Prats González, Carlos

(1915–1974)

   Chilean general, commander in chief of the army under President Salvador Allende Gossens (1970–1973), and a constitutionalist who opposed the coup of 11 September 1973. In June 1973 Prats González had demonstrated his commitment to constitutional government by putting down a tank rebellion (tancazo) led by Colonel Roberto Souper, thereby earning the enmity of anti–Allende Gossens forces within the military. The victim of a right-wing propaganda campaign, he was forced to resign as commander in chief in August 1973, replaced by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, a longtime friend and colleague. After the coup, Prats González went into exile in Argentina, where he worked on his memoirs. On 29 September 1974 he and his wife, Sofía, were murdered by a car bomb planted by agents of the Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional (DINA, Directorate of National Intelligence), Chile’s secret police. The operation, which reached across the border, prefigured the high-level political assassinations carried out by Operation Condor, a Latin American military network formed in 1975. Pinochet Ugarte, the head of the Chilean junta, denied involvement in the murder, despite the threat that Prats González posed to the military regime. In 1998, however, it became known that Pinochet Ugarte ordered the assassination of Prats González and two other rivals, Bernardo Leighton and Orlando Letelier del Solar.