excuse Kirchwey of any motive worsenthan excessive goodwill.nTo their credit, not all liberals sharednKirchwey’s politics. For what now appearsnto be a steadily shrinking historicalnmoment between 1945 and, say,n1965, the phrase “liberal anti-Com­nLetter From Chilenby Geoffrey WagnernAmong the LakesnMy advice to anyone who wants to seensome of the most polite people aroundnis to get to Chile soon—before wendeclare war on it or the media level itninto the likeness of a London suburb,nwith a bust of Lenin in every town hall,ntax-funded homes for lesbians, and anveto on golliwog dolls.nMy wife, Colleen, and I were all butnput off from going recently by inflammatorynheadlines, chiefly in the NewnYork Times and Washington Post, tonthe effect that the country was in totalnturmoil, demonstrations in the capitalnconstant, power stations blown upnnightly, and the like. In eight days innand around Santiago and Vina, andnweeks in the lake district to the south,nwe saw none of this. We also had thenpleasure of not hearing a word ofnpolitics there, despite meeting severalnministers and their wives and oncenattending a fairly high-level governmentalnparty at the Bellas Artes museum,nhostessed by the lovely doyenne ofnthe establishment, Nena Ossa. Frankly,nthe first impression any traveler mustnget in Chile is of the really high-gradennature of everyone around. Baggagenhandlers at the airport could well doublenfor doctors on our sit-com TV.nAt a time when the wallpaper journalismnof the West was mounting anmunism” was, for other than Kirchweynliberals, not an oxymoron. From thenperspective of the late 1980’s, however,nit has become all too apparent that thenKirchwey approach to international affairsnhas once again cast its spell overnthe liberal mind. Thirty years ago thisnCORRESPONDENCEnfairly hysterical hate campaign to clawndown Pinochet, who has said he willnstep down for fair elections, Santiagonwas thinly, extremely politely, policednby the Carabinieri, though I suspectnthey don’t take kindly to having Molotovncocktails chucked at them. An1:00-5:00 a.m. curfew created a quietnnight for which everyone seemedngrateful, barring a few nightclub owners.nDuring a changing of the guardnoutside the Moneda, or palace barracks,nI saw U.S. television crews (byntheir beards shall ye know them), obviouslynhostile to the regime, permittednto poke their snouts in everywhere. Asnfor freedom of the press I can only saynthat Hustler was on sale in my hoteln(though it is banned in the Caribbeannisland where I have a home), while anblock away Mariel Hemingway wasnshowing — and showing quite a bit,ntoo—in Star 80. There was some mildnfuss over the expulsion of an Americannjournalist who had filed an account ofnthe police killing of three civilians,nbecause his story was found to be antotal fabrication.nHowever, except for some handsomenoutlying architecture and thenbosky side-streets off Leones, where anregistered girl-watcher can go crazy,nSantiago cannot be called a gracefulncity, though it is certainly not a sad onenlike Lima. What it possesses for bothnEuropean and norteamerieano alike isnan astonishing, forgotten courtesy,nwhile its French-built Metro has tonnn”madame secretary” might haventhought that she had lost her brood andnher battle. Not so today.nJohn C. Chalberg teaches Americannhistory at Normandale CommunitynCollege in Bloomington, Minnesota.nblow the mind of anyone fated to travelnthe New York City subway. No graffitinor litter in the comfortable cars wherenschoolgirls in navy tunics cheerfullynyield their seats to the old. It is alsonincredibly cheap, though not so cheapnas Mexico City’s underground, statensubsidized to the point where a ticketnsells for less than the cost of printing it.nSantiago struck me as a provincialncapital, without the shopping or gastronomynof Buenos Aires. Its wines are,nof course, another matter, Chile beingnvirtually the vineyard of South America.nA bottle of the ubiquitousnUndurrago white, a Rheinwein approximation,ncosts less than one Americanndollar on the restaurant table. Youncan buy it for postage stamps in stores.nChilenos take baths in the stuff. No,nsouthwards lies the glory.nIn 90 comfortable minutes Ladeconwill fly you down to Temuco, wherenyou may rent a yanqui car to be turnednin later at Puerto Montt, lower down.nThe roads here are superlative and,ninterestingly, such is local courtesynthat, if hitchhikers are few, they expectnto be picked up. This Andean lake areanis not only glorious but unexploited,nbarring spots of some of the finestnpowder-base skiing in the world.nAround November there seem to benalmost no tourists at all—liberalismnhas done its work—and the ice-bluenlakes are fringed with snow-cappednvolcanoes, their lower slopes heavynwith fir and southern beach. ThisnJULY 1988137n