Word: santiagos
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...warm summer evening, and the citizens of Santiago were strolling through parks, or gathered before TV sets or driving home after the final weekend of the traditional vacation period. Suddenly, the earth began to shake. First came one tremor and then, two minutes later, another even more intense. Buildings shuddered, chunks of concrete rained down on the streets, cars were bounced around. The front walls of the city hall and the Municipal Theater collapsed. Many of the capital's aging churches and public buildings began to cave in. In panic, people streamed into the streets carrying mattresses, televisions, stereos...
Altogether, the quake shook an area stretching more than 1,000 miles along Chile's mountainous spine both north and south of Santiago. At its epicenter, near the village of Algarrobo, it officially measured more than 8 on the Richter scale; geologists compared it in magnitude with the disastrous 1960 Chile quake, which killed almost 6,000. In some places, including the port of San Antonio, three-quarters or more of the buildings were no longer habitable. In San Bernardo, five died when a church wall collapsed on a Roman Catholic $ congregation. Said Juan Andres Bravo, who had been helping...
...almost a decade had residents of Santiago seen anything like the show of government firepower mounted throughout their city last week. At dawn, long lines of green-and-brown troop-transport trucks began rolling along the Chilean capital's suburban avenues. Soldiers took up positions at traffic circles, machine guns at the ready. Armored cars growled to a halt at the edge of the slum areas in the southern part of the city. Along the dusty streets that honeycomb the shantytowns, rifle-toting soldiers were stationed every 100 yards. Meanwhile, helicopters clattered noisily overhead...
...crowds were small by past standards. Several leaders of the five-party Alianza Democratica, the main opposition group, did not endorse the protest for fear of running afoul of the siege order's ban on public gatherings; nonetheless, about ten Alianza leaders lined up in front of Santiago's cathedral and sang the national anthem. As they dispersed, a water cannon lumbered into view and began spraying. "The government can claim a 'military success,' " said Alianza President Ricardo Lagos, a socialist. "But the fact is that the army had to act as an enemy occupying...
During the protest, police arrested about 160 people, including two Roman Catholic priests and a deacon. The clerics spent a night in jail before being released in response to pleas from Santiago Archbishop Juan Francisco Fresno Larraín. A British subject who worked as the United Press International correspondent in Santiago, Anthony Boadle, was summarily deported for filing a report that three deaths had occurred during rioting (in fact, none had). Pinochet, who has refused widespread demands that he relinquish power to a democratically elected government, spent the protest days away from the capital, touring the desert country...