After Allende's "suicide" (1)

"We move like gazelles or the way gazelles move in a tiger's dream."

--Roberto Bolaño, By Night in Chile

Santiago was frightening, one of the few cities where I felt threatened by what I saw on the streets. I wanted an escape route in case the wrong people took an interest in me. And Chile was a place where escape felt impossible.

Here's the thing about cleaning up oil spills under a military regime. Big money is involved and the people with guns always want a piece. I've been crudely threatened, for example, by the Minister of the Five Percent and his big brother, the Minister of the Ten Percent. 

In a banana republic, such as where this extortion played out, you nod your head and catch the next international flight. You may have to buy your way through the border; I suggest crisp hundreds. (And I suggest you not carry a lot of them and especially avoid wearing a money belt if you're flying from Bogota to Mexico City.) But given the base venality that defines a banana republic, you can be gone before the goons arrive to favor you with mandatory hospitality, i.e., jail.

The trick is to get over the border fast into somewhere hospitable. For example I do not suggest fleeing Algeria for Sudan. Escaping Algeria for Morocco, however, is perhaps less convenient but also (probably) less fatal.

And forget about fleeing Algeria using dollars and a flight schedule. Back in the day it was French francs and dinar for an overland driver and expedited consideration at the border. (After my connections developed I could take a fast boat to Marseilles under cover of darkness, assuming certain risks.)

The point is to plan these moves, to lay out your resources for at least a skeletal escape, before you set foot in a place where you'll need them. And everybody I knew in Chile was trying to get out.

Continued...