Carlos Prats

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Carlos Prats.

Carlos Prats González (born February 24, 1915 in Talcahuano , Concepción , † September 30, 1974 in Buenos Aires , Argentina ) was a general in the Chilean army and interior minister and vice-president of Chile during the presidency of Salvador Allende . He was the predecessor of General Augusto Pinochet as Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army . In 1974 he and his wife Sofía Cuthbert were murdered by a car bomb in Buenos Aires.

background

Prats was born as the eldest son of Carlos Prats Risopatrón and Hilda González Suárez. He joined the Chilean army as a cadet in 1931 and graduated from high school. In 1935 he began the career of an artillery officer . Three years later he became a second lieutenant . Soon he returned to the military academy , this time as a teacher. He taught there and at the War Academy until 1954. In 1944 he married Sofia Cuthbert Chiarleoni, with whom he had three daughters.

In 1954 he was promoted to major and sent to the US military mission as an auxiliary military attaché . In the same year he received the rank of lieutenant colonel and returned to the war academy as a teacher. In 1961 he became the commander of the artillery regiment No. 3 " Chorrillos ", two years later the commander of the regiment No. 1 " Tacna ".

In 1964 he was promoted to colonel and sent to Argentina as a military attaché. In 1967 he returned as commander of the III. Army division back in Chile. In 1968 he was promoted to brigadier general and chief of the general staff. In the following year he received the rank of division general . His brilliant career culminated in his appointment as Commander-in-Chief on October 26, 1970 by President Eduardo Frei Montalva as the successor to his predecessor General René Schneider , who had been murdered shortly before on October 22. His nomination allayed fears of a possible military intervention over the election of Salvador Allende as president.

In the parliamentary elections in May 1973, the left-wing Unidad Popular increased its share of the vote to 43% of the vote, but the now no longer divided conservative camp reached 55%. Compared to the 35% of the conservative opponent Allende in the presidential elections in 1970, although a substantial increase, the conservatives did not achieve the two-thirds majority that was constitutionally required to remove the president. As a result, not only the majority conservative parliament took a blockade position, the judiciary and the audit office also opposed it. The truck owners went on a protracted strike that put the supply of the population with food and everyday necessities in acute difficulties. The right was simply not ready to stand still until the end of the regular term of office of the president in order to wait another two years for their expected election victory. Tensions in the country grew daily.

Public role during the Allende presidency

General Prats became the head of the " constitutionalists ", those members of the armed forces who gathered behind the Schneider Doctrine . Over time, he became President Allende's strongest supporter, becoming a cabinet member on several occasions and even vice-president in 1972.

Tanquetazo

On June 29, 1973, a tank regiment of the Chilean army, led by Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Souper, attempted a coup against the elected, legal government of the socialist president. Because of the tanks, this amateur coup attempt was given the name " Tanquetazo ", which could be translated as a tank coup . The coup was successfully put down by loyal soldiers loyal to the constitution ("constitutionalists"), with Carlos Prats playing a key role as the army commander in chief.

resignation

Due to a bizarre scandal caused by a traffic accident, he was ultimately forced to resign on August 22, 1973, embarrassed by the public protest of the generals' wives on his doorstep. This incident made it unmistakably clear to him that he had no support from fellow officers for his constitutional position. Together with him, two other generals in top positions resigned, Generals Mario Sepúlveda Squella and Guillermo Pickering , who wanted to show their support for a constitutional solution to the political crisis in Chile. Most of the rest preferred a military solution.

Prats proposed Allende when he was replaced as Supreme Commanding General Augusto Pinochet as his successor, who had previously been his deputy and whom he assumed was loyal to the constitution. General Pinochet assumed his position on August 23, 1973. The resignation of General Prats removed the last real obstacle to a military coup that came exactly three weeks later, on September 11, 1973. Four days after the coup , on September 15, 1973, Prats and his wife went into exile in Argentina.

assassination

Prats' body after the assassination

On September 30, 1974, Prats was killed in Buenos Aires together with his wife Sofia Cuthbert outside their home by a remote-controlled car bomb, with debris being thrown onto the balcony on the ninth floor of a building opposite. It was later found that the assassination attempt was planned by members of the Chilean secret police DINA , who were instructed by an exiled former CIA agent named Michael Townley . Two years later, he organized the assassination attempt on Orlando Letelier , Allende's former foreign minister and last defense minister. A car bomb was also used.

Judicial aftermath

The Chilean examining magistrate Alejandro Solís closed the investigation against Pinochet in this case after the Chilean Supreme Court refused to lift the ex-dictator's immunity in January 2005 . The members of the DINA leadership involved in the act, including the former head of the intelligence service Manuel Contreras and the former operational director and retired general Raúl Iturriaga Neuman as well as his brother Roger and the brigadiers Pedro Espinoza Bravo and José Zara were charged with the murder in 2003 and Sentenced to long prison terms in July 2010 in Chile.

Enrique Arancibia Clavel , a former agent of the Chilean secret service DINA, has been sentenced to life imprisonment for his involvement in the assassination of Prats in Argentina . He was also convicted of crimes against humanity in 2004 and released on parole in 2007 . In April 2011 he was killed in an assassination attempt.

In 2003, the Argentine federal judge Maria Servini de Cubria ordered Chile to extradite Mariana Callejas, the wife of Michael Townley, and Christoph Willikie, a retired colonel in the Chilean army. All three were charged with involvement in the Prats murder. But the Chilean appellate judge, Nibaldo Segura, refused this in July 2005, referring to the fact that she had already been prosecuted in Chile.

Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie was also accused of being involved in the murder of General Prats. Together with his comrade-in-arms Vincenzo Vinciguerra , Delle Chiaie testified before the judge Maria Servini de Cubria in Rome in December 1995 and confirmed that Enrique Arancibia Clavel and Michael Townley were the perpetrators entrusted with the direct execution of the murder.

See also

literature

Web links

Commons : Carlos Prats  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Prats, Carlos
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Prats González, Carlos
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Chilean general
DATE OF BIRTH February 24, 1915
PLACE OF BIRTH Talcahuano , Concepción
DATE OF DEATH September 30, 1974
Place of death Buenos Aires , Argentina