The Coup: The View from the Carrera

From Santiago, TIME Correspondent Charles Eisendrath sent these vignettes of life in the midst of a revolution:

The Carrera-Sheraton Hotel, which overlooks the Presidential Palace, is a bulky brown 17-story building with what at least one travel brochure optimistically describes as "tastefully decorated rooms." At the height of the fighting on Tuesday, Carrera Manager Luis Miguel ("Mike") Gallegos -upon whose thin breast every one of last week's guests would like to hang a medal -evacuated his 270 charges and 200 employees to the cavernous second basement. It took on the atmosphere of a London tube stop during the blitz, but with a notably international flavor. A French journalist challenged all comers to Scrabble in French. An S. A.S. pilot treated friends to drinks. A Tokyo businessman impassively read a magazine. Only one guest, Jerusalem Post Managing Editor Ari Raph, was wounded, and he but slightly. Raph, a veteran of the Six-Day War, observed that he had never seen precision bombing and strafing to match the Chilean air force raid on La Moneda.

By Wednesday, little things began indicating that the revolution was ending. Those trapped in the Carrera sensed the lessening fire, sometimes too soon. For instance, as I was typing in my room early Thursday, a man asked if he could look out the window, which overlooks La Moneda. As he opened the curtain, thwack! came the shot from below. Before I could crawl over and throw him out of my room, he had taken another peek, and we had taken another round. But after three days of entombment in the Carrera he, like everybody else, had begun thinking of other things. He had risked his life to see if his car, which was parked on the plaza, was undemolished. (It was.)

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The break came Friday. Santiago, a city with a climate like Denver's and women like Paris', stretched out in the early spring sunshine like a cat cooped up too long in a closet. Thousands surged around the smoky ruins of La Moneda. People in their Sunday best jammed into El Trafico bar, located in the shabby remains of the house where Chile's founding father, Bernardo O'Higgins, had met with the liberator of Argentina, Jose de San Martin. To the patrons swilling white wine and munching pork sandwiches, it seemed fitting to celebrate in a historic political monument -but there was no talk of politics, for the first time in memory.

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In the El Golf district, known for its fine houses and the rending beauty of the girls who parade each Saturday along Providencia Avenue, machine gunners lay prone under budding fruit trees. One soldier, submachine gun at the ready, dagger slung from his shoulder, was being besieged by a comely Chilena who kept threatening to put a flower in his dagger sheath. He resisted. But when I passed the spot a few minutes later, I noticed that the soldier had lost the battle, although perhaps won another.

When I walked by the now abandoned Congress building, a gardener in blue overalls was walking amidst the statues, tending to the plants. I asked him what he thought of the revolution. His response seemed to reflect the wish of many Santiagoans for a period of simple tranquillity. "Some win, some lose," he said. "But during revolutions, green plants don't get enough water."

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