A pall of tear gas hung over Santiago last week. Soldiers toting submachine guns stood on nearly every street corner, and enforced a midnight-to-dawn curfew. Half the city seemed out on strike —truckers, taxi owners, and even a majority of doctors, dentists, lawyers, engineers, pharmacists and maritime pilots. In a television appeal, beleaguered President Salvador Allende Gossens declared that the country was on "the brink of civil war."
That was probably an exaggeration, though there was no doubt that Allende's regime was facing the gravest crisis since he took power two years...
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