Not to be confused with 9/11 in the US
The Chilean Military Coup of 1973 was an overthrowing of the democratic socialist government (led by Salvador Allende) by the Chilean army (led by Augusto Pinochet) with extensive support from the CIA (US), ASIO (Australia) and Brazil on the 11th of September, 1973. The coup led to the creation of the brutal Pinochet Dictatorship and an end to the most stable and democratic government in South America.
Background
After World War I, the British Empire was in decline, and soon the US pushed out British companies out of Chile and replaced them with US ones who controlled much of the countries GDP, preventing it from developing as a nation as wealth was funneled to wealthy americans. Trade unionists became active around the country, pushing for increased wages, social democracy, and, in extreme cases, workers' control or a communist revolution.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the US government (alongside large corporations and banks) funded centrist and right-wing opposition candidates in Chilean elections as well as anti-communist media outlets and groups. The US successfuly persuaded the Chilean government to lower tariffs in order to reduce inflation, leading to the Chilean market to be overwhelmed by American products. Thus, the idea of electing a leftist candidate became popular, and Salvador Allende (a communist) became more popular with each election.
In this environment of economic crisi
Preparations
Coup
Results
The coup was a resounding success, the army quickly took control of the streets, defeating the few leftist popular militias based out of the University of Chile with street-by-street gunfights and battles and the use of the air force on its own population. All democratic institutions in Chile were dissolved and the army took complete control of society, converting former offices of leftist groups and the National Stadium into concentration camps where the execution of politicalibertarian Socialist Analysisdents began
Lessons
The Chilean Military Coup of 1973 unfortunately exposes some of the weaknesses inherent to the politics of social democracy and centralised/authoritarian socialism (unfortunate as we'd wish these programs had worked historically, as then we'd be living in a much more just and fairer world). If you organise any organisation, even a revolutionary one, from the top-down, it's relatively easily for counter-revolutionaries to identify the 'head' of said organisation and destroy it. People below them have not been trained in (or may not even be aware of) the principles of direct democracy, and are thus completely dependent on taking orders from above. If the 'above' is killed, then it just results in confusion, power plays, paranoia, corruption and infighting, which have destroyed so many efforts to build a socialist society before and is one of the main criticisms of other forms of socialism and representative democracy made by libertarian socialists.