El otro 11 de septiembre

[summerless_year]

Today is a weird day downtown, with every new arrival to the office asking, how is it outside? How is it? We are not suddenly preternaturally concerned with the weather. Rather, we are asking about the breatheability and be-ability of the air. Today is a red-letter, pacos (cops) everywhere, teargas kind of day. It's September 11th, Or more

Comments

[clarabr]

Hey, I came here for a light-hearted, funny entry! Just kidding :)

Well, I can't tell you what it's like to be Chilean, either, but I can tell you what it was like to grow up in *a* Latin American dictatorship.

The part about how all your students know the word "disappeared" almost made me cry. Nice post. May we never forget what happened on this continent.

[summerless_year]

thanks. I was very emotional while writing it. I'm thinking of submitting it to Mosaic Minds, as it pretty much represents how I feel about Chile at the moment. A bit of an enigma, really.

[blue_eyed_girl]

Wow ... what an amazing post. Very moving, and I definintely think you should submit it to MM (I was thinking that the entire time I read it).

There are rather a lot of Chileans living here in Sweden and I'm sure this story has plenty to do with how they came to be here. I can't even imagine ...

[summerless_year]

thanks very much. As I value your opinion, thanks even more. I think I'll think about it for a couple of days, see if anything needs to change and then send it over for my shifting spaces article.

[diabla_traviesa]

And I can tell you how my family almost starved to death during Allende's government and how my father was forced to leave his home.
I don't support Pinochet, I can't, but to some of us Allende deserves the same treatment.

Our country was completely divided after 1973 and people like me really want to leave it all behind, but there are some issues that haven't been dealt with, like the glorification of mr. Allende and the extreme amount of lies told by both sides just to justify their actions.

Most of the protests today are just about destruction and not about remembering things so they won't happen again. Chileans don't really know how to move on and that's one of the things that I hate the most about my stupid country

[summerless_year]

Thank you for posting that. It's important to say.

I know that many, many people suffered through Allende's government. I also have the relative insulation of knowing that few, if any Chileans will read this. The symbolism of a freely elected socialist president apparently was far better than the actual application of said government. Like I said in the piece. I don't know what it's like to be Chilean. I wasn't here. I didn't live it, and no one talks about it. At least not to me. And I was half a world away begging my mom for sugar cereal. The disparity of lives lived is what I'm getting at here. I did not mean to offend.

And yeah, Chilean protests just seem wildly destructive. And that damn teargas. What is up with the teargas?

[diabla_traviesa]

I really don't understand why they like to protest so much and why they like to destroy. And the teargas? I only know it's awfully uncomfortable.

[summerless_year]

I think it's the lack of clear personal motivation and plan that makes for the protests. Siempre la misma huea!