GOVERNMENT JUNTA OF THE REPUBLIC OF CHILE

MINISTER OF DEFENSE

Subsecretary of War

CONSTITUCION ACT OF THE GOVERNMENT JUNTA

Decree Law N° 1.- Santiago, Chile, on 11 of September of 1973.

The Comander in Chief of the Army, General of the Army Augusto Pinochet Ugarte; the Comander in Chief of the Navy, Admiral José Toribio Merino Castro; the Comander in Chief of the Air Force, General Gustavo Leigh Guzmán and the Director General of Carabineros (police), General Cesar Mendoza Durán, reunited at this time, and

Considering:

1° That the Public Force, formed constitutionally by the Army, the Navy, the Air Force and the Carabineros (police) Corps, represent the organization that the State has given itself for its physical and moral defense as well as its hitorical-cultural integrity,

2° That, consecuently, its supreme mission is to assure, above any other consideration, the survival of said realities and values, which are the superior and permanent ideals of the chilean nationality, and

3° That Chile finds itself in a process of sistematic and integral destruction of these elements constituive to its being, by effect of the intromission of a dogmatic and excluding ideology, inspired in the foreign principles of marxism-leninism,

Have decided, in fulfillment of the urgent duty that such mission imposes to the state defense organisms, to dictate the following,

Decree-Law:

1° With this date they are constituted in Government Junta and assume the Supreme Mandate of the Nation, with the patriotic compromise to restore the chilean identity, justice and the broken institutions, conscious that this is the only way to be faithful to the national traditions, to the legacy of the Fathers of the Nation and the History of Chile, and to permit the evolution and progress of the country to be channeled vigorously by ways that today's dynamics demand of Chile in the concert of the international community of which it forms part.

2° Designates General of the Army Augusto Pinochet Ugarte as President of the Junta, who assumes command in this date.

3° Declares that the Junta in the exercise of its mission, guarantees the plain effectiveness of the Judicial Power and will respect the Constitution and laws of the Republic, in the measure that the actual situation of the country allows for better fulfillment of the postulates that the country proposes.

Register in the Comptroller General of the Republic, publish in the Official Newspaper and insert in the Official Bulletins of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Carabineros (police), Investigations and in the official compilation of said Comptroller.

GOVERNMENT JUNTA OF THE REPUBLIC OF CHILE. AUGUSTO PINOCHET UGARTE, General of the Army, Comander in Chief of the Army.- JOSE T. MERINO CASTRO, Admiral, Comander in Chief of the Navy.- GUSTAVO LEIGH GUZMAN, General, Comander in Chief of the Air Force.- CESAR MENDOZA DURAN, General, Director General of Carabineros (police).