Upheaval: Turning Points for Nations in Crisis

by Jared Diamond

But just six years after my visit, in 1973, Chile was taken over by a military dictatorship that smashed previous world records for government-perpetrated sadistic torture. In the course of a military coup on September 11, Chile’s democratically elected president committed suicide in the presidential palace. Not only did the Chilean junta kill Chileans in large numbers, torture them in larger numbers, devise vile new techniques of psychological and physical torture, and drive still more Chileans into exile. It also directed terrorist political killings outside Chile, including what was, until the World Trade Towers attack of September 11 of 2001 (coincidentally on the anniversary of Chile’s coup), the only terrorist political killing of an American citizen on American soil (in Washington, DC, in 1976).