The Coup of September 11, 1973.
The days that followed the coup became the beginning of Chile’s 17-year
state of war and terror for the entire country. Chile had considered
itself, until the coup, a long-established democratic and tolerant country
that lived in considerable peace. Alfredo Jocelyn speaks of Santiago
during the 50’s as a city where the social differences were evident even
in the way people dressed. The city was very quiet and peaceful.
It did not resemble the fast cities in other parts of the Latin American
continent, such as Mexico City or Lima. In the 60’s and early
70’s, Santiago experienced an awakening; with groups joining in the streets
in order to defend their rights and demand better working conditions.
In 1970, as mentioned before, Allende was elected President of Chile.
Santiago became, during the next three years, the
stage for a social movement generated from the lower social classes, which
mobilized large number of Chileans in the streets of the major cities.
This was especially true of Santiago, whose population at the time was
a third of the total population of the country. This movement strove
to create a new, and fairer society. These mobilizations, consequently,
generated sharp social tensions among richer and poorer classes.
The army, which had remained impartial to political parties in spite of
its strong connections to the burgesses, became increasingly involved in
the right once a Marxist president was elected. However, Allende
was not a communist but had strong credentials as a socialist although
he was in good terms with the communist Chilean party. The participation
of the US in the internal problems of the country, as well as its role
in the des-stabilization of Chile and the aid to the military further contributed
to creating two opposing sides with more and more excluding claims.
Each side claimed to be the seed of the new Chile, and therefore two totally
different and excluding images of Chile divided the country in two different
Chiles. Caviedes wrote that this “intransigence, sectarism, and obfuscation
…created the abyss into which Chilean democracy precipitated itself in
1973.” (Caviedes, p.179).
Caviedes makes both the left and the right responsible for the failing of democracy in Chile, and states that the menace of a coup would have been dissolved, “Had the parties, politicians, and partisans had sufficient criteria, self-measure, and awareness of the stress they were subjecting the otherwise resilient Chile, they could have averted, through accommodation and compromise – acceptable because such a high prize was at stake – the collapse of democracy in the country” (p.179). The fact was, though, that Chile split in two halves unable to live together in the same land or work for common goals. The military intervention that followed was brutal, blind and intolerant. Such a brutal display of violence and terror will take many years to heal, precisely because, as Caviedes writes, the military intervention was “unprecedented in severity and length in the Chilean history” and therefore the wounds inflicted in the social fabric of Chile “will take generations to heal” (p.179).
The military generated a
state of war in a country where people had no arms to defend themselves
and no history of having to defend themselves against their own military.
The situation would be equivalent to the army of the United States suddenly
deciding to take in their hands the governing of the country. Although
the US army has been involved in wars and conflict zones all over the world,
nobody would ever expect that it would attack its own fellow citizens to
whom, in principle, they defend. Therefore, in Chile, factory workers,
peasants, students, syndicate leaders and members were prepared of a possible
minor police confrontation but never for a full army with planes, helicopters,
tanks, foreign aid for the US, torture chambers, disappearances of people,
etc. It is absolutely necessary to emphasize the fact that Chile
was a peaceful country before the coup in order to understand the extent
and the depth of the impact of such a violent and unexpected coup.
While Argentina, by contrast, had already suffered several drastic and
violent overthrows in its history during the 20th century, Chile had always
remained calm and democratic.
The coup started in Valparaiso,
a city about one and a half hours North of Santiago. From Valparaiso
they moved directly into Santiago where they bombarded most of the radio
stations and the TV station. Tanks filled the streets of the city.
Planes flew over the skies of Santiago while President Allende gathered
inside the Palacio de la Moneda with some of his men, and sent his last
works through one of the few remaining radio stations. By Noon, the
army started bombarding the Palace and Allende, still inside, died soon
afterwards.
The image of the Palacio de la Moneda in flames traveled throughout the world. The Palacio de la Moneda had been until then the symbol of a long and well established democracy in the country. Why Pinochet decided to demolish the building is uncertain but what is clear is that by bombarding it they inflicted a major wound in the Chilean society and in each individual Chilean. The Palace had been until then the most stable building of the Chilean social and political life. In fact, for Chileans in Santiago, even the sound of plains flying over the city and the sound of machine guns became a possibility that they had never though possible before.
The unprecedented and unexpected display of violence and destruction against the un-armed Chilean population, and the dramatic destruction of the Palacio de la Moneda, were events so out of the realm of possibility for most Chileans, that it produced a traumatic effect in Chileans both residing at home and abroad. Still today, Chileans keep coming back to the image of the palace in flames, a traumatic event that presents itself at all levels of the country’s activities since then and has not yet been able to find the appropriate end to its eternal return into the lives of Chileans. The same people who destroyed it later rebuilt the Palace. But no matter what, the palace that today stands in the place of the former Palacio de la Moneda is just one more example of the repressed image of the violence of the regime then, during the dictatorship, and still today.
Moreover, a camera called Jorge Müller Silva filmed the bombing of the Palacio de la Moneda. Those images still keep coming back in books, newspapers, the TV, theater, novels, literary criticism. It is as if the entire country an all those who are trying to come to terms with what happened suffers from the repeated nightmare from which it cannot break lose. The bombing of the palace keeps coming back in an eternal return of the same. Its return is partly due to the fact that it constitutes the essence of a traumatic event in the country and the fact that Chileans are still trying to understand why, and how it happened.
On the one hand Chileans experienced this event as a total surprise, a learning experience of how much harm Chilean were capable of inflicting on their fellow Chileans, but on the other, as Jocelyn writes, “the bombing of the palace meant that, “We stopped being who we were, or to be more precise, we stopped being what we though we were” (p.140). That is, the bombing of the palace made evident that Chileans were not the peaceful, united, and democratic people they though they were. The bombing forced Chileans to confront the fact Chile was in truth two different Chiles, and that inside of each one the sides there was a murderer figure ready to destroy the adversary. The only difference is that before Chileans had combated an external enemy, while now, they perceive the enemy inside of the Chilean body of society, as if a virus that needed to be eradicated had contaminated half of the population. In any case, this latest view coincided exactly with the image of the President of the United States at the time, Henri Kissinger.