It dissolved under pressure from the regime in November 1975, but the Vicariate of Solidarity was formed in its wake shortly thereafter, and it took up the baton of protection of human rights in Chile.
On 11 September 1973 a military junta toppled President Salvador Allende in a coup d'état and installed General Augusto Pinochet as head of the new regime.
[6][page needed] The chief activity of the Committee of Cooperation for Peace in Chile was the legal support for those persecuted by the government, as well as people arrested for political reasons without a trial.
At the end of 1974, a group of mostly women applied to the Committee for Peace to find out the whereabouts of their missing family members, the desaparecidos (the disappeared), who had been detained or killed.
[5] The Archbishop established its successor organization, the Vicariate of Solidarity in January 1976, which took over the responsibility of defending human rights in Chile[5] and was less subject to pressure than the Committee for Peace had been, because it was under the full protection of the Roman Catholic Church.