Pinochet was, according to Pizarro, “A great patriot that was poorly advised by ill-prepared civilian and military advisers in terms of public relations, in terms of international image. Again, PR. Everything he was doing was right. He was building bridges, creating schools, creating new businesses. He was copying the model of the United States. He tightened up our ties with the U.S. He was fighting communism, fighting corruption, fighting the terrorism. He was doing exactly the right things that every president is supposed to be doing. However, he was so ill advised in terms of public relations that he didn’t understand the importance of bringing on board the press, the media. He didn’t understand the term transparency. We didn’t have anything to hide.” Pizarro called that his “negative assessment” of Pinochet.
Even though Allende was elected in an internationally recognized democratic election, Pizarro asserted that Pinochet’s coup was necessary to restore democracy to Chile. “General Pinochet decided to rebuild the nation, divide the nation in regions, send the civilians to Chicago to study economy, change the traditional economical model of Chile up to 1973, to make a mirror image of the United States of America. So he did that,” Pizarro recalled with pride. “And overnight, in less than ten years, this little, tiny banana, third-world nation turned out to be the model, and it is today still, the economical and political model of the region. The most stable nation, Spanish-speaking nation in Latin America.” Pizarro says that the civilian governments that succeeded Pinochet’s regime have feared that the Chilean military will once again take power, as it did in 1973, if the government is corrupt. As a result, he says civilian leaders in Chile have engaged in historical revisionism about the Pinochet era aimed at demonizing the Chilean armed forces to “destroy the image of the military, present them as corrupt, dumb, banana-oriented, whatever, just destroy their image and make sure they never come to power again.” This history has endured, Pizarro argued, because “the right-wing parties of Chile are too calm, too silent, too comfortable, and they’re not being aggressive and responsible enough to defend what really happened, to tell the people what really happened in Chile during those seventeen years.”
Back in 1987, with Pinochet firmly in control of Chile, Pizarro finished high school and headed straight for the National Military Academy, where he graduated four years later as a second lieutenant. On graduation day, he shook General Pinochet’s hand and began his career in Chile’s armed forces. Pizarro moved around in various regiments and worked as a translator for the Army, translating for Chilean generals meeting with their foreign counterparts. That brought him in contact with military personnel from the U.S. Embassy in Santiago. In 1995, Pizarro said he struck up a friendship with one U.S. officer in particular, whom he declined to name. He listened to his new American friend and his colleagues speak of their adventures across the globe—from Panama to the Gulf War—with the U.S. military. Pizarro watched their videos and joined them at their homes for cookouts. “I was overwhelmed by their professionalism, their esprit de corps, their way of spreading good words, good news, their way of working. These guys were warriors,” Pizarro recalled. “They went to a war, they won the war, they went back home, and they never went, you know, crazy, or cuckoo, or unreliable. They were normal people. And so it was very motivating for me to think, Maybe, maybe I can be a part of this, maybe.” Pizarro began thinking of leaving the Chilean forces to join the U.S. military. “I love the Chilean Army,” he said. But “I have an opportunity because I have dual citizenship to join an army of a nation that has the same goals of democracy of Western society that Chile [has], but they’re actually deploying troops. I [felt] like a doctor that will study for thirty years and never, ever, ever operate [on] a single human being. I’m a professional. I want[ed] to deploy.” About a month after informing his superiors in Chile, Pizarro joined the U.S. Marines, “guaranteed deployed within ninety days. I love it. I was the happiest guy.”
Pizarro began his U.S. military career training at Paris Island, South Carolina, and then at the U.S. Armor School in Fort Knox, Kentucky. When he graduated in 1996, he says the commander of the Marine Detachment at Fort Knox called him into his office.
“Jose, is it true that you were a Chilean Army Officer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you speak Spanish?”
“Yes, sir. Better than English.”
“Maybe we’re going to have a career move for you,” the commander told Pizarro. Shortly after that conversation, Pizarro was sent to Camp Lejeune in North Carolina before being ordered by the Second Marine Expeditionary Force to work for three years, from 1996 to 1999, “at the Marine unit specializing in military operations in South America, called the Unitas.” Pizarro says that for the next three years, he traveled throughout Latin America working with U.S. Southern Command as a translator for “lieutenant colonels, colonels, and admirals from the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps going down to South America. Either if they needed to go for a forty-eight-hours meeting with the Commander in Chief of the Brazilian Marine Corps, they took me as a translator, or if they needed to conduct a three-week military exercise in Colombia, I went over there with a lieutenant colonel, with a U.S. Marine lieutenant colonel as a translator. So I loved it. It was a super, super-interesting experience. I went to every single nation in Latin America, except Bolivia. I went to Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador, Colombia, Venezuela, you name it. I was having the time of my life learning how to present U.S. foreign policy, U.S. defense atmospheric policies to the armed forces in Latin America.”
After three years working with Unitas and the U.S. Southern Command, Pizarro decided to take his experience to the private sector. In 1999, he said, he “offered my services” to the U.S. weapons manufacturer General Dynamics. He said the connections he made during his work with the U.S. military in Latin America put him in a prime position to help General Dynamics expand its sales and marketing in the region. “I knew [Latin American governments’] needs for helicopters, weapon systems, etc.,” Pizarro recalled. “I believe I grasped a certain degree of understanding of their needs, their budgets, their budget culture, etc.” General Dynamics hired Pizarro and, he says, made him the head of its Latin American division. “I was in charge of sales of Mark 19, MK19, GOA19, which is automatic grenade launchers, rockets, and electric airborne, helicopter-borne, electric helicopter-borne machine guns,” said Pizarro. He worked with General Dynamics for a year and a half and said he made so much money in salary and bonuses pushing weapons to Latin American governments that he was able to start his own company. “I realized, hey, I have enough money to, you know, create my own company and work for me instead of working for somebody else.”
In 2001, Pizarro started Red Tactica (Tactical Network), a company that would serve as a liaison between Latin American governments and U.S. weapons manufacturers. “Because every single Latin American Government has a military attaché, a naval attaché, an air force attaché, and a police attaché on separate buildings actually, times sixteen countries, sixteen countries times four military attachés, that was a major, major market for me,” Pizarro said. “So we went, for example, to the Argentinean Embassy. ‘Good morning, my name is Mike Pizarro. I’m a U.S. citizen, and I’m also a Chilean citizen. I’m bilingual. I’m bicultural. I know exactly, sir, Admiral, what you’re looking for. You’re looking for submarines, torpedoes, radars, electronic communication system,’ etc., etc.” Eventually, Pizarro struck up a relationship with virtually every defense and military attaché from “friendly” Latin American nations and earned a reputation as a go-to guy for Latin American countries seeking to purchase specialized weapons systems from major defense companies.