—caravana de la muerte—
On the eleventh of September, nineteen seventy three, at zero seven hundred hours, the Chilean Navy had taken over Valparaíso. By zero eight hundred, the Army held Santiago. By zero nine hundred hours, the Army had control of most of the South American country. In his final speech, President Salvador Allende said, ‘They have force and will be able to dominate us, but social processes can be arrested by neither crime nor force. History is ours, and people make history … These are my last words, and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice, and treason.” By twelve hundred hours, Hawker Hunter jet fighter planes finally arrived over the presidential palace in downtown Santiago. They dropped their load of bombs over the palace. Allende died shortly after. One story has it that he died by his own hands, with an AK-47 rifle that was a gift from Fidel Castro, and was engraved on a gold plaque: ‘To my good friend Salvador from Fidel, who by different means tries to achieve the same goals.’
The Army Commander-in-Chief, Augusto Pinochet, became president of Chile.
It was an event few knew or cared about outside of Chile. Over the next several years, thousands of people died or disappeared. The Chilean national stadium was used as an internment camp for over forty thousand people. In one instance, an army death-squad called the Caravan of Death, or Caravana de la Muerte, flew across the country by helicopters, carrying out executions. Overall, at least three thousand people had died.
Was the United States behind the coup? ‘We didn’t do it. I mean we helped them,’ Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told President Nixon five days later over the phone. The time was 11:50 A.M. The conversation began with football.
‘Nothing new of any importance, is there?’ the president had asked.
‘Nothing of very great consequence,’ Kissinger had said.
When he heard of Allende’s election to president, the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Edward M. Korry, said, ‘We shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty.’
A communiqué to the CIA base in Chile on the sixteenth of October, less than a month before the coup, stated: ‘It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup … We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end, utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG and American hand be well hidden.’
It was a date few remembered outside of Chile.