I don't know if there's something in the air, but since I've been in Chile, two momentous domestic issues have been brought to light. In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet, aided by the CIA, deposed the elected Marxist president, Salvator Allende, who, apparently, subsequently commited suicide with the help of his friend Fidel Castro's AK47 rifle on...wait for it...September 11th, 1973. Neither rifle nor bullets were ever recovered and his family was forbidden from seeing the body. There was never an enquiry into his passing. The day I arrived in Santiago the news channels were full of the story of Allende's remains being exhumed and taken for forensic analysis to determine the real cause of death. The suicide theory has been doubted by many for a long time yet only now are steps being taken to ascertain whether or not he really did top himself or whether Pinochet's mobsters bumped him off. A week later, my old friend Pablo Neruda enters the frame...
Just before going off to visit Neruda's house in Isla Negra I blithely remarked that I knew nothing about him, save for the fact he loved women and died the year Pinochet came to power. What I didn't know was that he was not at death's door in 1973 but, according to friends who saw him a day before he died, a healthy, 69-year-old shagmeister who had, a couple of weeks previously, published a withering tract condemning Pinochet, more or less the day the dictator seized power. The next day he had died of...prostate cancer. Hmmm. The Chilean Communist Party is insisting on an inquest into his death. If this continues, the poor old current Chilean government is going to have its work cut out: there are 725 cases of alleged human rights abuse pending against their former dictator, who died in 2006, having sidestepped, with the help of our 'socialist' Foreign Secretary of the time, Jack Straw, all attempts to bring him to justice. It's just one big fucking game for them, isn't it?
By the way, there is something in the air. It's volcanic ash, and it'd better not prevent me from getting home on Sunday.
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