José Toribio Merino Net Worth

Background and career

José Toribio Merino Castro (December 14, 1915 – August 30, 1996) was an admiral of the Chilean Navy who was one of the principal leaders of the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, along with General Augusto Pinochet of the Army, General Gustavo Leigh of the Air Force, and General César Mendoza of the Carabineros (national police). Together they established a military dictatorship that ruled Chile from 1973 until 1990, during which more than 3,197 Chilean citizens were executed or simply "disappeared", according to the reports of official bi-partisan commissions established by the President of Chile, Patricio Aylwin, in the 1990s. In addition, a further 28,459 Chileans were victims of torture, which included approximately 3,400 cases of sexual abuse of women.

Merino, as head of the Navy, was a member of the Military Government Junta from the day of the coup until his retirement on March 8, 1990, just a few days before the beginning of civilian rule. Under his leadership in the days immediately following the coup, the Chilean Navy was responsible for human rights violations including death in detention, disappearance and torture, practices that were only publicly acknowledged by the institution in 2004, more than eight years after Merino's death.

In 2021, the Chilean Navy refused to remove a statue of Merino from the gardens of the Maritime Museum of Valparaíso. The statue's removal had been sought by the Chilean Foundation for Historic Memory. The President of the Foundation, Luis Mariano Rendón, described Merino as an integral part of the military junta which implemented a systematic policy of human rights violations.