On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led a military coup that bombed the presidential palace where Salvador Allende was located. (The Associated Press) Allegedly, the president committed suicide during the assault and thus ended his three-year run as president. Pinochet and the military took over Chile resulting in a 17-year authoritarian rule. (Devine 27) According to Jack Devine, who had a 32-year career at the CIA, they did not know the extent of Pinochet’s brutal regime until years later, “…official Chilean investigations revealed that the Pinochet regime had murdered more than 2,200 people for political reasons and had imprisoned more than 38,000, many of whom were tortured.” (Devine 34) The United States, even though Devie states that the coup was not from the United States; The United States does have a hand in trying take Allende both out of the presidential race he won and getting him out of presidency during Allende’s run by sabotaging the Chilean economy and cutting off multilateral aid. (Kedar 717-18)
In The House of the Spirits, the readers get a more intimate perspective of the events through Jamie. Jamie was at the presidential palace with the president as it was under assault, and once he got out without the president, he was told to say that “The President” committed suicide but he refused because that may not be true, and it renders the faith of the people to the ground. Through Alba, do the readers witness some of the atrocities that may have been committed in those torture camps. The point is that Isabel Allende spoke of real-world events through the eyes of her characters in The House of the Spirits and made social commentary. The readers understand through her characters that what happened in Chile was not fair to the country nor the people.
Works Cited
Devine, Jack. “What Really Happened in Chile: The CIA, the Coup Against Allende, and the Rise of Pinochet.” Foreign Affairs, vol. 93, no. 4, 2014, pp. 26–35. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24483554. Accessed 27 Apr. 2026.
KEDAR, CLAUDIA. “Salvador Allende and the International Monetary Fund, 1970–73: The Depoliticisation and Technocratisation of Cold War Relations.” Journal of Latin American Studies, vol. 47, no. 4, 2015, pp. 717–47. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24544135. Accessed 27 Apr. 2026.
The Associated Press. “AP PHOTOS: 50 Years Ago, Chile’s Army Ousted a President and Everything Changed.” AP News, 6 Sept. 2023, apnews.com/article/chile-dictatorship-photo-gallery-50-years-84a3047f4301f7d6661deb4d02c757ec.
Ugarte, Marco. “Gen. Augusto Pinochet Exits His Home, Surrounded by Security Guards in Santiago, Chile, Sept. 7, 1986, the Day after He Survived an Assassination Attempt by the Guerrilla Group, Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front.,” The Associated Press, 6 Sept. 2023, apnews.com/article/chile-dictatorship-photo-gallery-50-years-84a3047f4301f7d6661deb4d02c757ec.