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Copyright © 2006 Ocean Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN: 978-0-9872283-7-6 (e-book)
Library of Congress Catalog Card No: 2005938210
Second edition first printed 2006
Reprinted 2016
Published in Spanish as Chile: el otro 11 de septiembre, ISBN: 978-1-920888-81-7
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CONTENTS
Introduction Pilar Aguilera and Ricardo Fredes
Ariel Dorfman The Last September 11
Pablo Neruda I Begin by Invoking Walt Whitman
Salvador Allende Last Words Transmitted by Radio Magallanes, September 11, 1973
Joan Jara The Coup
Joan Jara An Unfinished Song
Víctor Jara Estadio Chile
Beatriz Allende “We Never Saw Him Hesitate,” September 28, 1973
Matilde Neruda and Joan Jara Death of a Poet
Pablo Neruda Portrait of the Man
Fidel Castro On the Coup in Chile
Chronology Chile 1970-73
Resources
“Llegó volando el cuervo sobre mi suelo, para sembrar las ruinas y el desconsuelo.”
—Patricio Manns
Pilar Aguilera and Ricardo Fredes
On September 11, 1973, we awoke to a country in turmoil. What many people had predicted was actually happening: the armed forces of Chile were staging a coup d’état to overthrow democratically elected President Salvador Allende. We heard that the Moneda Presidential Palace was being bombed, but very little information was broadcast over the radio; instead there were mainly military communiqués and military marches being played.
On the evening of September 13, a group of soldiers, led by a captain, came to our home and proceeded to search for weapons. When they didn’t find any, they took my father away with them. They also took our books about socialism or left politics, and we found out afterward that such books had been burned. About an hour later they returned for my older brother and he was taken, beaten up and brought back to us. The captain said to my mother, “Here’s your son—we brought him back so he can work for you, because we executed your husband.”
About two months later, a gaunt man walked into Ricardo Fredes’ home. No one recognized him at first. Hector “Tito” Fredes, Ricardo’s father, had been held in one of the many concentration camps set up by the military. For many, such experiences marked the beginning of a long period of suffering, torture, anxiety and exile, part of the darkest chapter in Chilean history.
When they speak of the bombing of La Moneda Palace… you should know that this act is the equivalent of bombing the New York Public Library at 42nd Street and Fifth Avenue during the work day.
This was how, one year after the coup, José Yglesias tried to explain to US citizens the impact of the terror experienced by ordinary Chileans that day in 1973. The idea of an “other” September 11 must seem incredible to some. But when Chileans saw the photos of New Yorkers holding up images of missing loved ones after the September 11 attacks, the scene was frighteningly familiar, and as Ariel Dorfman commented: “During the last 28 years, September 11 has been a date of mourning, for me and millions of others.”
This book reclaims September 11, not only for the sake of history but also for the thousands of dreams that were shattered on the morning of September 11, 1973, and for those for whom, as Dorfman recalled, “the world [would] never be the same again.” The horror, confusion and seemingly endless terror in both cases are poignant. In Chile the nightmare continued for 17 years, and as one young Chilean remarked a year after the coup, “It took me a long time to realize that what was happening was for real and not a nightmare.”
Ariel Dorfman powerfully links the two September 11s, and provides a backdrop for the rest of the pieces contained in this book. Pablo Neruda, whose poetry has often been stripped of its politics by the mainstream, demands judgment of “those hands stained by the dead he killed with his terror,” in his poem from “A Call for the Destruction of Nixon and Praise for the Chilean Revolution.”
The intensity of the writings included in this book are an evocative and timely reminder that the horror visited upon the Chilean people was largely the result of continuous US involvement in our country, which climaxed during the years of Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government (1970-73). James Cockcroft’s chronology alone should serve as a damning indictment of US and CIA involvement in Chile from the 1960s right up to the coup. Also included in this book is Fidel Castro’s speech just days after the coup, which provides an uncompromising and powerful political analysis of events leading up to the coup.
This book also gives a voice to those who, from the very beginning, denounced the fascist nature of the Chilean and US forces eventually involved in the coup. Víctor Jara, the well-known Chilean composer and singer, wrote these lines while under detention in the infamous National Stadium where he was brutally executed:
What horror the face of fascism creates!
They carry out their plans with knife-like precision.