"We are going to get tough. Those people talking about human rights and all those things must be expelled from the country or locked up. The war against Marxism is on. The war is going to start from our side."
-- General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte
It was a balmy Sunday evening, and General Augusto Pinochet was making the 23-mile trip back to the capital, Santiago, from his weekend retreat at El Melocoton, accompanied by his ten-year-old grandson. The President's armor- plated Mercedes was the fourth in a five-car caravan. Suddenly, an oncoming car pulling a small camping trailer swerved across the road, blocking the presidential motorcade. "Intense firing began," Pinochet later recalled, "with machine guns, rifles and bazookas or possibly rocket launchers and some hand grenades." The barrage, which came both from the trailer and the surrounding hillsides, cut down the two motorcycle riders who led the President's caravan. A rocket hit the second car, which exploded in flames.
Although his vehicle was under heavy machine-gun fire and was rocked by at least one grenade explosion, Pinochet's driver managed to slam the car into reverse, whip around in a U-turn, and speed out of the circle of fire and back to El Melocoton. All but one carload of bodyguards stayed behind to shoot it out with the guerrillas. When the battle was over, five security men were dead and eleven wounded. Despite a widespread manhunt by army units and the paramilitary carabineros, all the attackers, whose number was estimated at between twelve and 40, slipped away.
To assure supporters and enemies alike that he had not been killed, Pinochet made a postmidnight television appearance. With considerable bravado, he described the ambush. "My first reaction was to get out of the car, but then I thought of my grandson at my side and covered his body with mine," he said. He displayed for the viewers a bandaged left hand, the result of a slight wound from flying glass.
The failed assassination attempt represented a dramatically sharp escalation of opposition to Pinochet's repressive regime. Though he is now highly unpopular, even among many conservatives who supported him when he led the military coup that ousted the government of Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens, this was the first attempt to kill the President.
The would-be assassins were suspected of being members of the shadowy Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, which U.S. State Department Spokesman Bernard Kalb described as a "Marxist-Leninist terrorist organization with links to the Chilean Communist Party." An armed leftist insurgency emerged in Chile only three years ago. Last month Chilean authorities claimed to have uncovered a huge arms cache that rebels had smuggled into the northern part of the country. A Washington diplomat says the finding of the weapons, together with the assassination attempt, indicates the leftists have decided "to up the ante."
Within hours of the attack, Pinochet declared a 90-day state of siege that he can extend at will. The decree suspended most civil liberties, gave the regime the right to ban demonstrations, conduct searches and make arrests without warrants, and close down the press and broadcasting stations. Declared Pinochet: "We are in a war between democracy and Marxism."