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Allende’s involvement in Chilean political life spanned a period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he was a senator, deputy and cabinet minister. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections. In 1970, he won the presidency in a close three-way race. He was elected in a run-off by Congress as no candidate had gained a majority.
On 11 September 1973, the military moved to oust Allende in a coup d’état supported by the United States Central Intelligence Agency(CIA).[4][5][6] As troops surrounded La Moneda Palace, he gave his last speech vowing not to resign.[7] Later that day, Allende committed suicide with an assault rifle,[8] according to an investigation conducted by a Chilean court with the assistance of international experts in 2011.[9]
Following Allende’s death, General Augusto Pinochet refused to return authority to a civilian government, and Chile was later ruled by a military junta that was in power up until 1990, ending more than four decades of uninterrupted democratic rule. The military junta that took over dissolved the Congress of Chile, suspended the Constitution, and began a persecution of alleged dissidents, in which thousands of civilians were kidnapped, tortured, and murdered.
batista was the elected President of Cuba from 1940 to 1945, and the U.S.-backed authoritarian ruler from 1952 to 1959, before being overthrown during the Cuban Revolution. Batista initially rose to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of the Sergeants, which overthrew the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada. He then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the five-member “pentarchy” that functioned as the collective head of state. He maintained this control through a string of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was himself elected President of Cuba on a populist platform.[3][4] He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba [5] and served until 1944. After finishing his term he lived in Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás that preempted the election.[6]
Back in power, and receiving financial, military, and logistical support from the United States government,[7][8] Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans.[9]Eventually it reached the point where most of the sugar industry was in U.S. hands, and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land.[10] As such, Batista’s repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba’s commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships with both the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large U.S.-based multinational companies who were awarded lucrative contracts.[9][11] To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions; ultimately killing anywhere from hundreds to 20,000 people.[12][13][14][15][16][17]
Catalyzing the resistance to such tactics, for two years (December 1956 – December 1958) Fidel Castro‘s 26th of July Movement and other nationalist rebelling elements led an urban and rural-based guerrilla uprising against Batista’s government, which culminated in his eventual defeat by rebels under the command of Che Guevara at the Battle of Santa Clara on New Year’s Day 1959. Batista immediately fled the island with an amassed personal fortune to the Dominican Republic, where strongman and previous military ally Rafael Trujillo held power. Batista eventually found political asylum in Oliveira Salazar‘s Portugal, where he first lived on the island of Madeira and then in Estoril, outside Lisbon. He was involved in business activities in Spain and was staying there in Guadalmina near Marbella at the time of his death from a heart attack on August 6, 1973.[18]