Remembering 11th September

Today I thought we would think back to that other 11th September. The one we don’t mention as much, because there was another one 28 years later. Today it’s been fifty years since the coup in Chile in 1973, killing not just President Allende, but many Chileans and others who had taken refuge in what was a democratic and just country.

I didn’t know much about Chile before Allende came to power, and then after the coup it became ‘my’ cause for protest. I was the right age, and I was learning Spanish at school, and before long that came in useful when the wave of refugees arrived.

Being of an age when it seemed important to keep up with current books I made sure to read Pablo Neruda who had been awarded the Nobel prize two years earlier, and who died soon after the coup, apparently poisoned by the junta. I may have been on the young side for his biography. I found it easier to understand the lyrics of Víctor Jara, the singer and songwriter who was murdered in the stadium. Violeta Parra who wrote and performed songs earlier still was also important. There was much music coming from Chile at the time, and luckily many af the artists were abroad on September 11th, so were able to continue sharing their music with us.

And then, after I touched on this as CultureWitch ten years ago, Chile has been brought closer to the Bookwitch family than I could ever have imagined. For astronomers it’s the place to go to for telescope time, and Daughter travelled there three times, and we learned about killer spiders, guanacos, llamas, alpacas, and vicuñas, not to mention snow during the emergency grade two in August. And there is Rosetta Girl, her Chilean astronomer friend who is now back living there. She visited once, before Covid took over the world and our movements.

But as I said, when I was seventeen I couldn’t have imagined anything like it.