Word: santiagos
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Their faces daubed with menacing black paint, soldiers fanned out through the busy streets of downtown Santiago. As armored vehicles and water cannons took up positions at strategic intersections, khaki-clad recruits with automatic weapons sealed off a 2-sq.-mi. area of shops, theaters and office buildings. Puzzled laborers on their way home from work looked on as angry students and union members materialized, taunting the military with their ritual battle cry, "He is going to fall!"--a reference to Chile's authoritarian leader, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. But then paramilitary police lobbed tear gas into the crowd...
Army units have rounded up an estimated 100,000 men in Santiago's vast slums and taken them at gunpoint to nearby assembly points to have their identities checked. Detainees are released after their hands have been stamped with black ink to indicate that they have been inspected. Only about 100 have been arrested and jailed. Says Valdes: "It is barbarous, exactly the same as what went on in the Warsaw Ghetto...
...purpose of the raids is to "find common delinquents and subversives" and claims that the sweeps have turned up weapons and explosives. Meanwhile, the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, a guerrilla group thought to be linked with the Communist Party, last week blew up three power pylons south of Santiago, plunging the capital and other towns housing more than half of Chile's 12 million people into darkness for 90 minutes...
Against a background of growing official repression, at least 15 bombs exploded across Chile last week in a spasm of antigovernment violence that killed four people, including one police officer. In the capital of Santiago, four soldiers were wounded when gunmen opened fire on them from a passing car. A bomb blew a hole in the wall surrounding the residence of U.S. Ambassador Harry Barnes...
Chile's dour 70-year-old dictator, General Augusto Pinochet, reacted harshly. Troops and police charged into an illegal May Day demonstration in Santiago, arresting 500 and injuring a dozen with rubber bullets. Security forces conducted sweeps in slum areas of the city, arresting a total of 11,000 men, who were hauled off to soccer fields and marked for police reference with indelible ink. If the unrest continues, Pinochet is likely to resort to a still tougher response: a state of siege of the kind that finally quelled similar unrest...