement he had written to admirers present for his birthday: "I assume the political responsibility for all that has been done.
"Two days later, he was again sentenced to house arrest for the kidnapping and murder of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende who were arrested the day of the 1973 coup and executed by firing squad during the Caravan of Death.
However, Pinochet died a few days later, on 10 December 2006, without having been convicted of any of the crimes of which he was accused.
A Legacy of Corruption
Turns out a man willing to commit extreme human rights abuses was dirty in other ways as well
In 2004, a United States Senate money laundering investigation led by ordered in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks uncovered a network of over 125 securities and bank accounts at Riggs Bank and other U.S. financial institutions used by Pinochet and his associates for twenty-five years to secretly move millions of dollars
In September 2005, a joint investigation by The Guardian and La Tercera revealed that the British arms firm BAE Systems had been identified as paying more than £1m to Pinochet, through a front company in the British Virgin Islands, which BAE has used to channel commission on arms deals. The payments began in 1997 and lasted until 2004.
Furthermore, in 2007, fifteen years of investigation led to the conclusion that the 1992 assassination of DINA Colonel Gerardo Huber was most probably related to various illegal arms traffic carried out, after Pinochet's resignation from power, by military circles very close to himself.
Huber had been assassinated a short time before he was due to testify in the case concerning the 1991 illegal export of weapons to Croatian army.
The deal involved 370 tons of weapons, sold to Croatia by Chile on 7 December 1991, when the former country was under a United Nations' embargo because of the support for Croatia war in Yugoslavia
3/14/25
From Allende To Pinochet
9/11/1973
The military deposed Allende's Popular Unity government and later established a junta that suspended all political activity in Chile and repressed left-wing movements, especially the communist and socialist parties.
Allende's appointed army chief, Augusto Pinochet, rose to supreme power within a year of the coup, formally assuming power in late 1974. The United States government, which had worked to create the conditions for the coup, promptly recognized the junta government and supported it in consolidating power.
Junta: a military or political group that rules a country after taking power by force
The 9/11 Coup D'état was not the first attempt to depose of Allende by the Military
On 29 June 1973, Colonel Roberto Souper surrounded the La Moneda presidential palace with his tank regiment and failed to depose the Allende Government. That failed coup d’état – known as the Tanquetazo – organized by the nationalist "Fatherland and Liberty" paramilitary group
By 7:00 am on 11 September 1973, 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 with his bodyguards, the "Group of Personal Friends" (GAP).
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 were unable to communicate with military leaders.
Admiral Montero, the Navy's commander and an Allende loyalist, had his telephone service was cut and his cars were sabotaged before the coup d’état, to ensure he could not thwart the opposition. Leadership of the Navy was transferred to 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 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 answered Allende's calls and immediately went to the La Moneda presidential palace.
When Defence minister Letelier arrived at the Ministry of Defense, controlled by Adm. Patricio Carvajal, he was arrested as the first prisoner of the coup d’état
Despite evidence that all branches of the Chilean armed forces were involved in the coup, Allende hoped that some units remained loyal to the government. Allende was convinced of Pinochet's loyalty, telling a reporter that the coup d’état leaders must have imprisoned the general.
Only at 8:30 am, when the armed forces declared their control of Chile and that Allende was deposed, did the president grasp the magnitude of the military's rebellion. Despite the lack of any military support, Allende refused to resign his office.
By 9:00 am, the armed forces controlled Chile, except for the city centre of the capital, Santiago. Allende refused to surrender, despite the military's declaring they would bomb the La Moneda presidential palace if he resisted being deposed. 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.
Leigh ordered the presidential palace bombed, but was told the Air Force's Hawker Hunter jet aircraft would take forty minutes to arrive.
Pinochet ordered an armored and infantry force under General Sergio Arellano to advance upon the La Moneda presidential palace. When the troops moved forward, they were forced to retreat after coming under fire from GAP snipers perched on rooftops.
General Arellano called for helicopter gunship support from the commander of the Chilean Army Puma helicopter squadron and the troops were able to advance again. Chilean Air Force aircraft soon arrived to provide close air support for the assault (by bombing the Palace), but the defenders did not surrender until nearly 2:30 pm. First reports said the 65-year-old president had died fighting troops, but later police sources reported he had committed suicide.
Casualties of 9/11/73
Fewer than 60 individuals died as a direct result of fighting on 11 September although there was fighting the following day.
In all, 46 of Allende's guard (the GAP, Grupo de Amigos Personales) were killed, some of them in combat with the soldiers that took the Moneda.
According to official reports prepared after the return of democracy, at La Moneda only two people died: President Allende and the journalist Augusto Olivares.
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.
The Aftermath of 9/11/73
In the first months after the coup d’état, the military killed thousands of Chilean Leftists, both real and suspected, or forced their "disappearance". The military imprisoned 40,000 political enemies in the National Stadium of Chile
Among the tortured and killed desaparecidos (disappeared) were the U.S. citizens Charles Horman, and Frank Teruggi.
Both were a part of the socialist cause
Horman was a filmmaker
Teruggi was a student/journalist
In October 1973, the Chilean songwriter Víctor Jara, and 70 other political killings were perpetrated by the death squad, Caravan of Death (Caravana de la Muerte).
The government arrested some 130,000 people in a three-year period; the dead and disappeared numbered thousands in the first months of the military government.
Those include the British physician Sheila Cassidy, who survived to publicize to the UK the human rights violations in Chile.
Among those detained was Alberto Bachelet (father of future Chilean President Michelle Bachelet), an air force official; he was tortured and died on 12 March 1974.
The right-wing newspaper, El Mercurio (The Mercury), 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 center on 10 January 1975.
Creation of the Junta
On the day of the coup, the military officers issued an Act of Constitution.
The act established a junta government that:
immediately suspended the constitution
suspended Congress
imposed strict censorship and curfew
banned the leftist parties that had constituted Salvador Allende's Popular Unity coalition
halted all political activity
The judicial branch continued to operate under the Junta, and nominally had jurisdiction over its repressive activities, but rarely interfered.
The new junta was made up of:
General Gustavo Leigh representing the Air Force
General Augusto Pinochet representing the Army
Admiral José Toribio Merino representing the Navy
General César Mendoza representing the Carabineros (uniformed police).
Pinochet Takes Control
Once the Junta was in power, General Pinochet soon consolidated his control. Since he was the commander-in-chief of the oldest branch of the military forces (the Army), he was made the head of the military junta.
This position was originally to be rotated among the four branches, but was later made permanent. He began by retaining sole chairmanship of the junta as Supreme Chief of the Nation from June 27, 1974 until December 17, 1974 when he was proclaimed President.