The first time I went to Chile, while General Pinochet was still under arrest in Britain, it seemed wise while I was in Santiago to read books about him discreetly. Early on the hot, clear summer mornings, I would cross the screeching road outside my hotel, pass through an elaborate wrought-iron gate, and walk up Cerro Santa Lucia, a steep wooded hill in the centre of the capital. At every entrance to the park there was a desk and attendant where pedestrians were required to sign a visitors' book, in the thorough manner of Chilean officialdom, democratic and otherwise. I would feel a faint prickle of anxiety about providing my full name and country of origin while a casually-dressed man on a worn chair paid the columns of signatures varying degrees of attention. But then I would be in, with my zipped-tight rucksack of anti-Pinochet polemics: the trees would close over the ascending path, the path would split into a maze of loops and shady dead-ends, and ornamental terraces and battlements would open out in all directions, populated only bygardeners.

LRB 25 January 2001 | PDF Download