I
t was just last year that I was
hurrying
through
the
Diag,
late for class, when I noticed
hundreds of American flags staked on
the lawns. It took me a few minutes
to remember the day. Sept. 11 — a day
whose significance bears the same
weight on the American consciousness
today as it did in 2001. But with a
symbol that means vastly different
things to different people, how could
an event like Sept. 11 be reduced to the
flying of a few flags on a university
campus?
I was born in Santiago de Chile.
My parents have their own disparate
experiences of Sept.11. For them, this
day is ingrained in a collective and
historical consciousness.
Sept. 11, 1973 was the date of the
military coup that redefined Chilean
politics and society. This was the
beginning of two decades where the
CIA-backed military took over the
country under the mantra of national
reconstruction.
The
following
years would be characterized by
systematic political repression and the
persecution and murder of dissidents.
Every year, the eleventh is a day of
national protests where Chileans of
all generations march in the streets
holding posters demanding answers
for the atrocities that occurred under
the dictatorship that followed and
demanding change for its persistent
political implications. However, not
everyone in Chile sees this day as a day
of pain and anger. Some celebrate Sept.
11 as the day Chile was saved
from the supposed clutches of
communism. General Augusto
Pinochet’s dictatorship, for some,
represents a neoliberal salvation
that propelled Chile into the
modern era. On Chilean soil,
Sept. 11 represents a symbolic
moment where the fracture of its
society is reenacted.
I left Chile before my first
birthday only to return in 2011.
I remember going to El Museo
de la Memoria y Los Derechos
Humanos, or the Museum of
Memory
and
Human
Rights
— a museum that documents
the
brutality
of
Pinochet’s
dictatorship.
I
remember
being 13 and walking down the
dimly lit hallways listening to
testimonies of those who had
survived. I can still hear the
voice of a woman who talked
about being stripped naked and
tied to a metal bed frame as she
was electrocuted by the regime.
I looked away because I couldn’t
bring myself to look at her face,
but when I looked back, I saw
my mother silently crying in the
corner of the room. The silence
was suffocating.
I wonder if here in the United
States this date has come to mark
historical ignorance. We talk
briefly about Sept. 11 in school.
We talk about the tragic loss of
life. We talk about the heroes
of New York City who worked
endlessly to find those trapped in the
rubble of the twin towers. But while
Americans of all political stripes
commemorate the victims and heroes
of 9/11, do we ever really talk about
its aftermath or the subsequent wars?
Unlike in Chile, these consequences
are almost never up for debate. In
effect, does this silence cheapen those
deaths with a patriotic rhetoric about
keeping America safe?
There was a time — and perhaps we
are still in the time — when questioning
those in charge is not the natural order
of a democracy, but rather a blatant
attack on America. To question is to be
anti-patriotic. The fear and sorrow of
2001 has become a fiber of apathy in a
cloth of patriotism. It is a resignation
to let politics run its course.
My own history is marked by the
aftermath of two distinct historical
events. Sept. 11 has become a historic
reflux that won’t go away with a
prescribed dose of patriotism, fear,
or apathy. It comes back as an itch
that demands to be scratched. In
Chile, it erupts time and time again
as anger towards a dictatorship whose
constitution is still the law. On one
side you have mothers holding posters
of their children whose bodies are
likely lost in the desert. On the other
side,
you
have
recently-appointed
government ministers questioning the
validity of El Museo de la Memoria as a
leftist dramatization of history. This is
a tear in the fabric of Chilean history,
a tear that will never fully repair itself.
A world away, in the U.S., resignation
to fear blanketed by a rhetoric of
patriotism has become an excuse for
hate. Did the pain of 9/11 help foster a
narrative that we use today to divide
the citizens of our country? What will
come of the memory of Sept. 11? To
have an identity defined by two critical
moments that share the same date is to
have a day on which you are reminded
on both fronts that history doesn’t just
disappear like the bodies in the sand or
under rubble but that it lingers like a
scar.
2B
Managing Statement Editor:
Brian Kuang
Deputy Editors:
Colin Beresford
Jennifer Meer
Photo Editor:
Amelia Cacchione
Editor in Chief:
Alexa St. John
Managing Editor:
Dayton Hare
Copy Editors:
Elise Laarman
Finntan Storer
Wednesday, September 12, 2018// The Statement
Patriotism: A fabric woven of
anger and fear
statemen
t
THE MICHIGAN DAILY | SEPTEMBER 12, 2018
BY MARTINA VILLALOBOS, COLUMNIST
DESIGN BY CASEY TIN