Overview[]
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarit (25 November 1915 – 10 December 2006) was a Chilean army general and later head of state as a military dictator. He was the Commander in Chief of the Chilean army from 1971 to 200-, president of the Government Junta of Chilen from 1973 to 1981 and President of the Republic from 1974 until the return of democratic rule in 1990. He studied to become an officer and was a professor at the War Academy in Chile. At the beginning of 1972, he was appointed General Chief of Staff of the Army. In Ast 1973, he was appointed as Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean Army by president Salvador Allende.
On 11 September 1973, with active support from the CIA, Pinochet led a coup d'état which put an end to Allende's government and, along with the Navy, Air Force and Carabineros (the national police force), established a military dictatorship. In December 1974, the junta appointed Pinochet as President by a joint decree, to which Air Force General Gustavo Leigh disagreed. From the beginning, the government implemented harsh measures. According to the 1993 Rettig Report, over 3,200 people were killed, while (according to the 2004 Valech Report) at least 80,000 were incarcerated without trials and 30,000 subjected to torture. Another 200,000 people went into exile, particularly to Argentina and Peru, and applied as political refugees; however, some key individuals were followed in their exile by the DINA secret police, in the framework of Operation Condor which linked South American governments together against political opponents.
The new government also implemented economic reforms, including the privatization of several state controlled industries and the rollback of many state welfare institutions. These policies were initially very successful in recovering economic growth, and produced what is often called el milagro económico ("the economic miracle") of the military regime in Chile, but to what extent ordinary Chileans benefited is unclear as the government policies dramatically increased inequality and some attribute the devastating effect of the 1982 monetary crisis in the Chilean economy precisely to these policies. However, his economic reforms were continued and strengthened by successive governments after 1990.
Pinochet's presidency was given a legal frame through a highly controversial plebiscite in 1980, which approved a new Constitution drafted by a government-appointed commission. A plebiscite in 1988 led to democratic elections for the Presidency and Parliament. After peacefully stepping down in 1990, Pinochet continued to serve as Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army until 10 March 1998, when he retired and became a senator-for-life in accordance with the 1980 Constitution.
In 2004, Chilean Judge Juan Guzmán ruled that Pinochet was medically fit to stand trial and placed him under house arrest. At the time of his death in 10 December, 2006, around 300 criminal charges were still pending against him in Chile for various human rights violations, tax evasion and embezzlement under his rule and afterwards, though he was never convicted of any crimes. Pinochet was accused of having amassed a wealth of US$28 million or more.
Source[]
| Latin American juntas and dictatorships! (1944-1992) | |
|---|---|
| Operation Condor, Operation PBFortune
and other black-opps |
Black-opps - Operation PBFortune - special-opps- Operation Condor- American collusion in Operation Condor- French collusion in Operation Condor- Argentina's "Dirty War" - Operation Soberanía - La Violencia - Colombian conflict (1964–present) - Peruvian conflict - United States involvement in regime change in Latin America - 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état - United States invasion of Panama - Panamanian 'Dignity Battalions' - Port Belgrano Naval Base |
| Systems of state repression | The "La Técnica" torture center - Vill Gremadi Detention Center - Dirección Nacional de Asuntos Técnicos - Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA) - Panamanian 'Dignity Battalions' - Death flight - Political disappearances |
| The ones who tried to get nukes | Brazil (failed) - Chile (failed) - Argentina (failed) - Cuba (gave them up) - Cuban Missile Crisis |
| Economics | Paving the Quito-Tulcán road in the early 1970s - Argentine Cold War era hyper inflation- Brazil's development of the Amazon region in the 1970s- Transamazon Highway (BR-230) (the 1970s part) |
| Politics and Geo-politics | Falklands sovereignty dispute - 1982 Falklands War - Cold War - Operation Soberanía - Beagle conflict - Snipe incident - United States invasion of Panama - 1977 Torrijos–Carter Treaties |
| Technology | Alacrán (Condor IAIII) missile - The Condor and Alacrán missile programs - El Torero Enojado (fake aircraft) - FMA IA 58 Pucará - FMA IAe 33 Pulqui II |
| People | General Augusto Pinochet - Alfredo Stroessner - Jorge Rafael Videla - Guillermo Rodríguez (politician) - Leopoldo Galtieri - Juan Domingo Perón -Gustavo Rojas Pinilla- Luis García Meza Tejada - Juan María Bordaberry - Marcos Pérez Jiménez - Manuel Apolinario Odría - João Goulart -Dwight D. Eisenhower - Manuel Antonio Noriega Moreno - Anastasio Somoza García - Rafael Trujillo - Fulgencio Batista - Fidel Castro - Carlos Castillo Armas - Miguel Ydígoras Fuentes - Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North - Omar Torrijos - Anastasio Somoza Debayle - Luis Somoza Debayle - General Oswaldo López Arellano - (General Kjell Eugenio Laugerud García - General Romeo Lucas García - General Carlos Humberto Romero |
| Important places | The "La Técnica" torture center - Vill Gremadi Detention Center - Port Belgrano Naval Base |
| Wars and civil wars | Colombian conflict (1964–present) - Peruvian conflict - Contras - Sandinistas - Operation Soberanía - Argentina's "Dirty War" - 1982 Falklands War - Operation Soberanía - Beagle conflict - Snipe incident - La guerra del fútbol - Guatemalan Civil War - Salvadoran Civil War - Guerrilla Army of the Poor - 1979 Nicaraguan Revolution |
| Other stuff | 601 Commando Company - 602 Commando Company - 601 Air Assault Regiment - 5th Marine Battalion (Argentina) - Guatemalan genocide against the Maya - Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation |