Paula (30 page)

Bomber planes flew like fatidic birds over the Palacio de La Moneda, dropping their bombs with such precision that they exploded through windows and in less than ten minutes set ablaze an entire wing of the building, while tanks lobbed tear gas canisters from the street. At the same time, other airplanes and tanks were attacking the official presidential home in an exclusive residential neighborhood. Smoke and fire engulfed the first floor of the palace, and began to invade the salons on the second floor where Salvador Allende and a few of his followers were still entrenched. There were bodies everywhere, many rapidly bleeding to death. The survivors, choked by smoke and tear gas, could not make themselves heard above the noise of the shelling, planes, and bombs. The army's assault troops stormed La Moneda through gaps burned by fire and shell, occupied the still blazing first floor, and with loudspeakers ordered the people above to exit the building by an external stone stairway. Allende realized that further resistance would end in a bloodbath and ordered his men to surrender, because they could better serve the people alive than dead. He said his final goodbyes with a firm handclasp, looking each man squarely in the eye. Then they emerged Indian file, with their arms above their heads. As they came out, the soldiers kicked them, and beat them with the butts of their weapons and, once they were on the ground, continued to beat them until they were senseless, then dragged them into the street where they lay on the pavement while the voice of a crazed officer threatened to roll over them with the tanks. The president was left standing beside the torn and bloody Chilean flag in the ruined Red Salon, rifle in hand. Soldiers burst in with drawn weapons. The official version is that Allende placed the barrel of the rifle beneath his chin, pulled the trigger, and blew off his head.

That unforgettable Tuesday, I left my house for the office as I did every morning; Michael had also left and I suppose that a little later the children started off to school, bookbags on their backs, not knowing that classes had been suspended. After a few blocks, I noticed that the streets were nearly empty; I saw a few disconcerted housewives standing before closed bakeries and laborers with their lunchboxes walking to work because no buses were running; only military vehicles were in the streets, and my flower- and angel-painted car looked like a joke. No one stopped me. The car didn't have a radio to get the news but, even if it had, most information was already being censored. I thought about going by to say hello to Tata, maybe he would know what the devil was going on, but I didn't want to disturb him so early. I drove on toward the office, with the sensation that I was lost in the pages of one of the science fiction books I had loved so much as an adolescent: the city seemed congealed in a disaster from another planet. I found the door of the publishing house closed with a chain and padlock; through the glass, the concierge signaled me to go away, a detestable man who spied on all of us to report the slightest transgression. So this is a military coup, I thought, and turned around to go have a cup of coffee with Mama Hilda and talk over events. That was when I heard helicopters and, shortly after, the first planes roaring overhead at low altitude.

Mama Hilda was in her doorway, looking down the street with a gloomy face; as soon as she saw the gaudy car she knew so well, she ran to meet me with the bad news. She feared for her husband, a dedicated French teacher; he had gone to work very early and she had heard nothing from him since. We had coffee and toast as we tried to reach him by telephone, but no one was answering. I talked with Granny, who suspected nothing, and with the children, who were calmly playing; the situation did not seem too alarming, and it crossed my mind that I could spend the morning sewing with Mama Hilda, but she was uneasy. The school where her husband taught was in the very center of town, a few blocks from the Palacio de La Moneda, and on the only radio still reporting news, she had learned that that was the sector taken by the military. “They're shooting, they're killing people, they say not to go outside because of stray bullets. A friend called me who lives down there and she says she can see the dead and wounded, and trucks filled with people they've arrested. It seems there's a curfew, do you know what that is?” Mama Hilda stammered. No, I didn't know. Although her concern seemed exaggerated—after all, I had driven there without being bothered by anyone—I offered to go look for her husband. Forty minutes later, I parked in front of the school, went in the half-open door, but saw no one: the courtyards and schoolrooms were silent. An aged porter came shuffling out and pointed to the room where I could find my friend. The porter was incredulous: “How can this happen? The soldiers are rebelling!” In the classroom, I found Mama Hilda's husband sitting facing the blackboard; a pile of papers was stacked high on his desk, the radio was blaring, and he was sobbing, with his face in his hands. “Listen,” he said. That is how I came to hear President Allende's last words. Later, we climbed to the top floor of the building and from there could see the roofs of La Moneda; we waited, without knowing why, because there wasn't any news being broadcast anymore, all the stations were transmitting military marches. When we saw the planes flying over, very low, heard the sound of the bombs, and watched a terrible column of smoke rise toward the sky, we felt as if we were trapped in a bad dream. We could not believe anyone would dare attack La Moneda, the heart of Chilean democracy. “What will happen to
compañero
Allende?” my friend wondered, his voice breaking. “He won't surrender,” I replied. “Ever.” At that moment, we finally understood the extent of the tragedy and the danger we ourselves were in. We left the porter, who refused to abandon his post, got into my car, and set off toward the residential area through the side streets, avoiding soldiers. I cannot explain how we reached his house without encountering any difficulty, or how I then drove all the way home—where Michael was waiting, nervously, and the children, happily, because of the unexpected vacation.

By midafternoon, I learned through a confidential telephone call that Salvador Allende was dead.

Telephone lines were overcrowded and international communications practically nonexistent, but I was able to call my parents in Buenos Aires to give them the terrible news. They had already heard, the censorship we were experiencing in Chile did not apply to the rest of the world. Tío Ramón lowered the flag to half-mast as a sign of mourning, and immediately presented his undeclinable resignation to the military junta. He and my mother made a rigorous inventory of all the public property in the residence, and two days later handed over the embassy. For them, that was the end of a thirty-nine-year diplomatic career. They were not willing to collaborate with the junta, they preferred uncertainty and anonymity. Tío Ramón was fifty-seven and my mother fifty-two; both were brokenhearted. Their country had succumbed to the insanity of violence, their family was scattered, their children far away, their friends dead or in exile. They were without employment and with few resources in a strange city where the horror of dictatorship and beginning phases of what would come to be called the “Dirty War” were already in the air. They said their goodbyes to the embassy staff, who showed them affection and respect till the last moment and, hand in hand, walked out with their heads high. In the gardens were throngs of people shouting the slogans of the Popular Unity, thousands of young and old, men, women, and children, weeping for the death of Salvador Allende and for their dreams of justice and freedom. Chile had become a symbol.

The terror began that same Tuesday at dawn, but some did not know it until several days later; others were slow to accept it and, despite all the evidence, a handful of the privileged were able to ignore it for seventeen years, and deny it even today. The four generals of the armed forces and the
carabineros
appeared on television, explaining the motives for the “Military Pronouncement,” as they called the coup, while scores of corpses floated in the Mapocho River that runs right through the city, and thousands of prisoners were incarcerated in barracks, prisons, and new concentration camps set up all over the country within the space of a few days. The most violent of the generals of the junta appeared to be the one directing the air corps, the most insignificant, the head of the
carabineros,
the most colorless, a certain Augusto Pinochet, whose name few people had ever heard. No one suspected in that first public appearance that the man with the look of a genial grandfather would turn into the sinister figure in dark glasses, bemedaled chest, and Prussian emperor's cape later seen round the world in revealing photographs. The military junta imposed a curfew for many hours, only armed forces personnel could move through the streets. During that time, they searched all the government and public administration buildings, the banks, universities, industries, rural communities—entire towns—in search of adherents of the Popular Unity. Leftist politicians, reporters, intellectuals, and artists were arrested on the spot; labor leaders were shot without a hearing, and as there were not enough prisons to hold all those arrested they had to utilize schools and sports stadiums. We had no news at all; TV stations were transmitting animated cartoons and radios were broadcasting military marches; every so often, new edicts were issued outlining the orders of the day, and again on the screen we would see the four generals of the coup, with the escutcheon and flag of Chile as backdrop. They explained to the citizenry the overthrown government's Plan Z, which involved an interminable blacklist containing the names of thousands of persons they had planned to massacre within the next few days, an unprecedented genocide, but they, the generals, had stepped in to prevent it. They said that the nation had been in the hands of Soviet advisers and Cuban guerrillas, and that a drunken Allende had committed suicide not only out of shame for his own failure as leader but particularly because the valiant armed forces had uncovered his deposits of Russian armaments, his pantry full of chickens, his corruption, his thievery, and his bacchanals, as could be documented in a series of pornographic photographs that they, out of common decency, were not going to exhibit. Through press, radio, and television, they urged hundreds of persons to turn themselves in at the Ministry of Defense, and some unwary individuals did so in good faith, and paid for it dearly. My brother Pancho was among those listed, and was saved by the fact that he was on a diplomatic mission in Moscow, where he was marooned with his family for several years. The home of the president was taken by assault, after being bombed, and even the family's clothing was pillaged. As souvenirs, neighbors and soldiers took personal belongings, private papers, and artworks that the Allendes had collected all their lives. In workers' neighborhoods, the repression was merciless; in all of Chile there were summary executions, uncounted arrests,
desaparecidos
and tortured; there was nowhere to hide so many persecuted, nor ways to feed the thousands of families without work. How was it that suddenly so many informers, collaborators, torturers, and assassins sprang up? Perhaps they were always there and we simply failed to see them. Nor was it possible to explain the fierce hatred displayed by troops who themselves came from the lower social classes and now were martyrizing their brothers.

Salvador Allende's widow, daughters, and some of his closest colleagues took refuge in the Mexican embassy. The day after the coup, Tencha Allende, carrying a safe conduct and escorted by soldiers, went secretly to bury her husband in an unmarked grave. She was not allowed to view his body. With her daughters, she went into exile in Mexico, where they were received with honors by the president and generously sheltered by all the Mexican people. The discharged General Prats, who had refused to back the coup, was spirited out of Chile to Argentina in the dark of night because he had a solid following among the rank and file and it was feared he might lead a splinter group among the armed forces, even though in fact he had never remotely entertained that idea. In Buenos Aires, he lived a modest and retiring life; he had very few friends, among whom were my parents, he was separated from his daughters, and he feared for his life. A virtual prisoner in his apartment, he began quietly to write the bitter memories of those last days.

The day after the coup, a military order was issued to display a flag from every rooftop in celebration of the victory of the valiant soldiers who had so heroically defended Western-Christian civilization against the Communist conspiracy. A jeep stopped at our door to inquire why we had not complied with the order. Michael and I explained that I was a relative of Allende: “We're in mourning; if you want, we will fly the flag with a black band and at half-mast,” we said. The officer stood thinking a moment, and as he had no instructions for such a contingency, left without further commentary. The denunciations had already begun, and we expected that at any moment there would be a call accusing us of who knows what crimes, but that did not happen; perhaps the affection everyone in the neighborhood felt for Granny saved us. Michael learned that a group of workers was trapped in one of the buildings he was constructing; they had not got out that morning and later could not leave because of the curfew, and were incommunicado and without food. We notified Granny, who crept across the street in a crouch to be with her grandchildren; we gathered provisions from our pantry and, as the radio had instructed for cases of emergency, left in our car, crawling at a snail's pace with windows open and holding a white flag on a stick. We were stopped five times, and each time Michael was ordered to get out; the banged-up Citroën was brusquely searched and we were permitted to continue. No one asked me anything, they didn't even look at me. I thought Memé's guardian spirit must have covered me with a mantle of invisibility. Later, however, I found out that it was an idiosyncrasy of the military that women don't count except as spoils of war. If they had examined my identification, and seen my name, we might never have delivered our basket of food. We had not felt any fear, because as yet we did not know the mechanisms of repression, and believed that to be safe from danger all we had to do was explain that we did not belong to any political party; we soon learned the truth, when the curfew was lifted and we could communicate with others.