The horror of 9/11

---

Geo: -33.4691, -70.642

No, not 9/11 in New York City when the twin towers came crashing down, but 9/11/1973 when Chile's own military overthrew their democratically elected government.

We visited a human rights museum in Santiago and were shocked by the horrible stories. On Chile's 9/11 tanks shelled the presidential palace while aircraft dropped bombs. During the attack, President Allende committed suicide, and thus ended Chile's socialist goverment.

During the period between 1973 and 1989 when the military was in power, more than 19,000 people were executed and 24,459, both men and women, imprisioned and tortured in over a thousand locations locations from one end of the country to the other.

The descriptions were so graphic we were sickened by their story and had to leave before we both threw up. Like going through a holocast museum, the atrocities were subhuman--how can a human inflict that kind of treatment on another?

Finally in 1989, after 16 years of Pinochet and his military rule the whole country was in chaos and he stepped down, allowing the return of democracy.

We lived with a woman in La Serena two years ago who was sentenced to prison for reporting a theft by a soldier, but because she was pregnant, she was allowed to have a sort of house arrest where she reported to the authorities weekly. She couldn't leave the country, but she didn't have to be incarcerated.

Later we were told that the US was sympathetic to the overthrow because of their fear that Chile would become another Cuba.

How much did the CIA have to do with this? There are certainly people in Chile who think the CIA did plenty to help Pinochet.

---