Julio Polloni

Julio Sergio Polloni Pérez was a Chilean major general who served as colonel in command of the communications units during the September 11, 1973 military coup . During the military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet, among other things, he was director of the SIME Army Intelligence Service , commander of the 2nd Army Division and ambassador to Paraguay .

Life

Polloni came from a family of officers and was the son of Alberto Polloni Roldan, who was the last colonel in command of a railway regiment in Puente Alto . After attending school in 1938, he joined the army (Ejército de Chile) and trained as an officer there. In 1950 he was employed as a lieutenant in the Antártica Chilena province .

After serving in the General Staff of the Army, he was appointed Colonel Commander of the Telecommunications Command (Comando de Telecomunicaciones) in 1973 , which was part of the Army Command under General Sergio Arellano Stark . On September 10, 1973, the day before the military coup, he attended a meeting with the Army Commander, General Augusto Pinochet, and other generals at the Ministry of Defense to plan operations for the following day. There he received the orders for the use of the telecommunications troops during the coup.

On the night before the coup he drove to the individual telecommunication units and informed his officers, engineers and radio technicians about the “Plan of Silence” ( “ Plan Silencio”), which called for the disconnection of telephone connections at important points and the shutdown of radio stations the People's Government of President Salvador Allende . Two days after the military coup, various intelligence officers met in the office of Air Force General Nicanor Díaz Estrada to process the information gathered during the coup. Polloni attended this meeting as a representative of the army.

Seventeen days after the coup d'état, the first changes in the military leadership occurred on September 28, 1973: The previous director of the SIME Army Intelligence Service (Servicio de Inteligencia Militar del Ejército) , General Augusto Lutz Urzua, became secretary of the ruling military junta (Junta de Gobierno) and replaced General Fernando González , who had only taken over on the day of the coup and was previously a military attaché at the embassy in Spain . González, in turn, succeeded General Héctor Bravo as commander of the 4th Army Division in Valdivia , while Colonel Polloni succeeded General Lutz as director of the Army Intelligence Service.

A few days later, Polloni was promoted to brigadier general. As director of SIME, he initiated a reorganization of this service and shifted the focus from internal repression to a defense-political intelligence service that dealt in particular with border problems. This later led to differences of opinion with the director of the national secret service DINA , Manuel Contreras , about the areas of responsibility of both secret services.

After the death of Defense Minister Óscar Bonilla Bradanovic on March 3, 1975 in an unexplained helicopter crash, there were again extensive changes within the army generals . Polloni was promoted to major general and took over the post of commander of the 2nd Army Division. He became the successor of General Sergio Arellano Stark, who became Chief of the General Staff of the Army.

On November 26, 1975 he was appointed ambassador to Paraguay. He remained in this post until 1979.

Polloni had been married to Marta Contardo since 1952.

His brother Jorge Alberto Polloni Pérez was also an officer. He was the father-in-law of Colonel Gerardo Huber Olivares, who was married to his daughter Adriana Polloni Becker. Huber was an officer of the DINA and most recently head of the department for exports and imports of the directorate for logistics of the army. In 1992 Huber's body was found in the Río Maipo shortly after it became known that he was involved in arms deliveries to Croatia .

Web links

• Entry (No. 12) in 11 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 1973: Golpe Militar en Chile
• Esteban Bucat Oviedo: SINTESIS: A 40 AÑOS DEL GOLPE DE ESTADO

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Carrera Militar de Alberto Polloni Roldan 1918–1942 y su retiro ( Memento of the original from February 16, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
2. ↑ Ascanio Cavallo, Manuel Salazar and Oscar Sepúlveda: La historia oculta del régimen militar. Chile 1973–1988 , Grijalbo, 1989
3. ↑ Terrorista chileno quiere armas para aniquilar comunistas (midiaindependente.org)
4. ^ Album by Alberto Polloni Pérez