He became known for his fascist ideals and for founding the Fatherland and Liberty movement, in which he had been accused of terrorist acts, in addition to collaborating with Pinochet's coup in 1973.
He wears a black tie as he mourns the suicide of his father, Manuel Rodríguez Valenzuela, a former education minister who killed himself after an investigation by the comptroller.
The movement had contact with Armored Regiments (Nº2), in which they attempted a coup in June 1973, with tanks in the streets and bomb attacks, in which it became known as “Tanquetazo”, which was also unsuccessful.
[5][12][13] After the failed coup attempt, he and other officials sought asylum at the Ecuadorian embassy, living in Quito for two months, returning to Chile clandestinely from Argentina.
[16] Pinochet ignored many of Rodríguez's advice and did not have much influence on the regime, even though he played a leading role in the coup that toppled Allende.
He expressed his loyalty to the regime after saying: "I am the most modest soldier, the most humble, but the most loyal to this cause" and that: "...our position is one of absolute and unconditional support for the government".
[17] In 1983, Rodríguez, Federico Willoughby-MacDonald and Gastón Acuña founded the National Action Movement (MAN), after the political opening in 1983 by minister Sérgio Onofre Jarpa.
[19] After Patricio Aylwin's victory in the 1989 elections, Pinochet called an urgent meeting in the city of La Moneda with some representatives, in which Rodríguez was one of them.
[20] He focused on law after losing the 1989 election, in which, after defending Pinochet from criminal proceedings, he became the target of protests in 2006, against his terrorist past and his relationship with human rights violations, among others.
[24] In October 1970, he held a demonstration at the Catholic university, in which a high-powered bomb had exploded at the stock exchange agency and then a dynamite attack hit the Providencia branch of Banco Francés e Italiano.
[13] In July 1973, Fatherland and Liberty militants murdered Arturo Araya Peeters, in which he and members of the FNPL were prosecuted and arrested by the naval prosecutor's office, but were released after some "paps on the ears", except Guillermo Claverie, in which he claimed that was innocent and had been a scapegoat for Rodríguez.
Pinochet had been accused of being the author of crimes committed by the Caravan of Death, led by Sergio Arellano Stark in 1973, executing 75 political prisoners.
[6][37] He also defended walmart from accusations of violating the Consumer Protection Act in 2013, along with Pedro Pablo Vergara, in which he claimed the law came to establish 6 months before the lawsuit.
[20] His anti-communism is eminent when he praised the dictatorship's repression, in which he told Pinochet and his colleagues that "...ultimately, the Chilean government, the military and the Armed Forces saved the country from a thousand years of communism..." and also that: "It was he who led the rescue of Chile from the hands of communism, which today, abusing public credibility, is dressed in sheep's clothing, flaunting its false democratic ideals.