The thing that's maybe most depressing about this...Allende was Chile's Trump. He ignored the constitution. He ignored the law. He saw himself as the one person who could create the Chile that Chile needed to be. And nothing was going to stop him.

To say that this was all the work of the US government or the CIA or whomever is to ignore all the damage that Allende caused, and all the apolitical people who stood against him...even when they later stood against Pinochet. Most couldn't have cared less about communism or socialism...they just wanted their rights and the rights of others not to be infringed in the interest of a political movement that had literally only caused them harm.

I think there is some sort of weird, old-leftist nostalgia for Allende. Mostly because the left either doesn't know the history or doesn't care.

"Allende was a democratically elected leader. General Pinochet was a thug who used murder and intimidation to seize power.
And those are the facts."

Is there anything you recall that Allende did that may have prompted a coup? Anything that may have drive the Chilean Supreme Court or the Chamber of Deputies to ask for military involvement?

Clearly the answer is no, right?

#11

You tell me.

"The answer is, "yes". Allende was intending on nationalizing several major industries. Rightwingers, especially Nixon, Kissinger and their corporate allies freaked out. So they killed him and took over the country."

So...first, they didn't kill him. He committed suicide.

But more importantly, it wasn't the nationalization of MNCs that grabbed the attention of Chileans, it was what he was doing to them.

Allende had a private army called the PIR that reported directly to him. It was a left-wing revolutionary group led by a relative. The PIR would go into the countryside and occupy farms, forcing the owners out. They would also occupy businesses. Allende ordered the various ministries not to get involved, leaving the owners with no legal recourse. The average Chilean might not have been bothered by this much either, except that the predictable result was a massive decrease in both agricultural and industrial output.

All of this prompted both the Chilean Supreme Court and the Chamber of Deputies to call on the military to restore constitutional law.

I bet you didn't know any of this, did you.

"Like maybe say the Monroe Doctrine gives us the right to overthrow governments as we see fit in our hemisphere?"

It was mothers marching in the street banging on empty pans that resulted in Allende being overthrown.

It's also probably why the people of Chile tolerated Pinochet after the coup. Because their kids were no longer starving and their businesses were no longer at risk of being taken over by left-wing paramilitaries.

It's also worth noting that, in Chile at the time there were three main political parties. One was Allende's party, Popular Unity. The other two were the moderate Christian Democrats and the conservative National Party. Due to a very close election and some other unique circumstances, the National Congress was forced to choose a president. With the backing of the Christian Democrats, the NS declared Allende the winner, but made him sign a statement that he would respect Chilean law.

Allende decided that his ambitious political goals were more important than constitutional law, and by 1973 the Christian Democrats had sided with the National Party in opposition to Allende.

At the time of the coup, the US was funding two main opposition efforts. One was the ant-Allende newspaper "Mercury." The other was funding for a trucker's strike that took place after Allende attempted to nationalize the trucking industry in Chile.

"Suppression of opposition"

Uh-huh. Would that opposition happened to have been socialist, by chance? Supporters of the Allende regime or his paramilitary allies?

Pinochet was not a primary architect of the coup. It was the Air Force chief and a few others. As designed, the intent of the coup was to restore the country to constitutional law as quickly as possible, and there was not indented to be an established leader. Pinochet was able to consolidate power and expel the Junta members who clashed with his vision of a post-coup Chile with him as supreme leader.

The one thing they all had in common was the desire to rid Chile of communists. That's understandable.

"Would you be baying it's okay to disappear Socialists?"

Was it OK to disappear National Socialists?

"We can understand why Pinochet and Saddam and MBS had so many people killed."

Early in the coup it wasn't really Pinochet driving that. He had yet to consolidate power. For that, you can look to AF Chief Gustavo Leigh, whose goal was to return the country to democracy as quickly as possible.

I never talked to the guy, but I suspect that his position was that democracy would not be possible while the socialist threat remained. After all, he's seen what Allende and his allies wanted to do to Chile.

"Well he certainly benefitted, and didn't try to put an end to it."

Why would he try and put an end to the people who tried to put an end to Chile?

"The man is a murderer, it's not a good look being down on your knees servicing him."

I can live with murderer. The allies murdered thousands of National Socialists, and even some normal Germans at the end of WWII. Lots of collaborators were murdered by the citizens of those countries that were occupied by the Germans. Was it legally wrong? Yes. Morally wrong? I'm not as sure about that. And at least some of the people who were killed or "disappeared" by the Junta were western leftists who likely became enamored with and wanted to be part of the budding socialist state, not realizing that the regime they supported was, no kidding, undermining the Republic. Think of the 01/06-ers who thought Trump was going to save the US, and in-support of that attacked the democratic foundations of this country.

My biggest problem with Pinochet is that he was an opportunist who put himself above the country he took an oath to. In the end, he was no better than Allende, even if he was able to keep food on the table.

"I'm unaware of any systemic, organized murder of civilians after the war under the leadership of the United States armed forces."

I'm not sure what you mean by civilians.

Non-military people?

Was Che Guevara a civilian or a service member?

The thing that got me interested in the Chilean Coup was that, if the US had a president that behaved in the way Allende did, it would be the sworn responsibility of the military and every other elected or appointed official to defend the constitution.

I think if you did a deep-dive on Chile under Allende, the coup would have likely never happened had the courts brought formal charges up against Allende for constitutional violations. Instead, he was permitted to keep committing unconstitutional acts to the point where the Supreme Court was unable to do nothing more than point out what he was doing, and hope that the stakeholders who had taken an oath to the constitution would uphold it.

"Oh, so they preferred a coup to a legal remedy!"

I'm not familiar with the particulars of Chilean law, but if it's anything like the US constitution it was the obligation of the military to intervene.

"It the obligation of the military to restore Constitution rule. Did that happen?"

Eventually, yes. But by that point the Junta members who supported it had been exiled from Chile.