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CHRONOLOGY - 1976
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JANUARY 5, 1976
The Vicaria de la Solidaridad (Vicaria) is formally created. The church-run organization is dedicated to defending human rights under the dictatorship. The Vicaria broadly defines its mission as giving legal, economic, technical and spiritual assistance to those in need but in fact, its most renown work is in documenting the human rights abuses that occurred under the dictatorship and providing legal assistance to the victims and their families. This aspect of the Vicaria's work is gradually abandoned with Chile's return to civilian rule and today it runs an archives and documentation center containing materials relevant to human rights in Chile.
JANUARY 9, 1976
The State Council is created through Constitutional Act No. 1. The new Council has the status of a consultative body without decision-making capacity and which makes pronouncements on the request of the president. The Council is comprised of former presidents and 16 others designated by the current president. Former president Eduardo Frei Montalva refuses to join the State Defense Council.
JANUARY 5, 1976
The Inter-American Human Rights Committee of the Organization of American States condemns human rights violations in Chile. El Mercurio newspaper publishes details of the OAS report, constituting the first public denouncement of this magnitude made in Chile since the military coup.
JULY 16, 1976
The Spanish diplomat Carmelo Soria, is found dead two days after his disappearance. The body of Soria, who worked at the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA) in Santiago, is found alongside his car. The murder is later attributed to the DINA's Mulchen Brigade and the amnesty law applied to the case.
JULY 30, 1976
The Apsi magazine begins circulation, marking the first step in what would be a gradual reappearance of opposition media.
JULY 1976
The United States government approves the "Kennedy Amendment", which bans military assistance to Chile. General Augusto Pinochet criticizes the US policy of conditional aid.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1976
Individual rights and freedoms are listed under the title "Of Constitutional Rights and Duties" through Act No. 3. While comprehensive in its definitions, these rights are often debilitated by other provisions in the same proclamation. The article on freedom of expression, for example, also declares illicit any diffusion of ideas that are "contrary to the regime" and the right to free association is limited by the ongoing prohibition on political parties.
SEPTEMBER 13, 1976
The varying degrees of states of emergency and the restrictions and state powers conferred by them are defined by the Junta's Constitutional Act No. 4. External war justifies a state of assembly; internal war or commotion calls for a state of siege; latent subversion allows for a state of defense against subversion and in the case of public calamity a state of catastrophe can be called.
SEPTEMBER 21, 1976
Orlando Letelier, former ambassador to the United States, is murdered by a car bomb in Washington D.C. along with his assistant, U.S. citizen Ronnie Moffit. This occurs less than two weeks after the military Junta revoked Letelier's Chilean citizenship. Letelier, who had been Defense Minister under President Salvador Allende, was taken prisoner by the military on the day of the coup and later exiled. He was a vocal opponent of Pinochet while residing in the U.S. where he worked at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C.
NOVEMBER 17, 1976
The Junta decrees the release of 304 political prisoners who had been arrested in the days following the 1973 military coup, 115 men and 19 women from Tres Alamos and 168 from the Puchuncavi prison camp. Eighteen prisoners are expelled from the country and two, Luis Corvalan and Jorge Montes, remain in confinement. A simultaneous decree annuls the internal exile of 198 people.
NOVEMBER 29, 1976
Thirteen Communist Party (PC) leaders are arrested, marking the beginning of a second crackdown on the PC by the military. By late December, intelligence forces have successfully wiped out the entire PC central committee for the second time in one year.
DECEMBER 17, 1976
Luis Corvalan, Secretary General of the Chilean Communist Party, is traded for Vladimir Bukovsky, a dissident Soviet writer, in a secret operation in Zurich airport supervised by European Migrations, and intergovernmental committee.
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