Patria y Libertad

Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Liberty) was the most prominent of the rightist paramilitary groups that opposed the government of Salvador Allende in Chile. It formed after the election of September 4, 1970, during the CIA operation known as Track II or Project FUBELT. Its leaders included Roberto Thieme.¹

CIA Money

The Senate's 1975 staff report on covert action in Chile states: "The CIA provided Patria y Libertad with $38,500 through a third party during the Track II period, in an effort to create tension and a possible pretext for intervention by the Chilean military. After Allende took office, the CIA occasionally provided the group small sums through third parties for demonstrations or specific propaganda activity. Those disbursements, about seven thousand dollars in total, ended in 1971." It adds: "It is possible that CIA funds given to political parties reached Patria y Libertad and a similar grouping, the Rolando Matus Brigade, given the close ties between the parties and these organizations." Of the truck owners' strikes of October 1972 and mid 1973 the report found that the 40 Committee "did not approve any funds to be given directly to the strikers," that "all observers agree that the two lengthy strikes could not have been maintained on the basis of union funds," and that it remained open "whether or to what extent CIA funds passed to opposition parties may have been siphoned off to support strikes." The agency's total spending in Chile from 1963 to 1973 included 1.2 million dollars under the heading "promoting military coup d'etat."¹

1973

The group joined junior army officers in the Tanquetazo, the attempted coup of June 29, 1973, which General Carlos Prats suppressed. On July 17 it announced a "total armed offensive" against the government. Michael Townley, an American electronics specialist living in Santiago, worked with it in operations against Allende before the secret police, DINA, recruited him in 1974.¹²