Carlos Altamirano


Carlos Altamirano Orrego was a Chilean lawyer and socialist politician. He was the general secretary of the Chilean Socialist Party between 1971 and 1979. Before that, he was deputy from 1961 to 1965 and senator from 1965 to 1973. He escaped after Pinochet's coup d'état on September 11, 1973, and lived as a refugee in Cuba. As a young man he won medals in the high jump event at the 1946 and 1947 South American Championships in Athletics.

Biography

Altamirano started as professor of financial law and public finances in the University of Chile. On July 26th, 1971, as Secretary of the Socialist Party, he called on President Allende to dissolve the National Congress. In 1973, sectors of the Chilean Navy tried to convince leaders of the far-right paramilitary organization Patria y Libertad to assassinate him. The plan, however, was not enacted. After the September 11, 1973 coup, Altamirano fled to Cuba. He wrote Dialéctica de una Derrota in 1977. He returned to Chile after the end of Pinochet's dictatorship in 1993.
According to lawyer Alun Jones, representative of the Spanish justice during Spain's request to Great Britain for the extradition of Augusto Pinochet, Pinochet had planned an attack against Altamirano just after Franco's funerals in 1975. A declassified FBI document suggests that Altamirano had become an obsession of DINA director Manuel Contreras, who wanted him assassinated at all cost, but that others within the agency cast doubts, because Altamirano seemed to be a decisive factor among the Chileans living in exile. The same document indicates that the neo-fascists associated with Stefano Delle Chiaie were to assassinate Bernardo Leighton instead.

Books