Charles River Editors - Augusto Pinochet: The Life and Legacy of Chiles Controversial Dictator

The man who would dominate life in Chile showed no signs of heightened ambition, and indeed his apparent lack of ideology may have been what led him to the Presidential Palace in Santiago. Born Augusto Jose Ramon Pinochet Ugarte on November 25, 1915 in Valparaiso, Pinochet was the eldest of six children. His father, Augusto, was of French ancestry and served as a relatively anonymous customs inspector. His mother, Vera Angelina Ugarte Martinez, of Basque descent, was similarly a middle class government worker. Augusto Sr. never saw military action, and the couple assumed the quiet life of intellectuals. All signs pointed toward their son following a similarly non-military path. Pinochet was educated in large part by Marxist-oriented priests at the Rafael Ariztia Institute, and his two attempts to enter military college both ended in rejection. He would later credit his upbringing in Catholic schools, at the Institute and with the French Fathers School in Valparaiso, for his deepened understanding of regional and national politics.

Eventually, it was Pinochets mother who influenced her son to continue pursuit of a military career. His personal persistence, fed by such encouragement, finally opened the doors to the Military School of Santiago in 1931, and he graduated in 1936 as a Second Lieutenant, having shown a good deal of military acumen not previously recognized by the higher-ups. As a commissioned officer, Pinochet gained several diverse appointments, which began with a 1937 stint in Concepcion. In 1940, he entered the Military Academy, but his studies were interrupted with a temporary assignment in the coal region of Lota. Returning to the school in the next year, Pinochet was appointed Chief of Staff.

On January 30, 1943, he married Lucia Hiriart, the daughter of an attorney and, by most accounts, a radical senator. In the same year, his daughter Inez Lucia was born. It is said that Lucia attached an imaginative sense of inspiration to her husbands pragmatism by likening him to Roman heroes such as Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, who saved the state on two occasions. Her children, in fact, were named after similar historical figures, such as Augusto and Antonio. In time, Pinochet came to draw parallels between himself and Cincinnatus. Although not initially inspired to pursue a political or military path, Lucia purportedly possessed enough ambition for the two of them.

Pinochet and Lucia

1948 saw Pinochet in his first executive position as commander of a regional prison camp. He later observed that it was during this tenure that he first began to lean significantly toward an anti-leftist ideology, citing a recognition of the truly diabolical attractions of Marxism. and the sanctity of a strong leadership hierarchy undoubtedly lent itself to the iron hand by which he later ruled the country. Included in such training was a maniacal loyalty to the national constitution.

Events that shaped the year of 1953 exerted a powerful influence on Chile, beginning with the death of Joseph Stalin in Russia. The communist component of the people that held a minor plurality were overt in holding tributes to the iconic Soviet leader, no one more fervently than Salvador Allende, who had just mounted his first failed attempt of several to win the Presidency. In his first of four runs, he finished last in a four-man race.