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# Allende in Retrospect![photo of Trucks stand idle outside Valparaiso, Chile on September 8, 1973, the 44th day of a paralyzing transportation strike.]Trucks stand idle outside Valparaiso, Chile on September 8, 1973, the 44th day of a paralyzing trans-portation strike.-UPI.On August 9 Allende swore in what he called a "national security cabinet," with General Prats as Defense Minister, Air Force Commander César Ruiz as Minister of Transport (the ministry which would deal with the striking truckers), and the heads of the Navy and of the National Police in other cabinet posts.Almost coincident with the entrance of the military into the cabinet, the naval establishment became involved in a serious conflict with the left wing of the Allende coalition. On August 7, the naval Intelligence arm announced the discovery of a plot to carry out an enlisted men's revolt on August 11 in Valparaíso and Concepción. The announcement accused PS Secretary General Carlos Altamirano, MAPU leader Oscar Garreton, and Miguel Enriques. head of the MIR, of being the "intellectual authors" of the revolt and demanded the lifting of the congressional immunity of the first two, who sat respectively in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies. Two days before the September coup, Altamirano admitted that he had encouraged navymen to resist their coup-minded (goipista) officers."This attempt to subvert the hierarchy of a service command from below was combined with maneuvers by Allende to replace officers unsympathetic to him. When General Ruiz resigned his cabinet post on August 17 in protest against his lack of sufficient power to settle the string, Allende compelled him to add that his departure from the cabinet "implicitly" carried with it his retirement as Air Force Commander. This was correctly seen as an Allende tactic to remove an officer opposed to him, and it met serious resistance from within the Air Force, provoking a series of actions which ultimately led directly to the September 1.1 coup.On August 20, top Air Force officers met to decide whether to resist Allende's action. By evening. Ruiz had persuaded them to accept it on the condition that Allende appoint the second-ranking officer, General Gustavo Leigh, as Air Force Commander and name another Air Force general to the cabinet (so that Allende could not repeat the same maneuver with Leigh). The next night the wives of high-ranking military officers, including those of six generals.. gathered in front of General Prats' house to present a letter asking for his resignation. When the demonstration was broken up by police tear gas, it provoked such dissension in the armed forces that on the following day General Prats decided to resign both as Defense Minister and Army Commander. He was joined by two other generals who, with Prats, had led the military forces that had quelled the tank-regiment revolt in June.The resignation of what appeared to be the last defenders of Allende in the army now meant that all three services were opposed to the President. It coincided with the adoption on the same day of a "sense of the house" (acuerdo) resolution by the Chamber of Deputies directed at the President and the military ministers, drawing their attention to "the serious breakdown of the constitutional and legal order." The resolution criticized the Allende government for repeatedly bypassing the legislature through the use of legal loopholes and for refusing to promulgate the constitutional reforms vc'ed by the Congress. It accused Allende of ignoring judicial orders, encouraging illegal seizure of property, persecuting opposition labor groups, and supporting illegal paramilitary organizations. In conclusion, it stated that the listed actions constituted a "serious breakdown of the constitutional and legat order of the Republic" and urged the military ministers to "put an end to the de facto situations listed above which violate the Constitution and the law" or be[^1] *it was an indication of the continuing press freedom in Chile that newsstands in downtown Chile at this time conta ned a left-wing publication headlined, "Soldiers, Disobey Your Officers," and a magazine of the extreme Right with the headlines, "The Right of Rebel'ion," "Rebellion and its Goals," and "Resistance to the Tyrant.*Libro Blanco, pp. 239-42.58