Life under Pinochet - Isabel Allende

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Life under Pinochet - Isabel Allende: ‘The day we buried our freedom’

Chilean author Isabel Allende remembers the military coup on 11 September 1973, and how it changed her own life and her country forever.

How did you get the first signs that Augusto Pinochet was staging a military coup against Salvador Allende?People were talking about the possibility for some time, but it was a vague rumour that nobody quite believed. Salvador Allende, however, was convinced that there was a real threat and that the American CIA was behind it. Chile had such a long and solid democratic tradition, that the idea of military intervention was almost unthinkable, so Allende’s fears seemed exaggerated. Certainly nobody thought that Augusto Pinochet would become a traitor. The first news that Pinochet was involved in the coup came on 11 September.

Pablo Neruda was a symbol of the opposition, and his funeral marked the first protest against the military coup. How do you remember that day? Pablo Neruda’s death [on 23 September 1973], which deserved a national day of mourning, was ignored by the dictatorship. His house in Isla Negra had been searched by the military and his house in Santiago was broken into by the security forces during his wake. The word of his funeral got around and people gathered to accompany his remains to the cemetery.

We knew that it was dangerous. The military government tried to make sure that there would be no political demonstrations during the ceremony. But short of shooting everybody it was impossible to stop people from reciting Neruda’s most revolutionary poems or chanting slogans and protest songs, like the music by Victor Jara, who had been tortured and killed in the National Stadium a few days before.

We walked several blocks to the tomb where Neruda’s coffin would be temporarily placed. His wish was to be buried in his house in Isla Negra, looking at the Pacific Ocean, the place he loved the most in this world. At the beginning there were a few of us and we were afraid of the soldiers, but as we walked, more and more people joined in and we started feeling stronger. The mood of the crowd shifted. Somebody began singing, another shouted Neruda’s name, then Allende and Jara… It became very emotional and also scary. The soldiers were anxious, nervous; they didn’t know what to do. I could see their fingers on the triggers, their jaws tense. It was a lovely spring day and as we approached the cemetery people poured in from the adjacent streets, crying, singing, hugging each other.

That day we buried not only the poet, we buried Allende, Jara, and hundreds of other victims, we buried our democracy, and we buried freedom.

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