The Other September 11

...This was the Italian Embassy, and one of the exiles was myself...

...This article is adapted from one that appeared in two Brazilian newspapers, Folha de Sao Paulo and 0 Globo, on September 11, 2003...

...Despite my conviction that it was inevitable, I was appalled...

...There is one fact that has received very little attention in Allende's fall from power...

...For years, we had lived in a small villa...

...On the third or fourth day, when it was suspended for a few hours, I went to visit Herbert Jose de Souza Betinho—who was to become Brazil's most important civil rights leader in the eighties and nineties—to see how he was faring and CHRONICLES to get him out of his house...

...At the end of the week prior to the coup, the president had been preparing a speech to be delivered on the eleventh, when he was to announce a plebiscite to decide on his planned "reforms...

...As if to convince himself that it was really me, he read—or practically shouted—a segment of the arrest warrant: subversivo, izquierdista, intelectual e muy vivo ("subversive, leftist, intellectual, and very clever...

...At home, each of the bandos or communiqués released by the military junta 86 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 was greeted with intense expectancy...

...To remain in the street could mean imprisonment or even summary execution...

...I tried to get close to the seat of government, La Moneda Palace, though it was impossible to do so...

...However, I could not hesitate...

...Instead of punishing the generals involved, he opted to resign...

...Even his use of language sank to new depths of vulgarity...

...Obviously, I was not aware that they were already murdering detainees and that the colonel was responsible for these assassinations...

...In his tiny apartment, he still kept letters, documents, address lists, and speculated about the possibility of resistance in the southern city of ConcepciOn, led by Prats...

...It was the apartment in which I had lived years earlier...

...Through the good offices of Carmen Mina, a Panamanian and director of the Latin American Center of Demographics, I sought out the ambassador of Panama and convinced him to open his embassy (which in fact was no more than a small ground-floor apartment) to those seeking political asylum...

...From that 88 n DISSENT / Winter 2004 point forward—much to my surprise—I calmed down and recouped some of my energy in order to cope with the situation...

...In the distance, I saw a pay phone and glanced at the soldier and decided to take the risk: CHRONICLES Listed tiene um jeton...

...He was an educated, conservative soldier who held democratic convictions and was solidly opposed to military intervention in the political sphere...

...The Ministry of Foreign Relations expressed its regret at having tried to arrest an international employee with diplomatic immunity and renewed the official visa in my passport...

...I accepted and asked if I could visit a cell where Brazilians were being held...

...This reduced the possibility of someone's informing on us...

...Despite the hard bench, the shouting detectives, the cold, the bright light, and my chronic difficulties in sleeping, I fell into a deep slumber...

...The recording makes it very clear that despite Pinochet's rather late joining of the rebel forces, he was by far the most irate, brutal, and radical of the military leaders...

...The only problem was that the owner of the house was one of them...

...Thus, the arrest warrant had been issued in the name of Jose Serra Chirico...

...Do you have a token...

...The soldiers came to take you away: what are you doing here...

...Consequently, I was able to go out during the day in order to prepare the family for leaving the country...

...Patricia Verdugo's re-issued Chile, Pinochet, and the Caravan of Death, accompanied by a CD, reveals the discussions among military leaders on September 11...

...One day, near the end of September, I had left a meeting in the office of the Director of Flacso, stating that I was going to Cepal...

...In much the same way, it is quite possible that the military, fully aware of what was about to happen and fearful that tensions would be dissipated, decided to move the coup to an earlier date...

...The walk from the stadium gates to the first street where I managed to get a taxi was certainly the longest and most tense walk of my life...

...and another Chilean student, by the name of Gloria, who then sympathized with the Moviemento Izquierda Revolucionciria, a left-wing movement that opposed Allende...

...The first person I recognized was Silveri°, a student of economics from Sao Paulo...

...Finally, they took me to the civilian police headquarters where I spent the night on a wooden bench, while a group of detectives played pachisi and heatedly discussed soccer...

...I called a friend and advised him I was being released...

...It is not difficult to imagine that, had Allende given the speech a week earlier, he may well have avoided the coup...

...My guess was that the coup would take place before September 18, Chile's National Day, when the military would be called upon to parade and salute President Salvador Allende...

...I decided to interrupt my trip to the Soviet Union and return to Chile, where I had lived in exile for more than eight years...

...He claims Pinochet is a legalist and that, though Prats is good, he has clearly fallen out of favor...

...The first news of violence was not long in coming: Luis Ramallo, one of the directors of Flacso—the Latin American School of Social Sciences—found the body of one of our Bolivian students in an improvised morgue...

...The curfew was extended constantly...

...Later on, something rather curious occurred: the ambassador rented a more spacious house and transferred the asylum-seekers to it...

...On Wednesday, Major Lavanderos, who had released me, was shot...

...Initially, it was not clear whether Pinochet, now the commander-in-chief of the army, had assumed command of the coup...

...On October 14, after my passport had been stamped "departure," I was arrested at the airport with my infant son in my arms, in front of my wife and four-year-old daughter...

...The Swedish ambassador, Harald Edelstam (a veritable hero, for all he did during those dark days and nights of oppression and terror) told me that the major was tried for treason for having protected enemies of the state...

...One radio station taped the discussions, and someone released the tapes twenty-five years later...

...However, because there were not yet any other exiles at the embassy, there were no police at the door...

...General Augusto Pinochet was then the second highest-ranking army officer...

...TWO FACTORS offered us some short-term protection...

...I remember a very tense moment when the broadcaster cited the name of Roberto Frenkel, a brilliant Argentine economist who, at the time, lived in Chile and worked with me...

...The rumors broadcast on Santiago radio stations were confused but to the point: the coup had begun...

...In the early evening, an officer announced to me, Por orden del major Ivan Lavanderos, usted puede salir, pero tiene que presentarse manna temprano, a las siete y media, para ser interrogado por el mayor...

...Compared to the ferocity with which the Chilean military began hunting down its prey, the Brazilian coup of April 1, 1964, was really no more than a staid tea party...

...Known as a 'good guy' who deserves to be `treated' [that is, killed] by the Chileans...

...In 1964, I had gone through a somewhat similar experience in Brazil...

...It had been transformed into a prison camp and, as was to become known later, a center of torture and murder...

...Betinho was a hemophiliac and would never have been able to withstand any type of physical abuse...

...I told him that I was being released and that, if anything happened to me, he should denounce it...

...He openly called together members of the international press and denounced the violence, the first of many denunciations of the Chilean reign of terror...

...With regard to me, the final paragraph stated simply, Trata-se de "boa gente" que merece ser "tratado" pelos chilenos...

...They left me in the main entrance hall, where I spent the day...

...His address was extremely well known, and he had a subscription to El Siglo, the newspaper of the Chilean Communist Party...

...Those who refused to do so would have to face consecuencias fdciles de se prevee (consequences easy to imagine...

...Automobile and pedestrian traffic was congested and the tension in the air was palpable...

...He was a candidate for president in the 2002 election...

...There I learned that the more you move your hands, the tighter the handcuffs become and the more they injure your wrists...

...His leg had been torn off by an artillery shell...

...Some time afterward, he left the priesthood and, curiously enough, had become my student in a graduate course...

...I made a point of demonstrating my skepticism at that possibility and insisted that he leave his apartment at once...

...The new house was in a different area of the city, and none of our neighbors knew yet who we were...

...There was a time when the ambassador sheltered more than six hundred people at the embassy...

...Were he to lose the plebiscite—which seemed quite probable—Allende would resign...

...A pillar of Chilean legality had retired from the stage...

...I began operating as a link between the different international organizations, all of which had mobilized (including Cepal—the Economic Commission for Latin America—whose executive secretary was then the current president of the Inter-American Development Bank, Enrique Iglesias) in order to protect students, employees, and foreigners in general...

...Despite the soothing comments, I was convinced that a coup was only a matter of days away...

...The next morning, I met with friends (including the current president of Chile, Ricardo Lagos, then a professor at Flacso) and it was decided that I would not report to the Stadium but would stay at the Italian Embassy, where Monica and the children had already taken refuge after my arrest...

...The soldiers had looked for me there and found Gullar...

...Though I was not aware of it, on that same day, they had invaded the apartment of the Brazilian poet Ferreira Gullar, who had presided over the famous Brazilian Popular Culture Center of the National Student Union, when I was president of that organization between 1963 - 1964...

...In the midst of the bustle, I met an acquaintance—the Jesuit priest connected to the "Iglesia Joven," who had performed our marriage six years previously...

...Frightened and increasingly more tense as I recalled the pretexts that could be put forward to justify grave consequences at the hands of the Chilean repression, I became convinced that the worst was about to happen...

...On Sunday, unable to thwart the conspiracy, he decided to join it...

...First of all, I was an employee of an international organization and had diplomatic immunity and an official visa in my Italian passport (I had obtained this passport because my father was an Italian citizen, and the Brazilian government refused to supply passports to those in exile...

...Volodia thinks the change will strengthen the government and ward off the threat of a coup...

...I N THE MORNING, after being submitted to an absolutely moronic interrogation—albeit with no violence whatsoever—I was transferred to the Stadium of Chile, the site where Garrincha and Vavg had won the World Cup for Brazil in 1962...

...DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 87 CHRONICLES From that moment forward, I slept every night at the residence of the Italian ambassador...

...Sandra Brisola, a student of mine at the school of economics...

...The broadcaster would go on the air and announce Bando numero siete (Communiqué number seven) and would then read off a list of names of persons who were to immediately hand themselves over to the first patrol they met on the street...

...Ambassador Camara Canto, a confessed supporter of the coup, presided over one of the most deplorable episodes in the history of Brazilian diplomacy, the true story of which has yet to be told...

...I FINISHED BY gaining access to another embassy for political exiles...

...They even offered me a jacket to ward off the cold...

...General Carlos Prats was the commanderinchief of the Chilean army...

...A few days after I arrived in Santiago and began to prepare my departure from Chile with my wife, Monica, and our two children, Monica woke me earlier than usual with the words They have surrounded and are shooting at La Moneda...

...Sometime later, Pinochet had Bonilla killed in a simulated accident...

...Si, como no ("Yes, of course") he responded courteously...

...I had already had the opportunity to meet him personally...

...The first three that I took to the Embassy were Betinho...

...The decision had been taken in agreement with the president of the Christian Democrats, the leading opposition party at the time...

...I decided to stop by my own office, which was located in a neighboring building...

...I thought it more probable that I would take a bullet in the back and they would claim that I had tried to flee...

...However, the visa renewal was no more than a trap...

...It seemed almost incredible that what had been predicted was actually coming about and in as definitive a manner as possible...

...However, the illusion of division within the Armed Forces was rapidly and very unpleasantly put to rest, when we listened to Pinochet's shrill and menacing voice introducing the military junta on the night of September 11...

...In a few days, the small Panamanian Embassy came to shelter more than a hundred people, most of whom were Brazilians, who had to survive in harsh conditions and terribly cramped quarters...

...The topic of this conversation was the situation in Chile, and the information was transmitted by Luiz Carlos Prestes, secretary general of the Brazilian Communist Party, on August 24, 1973...

...I was able to gain some points with them by talking about Brazilian soccer and praising the famous Chilean goalkeeper Sergio Livingstone...

...In my entire life, I do not recall waking up as suddenly and lucidly—with my heart pounding—as on that fateful September 11, 1973...

...At the orders of Major Ivan Lavanderos, you can leave, but you must report early tomorrow at 7:30 to be interrogated by the major...

...It seemed quite clear that such a demonstration of deference would not take place...

...From that point forward, it was quite clear: the chance of my name's coming up on the list was growing...

...The population was rapidly obeying the curfew orders being transmitted over radio stations DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 8 5 CHRONICLES already in the hands of the conspirators...

...Protesting that I had diplomatic immunity, I insisted on speaking with the commander, a certain Colonel Spinoza...

...We left for the airport...

...I even went to police headquarters to deal with passport questions...

...Prats had resigned after a group of generals' wives had taken to the streets to protest against him...

...Years later, in Brazil, someone gave me a small, handwritten document, dated September 1973 that had been found at the headquarters of the Sao Paulo Political Police...

...Another three generals in high-level positions decided to follow Prats's example...

...In January, the family was granted safe conduct out of the country, while I had to stay until May, because the government refused to allow me to leave...

...A confidant of Prats, he had held the post of acting army commander on several occasions and had demonstrated a "legalist" approach to the turmoil that marked the Chilean political process...

...It was only a matter of hours before they would come for him...

...In Chile, inclusion of the maternal surname is obligatory...

...We later discovered that it was only on September 8 that Pinochet had been informed of the preparations for Allende's overthrow on the following Tuesday...

...Second, while I was in Europe, Monica had decided to move the family to a new neighborhood...

...To our great sadness and indignation, the reaction of the Brazilian Embassy was atrocious: it turned its back on Brazilian citizens—men, women and children—then being hunted down simply because they were foreigners...

...Theotonio dos Santos, a Brazilian professor and one of the intellectual gurus of the Chilean left, had become a political exile in his own house...

...Ramallo, a sociologist and former Jesuit, was a very courageous individual...

...It made no sense...

...General Eduardo Bonilla, second in command to Pinochet, went on television at one point to claim that there was a clandestine army composed of ten thousand foreigners in Chile, and demanded that the citizenry denounce all suspects...

...At about noon, I could see smoke rising from the building from my vantage point a kilometer away...

...DISSENT / Winter 2004 n 89...

...I was visiting the Soviet Union, and I met him at his stark apartment in Moscow, where he lived in exile...

...When it was announced that I was not going to report, the army placed soldiers at the door...

...I was then handcuffed and spent three hours locked in the international arrival section of the airport, the target of furtive looks on the part of those arriving in the country...

...In Brazil and Italy, I do not use my mother's surname (Chirico...

...Volodia was a senator and a leader of the Chilean Communist Party...

...However, anonymous threats had become more common, probably from neighbors belonging to extreme right organizations, as it became known that I was in exile and that Monica's surname was Allende (though she was not a close relation to the president...

...Shortly afterward, I bumped into Enzo Falleto (co-author with Fernando Henrique of the now famous book Dependency and Development in Latin America), who stared at me astonished and asked, Hombre, los milicos vinieran a buscarte: que paces acci...

...Release me at night to report back in the morning...

...Later on, in Europe, he told me that he hadn't understood a word I had said— the result of one voice and two ears nearing the point of nervous breakdown...

...I had been arrested on Sunday and released on Monday...

...The police superintendent who made the arrest got my name wrong...

...Taking advantage of the fact that my car had diplomatic license plates, I was able to take food to the embassy on several occasions, passing it furtively through the windows...

...Moving toward the main stadium gates, I was accompanied by a sergeant of the army...

...I left the house, though I am not sure where I intended to go...

...Translated from the Portuguese by John Morris...

...Everyone thought that I was no longer in the building, including my colleagues and the soldiers who had believed them...

...JOSE SERRA is an economist who has served as minister of budget and planning and minister of health in Brazil...