Wednesday, 24 September 2014
This led to a military coup in 1973 led by General Augusto Pinochet. He ordered the Palacio de Moneda to be blitzed, and when they entered Allende's room, they found him dead with a gun shot to his head. For years and years there were conspiracy theories about how he died, whether he was shot by the military, or whether he committed suicide. In 2012, a team of experts exhumed his body and determined that from the angle of the bullet entry, it was suicide, but scepticism still remains. When the Palacio de Moneda was being blitzed by the military, Allende was giving a speech to the people via radio, his famous last words were "I have faith in Chile and its destiny". Apparently you could hear the guns and bombs in the background when he was giving his speech on the radio. And then he shot himself, probably before the military could get to him, with a rifle given to him as a gift from Fidel Castro. Quite a sad story!
After this it was the reign of Pinochet. He was a dictator and ruled with an iron fist. For 10 years there was a curfew in Chile, one couldn't walk on the streets after 8 pm, otherwise one would be shot, for no reason other than one was outdoors. Although the economy became better and people had food to eat, the price that was paid was high, there was no liberty and freedom for the people; teachers, artists, singers and anyone who ever talked about the government were killed, there are still more than a thousand people missing, nobody knows what happened to them or where they are.
The end of Allende and the beginning of Pinochet marked a division in Chile; some were strong supporters of Pinochet and some were not. Pinochet ruled for 17 years, and then there was a strong movement towards democratic elections, and Pinochet, who was over confident after years of suppression and oppression of the Chilean people, agreed to a referendum, thinking that the people would not dare to vote him out. But 56% of the population voted against him being President, and for democratic elections to take place. Following this, Pinochet stepped down as President of Chile in 1990, but remained Senator for life pursuant to an article in the Constitution that he put in place. This meant that he could never be prosecuted for what happened during his reign as President. However, he made the mistake of going to London, and whilst there, he was arrested pursuant to an international arrest warrant for war crimes committed during his reign as the President of Chile. He was supposed to have been brought back to Chile to face a trial, but he died in 2006 before facing justice in Chile.
Today, there is a statue of Allende with his famous last words inscribed, at the Constitutional Square which is adjacent to the Palacio de Moneda. There are no statues of Pinochet.
After this we walked to a street call New York Street, said to resemble the streets of New York. I have no idea whether this is true because I have never been to New York. The architecture was quite nice, and the Santiago Stock Exchange is located here. From New York Street we came to Alameda Street, the main avenue in Santiago, which is a street dedicated to one of the founding fathers of Chile. We passed by the Opera House, which was restored after being partially destroyed by an earthquake in 2010.
Then we walked through a park, known as Parque Forestral, and on the way we passed by the Museo de Bella Artes which is the Museum of Fine Arts. The Parque Forestral runs parallel to the Mapocho river, and the guide told us that if we walked along the river, we would come to a fish market selling all sorts of fresh local seafood, and there are restaurants offering traditional dishes there such as seafood soup, chowder and crab cakes, but they are only open until about 4 pm. We saw the Santa Lucia Hill, it is beautiful but we didn't have time to go up the hill. This hill was originally called Huelen by the Mapuches inhabiting this area. The Spanish conquistador Pedro de Valdivia later changed its name to Santa Lucia. It was at the foot of this hill that he founded the city of Santiago in 1541. In 1872, Benjamin Vicuña Mackenna decided to make the hill a new attraction, and he ordered that the hill be decorated with different types of trees, plants and other vegetation planted along a labyrinth of stairways and paths, with fountains and numerous look out points in between. Apparently the hill was decorated by prisoners.
Then we stopped for coffee at the Lastarria neighbourhood, I had my first Chilean pisco sour. Honestly I can't tell the difference between the pisco sour in Peru and the pisco sour in Chile, apparently in Chile they don't use egg whites and they use a bigger, less aromatic lemon because the smaller, more aromatic ones used in Peru can only grow in cold climates, and Chile's climate is not suitable for that. But I really couldn't tell the difference.
Then we continued through the park, there is a place called Plaza Italia or Italy Square just at the border of the park, and it is apparently the dividing line between the rich people who live in one direction of the square, and the poor people who live in the opposite direction of the square.
Through the park, we came to a place called the Bellavista neighbourhood, which is a bohemian town full of bars, restaurants, handicrafts and all sorts of artwork. There are a lot of street musicians, painters and people selling handicrafts along the street here, and the stuff here is pretty cheap too because there are a lot of students around due to the nearby universities here. In this neighbourhood, the guide recommended a tour agency that offered cheap packages for various tours, and I noticed that they had tour packages to Easter Island, so I decided to come back here once the walking tour ended.
From the Bellavista neighbourhood, you could see San Christobal Hill over the distance, you could take a funicular up the hill and see almost the entire city of Santiago from the top. But of course, there was no time for that!
The last place we visited was the house of Pablo Neruda, Chile's most famous poet who won the Nobel prize for literature in 1971. He had 3 houses in Chile, one in Santiago, one in Valparaiso, and one in Isla Negra which is the most beautiful, overlooking the sea. He loved the sea but could not swim, and the story is that he would sit in a boat for hours just watching the sea for inspiration, although he never learnt how to swim.
After the tour ended, I walked back to the tour agency to enquire about my trip to Easter Island. The price was much cheaper than anything I found on the internet, so I decided to book a tour but as it was already late in the evening, they told me to come back tomorrow morning so that they could contact the hotel and tour agency in Rapa Nui to confirm availability, etc. So I took the Metro back to Manuel Montt and went back to my hostel. After the walking tour in Santiago, I decided that I liked Santiago.
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