One handshake, refused, on camera, in front of the man who ran the country.
What Santiago was in 1974
The coup came in September 1973. The Estadio Nacional, the home of Chilean football, was converted into a detention centre within days. Thousands of prisoners passed through it. People were interrogated and tortured in the dressing rooms and the cycling track area. Bodies were recovered.
This is not background colour. It is the building the national team played in.
The send off
Chile qualified for the 1974 World Cup, and before departure the squad was presented to Augusto Pinochet in an official ceremony. He walked the line shaking hands while the cameras filmed.
Carlos Caszely, the centre forward, did not put his hand out.
Who he was
Caszely was twenty-four and the most recognisable footballer in Chile, a Colo-Colo forward and a full international. He came from a family of the left. His mother, Olga Garrido, had been detained by the DINA and tortured.
He had, in other words, both the visibility that made refusal dangerous and the personal reason that made it unavoidable.
The long version
What separates this from a single dramatic gesture is that he never walked it back. He criticised the regime publicly while it was in power, at a time when very few well known Chileans would.
In 1988, when Pinochet put his rule to a referendum expecting to win, Caszely appeared in the No campaign's television broadcasts. His mother appeared too, and described what had been done to her, on national television, to a country that had spent fifteen years not being told.
The No vote won with about 56 per cent. The dictatorship ended.
Why it goes on a wall
Because the sport is full of athletes who found their principles after retirement, when the cost had gone. This one was twenty-four, at the start of his career, in a country where people were disappearing, and he made the choice in the two seconds it takes for a hand to be offered.
The general put out his hand and the striker left it there.