Chile: The Other 9/11 is the title of a program made by the BBC last year. But maybe it should be the other way around?
This short film by Ken Loach (made in 2002) is narrated by a Chilean refugee who addresses family members of those killed on 9/11/2001, on another Tuesday, Sept 11. Maybe you know that this date also has grim meaning for Chile and all of Latin America because it was Tuesday, Sept 11, 1973 that Gen Pinochet and the armed forces of Chile, with the active support of U.S. president Nixon, Sec. of State Henry Kissinger, and the CIA and the School of the Americas, seized power by bombing the presidential palace, assassinating the democratically elected head-of-state Salvador Allende, and rounding up and torturing, killing, and disappearing thousands of people, Chileans and others. At least 30,000 were killed by the regime-and many, many more were tortured, exiled, or lived in fear for decades. The fact that Pinochet is now dead has not ended the divisions in Chile.
The impact of this event on all of Latin America was as devastating as 9/11 has been to us in the U.S.A. and to the world. As Pres. Bush says in the film, "On September the 11th, enemies of freedom committed an act of war against our country, and night fell on a different world, a world in which freedom itself is under attack." Those words have a terrible resonance for those of us who remember the responsibility the U.S. had in supporting the dictatorships and savage repression in Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, and the countries of Central America in the 80s. So while I remember and mourn with everyone the events of 8 years ago in 2001, I cannot forget, I must not forget, the legacy of suffering of that first "martes 11 de septiembre."
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