Chile, 1973 — military coup
Event Summary
On 11 September 1973 Chile's armed forces launched a coup d'état that overthrew the democratically elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende. A military junta composed of three generals and an admiral, with General Augusto Pinochet as its leader, seized power. The resulting dictatorship, marked by widespread human rights abuses, governed Chile for the following 17 years.
Films & Footage
Archival media is credited to its holding collection and license. Media sourcing policy →
Researched Details
Researched
Independent research, added record by record. Hover any label for what it means.
Sources
How It Unfolded
Hand-coded by Coup Atlas from the sources on this page, using a fixed list of tactics. Only events we have read through carry this coding, so most records do not have it yet.
- Led by
- Military
- How long it took
- Under a day — resolved within 24 hours
- Troop movements in the capital or key cities
- Seizure of broadcasters / coup declaration on state media
- Seizure of the presidential palace / seat of government
- Declaration of martial law or curfew
- Mass arrests of officials, officers, or opponents
Cross-Reference
Datasets agree. At least two of the three reference datasets we check against carry this event, and none of them disagrees about its date or its result.
Identifiers for finding this same event in the other datasets:
- Cline Center id
15509111973- Powell & Thyne id
PT-CHL-1973- Albrecht/Koehler/Schutz (CAM) id
CAM-155-1973-09-11-2
How the match is made is described in crossref-report.md.
Outcome and Target
Coup Atlas research identifies the target as: Salvador Allende, President of Chile (overthrown).
Baseline coding: Incumbent executive removed from power. Recorded leader fate: deposed; killed. The baseline file does not name individual targets; researched names are kept in a separate layer.
Baseline Dataset Citation
Baseline Source-Document Entries
CSP
Luttwak
Wikipedia
New York Times
This is the citation trail carried by the baseline dataset, grouped by outlet and rejoined from the line-wrapped original. Coup Atlas has not independently re-checked every document; read the original before citing a specific claim. URLs the import damaged beyond safe repair are shown as plain text and listed in citations-report.md. How this list is built →