Anl Trade union leaders toured the factories telling the workers to rely on "legality':
to leave things to the government.
Throughout the period of Popular Unity government the armed forces and the capitalist state remained intact. No aempt was maoc win rank-and-tile soldiers to the side of the government.
This revealed the whole paradox of Popular Unity; in the name of the working class and socialism it had captured the government. But the bourgeois state and its apparatus of repression stayed intact.
The army remained the final guarantor of the position of the right wing and the bourgeoisie.
At the beginning of 1973 pressure from the right wing built up. Middle class students from the Catholic University demonstrated against the government. The whole of the bourgeoisie clamoured for the army to intervene and overthrow the "Marxist' government.
The military carried out hundreds of raids on factories, left wing offices. shanty towns, union offices and workers homes 'looking for guns".
On 29 June 1973 the Second Armoured Division led by Colonel Robert Souper attempted a coup. But only a small part of the armed forces joined him. Troops loyal to Allende easily defeated the coup, as thousands of workers mobilised on the streets. Popular Unity com mittees decided to distribute arms to the workers.
That evening over a million workers marched to the Moneda Palace. As Allende urged caution on the crowd they shouted 'execute the plotter, hit the reactionaries hard, arm the workers'.
OUR HISTORY Last chance For Allende and his government this was the last chance. The defeated coup put the right wing on the defensive. The workers were infuriated. They wanted guns. During the day they had occupied their factories and wanted to keep them.
But Allende and Popular Unity, insicao or moollising une workers and crushing the right wing, decided that further concessions were the only way out.
Allende invited a wide range of rightwing figures to join his cabinet, in par10 he agreed that the military also join ine government.
By these hasty and desperate concessions, Allende only signalled his weakness to the right. The military became convinced that they could easily overintow him. Un sepicioct line blow was struck. Chile went into more than 15 years of the darkness of military dictatorship and brutal repression.