The Original 911: Once de Septiembre in Chile

For most people in the world, September 11 is remembered for the bombing of the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers in 2001. For Chile, however, the memory of that day goes back much farther and much deeper.

On September 11, 1973 Chile’s military forces overthrew the government of President Salvador Allende, the world’s first democratically elected socialist president. The military, led by General Augusto Pinochet, would remain in tight control for the next 17 years.

I wasn’t here on Chile’s Once de Septiembre—nor was I, by the way, in the US for its September 11. I arrived in Chile in 1991, a year after it had returned to democracy, to learn Spanish in preparation for anthropological field work that would take me into the world of the families of the detained and disappeared. My experience with the women who used folklore to protest the disappearance of their loved ones, who danced the Cueca Sola and who sewed patchwork arpilleras will wait for another time.

Today I will concentrate on September 11, 1993, twenty years after the day that changed Chile forever. A day that I was in fact present. The following is the entry from my field notes for that day… as is, without further interpretation or benefit of the 16 years that have passed since that date:

Saturday: 11 de SEPTIEMBRE de 1993: 20 AÑOS DEL GOLPE

What a day! The (in)famous “Once de Septiembre” marked the 20th anniversary of the golpe militar, and there has been a lot of commotion over the event. Things do not feel stable here, although no one believes that there will ever be the possibility of another coupe. There will be presidential elections in November and all the various factions are battling it out in many diverse ways. Pinochet has been doing and saying very strange things, which riles up the left and incites them to violence, which is scorned by the right, and the majority in the middle are rather confused.

I had every intention of participating in the various planned activities for the 11th:

•Ecumenical Liturgy in the San Ignacio church downtown near Los Heroes metro stop and just 1 block off Alameda
•March past La Moneda in homage to Allende, with plans to lay a wreath beneath the window of the room in which he died.
•Romería (March) to Cementerio General up Avenida La Paz
•Memorial Service in Cemetery at Allende’s tomb and ‘Patio 29′

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