The period of transition to democracy in Chile saw one of its most notable products emerge as a dominant and hegemonic perspective on the complex performance of the left in the times of Popular Unity. A part of this explanation was articulated around the denominated thesis on political violence in the sixties and seventies. The article proposes, however, that the conceptual and thematic bases of this thesis were not elaborated during the period of transition, but that these issues were already visible in the context of the 1973 coup d'état in a series of documents and publications coming from the military field. From there they would decisively influence sectors of the civilian intelligentsia that adhered to the Dictatorship, who contributed to propagate, through diverse works, the aforementioned thesis.