9/11 of Chile: The 1973 Coup and Its Aftermath

American people remember 9/11 2001 as an attack on their country, these attacks were made by foreign terrorists because of their foreign interests. The Chilean people have their own remembrance of a similar incident, but it was in 1973. On this day, Augusto Pinochet and The United States lead a coup that overthrew the president Salvador Allende, of the Chilean government. The United States government “supported, trained, funded, and armed military tin-pot dictatorships in order to defend democracy and the free market from progressive movements made up of the workers in colonized countries” (“Cold War Killer” 1). This day went down in history as the beginning of the darkest days in Chile’s history. It is said that “Augusto Pinochet’s legacy

The U.S. state department made the overthrow of the Allende government a top priority. The elements of the were to destabilize Chile’s economy and to encourage a military coup. Without the United States, Augusto Pinochet would have never become famous for all the bad things he did. To first understand Augusto Pinochet, we first need to learn how he came to power. The Bloody Coup against Salvador Allende started on September 11th, 1973. The military coup was led by military leader Augusto Pinochet, a graduate of the military academy in Santiago. Pinochet was accompanied during the coup with American soldiers whose interest were to take control of Chile. Citizens inside Chile said “Soldiers and tanks flooded the streets and planes rained bombs on the Moneda Palace. Allende himself was killed during the coup” (Cold War Killer 3). It is still unknown if, on this day, Salvador Allende committed suicide or was murdered. From this day forward, the justice of the Chileans was in the hands of their new unelected president, Augusto

The U.S. also supported Pinochet’s torture treatment “CIA operatives provided torture equipment and training to the leading pro-U.S. dictators of Latin America at U.S. military institutions, among them the infamous School of Americas complex in Georgia’s Fort Benning, now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation or WHINSEC. Chilean units trained here and it also provided training to death squads in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Paraguay, and other countries” (“Cold War Killer” 7). Not only did The United States train troops to fight for Pinochet but they also gave him torture weapons such as chambers to torture the Chilean people. Pinochet is known for torturing and hurting tons of people. The Chilean government stated “According to a government report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, his government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973” (Reel and Smith 1). After the coup, thousands of people in Chile were rounded up and taken to the national stadium in Santiago, where they were captured, tortured, and held prisoner for months. This is a real life account of Lelia Perez and what she experienced “I was forced to wear the clothes of people we had seen being killed. There was a curfew and the few people around just walked away from us. The