Forty years ago on Wednesday, the Chilean President Salvador Allende was deposed in a military coup d’état led by General Augusto Pinochet. During the Army attack on the Presidential palace, Allende killed himself. In commemoration of the anniversary, the collaborative project “Chile from within,” edited by the Magnum photographer Susan Meiselas, is being released in a digital edition. Originally published in 1990 and now out of print, the book compiled the previously unseen work of sixteen Chilean photographers, who documented their experience during this tumultuous era. Meiselas’s project provided them with a medium to share their own experiences, previously suppressed by the government. In the introduction, the playwright Marco de la Parra writes that the photographs “were taken against risks made custom, sometimes with confiscated cameras, broken, at times hidden, others surreptitiously from within a crowd, urgently. They were taken with blind faith … the craft of martyrs.”
In additional to the photographs, a selection of which can be seen in the slide show above, the digital edition of “Chile from within” features new material, including audio interviews, contact sheets, and archival footage. In the declassified National Security Archive document below, from October 7, 1970, the former C.I.A. agent David A. Phillips instructs Henry Hecksher, the C.I.A. station chief in Santiago, to sponsor military action against President Allende and his government:
C.I.A. Chile Coup Instructions (PDF) C.I.A. Chile Coup Instructions (Text)
Document courtesy Peter Kornbluh and the National Security Archive, Washington D.C.
