Pinochet's Coup Against Allende — Operation Condor Context
On September 11, 1973, Chilean military forces under General Augusto Pinochet bombed the presidential palace La Moneda, ending the government of Salvador Allende — the world's first democratically elected Marxist head of state, who died during the assault. The coup was the culmination of a sustained campaign of destabilisation that the Nixon administration had launched in 1970, when Allende won the election. Nixon ordered the CIA to 'make the economy scream' and authorised a covert $10 million programme to prevent Allende from governing effectively. The CIA worked with Chilean military officers, business associations, and media organisations to undermine public confidence and prepare military conspirators. The Pinochet regime that followed was among the most brutal in Latin American history. Thousands were killed or 'disappeared' in the immediate aftermath; tens of thousands were tortured. Chile under Pinochet became the principal node of Operation Condor, a US-supported network of right-wing military dictatorships across the Southern Cone — Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Brazil — that coordinated across borders to hunt down and assassinate political opponents wherever they had fled. The coup's Cold War logic was clear: preventing any socialist government in Latin America from succeeding, lest it demonstrate that the democratic road to socialism was viable.
- Year: 1973 CE
- Category: Covert
