In 1810, a governing board was created in the open council of Santiago de Chile to replace the power of the metropolis, broken by the Napoleonic occupation of the Peninsula . A national defense militia is instituted and, at the request of the Argentinian Martínez de Rozas, the ports of Valparaíso and Valdivia are opened to the ships of all nations.
The Congress of 1811 was divided between the moderate elements of Carrera (in Santiago) and the radicals of Rozas (in Concepción), but José Miguel Carrera seized power and expelled Rozas, until the Peruvian viceroy Abascal defeated him in 1813.
Bernardo O'Higgins y Riquelme, who in exile had received his revolutionary initiation from Francisco de Miranda, managed to repulse the Spanish troops and replaced Carrera, who overthrew him in July 1814 , producing an outbreak of civil war. Abascal took advantage of the confusion to attack Carrera and O'Higgins, whom he defeated in Rancagua. Thus ends the period known as the Patria Vieja .
O'Higgins decides to seek support from the Argentine General José de San Martín, who plans to liberate Chile and, from the sea, Peru, a stronghold of realism in America. In 1814 San Martín establishes his headquarters in Mendoza , where he trains more than five thousand men for two years. The troop performs an incredible military feat by crossing the Andes on horseback through the Patos and Uspallata gorges, defeating the Spanish in Chacabuco (February 12, 1817) and enters Santiago, where he proclaims O'Higgins Supreme Director of the country.
The royalists resumed the fight from El Callao, in Talcahuano and Valdivia, helped by Abascal. They surprised the insurgents in Cancha Rayada, who retreated to the north, recovered and presented battle. On April 5, 1818, San Martín and O'Higgins subdued the monarchists in the Maipú plain and thus the independence of Chile was sealed .
According to San Martín's plan, O'Higgins organizes a squad, commanded by Admiral Thomas Alexander Cochrane, which harasses the Spanish navy.
In September 1820, San Martín disembarked in the south of Lima and began the emancipation of Peru, with only four thousand five hundred men.
The military dictatorship in Chile, initiated in the September 11, 1973, coup against President Salvador Allende, was responsible for the torture and death of thousands of Chileans. The Chilean military dictatorship It began with the military coup carried out in the country, on September 11, 1973,