Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile) - The Day of The Military Coup

The Day of The Military Coup

Fewer than 60 individuals died as a direct result of fighting on 11 September 1973, but the MIR and GAP continued to fight the following day. In all, 46 Allende's praetorian guard (the GAP, Grupo de Amigos Personales, including ex-Chilean Army Special Forces Black Beret Mario Melo) were killed, some of them in combat with the soldiers that took the Moneda. Before the coup, Miguel Enríquez had convinced Allende to form a praetorian guard. Allende's praetorian guard under Cuban-trained commando Ariel Fontana should have had some 300 elite commando-trained GAP fighers defending the palace and nearby buildings in time for the military coup, but the use of brute military force, especially the use of Hawker Hunter bombers, Puma helicopter-gunships and the cordoning of Santiago, may have handicapped many GAP fighters from taking part in the action.

These factors may explain both the vigorous and brutal purges of armed forces personnel suspected of being sympathetic to Allende after Augusto Pinochet's 1973 coup d'état and the Operation Condor campaign of state terrorism staged throughout the Southern Cone.

During Pinchet's dictatorship, the group was responsible for several attacks on government personnel and buildings. In 1976, there had been plans to infiltrate 1,200 Marxist guerrillas from Argentina into Chile in an operation christened Plan Boomerang Rojo (Red Boomerang Plan), but the infiltration failed to materialize because of the co-operation of the Argentine authorities with Chile.