Читать книгу Torres del Paine. Chile's Premier National Park and Argentina's Los Glaciares National Park онлайн

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Following his election as Chile’s first socialist president in 1970, Salvador Allende instigated a series of radical social reforms aimed at closing the gulf between rich and poor, nationalizing companies and redistributing land. Despite initial successes, however, rising inflation and a drastic fall in world copper prices, combined with covert operations by the CIA to destabilize Allende’s government, led to a military coup in 1973, in which Allende was killed in the Moneda Palace when it was bombed.

The 1973 coup ushered in 17 years of brutal military dictatorship under Auguste Pinochet, in which thousands were executed or tortured, opposition parties banned, press freedom curtailed and Congress dissolved. Pinochet’s re-privatization of industry and other free-market economic policies eventually led to a reduction in unemployment and inflation, but only at the expense of welfare and education and at massive social cost. Pinochet drafted a new constitution in 1980, which guaranteed him power for a further eight years, following which a referendum would be held.