preview

Saavador Allende Research Paper

Decent Essays
Open Document

In 1973, Las Fuerzas Armadas de Chile staged a coup against President Salvador Allende, which led Latin America to one of the bloodiest and violent takeovers it had ever seen. President Salavador Allende served two terms and was known for being a Marxist, socialist, and communist. Because he was communist, it brought a cause for concern to the United States, who was greatly opposed to that form of government. The CIA even tried to help Allende's opposing candidates win in hopes that Chile wouldn't become a Communist country, but their plan was unsuccessful. The two candidates, whom Allende beat, made up over 60% of the peoples votes, which were all in opposition to the Popular Unity government system that Allende put into place (Chasteen, 2006). …show more content…

Eventually, rebellions did arise and create trouble for Pinochet's regime. A campaign started during his referendum of 1988 that was against the eight year renewal of his role as Chile's leader. According to the movie No, directed by Pablo Larrain, and is based off of a true story, in hopes of stopping other campaigns from making their case against Pinochet's renewal of being leader, he used methods such as intimidation, open threats, made people disappear, ordered assassinations, executions, allowed for people to be tortured, the destruction of property, and ordered protestors to be brutally assaulted and arrested, to get people to back down and vote yes for his eight year term renewal. The Central Nacional de Informaciones, or CNI, which was the last Chilean secret service agency, also admitted to being a part of over 50 cases of torture during Pinochet's regime (No, Larrain, 2012). The campaigns against his renewal ended up successful and Pinochet was forced down as his role of dictator, which finally opened Chile up into becoming a more democratic country. Pinochet's plebiscite of returning as leader for another eight years had lost with about 43% of the votes in favor. He then stepped down after 25 years of being the general army chief and dictator of Chile in March, 1988 (Skidmore, Smith, & Green,

Get Access