VivirLatino

I almost feel like I’m obligated to write something today about 9-11 and frankly, I’m tired of the date. It’s exhausting on so many levels since the combination of numbers can be multiplied, added, subtracted and divided in so many ways. It’s a date that carries real physical weight and reaction in my muscles and bones. I can feel it settling, heavy in my gut.

I survived 9-11-01. Not in some abstract way but in a real sitting in a subway car underground in downtown Manhattan for houra as smoke and fire rose above. My mother survived 9-11-01, feeling the World Trade Center reverberate from the impact of a plane, she managed to lead all of her employees to safety. It was the second time she survived an attack on the WTC.

Pero I also have to sit down with my hijas, half Chilenas, and talk about their relatives that did not survive 9-11-73 or the 17 years of U.S. sponsored military dictatorship that followed. It is why the family of my younger daughter came to the United States. It is why the family of my older daughter remain active in Chilean politics in the southern part of that country.

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