I came to the No campaign because the parties made a marketing study and I, despite the fact that I had been expelled from television for 5 years by the dictatorship, turned out to be the most reliable person on television, by far. This is what they have told me, I have never seen the survey at all. So, the truth is that when I saw myself there, I felt proud, but as time went by, it started to become an almost unsustainable burden, and at a moment I thought I could not go on. I realized what I was throwing on myself. The hatred of the people of, of almost half of Chile, because half of the country voted in favor of the dictatorship. That is what I remember; oh, and in addition to that, in the yes side, they began to attack me. So one did not know what was going to come in the Yes campaign. So it turned out that it was twice, I think, and very, very obscure, a commercial that I had made, but it was so old that it was not even clear that it was me. And then it happened but it was a, the month was very very heavy. And as I tell in my book, the opposition parties hired me a cab company because they thought it was very dangerous for me to be alone in my car, anything could have happened. So I was picked up by a cab. Once I was picked up by a cab with a very dark-haired driver, one of those shiny faces like a boxer’s, when people get hit a lot they get shiny, I don’t know why. And when we were driving he said to me, “You feel very safe, don’t you?” And I said, “Why?” “With all the political propaganda you are doing”. “Look,” I said, “you just do what you have to do, what you consider your duty”. “Who knows if he’d think the same with a half-dozen pounding him for a while,” he told me. I couldn’t think of an answer. I mean I came up with a couple, witty ones, but I thought, what’s the point? Because I thought about saying, “No more 6? ppss!” But I said, “No, no, no, no, don’t say anything.” So, that was one thing, I don’t remember any others.
One time we went to the movies with my wife, and they play the national song, it seems like it was right on September 18 which is national day, and that was during that, it ended on October 5, and they play the national song and they play it with that verse that the military added, “our brave men…” And everybody was standing with the national song and I sit down. And it was a reaction, and my wife sits down. So she finished the song and I told her, “we better go” especially her being a foreigner. So we stood up and we left.
Well, I had a little house with a garden in the high sector of Santiago towards the mountain range, not very high, but that way. And I went to vote early. My wife didn’t, because she’s Dutch, so she didn’t have the right to vote. She had never registered or anything like that. So it was a normal day. I think maybe we had a, a barbecue or something like that, because we had to wait for the moment when it started to become clear how the issue was going, the plebiscite. There were great doubts that they would respect the result in case it was adverse. There were quite a few doubts about my future in case the “No” side lost. Although they were not a great unknown because I was already marginalized from Chilean television, because I had opposed the dictatorship. And then at about five o’clock in the afternoon, some counts began and there were two counts, actually, there were more, but basically two, that of the government and that of Radio Cooperativa, together with Radio Chilena. It seems to me that they were the opposition radio stations. And it turned out that these two counts did not match, while in the one of Radio Cooperativa, etc. the No immediately began to sound with some advantage. In the government’s, they always won. In all the partial counts that were being made.
At about six o’clock in the evening cars started passing in front of my house, shouting insults. They stopped and shouted. They were boys, boys, probably from well-to-do families of the Chilean upper class who, to their shame, were happy with the dictatorship. Well, then they started to pass by shouting insults. I called, just in case, the agent of the “No” command, someone with whom I understood. I told him, look, this has started to happen and if it gets worse, what do I do? Because I don’t know, I can beat the shit out of them, but I don’t know what’s the right thing to do here. And he gave me a number, he told me, look, if this gets worse, call so-and-so and he will call the police station that was near my house, relatively close, about five blocks away there was a police station. But it didn’t go beyond that. They were just guys who were really angry because this so-and-so was betraying the fatherland. And then we sat down at home to wait for the results, because as the hours went by, the tallies were more complete and there was still this discordance between what the radio was reporting and what the government was reporting. This increased the uncertainty of what was going to happen if it was going to be respected or not, because it was difficult that they did not respect if there was a radio station that was giving that. But on the other hand, one could expect anything from a country under dictatorship. So, the night came and the discordance was total. The man who was giving the government news from the Diego Portales building, which was the seat of government, was that deputy Cardenil, who was a deputy later when democracy returned, so he was a government official and with all impudence he continued to give the government the victory. My wife and I were just listening.
Just in case, since my wife worked at the Dutch embassy, she had talked to the ambassador so that if things got really, really bad, I could jump over the wall and go to the embassy, which was not very far from my house, it was not next door, but it was accessible on foot. It was very funny because when my wife started talking to the ambassador, “look at the plebiscite…” He said, “Tell me no more, I already know. Maybe Don Patricio will come and have a drink of whiskey with me.”
And my eldest daughter could no longer resist what she was seeing and went to the top floor of the house to listen to the radio just because she could not resist seeing that barbarity on television. And suddenly there was a very curious moment when the television started showing cartoons. I said, this is the big one, because it is inexplicable that in the most important vote of the century, because there had been presidential elections, but here something much more important than who was president was being decided, they started to show cartoons. The hour progressed and finally they came from the Ministry of Defense to La Moneda, which, do you know where that is, it is about two blocks where there is a square, so it is an empty space, it is not a street. Matthei, the policeman who was Stange and Merino, the ineffable Merino, come there. And there is a journalist, he approaches Matthei and says, General, I don’t know what, and Matthei says, “For me it is very clear that the No won.” That was the moment. He had already said it and on national TV and radio, and it had been said by a member of the Junta.
Then we went to bed, didn’t we? The next day was more interesting, because we woke up normally, anyway. But around twelve o’clock we started to hear distant screams, but the screams of a crowd. [Imitates screams] I don’t know. So, after a while I went with, with my second daughter, not the oldest, who asked me, “Let’s see, dad, this thing”, what do I know”; “I said yes, but I’m not going to get in there”. They are celebrating, they are going to catch me. So we went in the car, it was a few blocks from my house, about ten blocks, and we saw a crowd in a wide avenue which is eas Condes, or Apoquindo in Santiago, a crowd and trucks and cars and trucks with flags and people celebrating. There were carabineros and they were hugging them because they thought it was like in Portugal, that it seems that the police or the army were giving flowers to the people. The carabineros were very, very close. It was also difficult for them to know what they could do. And my daughter got out and went to see this thing up close. I stayed in the car about two blocks away, thinking that she had won this and we would see what the outcome would be. After a while my daughter came back, we took the car back to the house. Nobody from the Concertación, nobody phoned me. That’s how it was.