In 1956, an extraordinary three-year agreement on transfer of ideas was signed by the Department of Economics at the Chicago University and the Faculty of Economics at the Catholic University of Chile. It was renewed twice, for a total of nine years. As a result, by the mid-1960s, there existed in Chile a substantial number of free-market economists, known as the "Chicago Boys".

After the breakdown of democracy in 1973--a result of Allende´s sistematic violations of the Constitution--the Chicago Boys did a "friendly takeover" of the relevant areas of the Pinochet government in order to rebuild the country, advance liberty and restore democratic rule.

From 1975 to 1989, a true revolution took place in Chile, involving a radical, comprehensive, and sustained move toward individual freedom. This Chilean revolution doubled Chile's historic rate of economic growth (to an average of 7 percent a year from 1984 to 1998), drastically reduced the proportion of people living in poverty, and brought liberal democracy and the rule of law.

The success of this revolution has been described in this way: "In a sense, it all began in Chile. In the early 1970s, Chile was one of the first economies in the developing world to test such concepts as deregulation of industries, privatization of state companies, freeing of prices from government control, and opening of the home market to imports. In 1981, Chile privatized its social-security system. Many of those ideas ultimately spread throughout Latin America and to the rest of the world. They are behind the reformation of Eastern Europe and the states of the former Soviet Union today... which demonstrates, once again, the awesome power of ideas" (James Flanigan, Los Angeles Times, August 5, 1998).

Now, it is a fact that the Pinochet government originated in a civilian rebellion against an unconstitutional government. Salvador Allende was elected president of Chile in 1970 by means of a democratic election (though with only 36.2% of the vote, and only after a congressional choice between the top two vote-getters), but his government lost its democratic character by repeatedly violating the Constitution. There are numerous evidences to that effect (including a letter of the Supreme Court to Allende), but the most important one is the momentous agreement of August 22, 1973, of the Chamber of Deputies (see my essay "Never Again. The causes of the breakdown of democracy in Chile", with all the relevant historic documents, in www.josepinera.com)

This agreement was approved by 81 to 47 votes, with all the deputies of the Christian Democratic Party (the party of former president Eduardo Frei Montalva) voting in favor. In this agreement, the chamber presented a list of twenty legal and constitutional violations of President Allende's government, and it agreed to give information of this "grave breakdown of the legal and constitutional order of the Republic" to the Armed Forces, through its ministers in the cabinet, and to tell them that "by virtue of their function, of their oath to remain faithful to the Constitution and the law, . . .it is up to them to put immediate end to all the situations referred to above, which infringe the Constitution and the law." This call of the elected legislature to the armed forces ministers was, in fact, a call to forcibly remove the president, who had initiated the use of violence with the purpose of imposing a communist dictatorship. Even Allende understood it that way.

The Armed Forces, led by general Pinochet, then commander-in-chief of the army, and acting pursuant to the agreement of the House of Deputies, removed Allende and took power eighteen days later, on September 11, 1973, vowing to restore democratic rule once circumstances permitted.

As The Economist said in an editorial only two days later: "The temporary death of democracy in Chile will be regrettable, but the blame lies clearly with Dr. Allende and those of his followers who persistently overrode the Constitution" (September 15, 1973).

Another important document in this regard is the letter that former president Eduardo Frei Montalva sent in November 1973 to Mariano Rumor, then president of the International Christian Democrat Union, explaining and justifying the military intervention to remove Allende. He wrote: "The fall of Allende has meant a setback to world communism. The combination of Cuba with Chile, with its 4.500 kms. of Pacific Ocean coast and its intellectual and political influence in Latin America, was a decisive step in the control of this hemisphere. That explains such a violent and exaggerated reaction [against the ouster]. This country was going to be an operations base for the whole continent."

According to Brian Crozier, founder of London's Institute for the Study of Conflict: "During his three year period, Allende transformed the country, in effect, into a satellite of Cuba, and hence an incipient addition to the Soviet Empire. By then Chile could be truthfully described as a Marxist state in ideological and economic terms. From a strategic viewpoint, it had been turned into a major base for Soviet and Cuban subversive operations, including terrorism, throughout Latin America. The Soviet KGB was recruiting members for training courses in terrorism. . . North Korean specialists were training young members of Allende's Socialist Party" (The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Empire, 1999).

Given how far communist forces had proceeded in Chile, and given Allende's unconditional support of Castro's Cuba and the Soviet Union (he even called this country the "big brother" of Chile in a meeting in Moscow with Brezhnev), it is not surprising that Chile confronted the risk of civil war following the military intervention. But, according to the report of the Rettig commission, set up by President Aylwin (an antagonistic successor to President Pinochet), in a seventeen-year period, 2,279 people died, including members of the armed forces. "Most of them," Crozier states, "died during the first months of military rule, when Chile was in effect a combat zone." By way of comparison, at least 250,000 people died in the Guatemalean civil war (2.5% of the population).

As in all fights against political violence and terrorism, even in the UK and Spain , some members of the intelligence services went beyond the law and committed human-rights violations (see my "Standing up for human rights" in www.josepinera.com). Those crimes should be unequivocally condemned but clearly they were not the result of a sistematic policy of the military government or of the Armed Forces. The guilty individuals should suffer the penalties imposed by the courts after a due process of law. And indeed some are, the most notorious example being the former head of the intelligence office, an army general, who has spent seven years in a Chilean jail.

Once the essentially transitory government had created the institutions for democracy and limited government--a market economy, an independent central bank, a constitutional court, private television, and many others--President Pinochet, according to the Constitution approved by referendum in 1980, surrendered its power to a democratically elected government on March 11, 1990.

Since then, Chile has had three governments and, despite setbacks on tax, labor and regulation policies, the free-market reforms have survived successfully the political transition. Moreover, Chile is still the top-ranking Latin American country in several indexes of economic and political freedom. One of the younger members of the Chicago Boys, the current mayor of Santiago, received 49% of the vote in the 1999 presidential election, and current polls indicate he may be elected president in 2005.

Those of us who stayed or returned to Chile to bring about the success of this revolution were willing to risk our honor and our lives on its behalf. One of my best friends, Senator Jaime Guzmán, was gunned down by leftist terrorists. We were willing to run such risks because we loved liberty above all.

We knew that the project would be controversial, even if we succeeded. Or, I should say, especially if we succeeded. Communists and socialists all over the world would never forgive a successful liberal revolution like the one we were engineering and would use all their influence in the media to create a black legend. They did.

So, the historic truth must be rescued and told urbi et orbe, especially now that the Chicago-UC "Free Minds" agreement of 1956 has logically and triumphally concluded in a USA-Chile Free Trade one.

* José Piñera is a prestigious and well-known Chilean economist. He lives in Washington D.C.