O’Higgins Park

This guide to O'Higgins Park in Santiago turns on April 3, 1987, when Pope John Paul II came to this lawn to beatify a young Chilean nun, Teresa de los Andes, in front of a crowd filling the park end to end, under the still-standing dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet. It follows what happened as agitators moved through the crowd and riot police answered with water cannons and tear gas. The guide also traces the ground's earlier life, from a wealthy family's private garden to thirty years of abandonment before it was rebuilt almost overnight for a president.