Word: coupes
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1970-1979
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Seni, whose government had lasted only eight days before losing a vote of confidence. Kukrit's Social Action coalition included 17 parties, a bloc obviously too diverse to be effective. While its factions bickered, rice prices doubled, the economy sagged, housing shortages increased, and the army threatened a coup...
...power. "There is nothing to prevent them if they have a mind to do so," Seni told McWhirter last week. "They, after all, have the guns." Seni knows this all too well -he was Prime Minister for a scant four months in 1946 before being ousted by a military coup...
...Chilean armed forces had a tradition of non-involvement that was rare in Latin America, but Rojas shows that only disagreements among three factions within the military postponed the coup until September 1973. The "reformists" wanted to run the country alone; the "hardliners" wanted to give power back to the centrist parties immediately; the "constitutionalists" wanted to enter into a coalition government, with Allende on hand to "control the masses." The deterioration of a compromise worked out by the "constitutionalist" generals--as well as the knowledge that powerful Chilean industrialists and the United States government urged intervention--precipitated the coup...
ROJAS CALLS HIS BOOK "an accusation" and says that it was written "in the style of a police report." It begins with a detailed version of Allende's murder on the day of the coup, refuting the junta's assertion that he committed suicide. After taking 30 pages to decide that pointless issue, Rojas offers a rambling chronological account of Allende's downfall: from the military's initial disorientation after his election, through the right-wing campaign of terrorism and economic sabotage, the Pentagon's secret 1972 proposal for his overthrow, the coup itself, and finally the "inferno" of torture...
Acting as a continental godfather, the American military has equipped, trained and educated armies in Latin America whose exaggerated prestige and lack of legitimate purpose leads them to rebellion. And they have rebelled. With the Argentine coup of last month, there are now only two South American nations--Venezuela and Columbia--with nominally civilian governments. Allende's failure to appreciate the extent of this American influence, shaping the military's new role, was largely responsible for his downfall...