September 11th, 1973

September 11th is a pretty monumental day in Chile as it is in the US. It's the day in 1973 when there was a successful military coup against the democratically elected President Allende. This began the 18 year long Pinochet regime. If you ask a Chilean about Pinochet you are sure to get mixed results. Although most will acknowledge the human rights abuses, some won't. A number also won't completely cast him off as his economic policies brought Chile to be the modernized economically stable country it is today.

There are protests every year on September 11th. They occur for a number of reasons. Some people want the human rights abuses to be acknowledged and perpetrators to be prosecuted, others are protesting foreign involvement in Chilean politics, others their current disputes with the government.

There shouldn't be any sort of major incidents. Occasionally the protestors are sprayed with tear gas when things get rowdy. The protests occur in the center of Santiago. The University I'm attending is about a mile away and to ensure nothing happens we only have class on Friday morning and at a location farther away from the center of the city. We also leave for the North at 4 am Saturday morning so none of us will be going out on the town Friday night. I just wanted to let you all know I'll be completely fine and our program is taking extra precautions.

Here's a good quote to show how the two events on September 11th compare:

"So, let’s imagine how [the September 11th attacks] could have been worse for example. Suppose that on September 11, Al-Qaeda had bombed the White House and killed the President, instituted a murderous, brutal regime which killed maybe 50,000 to 100,000 people and tortured about 700,000, set up a major international terrorist center in Washington, which was overthrowing governments all over the world, and installing brutal vicious neo-Nazi dictatorships, assassinating people. Suppose he called in a bunch of economists, let’s call them the 'Kandahar Boys' to run the American economy, who within a couple of years had driven the economy into one of the worst collapses of its history. Suppose this had happened. That would have been worse than 9/11, right? But it did happen. And it happened on 9/11. That happened on September 11, 1973 in Chile. The only thing you have to change is this per capita equivalence, which is the right way to look at it. Well, did that change the world? Yeah, it did but not from our point of view, in fact, who even knows about it? Incidentally, just to finish, because we [the U.S.] were responsible for that one." — Noam Chomsky.

*Note the economic collapse mentioned is true, but it was a total overhaul of the system to institute an open economy that has boomed in the last 15 years.

**Also, today Chile is considered to be the most stable country (economically and politically) in Latin America.

On a far less serious note: I'm off to the mall with some friends. We read over the itinerary for our trip to the desert and discovered that the list of things to pack read: heavy winter coat, gloves, hat, shorts, sandals, bathing suit. Because of the lack of water the desert's temperature is below freezing at night and hot during the day. I'm off to get something to wear under my jeans for our 4 am hike to see some geysers.

Bueno Bye!