The Centurions of Santiago

Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay—now Chile. One can no longer breathe on our continent. Latin America has become a pyramid of ruined ideas and victims’ bones. At the top, a tribunal of uniformed and bemedaled pygmies legislates, excommunicates, and executes nonbelievers. All the while, Nixon washes the stains of Watergate off his hands in the bowl that Kissinger holds for him, Brezhnev opens new psychiatric hospitals for incurable dissidents, Chou En-lai woos Pompidou in Peking and alerts Wes...