The 1973 Chilean coup d'état is presented as a pivotal precedent in the regional spread of military rule: Augusto Pinochet’s seizure of power in Chile forms part of the political backdrop against which the novel explains Argentina’s 1976 coup and the dictatorship that followed.

Regional Context

The account situates Chile alongside several neighboring countries that had already moved away from democratic government. Uruguay’s far-right president Juan María Bordaberry established a dictatorship with military support in 1973, the same year Pinochet staged his coup in Chile. Bolivia had been under the dictatorship of Hugo Banzer since 1971; Paraguay had been ruled personally by Alfredo Stroessner since 1954; and a military dictatorship established in Brazil in 1964 persisted under successive generals after Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco’s death in 1967. Against this regional pattern, Argentina in March 1976 was the only country in the Southern Cone still retaining a democratic regime.

Connection to Argentina’s Coup

The Chilean coup is not narrated as a separate scene with a detailed account of its participants or course. Its significance lies in the historical comparison: it helps establish that Argentina’s 1976 military takeover did not occur in isolation. The novel identifies the National Security Doctrine, adopted by United States diplomacy in Latin America to combat left-wing movements and organizations, as a broader framework behind the promotion and support of military dictatorships. Chile’s 1973 coup belongs to the regional landscape through which the Argentine dictatorship is understood.

Repression and Historical Significance

The surrounding account traces Argentina’s own escalation of state violence from the 1975 Operativo Independencia, officially directed against guerrillas in Tucumán but used to repress civilians and a broad range of social groups, to the military regime established in 1976. Between the spring of 1976 and the autumn of 1982, the Argentine dictatorship forcibly disappeared thousands of people; estimates put the number of victims at about thirty thousand. Its clandestine machinery encompassed abduction, secret detention, torture, execution, concealment of bodies, and the theft and reassignment of children born to detained women. The novel’s juxtaposition of Chile’s coup with this account of Argentina presents military rule as a regional political pattern while specifying the distinctive machinery and consequences of Argentina’s repression.