Our story begins in a little wood shop in Italy, where old Geppetto crafted Pinochet out of a scrap of wood.

He longed to become a real boy.

No, that's not right.

Let me try that again.

Augusto José Ramon Pinochet Ugarte was born on November 25th, 1915, in the bustling port city of Valparaiso, Chile.

A place famous, I assume, for some cool things, but famous to me for being a really good battlefield bad company, too, map.

His father, Augusto Pinoche Vera,

worked as a customs official,

a modest but stable position,

while his mother,

Avalina Ugarte Martinez,

came from an old Chilean family

with deep roots in the country's colonial past.

Hmm, a pucos.

The household was Catholic,

conservative, and disciplined,

values that would deeply

shape the young Augusto's worldview. That's called foreshadowing kids, and that's why they pay me the

big bucks. Pinochet's early education was pretty standard. He bounced between schools in Valparaiso

and nearby Kyoto, but he was never seen as a brilliant or charismatic young man.

What he did demonstrate was persistence and loyalty, qualities that made a military career the obvious next step.

In 1933, at 17 years old, he applied to the Chilean Military Academy in Santiago and was accepted.

...