Pinochet's DINA

On September 11, 1973, Augusto Pinochet's air force bombed the presidential palace in Santiago and overthrew the democratically elected Salvador Allende. Within weeks, the Caravan of Death flew between Chilean cities executing prisoners; within a year, the DINA (Dirección de Inteligencia Nacional) was formed under Manuel Contreras as a secret police with authority to detain, torture, and disappear citizens with no judicial oversight. The National Stadium became a detention camp; Villa Grimaldi, a torture site; over 3,000 Chileans were killed or disappeared, tens of thousands tortured. Pinochet exemplifies the Opportunist-at-regime-scale pattern: power treated as proof of legitimacy, the state's security apparatus directed not at external threats but at the population it ostensibly serves. The economic miracle the Chicago Boys credited him with depended on the simple fact that resistance had been physically eliminated. He died under indictment, having lost the immunity he believed wealth would buy.