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The result was a scene of self-aggrandizement that could find no parallel in contemporary Latin America. A huge red-white-and-blue Chilean flag was draped between government office buildings near La Moneda Palace. Beneath it trooped thousands of Chileans, most of them government workers given the day off so they could attend the rally. PINOCHET TODAY, PINOCHET TOMORROW, PINOCHET ALWAYS, proclaimed brightly lettered banners. The general, resplendent in a white summer tunic, stood on a wooden platform flanked by his wife, the other junta members and their wives. The group reviewed the parade for a full seven hours.
As he made plain over and over again last week, Pinochet's brush with death was to him only further proof that he, and he alone, stands between Chile and chaos. Addressing his generals at La Moneda Palace the day after the ambush, he declared: "I am disposed to give my life for the freedom of my country, because if we don't act in that manner we are going to lose our liberty and be shackled to the Russian vehicle, transforming us into a colony in South America." An increasing number of Chileans, from both the left and right, believe that they have already lost their basic liberties to a police state run by a man who sees himself as his nation's savior.