ON SEPTEMBER 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet led the Chilean armed forces on an attack against Chile's democratically elected president, Salvador Allende, and bombed the presidential palace La Moneda—Chile's equivalent of the White House—with military jets. General Pinochet's goal was to take over the country.

Two hours before the bombs began to fall, Chile's president Allende, aware of the coup, broadcast a speech to the nation over the radio. To this day, many Chileans remember listening to that speech from their homes or workplaces. President Allende vowed that he would not yield to the military coup. "I will pay with my life [for] the loyalty of the people," he told the citizens of Chile. Editor and journalist Marc Cooper, who worked as a translator at La Moneda at the time, explains what happened next: "Within hours, the Moneda was rocketed and burned...