Patricio Carvajal

Patricio Carvajal Prado

Patricio Carvajal Prado (born September 13, 1916 in Santiago de Chile , † July 14, 1994 by suicide ) was a Chilean vice admiral and politician who was chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Chile and during the military dictatorship under General Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1974 Minister of Defense, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1974 to 1978 and Minister of Defense again between 1982 and 1990. He was one of the main initiators of the September 11, 1973 military coup .

Life

Military career and Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces

Carvajal joined the Navy (Armada de Chile) as a midshipman in 1935 and was temporarily one of José Toribio Merino's classmates . After completing his training in 1941, he was promoted to lieutenant at sea . In the following years he found various uses in the Navy and was promoted to corvette captain in 1950 and frigate captain in 1955 . The artillery specialist completed a course in anti- submarine tactics in the United States in 1958 and, on his return to Chile, took over command of the training ship Esmeralda , with which he undertook a 1960 journey to train midshipmen and sailors.

After he was a naval attaché at the embassy in Great Britain in 1966 , he became Chief of the General Staff of the Navy on his return in 1967 (Jefe de Estado Mayor de la Armada) . In 1968 he met Colonels Augusto Pinochet from the Army and Gustavo Leigh from the Air Force during a course of the High Command .

In 1973 Carvajal, who was promoted to Vice Admiral in 1970, became Chief of the United General Staff of the Armed Forces (Jefe del Estado Mayor Conjunto de las Fuerzas Armadas) .

Naval crisis and first coup tendencies

In July and August 1973 there was a crisis in the Navy after 60 NCOs and sailors were arrested. Several officers were subsequently dismissed for subversive activities, arrests and torture in the Navy.

After that, at the end of August 1973, some vice admirals asked to dismiss the Commander in Chief of the Navy, Admiral Raúl Montero Cornejo . On September 8, 1973, the Admiralty met with Orlando Letelier , Minister of Defense (Ministro de Defensa) in the government of President Salvador Allende , to discuss this matter. At this meeting only three admirals defended the work of their previous Commander-in-Chief: Rear Admiral Daniel Arellano Mac Leod from the Directorate General for Services and at that time Minister of Finance (Ministro de Hacienda) in the Allende Cabinet, Rear Admiral Hugo Poblete Mery from the Directorate for Supply, and Rear Admiral Hugo Cabezas , Chief of the General Staff of the Navy and thus Deputy Montero. Poblete was arrested after the coup. The uprising of the admirals against their commander-in-chief at the meeting in the Ministry of Defense thus formed a preliminary stage of the military coup. The Allende government was informed about this and it was expected that the qualifying authority (Junta Calificadora) would appoint Vice Admiral José Toribio Merino , at the time Commander of the First Naval Zone (Primera Zona Naval) in Valparaíso and, after the military coup, Commander in Chief of the Navy, and Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal Prado would suggest retiring, who at the time already met the legal requirements for 40 years of active service.

Military coup of September 11, 1973 and the role of Carvajal

The La Moneda presidential palace, destroyed by air bombing during the military coup on September 11, 1973 , where President Salvador Allende was killed

The Navy was one of the main initiators of the September 11, 1973 military coup, and Carvajal was one of the driving forces behind it. Letelier wrote of Carvajal's role: “As Chief of the United General Staff, Carvajal was the liaison to the entire group of reactionary officers” ('Carvajal, como jefe de Estado Mayor Conjunto, era el hombre de enlace de todo el grupo de los oficiales reaccionarios'). As chief of staff, he coordinated the military activities of the three branches of the armed forces during the coup.

Shortly before 7 a.m. on September 11, 1973, President Allende planned to invite Defense Minister Letelier to his official residence, La Moneda . Letelier had previously tried to contact the Commander in Chief of the armed forces: Admiral Raúl Montero (Navy), General Augusto Pinochet (Army) and General Gustavo Leigh (Air Force). At the time, Letelier's adjutant appeared in Carvajal's office. Carvajal then interrupted Letelier's phone call, whereupon Letelier replied that he had knowledge that troop concentrations had occurred in Santiago de Chile, which Carvajal dismissed as misinforming the minister. Letelier insisted that it wasn't misinformation. At 6 a.m., Carvajal returned to Letelier's office with Air Force General Díaz Estrada and Army General Sergio Ñuño to inform him of the fighting in the capital. Half an hour later, President Allende tried to contact the military leadership himself, but received few answers on the current situation from Brigadier General Hermán Brady Roche , commander of the 2nd Army Division and commander of the Santiago de Chile garrison.

Carvajal finally went to the La Moneda presidential palace at 9:30 am on September 11 and told President Allende that he was “disturbing” ('lo molesta') and telling him to resign and surrender. He guaranteed the president physical integrity and an airplane that would take the president and his family abroad. When General Javier Palacios found the lifeless body of the president in his office, he passed the information on to General Ñuño, who in turn informed Carvajal. He informed the Commander in Chief of the Army, General Pinochet, in English with the words that "the soldiers of the infantry school had said that Allende had committed suicide and was now dead" ('They (los militares de la Escuela de Infantería) said that Allende committed suicide and is dead now ').

Defense Minister and Foreign Minister

One day after the coup, on September 12, 1973, Carvajal was appointed Minister of Defense (Ministro de Defensa) by the ruling military junta under General Pinochet , and thus Letelier's successor. He held this office until his replacement by Major General Óscar Bonilla Bradanovic on July 11, 1974.

He himself dissolved Vice Admiral Ismael Huerta Díaz as Foreign Minister (Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores) on July 11, 1974 and remained in this ministerial office until his replacement by Hernán Cubillos Sallato on April 14, 1978. In this capacity, he participated in a conference of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Grenada , where the US Secretary of State Cyrus Vance rejected allegations of human rights violations in Chile. The ambassador to the United Nations , Sergio Diez , the ambassador to the OAS María Eugenia Oyarzún and Minister of Justice (Ministro de Justicia) , Miguel Schweitzer , also took part in this conference. The direct negotiations between Chile and Argentina in 1977/78 to settle the Beagle conflict , a dispute between Argentina and Chile over territorial claims in the Beagle Channel that lasted from 1904 to 1984 , also fell during his term of office .

After finishing his work as Foreign Minister, he became ambassador to Switzerland in 1978 and remained there until December 15, 1982.

Subsequently, Carvajal took over as the successor of Washington Carrasco Fernández again as Minister of Defense and held the ministerial office until the end of the military dictatorship on March 11, 1990. He was succeeded by Patricio Rojas Saavedra , who took over the office in the cabinet of Patricio Aylwin , the first democratic elected president after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship.

He committed suicide a few months later. He was married and had four children.

Web links

• Entry (No. 6) in 11 DE SEPTIEMBRE DE 1973: Golpe Militar en Chile
• Entry in rulers.org
• Emilio Massera recibe a Patricio Carvajal Prado 1976 on YouTube

Individual evidence

1. ↑ List of Chilean Foreign Ministers (rulers.org)