I arrived in Chile as a missionary just three years after the coup d’etat that removed the first freely elected socialist leader in the Western Hemisphere and replaced him with the military dictator Augusto Pinochet. Even three years later, it was still very different from what I was use to in the USA. They were under martial law and there was a curfew (toque de queda) every night from midnight to early morning. In downtown Concepcion, one could still see big bullet holes in the side of a building left over from fighting during the coup.
The police were a branch of the armed forces (Carabineros), dressed like the military, carried Uzi-type machine guns, and drove in jeeps with 50 cal machine guns mounted in the back. While this took some getting use to, after a few months it seems normal. Several times kids would yell “CIA” to us as we walked. I didn’t understand why until years later when I read of the CIA’s complicity in the coup.
So while the military Junta that ran the country seemed pretty stable, there was always the chance that it could become unstable, and we missionaries could be in danger. In July of 1977 we received a letter from the Mission President. It said that “we never know when there might be an emergency of natural or other causes” and that we should have an emergency plan. It also gave us code words that the mission office would use to convey what we were to do in an emergency. They were
“Keep the books”: We were to stay in our houses and not leave for any reason.
“Pack the books”: We were to pack our bags, and be ready to leave when given the commend
“Sell the books to the zone” We were to go to the Zone Leaders house, and stay there.
“Sell the books to the mission” We were to get the mission office immediately.
There was talk among the missionaries that there use to be another code word used right after the coup. It was “Burn the books”. When this was was received, the missionaries were to get to anyplace safe, like the mountains and just hang out. This was cool stuff for 19 year old kids! There was endless talk among the missionaries on how we would get to the mission office (sometimes 4-5 hours away in a train), or better yet what we’d do if we had to “burn the books”.
As you know nothing happened, we never did anything with our “books” except try to get investigators to read the BofM. Did any of you go to missions with emergency plans? What were your code words?
Wheat & Tares 
My companion and I were walking down the street of a South Korean town when we saw a US military vehicle with a loudspeaker. “All military personnel return to base, this is not a drill.” I stopped the jeep and asked what was going on. “You better blankity-blank get back to the base now!”. “We’re missionaries, not airmen.” “They killed an American officer on the DMZ and there’s going to be war.”
We called the base and the base commander told us that if war broke out to come to the base, they would sware us into the military and we could fight too.
I called the mission president and were told to “prepare the books”.
I served in Guatemala in the early 90s at the end of their civil war. There was an attempted “self coup” during my time there and a few months before I arrived gringo missionaries from I think Honduras were all evacuated to Guate after weeks of not leaving their apartments. Central America was still very unstable.
Only once did I feel endangered by potential civil unrest. During my mission a couple of Peace Corps volunteers were murdered for supposedly kidnapping children and I had people run from me and scream at me to stay aware from their children. It was a little exciting but mostly scary. Only about 20% of missionaries had access to phones so we had no code words because we had no way of reliably getting messages. Funny but true story. I was in remote Guatemala and it took less time for us to find out that BYU beat Notre Dame than finding out President Benson died.
We had pretty much the same code words. The “pack the books” which meant “prepare a small bag with emergency supplies and be ready to go” and “send the books to (place)” and we were supposed to take whatever we could carry in one arm, presumably the aforementioned bag, and go to the place mentioned in the code phrase. It was expected to be the church, zone leader’s apartment, or mission office. Typically a whole district went to the same chapel, so going to the church would have resulted in a district level muster.
One time some elders decided to play a joke on the sisters in their district, so they called them and told them to send the books. Not cool, IMO. The sisters hadn’t read the mission manual that explained that whole thing, so at first they were just confused. eventually they found the code phrase, may be with some hints from the elders. But I think they eventually figured out what it meant, but the elders had forgotten to tell them where to send the books to.
The closest I got to any of that was serving in Europe during 9/11. We had a fairly substantial population of Muslim refugees in our area. The day of 9/11 we were allowed to stop all missionary work and watch the news at the home of anyone who would allow us. The day after we were told to stay indoors until President assessed the situation. Things remained fairly calm. The only thing that really changed is that more Muslims did seem to be more bold in what they said to us (the only person who threatened my life during my two years was Muslim), and our teaching guidelines for Muslims changed drastically, mainly with regards for their safety. Code phrases could have been fun though.
Slightly unrelated but related to another part of the OP, I think the idea that missionaries were CIA was fairly common around that time. My dad and uncles served around the world around that same time and would get similar statements from other people. I think it’s somewhat less pervasive today.
Interestingly enough, my dad interviewed an ex-military officer and former member of the Church who had left the church when he supposedly found out that the Church knowingly allows the CIA to pose as missionaries. Although I find that unlikely, I have no real problem with it given certain circumstances. This guy, however, maintained that the CIA starts this missionary “infiltration” by first posing as potential new converts and then make their way all the way up. I’m doubtful even the CIA has patience for that.
“Dear Journal, Elder Richins from Virginia is quickly becoming one of my more eccentric companions. We stopped by a house across the street and down slightly from our new apartment, but they weren’t interested. Still, Richins insists on watching them out the window with his pair of binoculars. I didn’t even know binoculars were approved mission material, but I guess he must really care about them.”
We got the CIA thing even in Michigan (1979-1981), I guess because of the suits and trench coats.
One evening in Ann Arbor, we saw a knot of toughs walking towards us. They had spotted us and were making a plan.
I carried a pocket planner in my inside suit pocket. It was about 6” long and 3” wide. I reached inside my jacket and wiggled the top of the planner which made the bottom move 6” down. It had the desired effect: they thought I had a gun in a shoulder holster and the Red Sea parted and we passed by unscathed.
Another similar situation, I heard one of the group say, “We better not. You never know what they got under those coats.”
Serving in northern Taiwan in the late 1970s, we were confronted with a lot of political tensions. Nixon had visited China in 1972, and it was only a matter of time before the US switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan (Republic of China) to Mainland China (PRC). Jimmy Carter’s Secretary of State Cyrus Vance visited Beijing several times; Taiwan and its people correctly interpreted this as an existential threat to its future. The missionary force was 90 percent American and Caucasian, and everyone wanted to talk politics; why is the US doing this to Taiwan? We had been strictly instructed to stay off politics and to reply that we even though we were Americans, we were representing our church, and not our country. It didn’t cut much ice. There was a lot of anger.
When the US de-recognized Taiwan in late November/early December 1978, there were riots and mobs attacked Caucasians, who were (sometimes falsely) assumed to be Americans. We were ordered to spend an entire week in our apartments, and went crazy. The Mission Office staff picked us up in the mission van. Just showed up unannounced , and we went and held all-day volleyball marathons in the STake Center, that were fun and wore us out. Meals were ordered in by the Mission, because we weren’t supposed to go out.
The same thing happened several weeks later, when US Undersecretary of State Warren Christopher flew to Taiwan to handle the practical aspects of derecognition. “Spontaneous demonstrators” equipped with portable toilets and other conveniences attacked his motorcade on the way from the airport onto the city, and there was another week of mass unrest, and back we went into the apartments for a second week, punctuated by lots of volleyball.
We had no “burn the book” codes, and our apartments had no phones. It was a tense time. The unrest affected the work; baptisms tanked for a while.
I was in Venezuela from 1975 to 1977. Similar situation. My companion and I were arrested for being CIA spies. Spent some time in a secret prison without any outside contact. Missing elders resulted in some tense days for the mission president. An influential member heard two spies had been arrested and finally got us released on his reputation.
“ Antagonisms culminated on Sept. 11, 1973, with Auguste Pinochet leading a military coup that toppled Allende’s government. Pinochet then ushered in 15 years of repression during which he systematically eliminated his enemies through abduction, torture and execution. Catholic bishops spoke out strongly against the abuses and were soundly punished by the dictator.
“This was the height of the Cold War and Mormon leaders lined up behind Pinochet, whom they saw as an opponent of Communism.
“LDS President Spencer W. Kimball gave the dictator a copy of the Book of Mormon and called him, ‘one of the great leaders of Latin America.’
“Robert Wells, a Mormon executive assigned to the South America in the 1970s to establish friendly relations with conservative governments, reportedly said the coup was an ‘an act that served the purpose of the Lord.’”
By Peggy Fletcher Stack
The Salt Lake Tribune
April 1 2006
P – gutted by this. I hope someone, somewhere, has since searched their soul and found it wanting…
Agreed, wayfarer. Then, of course, NPR this morning on the way to work, Mitchell & Jesson, the LDS psychologists who developed the CIA “enhanced interrogation techniques” (surely one of the great euphemisms of all time) soon to testify in Guantanamo. Shortly after their involvement became known years ago, Jesson was actually called as Bishop. He wisely declined, as I recall.
P, I met Elder Wells several times. He was the 70 over Chile and Argentina. I had some one on one time with him while I was Zone leader. Also I was in Chile when Kimball visited, and met with Pinochet.
Interesting, Elder Wells daughter, Sharlene Wells, was Miss America 1985, the year after Vanessa Williams resigned due to nude photos. They went the complete other way and picked the squeaky clean girl from Utah! I met Sharlene on one of her fathers visits when she was 13.
This issue of the Church’s relations with the Pinochet regime has long interested me. Can any of our commenters recommend books/ articles for further reading on this subject, especially an analysis of benefits and negatives that resulted? Thanks in advance!
No code words, but in Maryland, near D.C., in 2002 we were under lockdown for several days when the “sniper” was on the loose. A set of sister missionaries in a neighboring area were only yards away from one shooting and were among the first to reach the victim as she died. Those were eerie days.
I was in the LTM when the golpe militar happened. My departure was delayed a few weeks and then I landed in Santiago. The airport was deserted except for deplaning passengers and many very young military men holding machine guns and positioned behind sandbags with more machine guns. There were bullet holes in some of the walls of the airport buildings. The day of our arrival coincided with the anniversary of Allende’s election and there was a 6pm curfew that night. During the next 22 months I served in several cities in the middle and south of Chile, including first in Concepcion in the days immediately following the golpe where the Marxist/Socialist factions were particularly strong and active.
I recount this because the Chile that I read about 40+ years later in news stories, Wikipedia entries and blog comments hardly resembles the place I lived in back then. I get the feeling that people like p and the authors of the Wikipedia article who wrote about a repressive regime imagine something like the America portrayed in The Man in the High Castle or the Nazi Germany portrayed in countless WWII movies, ie a police state where violent enforcers insert themselves into every part of people’s lives, where people live in daily fear and cower helplessly under the repressive jackboots of the enforcers, afraid to live a normal life.
I’m here to tell you that wasn’t the case. Life was remarkably normal everywhere I went, even in those early days right after the revolution in the areas that gave the greatest support to Allende and his government. People went where ever they wanted to go, they said what they wanted to say, including talking about what had happened, both pro and con, in public, in private and in the newspapers. People weren’t cowering in fear, or looking over their shoulders, afraid of what their oppressors might hear them say or see them doing. Public life was remarkably free and open, as was private life.
This is not to say that I, as a young, naive and callow 19 year old knew everything that was going on, of course I didn’t. This is not to say that there weren’t terrible things going on that I had no knowledge of, of course there were. I’m only speaking to that image of a dreary 1984 type society that repressed speech and action and normal life that seems to be the standard trope when speaking about Chile in the Pinochet era. It wasn’t that at all.
I was serving in Korea when Park Chung Hee was assassinated. No code words, but we were ordered to stay in our apartments for a while, until things calmed down. Before the assassination the country had its nightly curfews, and police carried whistles and sidearms. After the assassination there were tanks sitting in major intersections, and the sidearms were now rifles instead of handguns. I was a contestant in a Korean speech contest for foreigners, and so got permission to go downtown to where the contest was. It was both very cool and very frightening at the same time.
We had the same code words in our mission and they were in the front of our area book. There were alot of demonstrations in Athens and we often got caught up in them.
But years later there were riots in Athens, I imagine the books were asked to be packed.
We had the same code words in our mission and they were in the front of our area book. There were alot of demonstrations in Athens and we often got caught up in them.
But years later there were riots in Athens, I imagine the books were asked to be packed.
We had the same code words in Bulgaria (95-97). We never actually got the calls, but we were locked down for about a month due to nationwide protests. We later found out that the Peace Corps in our areas were keeping a close eye on us… If we left, they were going to be right behind us. Rumor had it that if the striked had lasted another week we would have been evacuated.