Augusto Pinochet (World Leader) – Overview, Biography

Augusto Pinochet
Name:Augusto Pinochet
Occupation: World Leader
Gender:Male
Birth Day: November 25,
1915
Death Date:Dec 10, 2006 (age 91)
Age: Aged 91
Birth Place: Valparaiso,
Chile
Zodiac Sign:Sagittarius

Augusto Pinochet

Augusto Pinochet was born on November 25, 1915 in Valparaiso, Chile (91 years old). Augusto Pinochet is a World Leader, zodiac sign: Sagittarius. Nationality: Chile. Approx. Net Worth: Undisclosed.

Trivia

He was arrested in 1998 in England on human rights charges, and the case stirred worldwide controversy, though Pinochet was already in frail health.

Net Worth 2020

Undisclosed
Find out more about Augusto Pinochet net worth here.

Does Augusto Pinochet Dead or Alive?

As per our current Database, Augusto Pinochet died on Dec 10, 2006 (age 91).

Physique

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Before Fame

He ran a communist-eradication program in Chile, leading the army on massive crackdowns on political offenders real and imagined.

Biography

Biography Timeline

1915

Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte was born in Valparaíso on 25 November 1915. He was the son and namesake of Augusto Pinochet Vera (1891–1944), a descendant of an 18th-century French Breton immigrant from Lamballe, and Avelina Ugarte Martínez (1895–1986), a woman whose family had been in Chile since the 17th century and was of partial Basque descent.

1931

Pinochet went to primary and secondary school at the San Rafael Seminary of Valparaíso, the Rafael Ariztía Institute (Marist Brothers) in Quillota, the French Fathers’ School of Valparaíso, and then to the Military School in Santiago, which he entered in 1931. In 1935, after four years studying military geography, he graduated with the rank of alférez (Second Lieutenant) in the infantry.

1937

In September 1937, Pinochet was assigned to the “Chacabuco” Regiment, in Concepción. Two years later, in 1939, then with the rank of Sub-lieutenant, he moved to the “Maipo” Regiment, garrisoned in Valparaíso. He returned to Infantry School in 1940. On 30 January 1943, Pinochet married Lucía Hiriart Rodríguez, with whom he had five children: Inés Lucía, María Verónica, Jacqueline Marie, Augusto Osvaldo and Marco Antonio.

1945

By late 1945, Pinochet had been assigned to the “Carampangue” Regiment in the northern city of Iquique. Three years later, he entered the Chilean War Academy but had to postpone his studies because, being the youngest officer, he had to carry out a service mission in the coal zone of Lota. In 1948, Pinochet was initiated in the regular Masonic Lodge Victoria n°15 of the Orient of St. Bernard, affiliated to the Grand Lodge of Chile. He received the Scottish Rite degree of companion, but he is thought not to have ever become a Grand Master.

1951

The following year he returned to his studies in the Academy, and after obtaining the title of Officer Chief of Staff, in 1951, he returned to teach at the Military School. At the same time, he worked as a teachers’ aide at the War Academy, giving military geography and geopolitics classes. He was also the editor of the institutional magazine Cien Águilas (‘One Hundred Eagles’). At the beginning of 1953, with the rank of major, he was sent for two years to the “Rancagua” Regiment in Arica. While there, he was appointed professor of the Chilean War Academy, and returned to Santiago to take up his new position.

1956

In 1956, Pinochet and a group of young officers were chosen to form a military mission to collaborate in the organization of the War Academy of Ecuador in Quito. He remained with the Quito mission for four-and-a-half years, during which time he studied geopolitics, military geography and military intelligence. At the end of 1959 he returned to Chile and was sent to General Headquarters of the 1st Army Division, based in Antofagasta. The following year, he was appointed commander of the “Esmeralda” Regiment. Due to his success in this position, he was appointed Sub-director of the War Academy in 1963. In 1968, he was named Chief of Staff of the 2nd Army Division, based in Santiago, and at the end of that year, he was promoted to brigadier general and Commander in Chief of the 6th Division, garrisoned in Iquique. In his new function, he was also appointed Intendent of the Tarapacá Province.

1971

In January 1971, Pinochet was promoted to division general and was named General Commander of the Santiago Army Garrison. On 8 June 1971, following the assassination of Edmundo Perez Zujovic by left-wing radicals, Allende appointed Pinochet a supreme authority of Santiago province, imposing military curfew in process, which was later lifted. However, on 2 December 1971, following series of peaceful protests against economic policies of Allende, the curfew was re-installed, all protests prohibited, with Pinochet leading the crackdown on anti-Allende protests. At the beginning of 1972, he was appointed General Chief of Staff of the Army. With rising domestic strife in Chile, after General Prats resigned his position, Pinochet was appointed commander-in-chief of the Army on 23 August 1973 by President Salvador Allende just one day after the Chamber of Deputies of Chile approved a resolution asserting that the government was not respecting the Constitution. Less than a month later, the Chilean military deposed Allende.

1973

On 11 September 1973, the combined Chilean Armed Forces (the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Carabineros) overthrew Allende’s government in a coup, during which the presidential palace, La Moneda, was shelled and most likely where Allende was said to have committed suicide. While the military claimed that he had committed suicide, controversy surrounded Allende’s death, with many claiming that he had been assassinated (such theory was discarded by the Chilean Supreme Court in 2014).

Some political scientists have ascribed the relative bloodiness of the coup to the stability of the existing democratic system, which required extreme action to overturn. Some of the most infamous cases of human rights violation occurred during the early period: in October 1973, at least 70 people were killed throughout the country by the Caravan of Death. Charles Horman and Frank Teruggi, both U.S. journalists, “disappeared,” as did Víctor Olea Alegría, a member of the Socialist Party, and many others, in 1973. British priest Michael Woodward, who vanished within 10 days of the coup, was tortured and beaten to death aboard the Chilean naval ship, Esmeralda.

In 1973, the Chilean economy was deeply depressed for several reasons, Allende’s government had expropriated many Chilean and foreign businesses, including all copper mines, had controlled prices, inflation reached 606%, income per capita had a contraction of -7.14% in 1973 only while in comparison to 1970 it had contracted by -30%, GDP contracted by -5% in 1973, and also public spending rose from 22.6% to 44.9% between 1970 and 1973 creating a deficit of 25% of the GDP, while some authors like Peter Kornbluh also argue that economic sanctions by the Nixon administration helped to create the economic crisis other authors like Paul Sigmund and Mark Falcoff argue there was no blockade because there was still (just less) aid and credit as well as not a real embargo on trade; the economic and political crisis had the armed forces taking power in September 1973 with Augusto Pinochet, José Toribio Merino Castro, Gustavo Leigh and César Mendoza as their leaders.

Pinochet’s regime was responsible for various human rights abuses during its reign, including forced disappearances, murder, and torture of political opponents. According to a government commission report that included testimony from more than 30,000 people, Pinochet’s government killed at least 3,197 people and tortured about 29,000. Two-thirds of the cases listed in the report happened in 1973.

1974

The junta members originally planned that the presidency would be held for a year by the commanders-in-chief of each of the four military branches in turn. However, Pinochet soon consolidated his control, first retaining sole chairmanship of the military junta, and then proclaiming himself “Supreme Chief of the Nation” (de facto provisional president) on 27 June 1974. He officially changed his title to “President” on 17 December 1974. General Leigh, head of the Air Force, became increasingly opposed to Pinochet’s policies and was forced into retirement on 24 July 1978, after contradicting Pinochet on that year’s plebiscite (officially called Consulta Nacional, or National Consultation, in response to a UN resolution condemning Pinochet’s government). He was replaced by General Fernando Matthei.

Many other important officials of Allende’s government were tracked down by the DINA in the frame of Operation Condor. General Carlos Prats, Pinochet’s predecessor and army commander under Allende, who had resigned rather than support the moves against Allende’s government, was assassinated in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1974. A year later, the murder of 119 opponents abroad was disguised as an internal conflict, the DINA setting up a propaganda campaign to support this idea (Operation Colombo), a campaign publicised by the leading newspaper in Chile, El Mercurio.

Investigative journalist Juan Cristóbal Peña has put forward the thesis that Pinochet felt intellectual envy of Carlos Prats and that the latter’s assassination in 1974 was a relief for Pinochet.

1976

Other victims of Condor included, among hundreds of less famous persons, Juan José Torres, the former President of Bolivia, assassinated in Buenos Aires on 2 June 1976; Carmelo Soria, a UN diplomat working for the CEPAL, assassinated in July 1976; Orlando Letelier, a former Chilean ambassador to the United States and minister in Allende’s cabinet, assassinated after his release from internment and exile in Washington, D.C. by a car bomb on 21 September 1976. Documents confirm that Pinochet directly ordered the assassination of Letelier. This led to strained relations with the US and to the extradition of Michael Townley, a US citizen who worked for the DINA and had organized Letelier’s assassination. Other targeted victims, who escaped assassination, included Christian-Democrat Bernardo Leighton, who escaped an assassination attempt in Rome in 1975 by the Italian terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie; Carlos Altamirano, the leader of the Chilean Socialist Party, targeted for murder in 1975 by Pinochet, along with Volodia Teitelboim, member of the Communist Party; Pascal Allende, the nephew of Salvador Allende and president of the MIR, who escaped an assassination attempt in Costa Rica in March 1976; US Congressman Edward Koch, who became aware in 2001 of relations between death threats and his denunciation of Operation Condor, etc. Furthermore, according to current investigations, Eduardo Frei Montalva, the Christian Democrat President of Chile from 1964 to 1970, may have been poisoned in 1982 by toxin produced by DINA biochemist Eugenio Berrios.

In sharp contrast to the privatization done in other areas, Chile’s nationalized main copper mines remained in government hands, with the 1980 Constitution later declaring the mines “inalienable”. In 1976, Codelco was established to exploit them but new mineral deposits were opened to private investment. In November 1980, the pension system was restructured from a PAYGO-system to a fully funded capitalization system run by private sector pension funds. Healthcare and education were likewise privatized. These mines would ultimately help them economically however they would fall partly in American hands.

1979

Professor Clive Foss, in The Tyrants: 2500 Years of Absolute Power and Corruption (Quercus Publishing 2006), estimates that 1,500–2,000 Chileans were killed or “disappeared” during the Pinochet regime. In October 1979, The New York Times reported that Amnesty International had documented the disappearance of approximately 1,500 Chileans since 1973. Among the killed and disappeared during the military regime were at least 663 Marxist MIR guerrillas. The Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, however, has stated that only 49 FPMR guerrillas were killed but hundreds detained and tortured. According to a study in Latin American Perspectives, at least 200,000 Chileans (about 2% of Chile’s 1973 population) were forced to go into exile. Additionally, hundreds of thousands left the country in the wake of the economic crises that followed the military coup during the 1970s and 1980s. Some of the key individuals who fled because of political persecution were followed in their exile by the DINA secret police, in the framework of Operation Condor, which linked South American military dictatorships together against political opponents.

1980

Pinochet organized a plebiscite on 11 September 1980 to ratify a new constitution, replacing the 1925 Constitution drafted during Arturo Alessandri’s presidency. The new Constitution, partly drafted by Jaime Guzmán, a close adviser to Pinochet who later founded the right-wing party Independent Democratic Union (UDI), gave a lot of power to the President of the Republic—Pinochet. It created some new institutions, such as the Constitutional Tribunal and the controversial National Security Council (COSENA). It also prescribed an 8-year presidential period, and a single-candidate presidential referendum in 1988, where a candidate nominated by the Junta would be approved or rejected for another 8-year period. The new constitution was approved by a margin of 67.04% to 30.19% according to official figures; the opposition, headed by ex-president Eduardo Frei Montalva (who had supported Pinochet’s coup), denounced extensive irregularities such as the lack of an electoral register, which facilitated multiple voting, and said that the total number of votes reported to have been cast was very much larger than would be expected from the size of the electorate and turnout in previous elections. Interviews after Pinochet’s departure with people involved with the referendum confirmed that fraud had, indeed, been widespread. The Constitution was promulgated on 21 October 1980, taking effect on 11 March 1981. Pinochet was replaced as President of the Junta that day by Admiral Merino. During Pinochet’s reign it is estimated that some one million people had been forced to flee the country.

1985

Protests continued, however, during the 1980s, leading to several scandals. In March 1985, the murder of three Communist Party members led to the resignation of César Mendoza, head of the Carabineros and member of the junta since its formation. During a 1986 protest against Pinochet, 21-year-old American photographer Rodrigo Rojas DeNegri and 18-year-old student Carmen Gloria Quintana were burnt alive, with only Carmen surviving.

The Pinochet government implemented an economic model that had three main objectives: economic liberalization, privatization of state owned companies, and stabilization of inflation. In 1985, the government initiated a second round of privatization, revising previously introduced tariff increases and creating a greater supervisory role for the Central Bank. Pinochet’s market liberalizations have continued after his death, led by Patricio Aylwin. According to a 2020 study in the Journal of Economic History, Pinochet sold firms at below-market prices to politically connected buyers.

1986

In September 1986, weapons from the same source were used in an unsuccessful assassination attempt against Pinochet by the FPMR. His military bodyguard was taken by surprise, and five members were killed. Pinochet’s bulletproof Mercedes Benz vehicle was struck by a rocket, but it failed to explode and Pinochet suffered only minor injuries.

1987

According to the transitional provisions of the 1980 Constitution, a referendum was scheduled for 5 October 1988, to vote on a new eight-year presidential term for Pinochet. Confronted with increasing opposition, notably at the international level, Pinochet legalized political parties in 1987 and called for a vote to determine whether or not he would remain in power until 1997. If the “YES” won, Pinochet would have to implement the dispositions of the 1980 Constitution, mainly the call for general elections, while he would himself remain in power as president. If the “NO” won, Pinochet would remain President for another year, and a joint Presidential and legislative election would be held.

Political advertising was legalized on 5 September 1987, as a necessary element for the campaign for the “NO” to the referendum, which countered the official campaign, which presaged a return to a Popular Unity government in case of a defeat of Pinochet. The Opposition, gathered into the Concertación de Partidos por el NO (“Coalition of Parties for NO”), organized a colorful and cheerful campaign under the slogan La alegría ya viene (“Joy is coming”). It was formed by the Christian Democracy, the Socialist Party and the Radical Party, gathered in the Alianza Democrática (Democratic Alliance). In 1988, several more parties, including the Humanist Party, the Ecologist Party, the Social Democrats, and several Socialist Party splinter groups added their support.

1988

On 5 October 1988, the “NO” option won with 55.99% of the votes, against 44.01% of “YES” votes. Pinochet accepted the result and the ensuing Constitutional process led to presidential and legislative elections the following year.

1989

In August 1989, Marcelo Barrios Andres, a 21-year-old member of the FPMR (the armed wing of the PCC, created in 1983, which had attempted to assassinate Pinochet on 7 September 1986), was assassinated by a group of military personnel who were supposed to arrest him on orders of Valparaíso’s public prosecutor. However, they simply executed him; this case was included in the Rettig Report. Among the killed and disappeared during the military junta were 440 MIR guerrillas. In December 2015, three former DINA agents were sentenced to ten years in prison for the murder of a 29-year-old theology student and activist, German Rodriguez Cortes, in 1978. That same month 62-year-old Guillermo Reyes Rammsy, a former Chilean soldier during the Pinochet years, was arrested and charged with murder for boasting of participating in 18 executions during a live phone-in to the Chilean radio show “Chacotero Sentimental.”

Wages decreased by 8%. Family allowances in 1989 were 28% of what they had been in 1970 and the budgets for education, health and housing had dropped by over 20% on average. The junta relied on the middle class, the oligarchy, foreign corporations, and foreign loans to maintain itself. Businesses recovered most of their lost industrial and agricultural holdings, for the junta returned properties to original owners who had lost them during expropriations, and sold other industries expropriated by Allende’s Popular Unity government to private buyers. This period saw the expansion of business and widespread speculation.

The Coalition changed its name to Concertación de Partidos por la Democracia (Coalition of Parties for Democracy) and put forward Patricio Aylwin, a Christian Democrat who had opposed Allende, as presidential candidate, and also proposed a list of candidates for the parliamentary elections. The opposition and the Pinochet government made several negotiations to amend the Constitution and agreed to 54 modifications. These amendments changed the way the Constitution would be modified in the future, added restrictions to state of emergency dispositions, the affirmation of political pluralism, and enhanced constitutional rights as well as the democratic principle and participation to political life. In July 1989, a referendum on the proposed changes took place, supported by all the parties except the right-wing Southern Party and the Chilean Socialist Party. The Constitutional changes were approved by 91.25% of the voters.

1990

Thereafter, Aylwin won the December 1989 presidential election with 55% of the votes, against less than 30% for the right-wing candidate, Hernán Büchi, who had been Pinochet’s Minister of Finances since 1985 (there was also a third-party candidate, Francisco Javier Errázuriz, a wealthy aristocrat representing the extreme economic right, who garnered the remaining 15%). Pinochet thus left the presidency on 11 March 1990 and transferred power to the new democratically elected president.

1991

Financial conglomerates became major beneficiaries of the liberalized economy and the flood of foreign bank loans. Large foreign banks reinstated the credit cycle, as debt obligations, such as resuming payment of principal and interest installments, were honored. International lending organizations such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Inter-American Development Bank lent vast sums anew. Many foreign multinational corporations such as International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT), Dow Chemical, and Firestone, all expropriated by Allende, returned to Chile. Pinochet’s policies eventually led to substantial GDP growth, in contrast to the negative growth seen in the early years of his administration, while public debt also was kept high mostly to finance public spending which even after the privatization of services was kept at high rates (though far less than before privatization), for example, in 1991 after one year of post-Pinochet democracy debt was still at 37.4% of the GDP.

1998

Due to the transitional provisions of the constitution, Pinochet remained as Commander-in-Chief of the Army until March 1998. He was then sworn in as a senator-for-life, a privilege granted by the 1980 constitution to former presidents with at least six years in office. His senatorship and consequent immunity from prosecution protected him from legal action. These were possible in Chile only after Pinochet was arrested in 1998 in the United Kingdom, on an extradition request issued by Spanish judge Baltasar Garzón. Allegations of abuses had been made numerous times before his arrest, but never acted upon. The extradition attempt was dramatised in the 2006 BBC television docudrama Pinochet in Suburbia, with Pinochet played by Derek Jacobi. Shortly before giving up power, Pinochet prohibited all forms of abortion, previously authorized in case of rape or risk to the life of the mother.

After having been placed under house arrest in Britain in October 1998 and initiating a judicial and public relations battle, the latter run by Thatcherite political operative Patrick Robertson, he was released in March 2000 on medical grounds by the Home Secretary Jack Straw without facing trial. Straw had overruled a House of Lords decision to extradite Pinochet to face trial in Spain.

1999

In April and May 1982, a squadron of mothballed British Hawker Hunter fighter-bombers departed for Chile, arriving on 22 May and allowing the Chilean Air Force to reform the No. 9 “Las Panteras Negras” Squadron. A further consignment of three frontier surveillance and shipping reconnaissance Canberras left for Chile in October. Some authors have speculated that Argentina might have won the war had the military felt able to employ the elite VIth and VIIIth Mountain Brigades, which remained sitting in the Andes guarding against possible Chilean incursions. Pinochet subsequently visited the UK on more than one occasion. Pinochet’s controversial relationship with Thatcher led Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair to mock Thatcher’s Conservatives as “the party of Pinochet” in 1999.

2000

The US provided material support to the military government after the coup, although criticizing it in public. A document released by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 2000, titled “CIA Activities in Chile”, revealed that the CIA actively supported the military junta after the overthrow of Allende, and that it made many of Pinochet’s officers into paid contacts of the CIA or U.S. military, even though some were known to be involved in human rights abuses. The CIA also maintained contacts in the Chilean DINA intelligence service. DINA led the multinational campaign known as Operation Condor, which amongst other activities carried out assassinations of prominent politicians in various Latin American countries, in Washington, D.C., and in Europe, and kidnapped, tortured and executed activists holding left-wing views, which culminated in the deaths of roughly 60,000 people. The United States provided key organizational, financial and technical assistance to the operation. CIA contact with DINA head Manuel Contreras was established in 1974 soon after the coup, during the Junta period prior to official transfer of Presidential powers to Pinochet; in 1975, the CIA reviewed a warning that keeping Contreras as an asset might threaten human rights in the region. The CIA chose to keep him as an asset, and at one point even paid him. In addition to the CIA’s maintaining of assets in DINA beginning soon after the coup, several CIA assets, such as CORU Cuban exile militants Orlando Bosch and Guillermo Novo, collaborated in DINA operations under the Condor Plan in the early years of Pinochet’s presidency.

Pinochet returned to Chile on 3 March 2000. So as to avoid any potential disruption his flight back to Chile from the UK departed from RAF Waddington, evading those protesting against his release. His first act when landing in Santiago’s airport was to triumphantly get up from his wheelchair to the acclaim of his supporters. He was greeted by his successor as head of the Chilean armed forces, General Ricardo Izurieta. President-elect Ricardo Lagos said the retired general’s televised arrival had damaged the image of Chile, while thousands demonstrated against him.

In March 2000, Congress approved a constitutional amendment creating the status of “ex-president,” which granted its holder immunity from prosecution and a financial allowance; this replaced Pinochet’s senatorship-for-life. 111 legislators voted for, and 29 against.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of judge Juan Guzmán’s request in August 2000, and Pinochet was indicted on 1 December 2000 for the kidnapping of 75 opponents in the Caravan of Death case. Guzmán advanced the charge of kidnapping as the 75 were officially “disappeared”: even though they were all most likely dead, the absence of their corpses made any charge of “homicide” difficult.

Pinochet was stripped of his parliamentary immunity in August 2000 by the Supreme Court, and indicted by judge Juan Guzmán Tapia. Guzmán had ordered in 1999 the arrest of five militarists, including General Pedro Espinoza Bravo of the DINA, for their role in the Caravan of Death following the coup on 11 September. Arguing that the bodies of the “disappeared” were still missing, he made jurisprudence, which had as effect to lift any prescription on the crimes committed by the military. Pinochet’s trial continued until his death on 10 December 2006, with an alternation of indictments for specific cases, lifting of immunities by the Supreme Court or to the contrary immunity from prosecution, with his health a main argument for, or against, his prosecution.

2001

The practice of murdering political opponents via “death flights”, employed by the juntas of Argentina and Chile, has sometimes been the subject of numerous alt-right and other right-wing extremist groups internet memes, with the suggestion that political enemies and leftists be given “free helicopter rides.” In 2001, Chilean President Ricardo Lagos informed the nation that during Pinochet’s reign, 120 bodies had been tossed from helicopters into “the ocean, the lakes and the rivers of Chile”. In a final assessment of his legacy during his funeral, Belisario Velasco, Chile’s interior minister at the time remarked that “Pinochet was a classic right-wing dictator who badly violated human rights and who became rich.”

2002

In July 2002, the Supreme Court dismissed Pinochet’s indictment in the various human rights abuse cases, for medical reasons (vascular dementia). The debate concerned Pinochet’s mental faculties, his legal team claiming that he was senile and could not remember, while others (including several physicians) claimed that he was only affected physically but retained all control of his faculties. The same year, the prosecuting attorney Hugo Guttierez, in charge of the Caravan of Death case, declared, “Our country has the degree of justice that the political transition permits us to have.”

2004

Pinochet resigned from his senatorial seat shortly after the Supreme Court’s July 2002 ruling. In May 2004, the Supreme Court overturned its precedent decision, and ruled that he was capable of standing trial. In arguing their case, the prosecution presented a recent TV interview Pinochet had given for a Miami-based television network, which raised doubts about his alleged mental incapacity. In December 2004, he was charged with several crimes, including the 1974 assassination of General Prats and the Operation Colombo case in which 119 died, and was again placed under house arrest. He suffered a stroke on 18 December 2004. Questioned by his judges in order to know if, as president, he was the direct head of DINA, he answered: “I don’t remember, but it’s not true. And if it were true, I don’t remember.”

In 2004, a United States Senate money laundering investigation led by Senators Carl Levin (D-MI) and Norm Coleman (R-MN)—ordered in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks—uncovered a network of over 125 securities and bank accounts at Riggs Bank and other U.S. financial institutions used by Pinochet and his associates for twenty-five years to secretly move millions of dollars. Though the subcommittee was charged only with investigating compliance of financial institutions under the USA PATRIOT Act, and not the Pinochet regime, Senator Coleman noted:

2005

In January 2005, the Chilean Army accepted institutional responsibility for past human rights abuses. In 2006, Pinochet was indicted for kidnappings and torture at the Villa Grimaldi detention center by judge Alejandro Madrid (Guzmán’s successor), as well as for the 1995 assassination of the DINA biochemist Eugenio Berrios, himself involved in the Letelier case. Berrios, who had worked with Michael Townley, had produced sarin gas, anthrax and botulism in the Bacteriological War Army Laboratory for Pinochet; these materials were used against political opponents. The DINA biochemist was also alleged to have created black cocaine, which Pinochet then sold in Europe and the United States. The money for the drug trade was allegedly deposited into Pinochet’s bank accounts. Pinochet’s son Marco Antonio, who had been accused of participating in the drug trade, in 2006 denied claims of drug trafficking in his father’s administration and said that he would sue Manuel Contreras, who had said that Pinochet sold cocaine.

Over several months in 2005, Chilean judge Sergio Muñoz indicted Augusto Pinochet’s wife, Lucia Hiriart; four of his children – Marco Antonio, Jacqueline, Veronica and Lucia Pinochet; his personal secretary, Monica Ananias; and his former aide Oscar Aitken on tax evasion and falsification charges stemming from the Riggs Bank investigation. In January 2006, daughter Lucia Pinochet was detained at Washington DC-Dulles airport and subsequently deported while attempting to evade the tax charges in Chile. In January 2007, the Santiago Court of Appeals revoked most of the indictment from Judge Carlos Cerda against the Pinochet family. But Pinochet’s five children, his wife and 17 other persons (including two generals, one of his former lawyer and former secretary) were arrested in October 2007 on charges of embezzlement and use of false passports. They are accused of having illegally transferred $27m (£13.2m) to foreign bank accounts during Pinochet’s rule.

In September 2005, a joint investigation by The Guardian and La Tercera revealed that the British arms firm BAE Systems had been identified as paying more than £1m to Pinochet, through a front company in the British Virgin Islands, which BAE has used to channel commission on arms deals. The payments began in 1997 and lasted until 2004.

The Supreme Court affirmed, in March 2005, Pinochet’s immunity concerning the 1974 assassination of General Carlos Prats in Buenos Aires, which had taken place in the frame of Operation Condor. However, he was deemed fit to stand trial for Operation Colombo, during which 119 political opponents were “disappeared” in Argentina. The Chilean justice also lifted his immunity on the Villa Grimaldi case, a detention and torture center in the outskirts of Santiago. Pinochet, who still benefited from a reputation of righteousness from his supporters, lost legitimacy when he was put under house arrest on tax fraud and passport forgery, following the publication by the US Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of a report concerning the Riggs Bank in July 2004. The report was a consequence of investigations on financial funding of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the US. The bank controlled between US$4 million and $8 million of Pinochet’s assets, who lived in Santiago in a modest house, dissimulating his wealth. According to the report, Riggs participated in money laundering for Pinochet, setting up offshore shell corporations (referring to Pinochet as only “a former public official”), and hiding his accounts from regulatory agencies. Related to Pinochet’s and his family secret bank accounts in United States and in Caribbean islands, this tax fraud filing for an amount of 27 million dollars shocked the conservative sectors who still supported him. Ninety percent of these funds would have been raised between 1990 and 1998, when Pinochet was chief of the Chilean armies, and would essentially have come from weapons traffic (when purchasing French ‘Mirage’ fighter aircraft in 1994, Dutch ‘Leopard 2’ tanks, Swiss ‘MOWAG’ armored vehicles or by illegal sales of weapons to Croatia, during the Balkans war.) His wife, Lucía Hiriart, and his son, Marco Antonio Pinochet, were also sued for complicity. For the fourth time in seven years, Pinochet was indicted by the Chilean justice.

2006

During his lifetime, Pinochet amassed more than 55,000 books in his private library, worth an estimated 2,840,000 US dollars (2006–07). The extent of his library was only known to the public after a police inspection in January 2006. Pinochet bought books at several small bookshops in the old centre of Santiago and was later supplied with books from abroad by military attachés who bought texts Pinochet was searching after. As ruler of Chile he used discretionary funds for these purchases. The library included many rare books including a first edition (1646) Historica relacion del Reyno de Chile and an original letter of Bernardo O’Higgins. A significant part of the books and documents of the library of José Manuel Balmaceda was found in Pinochet’s library in 2006. Pinochet’s library contained almost no poetry or fiction works.

On 25 November 2006, Pinochet marked his 91st birthday by having his wife read a statement he had written to admirers present for his birthday: “I assume the political responsibility for all that has been done.” Two days later, he was again sentenced to house arrest for the kidnapping and murder of two bodyguards of Salvador Allende who were arrested the day of the 1973 coup and executed by firing squad during the Caravan of Death.

Pinochet died a few days later, on 10 December 2006, without having been convicted of any of the crimes of which he was accused.

Pinochet suffered a heart attack on the morning of 3 December 2006 and was given the last rites the same day. On 4 December 2006, the Chilean Court of Appeals ordered the suspension of his house arrest. On 10 December 2006 at 13:30 local time (16:30 UTC) he was taken to the intensive care unit. He died of congestive heart failure and pulmonary edema, surrounded by family members, at the Military Hospital at 14:15 local time (17:15 UTC).

Massive spontaneous street demonstrations broke out throughout the country upon the news of his death. In Santiago, opponents celebrated his death in Alameda Avenue, while supporters grieved outside the Military Hospital. Pinochet’s remains lay in repose on 11 December 2006 at the Military Academy in Las Condes. During this ceremony, Francisco Cuadrado Prats—the grandson of Carlos Prats (a former Commander-in-Chief of the Army in the Allende government who was murdered by Pinochet’s secret police)—spat on the coffin, and was quickly surrounded by supporters of Pinochet, who kicked and insulted him. Pinochet’s funeral took place the following day at the same venue before a gathering of 60,000 supporters.

In Spain, supporters of late dictator Francisco Franco paid homage to Pinochet. Antonio Tejero, who led the failed coup of 1981, attended a memorial service in Madrid. Pinochet’s body was cremated in Parque del Mar Cemetery, Concón on 12 December 2006, on his request to “avoid vandalism of his tomb,” according to his son Marco Antonio. His ashes were delivered to his family later that day, and are deposited in Los Boldos, Santo Domingo, Valparaiso, Chile; one of his personal residences. The armed forces refused to allow his ashes to be deposited on military property.

2007

In 2007, fifteen years of investigation led to the conclusion that the 1992 assassination of DINA Colonel Gerardo Huber was most probably related to various illegal arms traffic carried out, after Pinochet’s resignation from power, by military circles very close to himself. Huber had been assassinated a short time before he was due to testify in the case concerning the 1991 illegal export of weapons to the Croatian army. The deal involved 370 tons of weapons, sold to Croatia by Chile on 7 December 1991, when the former country was under a United Nations’ embargo because of the support for Croatia war in Yugoslavia. In January 1992, the judge Hernán Correa de la Cerda wanted to hear Gerardo Huber in this case, but the latter may have been silenced to avoid implicating Pinochet in this new case—although the latter was no longer President, he remained at the time Commander-in-Chief of the Army. Pinochet was at the center of this illegal arms trade, receiving money through various offshores and front companies, including the Banco Coutts International in Miami.

2011

The Rettig Report concluded 2,279 persons who disappeared during the military government were killed for political reasons or as a result of political violence. According to the later Valech Report approximately 31,947 were tortured and 1,312 exiled. The exiles were chased all over the world by the intelligence agencies. In Latin America, this was made in the frame of Operation Condor, a cooperation plan between the various intelligence agencies of South American countries, assisted by a United States CIA communication base in Panama. Pinochet believed these operations were necessary in order to “save the country from communism.” In 2011, the commission identified an additional 9,800 victims of political repression during Pinochet’s rule, increasing the total number of victims to approximately 40,018, including 3,065 killed.

2013

Critics argue the neoliberal economic policies of the Pinochet regime resulted in widening inequality and deepening poverty as they negatively impacted the wages, benefits and working conditions of Chile’s working class. According to Chilean economist Alejandro Foxley, by the end of Pinochet’s reign around 44% of Chilean families were living below the poverty line. According to The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, by the late 1980s, the economy had stabilized and was growing, but around 45% of the population had fallen into poverty while the wealthiest 10% saw their incomes rise by 83%. But others disagree, Chilean economist José Piñera argues that 2 years after Pinochet took power, poverty was still at 50% and the liberal reforms reduced it to 7.8% in 2013 as well as income per capita rising from US$4.000 in 1975 to US$25.000 in 2015, supporters of the reforms also argue that when Pinochet left power in 1990 poverty had fallen to 38% and some claim that since the consolidation of the neoliberal system inequality has been reducing. However, protests erupted in late 2019 in response to growing inequality in the country which can be traced back to the neoliberal policies of the Pinochet dictatorship.

2015

According to John Dinges, author of The Condor Years (The New Press 2003), documents released in 2015 revealed a CIA report dated 28 April 1978 that showed the agency by then had knowledge that Pinochet ordered the assassination of Orlando Letelier, a leading political opponent living in exile in the United States.

2017

On 2 June 2017, Chilean judge Hernan Cristoso sentenced 106 former Chilean intelligence officials to between 541 days and 20 years in prison for their role in the kidnapping and murder of 16 left-wing activists in 1974 and 1975.

Upcoming Birthday

Currently, Augusto Pinochet is 106 years, 8 months and 22 days old. Augusto Pinochet will celebrate 107th birthday on a Friday 25th of November 2022.

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