Fiftieth anniversary

It is exactly 50 years since September 11, 1973, when the United States government helped topple and kill the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, in order to install a dictator more to its liking.

In his 17-year rule, Augusto Pinochet had over 3,000 of his countryfolk murdered and tens of thousands more tortured, and the specter of Chile was felt wherever the CIA and US flexed their muscles, as they often did, during those decades. I wonder what Chile, South America, Latin America, and the United States’s relationship with these countries would be like today if not for that coup.

Some years–those ending in a 1, especially–I think a lot about September 11, 2001. And some years, that earlier 9/11 dominates my thoughts.