Once on the ground, Manuel used his official credentials to recruit a Red Cross ambulance to drive us to Pachama over rocky and washed-out roads. The plane departed for Chile’s northernmost city of Arica two days late, as things were chaotic in Santiago. Our purpose was to document an Aymara village’s patron saint festival, with its music, food, religious ritual and material culture. Our first field trip took us to the high Andes, the northern village of Pachama, a stone’s throw from the Bolivian border. I was placed under the wing of the renowned Chilean folklorist Manuel Dannemann, assisting him in documenting music and folklore for his ambitious Atlas of Chilean Folklore. For me, this was mainly an inconvenience-until September 11, when inconvenience turned to high anxiety and lawlessness. People often spoke of how every civic organization down to the animal welfare league was divided by national politics.
Their bitter rivalry was not unusual for the times. One was a communist and the other was a teacher at the military academy, as well as a supporter of the conservative Patria y Libertad (Fatherland and Freedom) group. I hid my own pile of LPs by left-leaning musical groups such as Quilapayún and Inti-Illimani in the attic of a house in the coastal town of Viña del Mar.Īt the university, I had been given a desk located between two warring faculty members. Leftist acquaintances used my apartment as a gathering place before they dashed for the Mexican embassy, which was offering political asylum. In the following days and weeks, the carabineros and military burned large piles of confiscated books in the streets, some of them publications the socialist government had subsidized in support of its cause. Television stations ran the same images over and over-evidence of Allende’s death, an AK-47 assault rifle in his home bearing a friendly inscription to him from Fidel Castro, and soldiers pointing to packs of American currency allegedly found in the president’s refrigerator. People rushed to the neighborhood bakery to buy food-whatever they could find. On the street, carabineros (national police) and military were out in force. Many of them would die.įrom the window of my third-floor apartment, I watched Hawker Hunter jet fighters fire missiles at the downtown area, where the presidential palace, La Moneda (above September 11, 1973), stood.įrom the window of my third-floor apartment, I watched Hawker Hunter jet fighters fire missiles at the downtown area, where the presidential palace, La Moneda, stood. I learned later that they were on their way to defend President Allende, whom they saw as a champion of disenfranchised people such as themselves. On the hurried walk to my apartment, I passed small groups of campesinos (farmers) headed toward the city center. The now infamous golpe de estado (coup d’état) led by Chile’s army general Augusto Pinochet had begun. I heard popping in the distance, popping and booming growing louder and louder. When I reached the perimeter of the central city, I saw uniformed carabineros, the national police. Cars were moving faster than usual, many driving away from downtown, not toward it. I soon sensed, though, that something more was going on.
With no bus to take, I headed on foot toward my office at the University of Chile. Chile, normally a stable country, had fallen on difficult times as the Allende socialist regime looked to redistribute the wealth of an entrenched oligarchy. It also became an (unintended) opportunity to learn something about politics. It had seemed a great opportunity, as Chile, a long, narrow country that seems like the South American equivalent of the Californian coast, was rich in regional and indigenous cultural traditions. My Convenio Chile-California fellowship had taken me to Chile, where I had worked for two months as an exchange fellow in a University of California music program, teaching a course and conducting music research in the field. It seemed the strike by truckers and bus owners in protest of socialist president Salvador Allende’s policies had made my bad commute downtown even worse. A few daring riders stood on the bumper and held on. As usual, the bus running by my apartment was packed to the gills, but today there was overflow. Septemwas a pleasant pre-spring morning, a workday in Santiago.