What would have happened if Augusto Pinochet and other Chilean military officers had launched the September 11th 1973 coup that overthrow Salvador Allende but had relinquished power relatively quickly and allowed (at least mostly) free elections within a few months or at most a year? While I suspect the left would suffer from official or unofficial handicaps in such a situation such as bans on a large number of Socialists and other UP politicians from running for office, even a relatively fair election would have produced a conservative majority. Assume that Allende still kills himself and that the murders and other human rights violations immediately following the coup still occur but taper off by the time of the elections.
1973 Chile Coup Happens But No Pinochet Dictatorship
- Thread starter Marius Mazzini
- Start date
The coup happens with overt, rather than covert, American support. Thus it gives the US a bigger influence on the junta's rule.
Nixon then uses that leverage to get the junta, and Pinochet, to commit to elections in a short enough time frame. The rationale for Nixon doing this is to diffuse domestic pressure as to the why the US overtly sponsored a coup; arguing that Chile was on the verge of Marxist tyranny and the coup was a reset for democracy.
However, if you're willing to consider Chile still being a dictatorship, but just not under Allende, I do have an idea for that.
The 1973 coup receives organizational help from civilian anti-communist politicians. As part of the planning, the military promises to hand over power to this group of politicians.
After the coup, the junta announces elections and a new constitution. But these elections are rigged and the constitution is as good as rubbish.
The pre-selected politicians then receive power from the junta. The new government immediately moves to turn Chile into a one party dictatorship. There's no telling when this regime falls, if at all.
Nixon then uses that leverage to get the junta, and Pinochet, to commit to elections in a short enough time frame. The rationale for Nixon doing this is to diffuse domestic pressure as to the why the US overtly sponsored a coup; arguing that Chile was on the verge of Marxist tyranny and the coup was a reset for democracy.
However, if you're willing to consider Chile still being a dictatorship, but just not under Allende, I do have an idea for that.
The 1973 coup receives organizational help from civilian anti-communist politicians. As part of the planning, the military promises to hand over power to this group of politicians.
After the coup, the junta announces elections and a new constitution. But these elections are rigged and the constitution is as good as rubbish.
The pre-selected politicians then receive power from the junta. The new government immediately moves to turn Chile into a one party dictatorship. There's no telling when this regime falls, if at all.
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Another interesting character was Robert Viaux
Imagine him as a psychopathic version of Pinochet. Irl the USA refused to aid him because of his extreme ideas but if they have no other option then.........................
Imagine him as a psychopathic version of Pinochet. Irl the USA refused to aid him because of his extreme ideas but if they have no other option then.........................
The resulting government would undoubtedly be much better than the Pinochet dictatorship, which did immense damage to Chile not only in human terms, but also economically because the elected government would not be willing or able I believe to Institute the privatization of healthcare and education, which have created the vast inequality gap that is still affecting the country.
When I read the title of this thread, I thought of Merino as the de facto leader, but I guess if there's a civilian that would lead the country post-coup, I thought of Aylwin.
Are they plausible enough?
Are they plausible enough?
I am assuming that if there is an elected government, they won’t be able to introduce sweeping change like deregulating education, and health care, because it be very unpopular and disruptive, something that Pinochet dealt with by using the Army to crush opposition.
Pangur
Donor
Ok so this benign coup was because of what now ? In South America in the early 70s when by any messure coups but very right wing juntas on power. As for that election with one side that can't take part, pointless surely is the previous election elected a left winger
The UP never won a majority in either the 1970 Presidential election (which was sent to Congress and Allende got elected thanks to Christian Democratic backing whose support he eventually lost) or the 1973 Congressional election.
Pangur
Donor
I dont recall mentioning a majority, what I am calling out is that if you dont allow the left to participate the result is fundamentally flawed
The nature of his overthrow and death has made Allende a martyr but as others have said the government and left more broadly were visibly failing and very unpopular by the time of the coup so a free election would have seen them humiliated. However the 1970's were a terrible period to be a government with the oil price shocks, stagflation etc. so it's likely that the new government can't do much better than Pinochet leaving then vulnerable to an election defeat the next time there is one.
Holding elections while banning the left would be a farce and everyone would know it, so why bother?
Maybe in a free election without a coup, but backlash to a coup would only help the left.
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I think if they moved quickly enough they wouldn't have to ban the left or rig things to see the left defeated in an election and there initially wasn't much of a backlash from the wider Chilean population, the government was very unpopular. The problem is that the international economic situation means any government of any stripe is going to run into trouble rapidly.
Unpopular enough that Chilean's just shrugged their shoulders when their president was shot and government deposed? I will confess to having a surface level understanding of the situation but that seems unlikely. There have been drastically unpopular governments where I live, but I never wanted to see any prime ministers murdered. In the 1973 elections Popular Unity didn't even do that badly. I count 54.18% to 43.28% in popular vote and 87 to 63 seats in the lower house.
There were not significant protests or armed resistance, certainly compared to other Latin American countries at the time. Remember pre the coup the opposition controlled Congress and the country was in the middle of a major political crisis, among other things the Lower House had passed a resolution 81-47 calling for "members of the Armed and Police Forces...put an immediate end(to) breach[es of] the Constitution...with the goal of redirecting government activity toward the path of Law and ensuring the Constitutional order of our Nation, and the essential underpinnings of democratic co-existence among Chileans". If the Junta had called immediate elections the Right would have won a comfortable majority and things would have settled down, at least until the fundamental economic problems blew them up in turn.
State sanctioned terrorism tends to bring down those numbers. There was guerilla fighting, quiet torture and killing of leftists and some 40,000 people imprisoned in the National Stadium. Seems significant to me.
People don't like it when their democratically elected governments are overthrown, that tends to create a pretty simple rally around the flag effect and that would benefit whoever started waving Allende's bloody shirt.
For example what happens when the story of Víctor Jara comes out? Tortured and killed for the "crime" of being a leftist. A free election will see this stuff come to light. Maybe I'm an idealist but I don't see the majority of Chilean people shrugging their shoulders and tacitly approving this act.
There's a reason they didn't actually have elections after the coup. This would be a massive shot in the arm for the Chilean left. If there was going to be such a slam dunk victory why even have a coup in the first place? Allende and the opposition Congress had been throwing accusations of ignoring the constitution at each other for three years but there was no indication that Allende wouldn't step down at the end of his term no matter what Pinochet apologists might spin.
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People also don't like political chaos and economic disaster and rightly or wrongly in Presidential systems like Chile or the US the President gets blamed when things are going wrong, whether he's actually to blame or not. However every day that passes post September 11th 1973 the position of the broad left strengthens, as they reorganise and people come to the fore to replace those killed in the coup, as the continued economic troubles begin to be associated with the Junta and the right rather than them, and as awareness of the violence of the coup spreads. An late 1974 election for example would probably have a very different result to a November 1973 one for example. But there is a window, and we can debate until the end of time how long it is, where the unpopularity of the Allende government would be a larger drag on the electoral prospects of the left than the behaviour of the Junta would be on the electoral prospects of the right.