Moneda in Santiago, Chile

This picture of me at the Moneda in chile was taken by a visitor also to the Presidential palace of Chile last January 2010.
In September 11th, 1973, this was occupied by the Socialist President Salvadore Allende.
There were a lot of problems in the country with strikes and people were not contented.
Food was also scarce as well.

The Presiedential palace was bombed around 8 in the morning. I at the time of this event was at our parish La Asuncion in Talcahuano.
I was asked by Father Manuel Mejia to go and pick up our cook. who lived in Huanpencillo
which was our neighboring Maryknoll parish of San Miguel (St. Michael) Father Richarfd Smith was in charged of the parish at the time.

At this time I had a very nice black beard which was closely cut and some people thought I looked like the famous Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn. In fact the Director of the North America language school in Concepcion, Chile thought I was a spy for the United States Government which I was not. I was teaching English as a second language there as well as at our own school of La Asuncion and also for workers at the American factory called Amoco which made steel ball bearings.

Well anyway, getting back to this adventure on traveling on September 11th to pick up our house cook, after being stopped many times on the road. I had to get out put my hands on top of the truck and give them my name and identifiction number. Everyone carries a card with name and number for identificatioin, here in Bolivia as well. It is like a license or a Social security card.

When I finally reached the apartment of Maria, she told me that there was a military take over by the Army general Pinochet. She would not be returning with me.
So she went with me to our parish house of San Miguel. I was deeply shaken at the time and I spent sometime in the bathroom. As you can imagine I was a nervous wreck.

Finally Father Manuel Mejia came by another road to pick me up and to bring me back to the parish La Asuncion.
On the television and radio the new Military government which was a dictatorship gave a list of restrictions that had to be observed by everyone.

The military even came to our school and told all the teaching staff on what we could teach and not to teach. There was a complete change.

I remember being in Concepcion, the city next to Talcahuano and all types of items that were missiing showed up in trucks, meat, toilet paper, soap, cigarettes and many other items suddenly appeared. It was amazing how so much was kept out of existence. Creating a lot of problems for the people at the time with these ratiions of food and supplies.

However there was also a curfew as well which was retrictions of movment at night. You had to get special permission to travel at night by the military or the police. And a light had to be kept on in the car.

to be continued..