Was The United States Responsible? It has long been said that the United States was responsible for bringing down Salvador Allende’s government in Chile but this paper will argue that the Allende government was brought down by its own doing. It is true that Salvador Allendewas elected in 1970 by means of a democratic election, although only with 36.6%of the vote. Nevertheless, it is equally true that his government lost its democraticcharacter by having repeatedly violated the Constitution. In effect, President Allende became a tyrant when he broke his solemn oath torespect the Constitution and the Chilean laws. This was not just obvious to thegreat majority of Chileans in their daily lives, but was also established by almosttwo thirds of the House of Deputies (the Lower House of the Chilean Congress) inits momentous Agreement of 23 August 1973 (there was also a statement to thesame effect from the Supreme Court).In this Agreement, is presented a list of the legal and constitutional violationsof President Allende's government and it decided to “make representations” of this“grave breach of the legal and constitutional order of the Republic” to, among otherauthorities, “the Armed Forces”. At the same time it decides to “makerepresentations to those that, by virtue of their function, of their oath to remainfaithful to the Constitution and the law, ... it is up to them to put immediate end toall the situations referred to above, which infringe the Constitution and the law.”Since no feasible mechanism existed in the Chilean Constitution to remove aPresident who had lost his democratic nature, the House of Deputies, with thesupport of all the representatives of the Christian Democratic Party, “maderepresentations” to the Armed Forces whom it was up to “to put immediate end” tothis grave situation. This was, in fact, an inequivocal call to remove PresidentAllen...
