Multimedia Collection
Chile: "Defeat of a Dictator"
(A Force More Powerful series)
VHS
34 minutes
HM278 .C51 2000
General Augusto Pinochet seized power in a 1973 military coup. He banned political parties, closed newspapers, and spread fear throughout the country; political assassinations, disappearances, torture, and imprisonment became common. In 1983, an economic crisis pushed many Chileans to dare oppose the dictatorship for the first time. Copper miners called for a nonviolent national protest day against Pinochet, unleashing pent-up opposition in a wave of monthly protests. Mainstream opposition parties re-emerged after ten years underground, and supported by the Church, staged frequent nonviolent demonstrations. By 1987, the democratic opposition realized that the constitution Pinochet wrote in 1980 called for a plebiscite - a chance for people to vote yes or no on another eight years of military rule. Isolated and overconfident, Pinochet had always assumed he would win if people were given a choice. But after years of organizing, the opposition was prepared, and ran a bold, future-oriented "NO" campaign. On October 5, 1988, Pinochet was voted out.
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