Evandro Teixeira. Chile 1973

 

After the presidential palace was taken, the next target was the Chilean people. On the day of the coup, every leftist, every student activist, suspected public servant, and Allende partisan that the military found was detained and transported in trucks that roamed the city. It didn’t matter if they were men or women, young or old. They piled people into vehicles and then threw them ominously into the National Stadium, where the stands soon became crowded with terrorized prisoners. The military was occupying all of Chile, not just the government or a few blocks in downtown Santiago. The Junta was a way of life in which it was not tolerated to be leftist or sometimes to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Many of the prisoners from La Moneda Palace were slain in the following days; and hundreds more were tortured.

Ricardo Lagos

Así lo vivimos — La vía chilena a la democracia Santiago: Taurus, 2012, p. 37.