The 1973 Chilean coup d’état is recalled as the moment when Augusto Pinochet ordered the bombing of La Moneda, Chile’s presidential palace, and as the political rupture whose coercive legacy remains present in the novel’s 1986 Santiago. Its significance lies not only in the remembered military action but in the contrast between Pinochet’s self-justifying account of the coup and the ordinary people living amid dictatorship, protest, and armed repression.

The Coup in Pinochet’s Recollection

While riding in a motorcade, Pinochet considers the route through the Cajón del Maipo and the narrow gorge where only one car could pass. The road’s height and constriction recall the first sensation he remembers having in September 1973: he had given the order for Hawker Hunters to bomb La Moneda. He was not at the palace but in Peñalolén, in the hills above Santiago, directing the operation from a command room. His memory presents the decision as a test he had passed without hesitation.

Pinochet’s recollection is framed by the present journey and by his contempt for the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front, whom he dismisses as students pretending to be guerrillas. He also rejects poetry and ridicules the idea of a Communist poet becoming president. The association between those remarks and his memory of the bombing reveals how his political self-image depends on casting opponents as weak, unserious, or unfit to govern.

A Ruler’s Account of Legitimacy

Pinochet remembers asking, in effect, whether his opponents expected him to hesitate or whether the army would stand aside while the country became, in his view, disorderly. He interprets the coup as an action taken to restore order, not as a seizure of power requiring regret. He then credits God and the Virgen del Carmen with supporting what he calls his historic action, and treats Chile’s apparent prosperity as confirmation that the decision was right.

The novel sets this confident retrospective justification against evidence of the regime’s coercive reach. In the 1986 setting, news reports arrests and injuries during student unrest; police confront demonstrators; and, after an attack on Pinochet’s motorcade, soldiers occupy Santiago, search homes and neighborhoods, and detain people on suspicion. These later scenes do not recount the coup itself, but show the continuing political world through which its consequences are experienced.

The Coup’s Continuing Presence in Daily Life

For residents of Santiago, political violence is not confined to official speeches or military operations. It enters daily life through radio bulletins, neighborhood discussion, demonstrations, and the danger of moving through the city. The Queen of the Corner, who initially prefers old songs to distressing political broadcasts, becomes increasingly affected by reports of arrests and the testimony of families seeking justice for detained and disappeared relatives. Her changing response shows how state repression gradually makes the political intimate, even for someone who had tried to keep it at a distance.

The coup’s legacy is also reflected in the contrast between Pinochet’s movement through the city under armed protection and the vulnerability of civilians subjected to military searches and curfew conditions. The novel’s focus shifts between the dictator’s private memories and the precarious lives of people below his level of power. In that structure, the 1973 bombing of La Moneda remains more than a recalled military episode: it is the origin point of a political order whose force is still visible in the fear and resistance of 1986 Santiago.