Story of a Death Foretold: Pinochet, the CIA and the Coup against Salvador Allende, 11 September 1973

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On 11 September 1973, President Salvador Allende of Chile, Latin Americas first democratically elected Marxist president, was deposed in a violent coup dtat. Early that morning the phone lines to Allendes office were cut, army officers loyal to the republic were arrested and shortly afterwards bombs from four British-made Hawker Hunter jets began slamming into the presidential palace. Allende refused to leave his post, making broadcasts to encourage the Chilean people until the last pro-government radio station was silenced. Later that morning he was found dead, with an AK-47 that had been a gift from Fidel Castro by his side. The coup had been planned for months, even years before it actually happened. In fact, from the moment Allendes electoral victory in 1970 became a possibility, business leaders in Chile, extreme right-wing groups, high-ranking officers in the Chilean military and the US administration and the CIA worked together to secure a prompt and dramatic end to his progressive social programme. Why Allende seemed such a threat in the political and economic context of the time and how the coup was engineered is the story Oscar Guardiola-Rivera tells, drawing on a wide range of sources, including phone transcripts and documents released as recently as 2008. It is a radical retelling of a moment in history that even at the height of Cold War paranoia a time when Henry Kissinger described Chile as a dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica shocked the world and which continues to resonate today. As the uprisings of the Arab Spring and the global protests at austerity measures introduced since the crash of 2008 show, the world is struggling to deal with the economic and political dilemmas Allende faced at the time.

Reviews

The author deftly follows two strands political developments in Chile itself and the global context that rendered a seemingly mild version of Latin American socialism so unpalatable for US government and business interests He is at his strongest when tracing the social and cultural history of the movement, the "revolution from below" involving "shoemakers, weavers, poets and musicians [and] other areas of social creativity and production, such as factory labour, mural painting and literature" * John Kampfner, Observer *

Author Bio

Oscar Guardiola-Rivera teaches international law and international affairs at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has served as an aide to the Colombian Congress and as a consultant to the United Nations in South America. He has lectured in law, philosophy, and politics on three continents, writes a regular column for the Colombian newspaper El Espectador, is an occasional contributor to the Guardian and is the author of What if Latin America Ruled the World: How the South Will Lead the North into the 22nd Century. He lives in London.