Keeble McFarlane

IT'S taken only two years, but the term "9/11" has become firmly embedded in our language as the epitome of wanton disregard for the norms of civilised behaviour, utter ruthlessness, casual brutality and the willingness to sacrifice your own life for a questionable cause. Because of the overwhelming power and reach of the North American news media, that shorthand description of the events of September 11, 2001, was branded into our consciousness much as the logo of a western cattle ranch is burned into the hide of a yearling steer by a cowboy wielding a red-hot iron plucked from the fire. So we were treated, once again on Thursday, to a re-hashing of the horrific scenes of that beautiful September day, to the "hurting up" of a wound still raw under a scab which has not succeeded in softening the effects of that infamous day.

But another set of people were having their own observation of 9/11, only the event they're remembering took place 30 years ago, in a country far to the south. It was on that day, in Santiago, the charming capital city of Chile, that the first freely-elected Marxist president in the Americas died in a military attack on La Moneda, the presidential palace. Salvador Allende Gossens was subjected to the ultimate punishment for his efforts to build a socialist society in a parliamentary democracy. Allende ascribed his socialist beliefs to his experiences as a doctor -- he said he could see a difference between the organs of poor people and the rich, because of diet, access to treatment, and the environments in which they lived.

His efforts went a long way back -- he was first elected to the chamber of deputies in 1937 and served as minister of health for three years. He then graduated to the Senate in 1956, spending 25 years in that chamber. During that time Allende tried, unsuccessfully, on three occasions -- in 1952, 1958 and 1964 -- to become president of Chile. He finally made it in 1970, with the help of a coalition of left-wing parties.

Now, Chile was -- and still is -- one of the most socially-conservative societies in this part of the world. Some 20 years ago, I had a conversation with a Canadian woman on a flight from Santiago to Toronto. She lived in the Chilean capital, and was travelling with a young Chilean companion to visit her family in Canada. She told me that the young woman was most likely appalled at her behaviour in speaking with a strange man in the absence of her husband. So you can understand the relative ease with which the business community, along with the old fogeys (such as General Augusto Pinochet) who ran the military and the social establishment of Chile, could foment vociferous opposition among the middle classes to the reforms Allende tried to introduce. In Jamaica, people block the road when they are upset over something; in Allende's Chile, huge parades -- mainly of women -- took to the streets beating cooking pots with spoons and ladles to signal their discontent with some policy or other.

Then the Americans got into the act. The frosty winds of the Cold War were still blowing strongly and that most enthusiastic of cold warriors, Henry Kissinger, turned loose the CIA and other forces of destabilisation upon the poor Chileans. He remarked that he was saving Chile from the irresponsibility of its people in electing someone such as Allende. The Chile caper was one of the nastier episodes in the history of the CIA. At first, the operatives stimulated dissent and played upon the discomfort conservative people felt about change. And as in the case of the Manley period, not long afterwards, they sowed all manner of discontent, discord and disinformation among the population, and soon the Opposition became a juggernaut Allende was powerless to stop.

His death on September 11, 1973, was just the beginning of a long nightmare for many Chileans. People were herded into football stadiums for interrogation about their activities, and many -- to use a term which came to prominence in that part of the world -- "disappeared". To this day, there are families in Chile who don't know exactly how, where or when their loved one died.

Many Chileans left, migrating to places like Canada, where they weren't regarded with suspicion for supporting Allende. A Chilean refugee from those times even got himself elected as a member of parliament for a constituency in Quebec.

As for the crochety old Pinochet, well, he engineered himself all kinds of legal and constitutional devices to give him immunity. But that didn't stop a bailiff in Britain from handing him a subpoena to appear in court a few years ago to answer charges relating to crimes committed under his command. He won't be tried in any court of law, of course, but as one Chilean exile in Canada put it last week, the very fact that a British police official presented him with those charges was a moral victory for those who suffered.

So this week, while the Americans made very public remembrances of the terrible events of two years ago, Chileans, wherever they are, remembered -- much more quietly -- another disturbing, extremely unpleasant September 11th, when the whole order of their peaceful country was turned on its head.

Trousers in Denim

Cream of the 'Crop'

Cheeky's World