Koen Wessing, a young Dutch photographer, flew to Santiago 50 years ago and showed the world what General Pinochet’s rule would mean for the country
hen news broke of the overthrow of Salvador Allende’s elected government in Chile, 50 years ago this month, the Dutch photojournalist Koen Wessing took the first plane to Santiago. He was one of the few journalists on the ground to witness the mass arrests of Allende supporters and book burnings in the aftermath of General Augusto Pinochet’s CIA-backed coup. This picture shows groups of Allende supporters forced at gunpoint to remove democracy slogans from city walls.
Wessing was 31 when he went to Chile. He had become famous in the Netherlands during the student riots of 1969 when he evaded a police cordon around the University of Amsterdam by creating a high footbridge between two buildings to make sure his film of the protests got out. Fearing the seizure of cameras in Chile, he employed similar determination and cunning to get his story to the world, enlisting the help of an air hostess to smuggle his film back to newspapers in Europe.
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