Despite the campaign of fear, Chile opted for the left-wing parties, who got together in a coalition known as Popular Unity, led by Salvador Allende. In 1970, to the horror of those who had traditionally held power and of the United States, which viewed the election in terms of Fidel Castro and his Cuban revolution, the Popular Unity Coalition won. Allende himself was probably the most surprised of all. He had run for president three times before and liked to joke about his epitaph reading Here lies the future president of Chile. The second-most--surprised person was Enrique Maraz, who overnight found he had nothing to fight against. That changed almost as soon as the initial euphoria died down.
The triumph of Salvador Allende, the first Marxist elected by a democratic vote, attracted the interest of the entire world, and in particular the CIA. However, it proved impossible for him to govern with the support of parties of widely differing tendencies and in the teeth of an all-out war declared by his political enemies. This rapidly became obvious, and unleashed a storm that would last three years and shake Chilean society to its very foundations. No one could remain indifferent.
To Enrique Maraz, the only possible revolution was the Cuban one; Allende’s reforms simply served to postpone that indispensable upheaval. His far-left party sabotaged the government with the same fervor as the Right. Shortly after the election, Enrique abandoned his studies and departed from his mother’s home without leaving an address where she could find him. They had sporadic news of him, when he turned up on a visit or phoned, always in a hurry, but his activities remained secret. He still had his beard and long hair but had given up the beret and boots, and seemed more thoughtful. He no longer leapt into damning attacks on the bourgeoisie, religion, and Yankee imperialism. He had learned to listen with feigned politeness to what he saw as his mother’s reactionary opinions and his sister’s nonsense.
Lucia had decorated her room with a poster of Che Guevara her brother had given her, but only because the guerrilla fighter was sexy, and to annoy her mother, who thought he was a delinquent. She also had several records by Victor Jara. She knew his protest songs by heart and also some of the slogans of the “Marxist-Leninist vanguard of the working-class and oppressed sectors,” as Enrique’s party defined itself. She would join in huge marches in defense of the government, shouting until she was hoarse that the people united would never be defeated. Days later, with equal enthusiasm, she would go with her girlfriends to equally large protest demonstrations against the same government she had defended a few days earlier. She was much less interested in any cause than in the fun of shouting at the top of her voice in the street. Enrique reproached her one day when he caught sight of her in the distance at an opposition march, saying her ideological coherence left a lot to be desired. The fashion then was miniskirts, platform boots, and thick black eye makeup, all of which Lucia adopted. Also in vogue were hippies and flower children, whom some young Chileans imitated, dancing in a stoned haze with their tambourines and making love in the parks, just as they did in London or California. Lucia never went that far, because her mother would never have allowed her to mix with those bucolic degenerates, as she called them.
Since the only topic of conversation in the country was politics, which produced violent breakups between families and friends, Lena imposed a law of silence on the matter in her own house, just as she had done regarding her husband. To Lucia, who was at the height of adolescent rebelliousness, the ideal way to anger her mother was mentioning Allende. Lena would get back in the evening exhausted from her day at work, the dreadful public transportation, traffic held up by strikes and demonstrations, not to mention endless lines to buy a scrawny chicken or the cigarettes she could not live without, and yet she would recover sufficiently to bang on saucepans in her backyard with her women neighbors as an anonymous way of protesting about shortages in particular and socialism in general. The noise of these saucepans began with a single clang in one yard, taken up by others until it became a deafening chorus that spread through the middle-and upper-class neighborhoods as if heralding the apocalypse. Lena would come home to find her daughter sprawled in front of the TV or chatting with her friends on the phone with her favorite songs blasting in the background. Although she was worried about her irresponsible daughter, who had a woman’s body but a child’s brain, she was far more concerned about Enrique, fearing that her son was one of those hotheads who sought power through violence.
THE DEEP CRISIS DIVIDING CHILE became unsustainable. Peasant farmers invaded land to set up agricultural cooperatives, banks and industries were expropriated, the copper mines in the north, which were in the hands of American corporations, were nationalized, shortages became endemic. There were no needles or bandages in the hospitals, no spare parts for machinery or milk for babies; everyone lived in a state of paranoia. Business owners sabotaged the economy by withdrawing essential items from the market. In response, the workers formed committees, threw out the bosses, and took over industries. In the city center, pickets could be seen around bonfires guarding offices and stores from right-wing gangs. In the countryside, the peasants kept watch day and night to protect themselves from the former landowners. There were armed gunmen on both sides. Despite the bellicose atmosphere, the Left increased its percentage of the vote in the March 1973 legislative elections. It was then that the opposition, which had been plotting for three years, understood that sabotage was not enough to overthrow the government. They turned to arms.
On Tuesday, September 11, 1973, the military rose against Allende’s government. That morning, Lena and Lucia heard helicopters and squadrons of planes roaring low above the rooftops. When they looked out, they saw tanks and army trucks in the nearly deserted streets. None of the television channels was functioning: all they showed was a geometric pattern. On the radio people heard the military pronouncement, but only understood what that meant several hours later when the state TV channel resumed broadcasting and four generals in combat uniforms appeared on the screen in front of a flag of Chile to announce the end of communism in the beloved homeland and issue edicts that the population was called on to respect. Martial law was declared; Congress was indefinitely suspended, as were civil rights, until the honorable Armed Forces restored law, order, and the values of Western, Christian civilization. They explained that Salvador Allende had hatched a plan to execute thousands upon thousands of opponents in an unprecedented genocide, but that they had stepped in first and succeeded in preventing this.