etc. I did most of my high school years in Santiago, Chile, during the years in which Augusto Pinochet was the dictator. The Chilean people had gotten sick and tired of "Pinoccho" so they started banging pots & pans in the streets and holding violent protests downtown.

One day a couple of buddies and I decided to head down there to see what was going on. We took the subway down there (which was surprisingly still running) one day after school, and when we walked out, it looked like a war zone. The "carabineros" were rounding people up and throwing them into the backs of vans, many of them probably never to be seen again. They were firing water cannons at protestors who were throwing rocks and glasses and all sorts of stuff, and many were wearing bandanas on their faces as protection from the tear gas. We walked around for a few minutes, gawking at the scene, then the tear gas started to hurt my eyes and throat and we started to get scared and decided to bail. They had just closed that subway station, so we ended up having to walk a couple of miles to another subway entrance, sneaking through alleys and side streets to avoid getting caught up in the urban battle.

In retrospect, I could have easily been injured, or rounded up by the cops and thrown in jail, or "disappeared" with my body thrown off a helicopter into the ocean. Very stupid. OTOH, it was a very interesting thing to see, and really drove home for me just how ugly violent dictatorships can be.