Michael Batson

Flying west into Chile’s capital Santiago from Argentina is an interesting experience to say the least.  The route taken brings you inevitably down through the Andes, the pilot having to negotiate mountain passes and vicious cross winds.

You cannot make this journey without thinking of the film Alive about the Uruguayan rugby team, which crashed high in the Andes and resorted to cannibalism in order to survive.

Chile is the longest and narrowest land on Earth. Backed by the spine of the mighty Andes, it extends from sub-Antarctic climate in the south to the Atacama in the north, described as the world’s most perfect desert.

An interesting, and unnoticed geographic feature of Santiago is that it lies east of New York, giving the Americas a different perspective.

The plane appears full of skiers, either Chileans returning home or Argentines leaving, their faces burned with that curious colour that sun reflected on snow leaves without sun block.  South Americans don’t appear overly concerned with covering up when on the slopes.  The plane, a rear-engine jet, had an unusually large smoking section.

Landing was accompanied by rapturous applause.  Given the perilous route into Santiago, with jagged peaks threatening either side, even I was tempted to put my hands together.

People reckon there’s something in the air about Chile’s capital. That something would be smog, tons of it. The city is home to almost 40 percent of all the motorised vehicles in Chile. This despite having a modern metro system capable of carrying 2 million passengers per day.

Guide books critically claim the city comes up short on all fronts. Less cultural that Buenos Aires, less colonial than Lima, less Latin American than Mexico City, less exciting than Rio.

The city sits in a stunning setting, jammed between the Andes and the sea.  Its port, Valparaiso, is a couple hours away by bus, as are the ski fields of the mountains on the road to Mendoza.

The city was founded in 1541 by the Spanish conquistador, Pedro de Valdivia, on the Mapocho River, a site chosen for its climate and for the ease with which it could be defended. Handy this, for Valdivia ignored local warnings about likely opposition from the native inhabitants, who promptly attacked the Spanish, and almost starved them to death.

Despite Indian attack the city was rapidly settled. Following independence and the subsequent Republican era, the city acquired many of its landmark buildings. From the 1930s Santiago was transformed into a modern, industrialised city but it was development that came at a cost.

Santiago's growth was reflected in the appearance of poverty-stricken neighborhoods in some areas of the city. The rich congregated amongst themselves in a city that generates 45 percent of the country’s gross domestic product. In 1985 the city was struck by a major earthquake, causing few casualties but leaving thousands homeless and destroying many old buildings.

The main thoroughfare, Avenida Libertador General Bernardo O’Higgins better known as Alameda, is choked with buses, no doubt major contributors to the capital’s appalling air pollution.  O’Higgins along with Jose de San Martin, freed Chile from the yoke of Spanish colonialism. O’Higgins was of Irish and Basque descent, which must have made for a fiery combination, too much for the Spanish in any case.

O’Higgins was once governor of Chile and then Viceroy of Peru. He knew his father but the two never met, and only began using the O’Higgins name after his father died. A Mason, he was educated in Peru and England before settling down to a life as a gentleman farmer on his inherited estate outside city of Los Angeles, that being the one in Chile, south of Santiago.

All that changed when Napoleon took over Spain, triggering a series of violent events in South America. Chile rebelled against the French-dominated Spanish government.

O’Higgins was noted for his reckless courage, but wasn’t much of a tactician.  He was exiled to Argentina after defeat by royalist forces at the Battle of Rancagua.  There he met the Argentine General San Martin, and the two marched their forces over the Andes to defeat the royalists in a series of battles.

Eventually, O’Higgins became dictator of Chile following independence in 1818, before being deposed in a conservative coup, a portent of future political life in this land.

The Palacio de la Moneda is an ornate classical building designed by the Italian architect, Joaquin Toesca in the late 18th century. It was the originally a mint, hence the name “the coin”.  It was the death place of President Salvador Allende in 1973. He committed suicide rather than be captured by the military who assumed power in a bloody coup.

Armed guards stand at the entrances, carrying Israeli made Uzis.  Don’t take photographs of many public buildings in Latin America, especially ones with armed guards standing outside, for this will get you all the wrong kind of attention.

Princess Anne of England was paying a visit and had been granted an honour guard.  Jack booted conscripts lined up in the square accompanied rather comically, by a stray dog that looked like it needed a good feed. The dog lent a kind farcical element to proceedings, and was persistent until the end, refusing to be moved. The guard couldn’t flinch to shoo it and the grandees ignored it.

Allende raised the ire of the foreign multinational mining conglomerates by continuing the nationalisation policies of his predecessor, Eduardo Frei. A socialist, Allende then appeared on the radar of the US government, and its chief spy agency the CIA, no stranger to toppling a government or two.  Conservative elements in the country’s military, particularly those in the Chilean navy, were co-opted into staging a coup of a democratically elected government.

The Chilean air force bombed the Palacio de la Moneda with Allende inside.  In the days that followed the fall of the Allende government, thousands of Chileans were rounded up and, in a foreshadowing of the Guerra Sucia, the Dirty War in Argentina, were “disappeared”. The 1982 Costa Gavras film Missing starring Jack Lemmon as a distraught father searching for his son in post-coup Santiago gives an insight into those grim days.

The new military government was led by General Augusto Pinochet, by all accounts an automaton and a man of mediocre abilities.  There’s a well-known photo of him taken after assuming power, with him seated in full uniform wearing sunglasses, surrounded by his leading henchmen.

To enforce power, he utilised the forces of the military and the notorious secret police, the DINA.  Among their techniques were dogs trained to rape prisoners.  Pinochet embarked on an authoritarian free market economic experiment utilising the policies of Milton Friedman, from the Chicago School of Economics.  It was said that while Chile’s economy was run by that particular Chicago school, the police was run by the Chicago school of Al Capone.

British writer and polemicist, Christopher Hitchens, who haunts American current affairs shows that invite him on to say outrageous things in stylish phrases, attempted to bring Henry Kissinger to trial for alleged criminal culpability for the toppling of Allende’s government.  The lawsuit was filed on the 28th anniversary of the Chilean coup, which happened to be the morning of 11 September 2001.  Given the events of that day, the law suit consequently went into eclipse.

Chileans are a pretty laid back lot until that is, it comes to football. The most popular side is the magnificently named Colo Colo. Club Social y Deportivo Colo Colo to give it the full name is the only Chilean side to win the Copa Libertadores, South America’s version of the Champions League.

Their emblem and name comes from Colo Colo, a Mapuche Indian chief, wo went undefeated by the Spanish conquest. They are the only Chilean club never to have been relegated from the country’s Primera Division.

Cerro San Christobal is the second-highest point in Santiago and rises 300 metres above the city, but not high enough to beat the smog. It is topped by a statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a present from the French.  On a Saturday morning I was aghast to see a jogger making the ascent, not doubt accomplishing the unenviable objective of sucking all that carbon monoxide further into the lungs.

My first night in town was spent in a windowless room in a high rise. Thereafter I moved into a budget hotel housed in a colonial house off the Alameda. It was a surprisingly large room dominated by a high ceiling. I was awoken in the morning by the cast and crew of a television commercial for ice cream.

Chilean women in the centre of town wear flesh-coloured stockings, that being for northern Europeans, whereas they’re physically more akin to southern Europeans. They are short of stature with black hair and eyes, and have dazzling smiles.

Restaurants specialize with the meal of the day, often two or three courses, and in the side streets these can be had for a reasonable sum.  The only place you’re guaranteed an audience in English is in a travel agents or the international section of a bank.

Like the rest of Latin America, survival Spanish is a must, but I reckon the guide books are a little harsh on Santiago.