Chile: the balanced view : a recopilation of articles about the Allende years and after

subsequently asserted that Allende planned to announce the plebiscite in a radio address at noon on the day of the coup.(27) Meantime, after a stormy session with Allende on September 7, the military comman– ders proceeded on Sunday, September 9, to draft the texl of the pronunciamiento issued on September 11. They did not secure the agreement of the National Police until early on the morning of the coup itself, and only after the fourth-ranking officer in seniority had taken over the position of police commander.(28) On Septembér 10, Navy units set sail from Valparaíso for previously scheduled ma– neuvers, but that evening they returned to port and by early morning of the 11 th had seized control of that city. Concepción, the third-ranking cíty in Chile and a known center of leftist activism, was taken over without a hitch. Santiago required a few hours longer. To justify their action, the mil itary commanders broadcast a communiqué to the nation. While admitting that the Allende government had initially come lo power by legal means, they announced that 1I had "fallen into flagrantillegitimacy" by violating fundamental rights, by "artificially fomenting the class struggle", by refusing to implement the decisions of the Congress, the judiciary and the Controller-General, by causing a critical decline in agricultural, commercial and industrial activity in the country, and by bringing about a state of inflation and anarchy which "threaten the internal and external security of the country" The coup leaders concluded: These reasons are sulficient in the light 01 classical doctrine ...to justify our intervention lo depose a government whic/z is iIlegílimate. immoral, and unrepresenlative olthe overwhel– ming sentiment ollhe nalion.(29) At 9:30 a.m., when il was apparent that no one but the GAP, his personal bodyguard, was ready to defend him, Allende broadcast his last message to the Chilean people over the single pro-Allende radio station that had not yet been shul dowrí by the mililary. He began: . This is surely lhe last time lhal I wi// be able 10 speak to you... My words are not spoken in bitterness but disappoitltment. In the lace ollhese evenls lean only say lO the workers, "1 am not going lo resign". Al this historie juncture I will pay wilÍ¡ my lijelor lhe loyalty ollhe people. Blaming "foreign capital, imperialism, and reáction" for persuading Ihe ermed forces to break with their tradition, he said: History wi//judge·them... My voice will no longer come to you, but is does not malter. You will conlinue to hear it; it will always be among you. At lhe leasl, you will remember me as an honorable man who was loyal lo the revolutioll.(30) At 11:00 a.m., the coup leaders permitted those who wished to do so to leave the building, and -€xcept for his personal secretary- all the women, including Allende's pregnant daughter, left. The military also offered the President and his family safe conduct out ofthe country if he would surrender. Allende rejected the ofter. The Air Force then sent in . Hawker Hunter bombers, which repeatedly hit the p.!llace with rockets and set fire to large (27)lnformation Irom the author's personal interviewswilh Patricio Aylwin, Jan. 11, 1974. and Carlos Briones, Jan. 14,1974. • (28)Accounls 01 pre-coup military aclivilies appear in The Chrialian Science Monitor (Boslon), Sept. 17, 1973: Tile Wall Streel Joumal (NewYork), Sept. 25, 1973: Le Monde (Paris), Dec. 19,1973; and Robert Moss, "Chile's Coup and Afler," Encounler (London), March 1974, pp. 72-80. (29)Libro Blanco, pp. 248-49. (30)Translaled from Ihe Iranscripl 01 Ihe tape recording 01 Ihe speech published in Ricardo BOizard, El Ullimo Día de Al/ende (The Lasl Day 01 Allende), Sanliago, Edítorial del Pacifico, 1973, pp. 53-55, 36