I love my major, and I fucking love my capstone professor.

He walked in today completely ignorant of today’s date. When he asked a student, the student seemed to reprimand him for not knowing that today was that oh-so-dreaded 9/11. He stared at us for a few seconds and talked about how sad the events where eleven years ago.

Then he continued, “Let us not remain ignorant. This is a Human Rights in Latin America course. We have a more important event to remember as 9/11. A 9/11 that is often casted in the shadows and, even if talked about at all, is always called the ‘other 9/11’. Let us talk about Chile.”

We ended up having a 45 minute discussion based solely on Chile and on the events. The horrid tortures and disappearances, and the US involvement in the acts.

It was an amazing, civilized conversation that just made me love my field even more. He kept repeating that working for and pro human rights was not an easy thing to do—you see horrible things, disturbing things that you need to be prepared for them to keep you up at night, even put you in the way of danger. But, god am I ready. Am I motivated to do this for the rest of my life.

I’m not shunning nor denying the horrible events that went on in New York City eleven years ago today. I am not condemning those who remember this day and pay their respects to the victims and their families. I simply feel the need to remember other historical occurrences and contexts—the vicious and ironic cycle of history and hegemonies. 

Today I also pay tributes to those fallen in the arms of Augusto Pinochet and the US-led military coup that persisted and disturbed the life of millions of Chileans in Latin America. Not because of an Anti-US agenda, but because these are things to remember in order to keep history from repeating itself, because that is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

I give out my deepest condolences to all those victims in Chile in ‘73, in US in ‘01, and any and every other society or civilization that has lived the atrocities of avarice and selfish economic strife. 

Never forgotten.   

(I’m sorry for any grammatical incoherences—I haven’t slept much this week and I’m currently slurring my typing due to drowsiness.)

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