Salvador Allende


Video clip from the film 9/11/01

October 22, 1970 - General Rene Schneider Chereau, commander in chief of the army, was attacked and fatally wounded in a CIA-supported coup attempt by right-wing extremists hoping to block the election of Salvador Allende.
October 24 - Allende was elected by a joint session of the Congress, by a vote of 153-35.
November 12 - Reestablisment of diplomatic relations with Cuba, the first step in Alende's policy of rapprochements with the Communist countries. Allende was the first overt Marxist popularly elected in an American state. His government called for the expropriation of large foreign companies and financial, commercial, and inudstrial monopolies. He also planned to redistribute all landholdings over 80 hectares.
1971-73 - During his 1,000 days in power, President Allende introduced far-reaching social and economic reforms. An initial price and wage freeze, along with massive public spending in housing, sanitation, and health, led to a short-run boom in consumer spending and income redistribution. Highly popular throuh 1971, even among middle-class groups, Allende nationalized copper, coal, and stell production, and most private banks. Workers in some cases occupied their firms, refusing to leave until expropriation was announced. Factories, such as Yarur textile works, were turned into cooperatives with or without government approval. Pressures mounted from the Left in the UP and the rural sector (where peasants took over land on their own) for more rapid reform. By 1972 the latifunda system (large agricultural estates with low productivity) had been dismantled, but under the reform, agricultural production had decline by 29 percent. By 1973 the government had lost control of the reform in many areas. At the same time, opposition on the Right and Cener was growing. Runaway inflation (300 percent by 1973), widespread strikes, disinvestment, sabotage, and protests were destroying the economy. CIA initiatives also helped cause serious problems for the regime by 1973. The U.S. stopped the flow of needed spare parts and supplies and cut off aid and loans to the government (destabilization), while still funding the military.
July 16, 1971 - Congress unanimously approved the expropriation of the foreign-owned copper mines. Although allowing for compensation, Allende later claimed that excess profits earned by Anaconda and Knecott denied them the right to recompense. The firms protested the ruling and called for retaliatory measures.
March 1972 - Press reports revealed joint plans on the part of International Telephone and Telegraph and the U.S. government to overthrow the Chilean government.
October - A CIA-subsidized truck drivers' strike developed into a full-scale lockout by capitalists trying to pressure the regime into reversing reforms.
June 29, 1973 - With the backing of the U.S., dissatisfied elements of the military launched an abortive coup attempt.
July 26 - In a renewed right-wing offensive, private truckers launched a strike. In the following weeks business and professional groups formed a "civic front" calling for Allende's oveerthrow. Meanwhile, factory occupations and mass demonstrations (calling for the arming of workers) continued as the country moved to the brink of civil war.
September 11 - President Allende overthrown in U.S.-backed military coup. Anti-Allende forces claimed he had committed suicide during the siege of the presidential palace. General Augusto Pinochet (born 1915) emerged as head of a four-man junta. In the next month perhaps as many as 30,000 dissidents were rounded up and tortured, and approximately 2,000 were murdered. Political parties and labor unions were banned, and Pinochet moved quickly to adopt a free market strategy to "regenerate" the Chilean economy and society.
1973-78 - Under a declared state of siege, Pincohet ruled the country with a mix of terror and radical free market ideology. Pinochet established a secret police, the National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), which used national information networks and concentration camps to implement its terror. The economy was put under the control of the "Chicago boys," free market economists trained under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago. They applied a "shock treatment" to the economy, which, after lowering wages and reducing the GNP, did lead to growth rates of about 8 percent between 1977 and 1980. The recovery was fueled by massive loans from abroad.
December 1974 - Pinochet assumed the presidency.