Word: junta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...While many things reported in your articles about Chile are correct, I think you missed two main points. First, without military intervention, democracy would have had no chance of surviving. Secondly, beyond a doubt, the military junta today has the support of the vast majority of the inhabitants of Chile, probably 75% plus...
Murder Plot. To defend the junta's harsh rule, Air Force General Gustavo Leigh Guzmán granted a lengthy interview to TIME'S Benjamin Gate and Rudolph Rauch in his suburban Santiago home. Leigh, 53, the most articulate of the junta's four members, showed Gate and Rauch a Soviet-made automatic rifle that, he said, was part of a leftist cache of weapons. The weapons were smuggled into Chile, presumably for use in "Plan Zeta," a supposed plot to murder top military leaders and rightists. The military did not learn of Plan Zeta...
...spark for action came, said Leigh, on Sept. 9, when Socialist Party Secretary-General Carlos Altamirano admitted during a radio speech that he had urged sailors to disobey military orders. Leigh said he immediately contacted General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the army chief of staff, now the junta leader, and told him: "I can't resist one bit more. This country is going to disaster. The only thing I ask of you is, don't shoot at my troops, don't shoot at my planes, don't fire on my bases." Pinochet's answer...
...Compromises. Chile also has one of the world's highest rates of inflation, more than 300% for 1973. To bring the spiraling economy under control, the junta has devalued by more than half the wildly inflated escudo, and ordered huge price increases for such necessities as sugar (400%) and cooking oil (500%), which had been subsidized at prices far below their market value. It canceled the inflationary (300%) wage increase in minimum salaries approved by Allende, but instituted a system of bonuses and benefits that has increased the minimum income to $42 a month...
Leigh hotly denied that the junta was embarked on a campaign of terror. "We have not executed anyone who is just a politician. We have executed people who have planned assassinations or who fired against the soldiers after the coup. There have been no executions of those who were arrested or detained for whatever reason other than armed resistance." As for the thousands of political prisoners, Leigh said that "right now we just want to keep them out of contact with the rest of the people. Later they will have to go before the military court and it will have...