9-11-73

Today marks the fortieth anniversary of the military coup that ended the attempt to turn Chile into a Castro-ite dictatorship that Salvador Allende Gossens preferred. As Alberto Fuguet said, Pinochet changed Chile for the better, and that's the dirty little secret; the right wing won, and they turned out to be not so bad.

Unfortunately, some Chileans have forgotten nothing, and learned nothing;

Chile is a country divided, one whose citizens often disagree on the best way to deal with their past. There are those who want to move on and look forward, and others who think society cannot reconstruct itself until it acknowledges what happened on Sept. 11, 1973.

Which was that an overwhelming majority of Chileans wanted Allende removed from office. The Chilean Chamber of Deputies had voted, 81-47, to remove him as President. When Allende made a defiant radio broadcast saying, over my dead body, the military, led by Augusto Pinochet, gave him his wish--he ended his life with an AK-47 he'd received as a gift from Fidel Castro. Today, Chile is one of South America's happiest places.

Cuenta tus bendiciones, amigos.