of the oppositional left and worker-unions as the top government politician supposedly ordering the repressive actions which culminated in the Masacre de Puerto Montt on 9 March 1969. At this massacre, nine working-class men and woman were killed by police in Southern Chile. Following the assassination of Perez Zijovic, the MIR Political Bureau condemned this action in "categorical" terms in a special issued communiqué. MIR explicitly condemned terrorism perpetrated against individuals ("atentado personal"). Ideological issues that would help to explain this anti-terrorist posture of MIR have been referred in historical notes by MIR leaders who survived the epoch. Although MIR built up an arsenals of light arms, assault automatic weapons, and also mobile mortar-launchers from its own handcrafted manufacturing (the Talleres), MIR supported rather than opposed the presidency of Salvador Allende and his People's Unity coalition. Nationwide unrest and political polarization escalated, as did left-wing and right-wing violence. Before 1973, the organization may have staged few attacks compared to its urban guerrilla peers, but it tried to infiltrate the Chilean Armed Forces in anticipation of a coup d'état against Allende and discussed plans to replace the existing police and military with a militia recruited from the Popular Front's supporters. The MIR commanders, Oscar Garretón and Miguel Enríquez, were tasked with infiltrating Chilean Navy personnel. In August 1973, it formed the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR) with other South American revolutionary parties (the Argentine ERP, the Uruguayan Tupamaros and the Bolivian National Liberation Army). However, the JCR never achieved real effectiveness. The day of the military coup Fewer than 60 individuals died as a direct result of fighting on 11 September 1973, but the MIR and GAP continued to fight the following day. In all, 46 Allende's "praetorian guard" (the GAP, Grupo de Amigos Personales) were killed, some of them in combat with the soldiers that took the Moneda. Before the coup, Miguel Enríquez had convinced Allende to form a praetorian guard. Allende's praetorian guard under Cuban-trained commando Ariel Fontana should have had some 300 elite commando-trained GAP fighters defending the palace and nearby buildings in time for the military coup, but the use of brute military force, especially the use of Hawker Hunter bombers, Puma helicopter-gunships and the cordoning of Santiago, may have handicapped many GAP fighters from taking part in the action. These factors may explain both the vigorous and brutal purges of armed forces personnel suspected of being sympathetic