Chile's "No" Vote Ends Pinochet's Rule
- Date
- 1988
- Category
- Politics & governance
- Region
- Latin America (Chile)
- Era
- Contemporary
- Significance
Chileans voted "No" to extending General Augusto Pinochet's rule in a national plebiscite on 5 October 1988, with 55.99 percent rejecting eight more years of his dictatorship.
The vote was mandated by Pinochet's own 1980 constitution, which he expected to win; instead a broad opposition coalition ran a disciplined, upbeat television campaign built around the rainbow-hued slogan "Chile, la alegría ya viene" ("Chile, joy is coming"). International observers and elements of the military reportedly helped block a rumoured plan to annul the result. The outcome required competitive presidential elections the following year, and Patricio Aylwin took office in March 1990, ending seventeen years of a regime that had killed or disappeared several thousand people and tortured tens of thousands after the 1973 coup. Pinochet retained command of the army and a senate seat, so the transition was gradual and constrained, but the plebiscite showed that an entrenched dictatorship could be dismantled through its own institutional rules and a peaceful ballot. It became a model case of negotiated democratisation and a landmark in Latin America's regional return to elected government.
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Empires active in 1988
- Soviet Union1922 CE – 1991 CE
- British Empire1583 CE – 1997 CE
- Portuguese Empire1415 CE – 1999 CE
- Yugoslavia1918 CE – 1992 CE
Related politics & governance events
- Fall of the Berlin Wall9 November 1989
- Revolutions of 1989 across Eastern Europe1989 (Autumn of Nations)
- German reunification3 October 1990
- Dissolution of the Soviet UnionAugust–December 1991
- Gorbachev's glasnost and perestroika1985–1991 (from 11 March 1985)
- The end of apartheid and Nelson Mandela's election in South Africa27 April 1994 (election); 10 May 1994 (inauguration)
Further reading
The wider story
The Americas: A Hemispheric History
Brisk single-volume history of the whole hemisphere since European contact.
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