Word: santiagos
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Week after week, as a succession of bitter strikes plunged Chile toward economic chaos, rumors had circulated in Santiago that the country was on the verge of a military coup. Even so, many Chileans dismissed the stories. True, Chile had large and well-trained armed forces. But unlike the colonels of neighboring Peru and the generals of Brazil, Chile's officers had by and large a non-political tradition...
...coup was carefully planned and meticulously executed, reported TIME Correspondent Charles Eisendrath, who watched the action from a window overlooking the palace. Early last Tuesday morning, armored cars rolled across Santiago's broad Plaza de la Constitucion to block the portals of La Moneda, the somber 18th century-style Presidential Palace. As army sharpshooters took up positions, at least 100 armed carabineros−Chile's paramilitary police−jumped out of buses and double-timed across the square. Their mission, according to the secret order of the day, was "to restore institutional normality" in South America...
Allende had apparently heard ru mors; at the uncharacteristically early hour of 7:15, he had driven to La Moneda from his comfortable villa in Santiago's Barrio Alto district. As the troops began to assemble outside the palace, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, commander in chief of the army, telephoned an ultimatum to the palace. If Allende surrendered his office, he would be given safe-conduct out of the country; otherwise he would be deposed by force. Allende refused. "I will not resign," he declared in a very brief radio broadcast. "I am prepared to die if necessary...
...Socialist Party went silent after making a final appeal to enlisted men to disobey the orders of their officers. Another station operated by Allende's Communist partners* in the Chilean Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) coalition went dead. Soon the only station left on the air in Santiago was one that identified itself as "the military government radio." Its first order: "The President of the republic must proceed immediately to hand over his high office...
...Mexican journalist in Santiago, Manuel Mejido, managed to interview 15 of the people who claim to have last seen Allende alive. According to his account, the President assembled close friends in the palace and told them: "I will not abandon La Moneda. They will only take me out of here dead." The group included ten members of the security force and 30 youths of a private guard known as el Grupo de Amigos Personales (the Group of Personal Friends...