September 11: Remembering the resistance to Pinochet’s Chile

Michael Fox, Narrator: September 11th is a hard anniversary, but an important one. Not just of planes flying into towers, and devastation, destruction, lives lost in New York, but also of September 11, 1973. Santiago, Chile. Tanks on the streets. Planes bombing La Moneda, the presidential palace. The overthrow of President Salvador Allende by US-backed General Augusto Pinochet.

Pinochet would unleash a bloody regime that would grip power until 1990, 17 years later. During his rule, thousands were rounded up, detained, tortured, and executed. But there was resistance.

If you are a fan of this show, you have heard stories of people standing up to the US-backed Pinochet regime. Today, in this special episode marking the September 11th coup, I’m bringing them all back in one place. Four vignettes of people standing up to the evil that Pinochet enveloped the country with in the early 1970s, and the fight for truth, justice, and memory that continues until today.

I’ll play these stories back to back. Thanks for listening.

[Episode 1 – The Last Words of Victor Jara]

Hope does not die. 

But it can fade until it’s transformed and reborn.

This is what happened that overcast winter day, when it was trampled by the soldiers in uniform. Run over by the tanks. Gunned down by the machine guns. Overcome by the whining turbines of the planes that descended on the city.

Chile’s democratically elected president Salvador Allende promised to fight. 

“I will not resign,” he told the country in his final address, as bombs fell.

Allende was one of thousands of victims killed or rounded up.

Sports stadiums converted into detention, torture, and execution centers.

This is where Victor Jara was taken.

His songs were the soundtrack of Allende’s revolution. His… the voice of hope.

He was crammed alongside thousands others into the Estadio Chile.

There he was beaten. Starved. Tortured. 

But amid the suffering and chaos, Victor Jara found a paper and pencil. 

He wrote his last words. A poem titled “Estadio Chile.””

He writes words of truth. Of pain and suffering. But also the resolve to live and relive.

The blood of the companion President

Is stronger than bombs and the shrapnel.

And our fist will fight again.

How badly I sing

when I have to sing in terror.

Terror like the one I live, terror like the one I die.

To see myself among so, so many moments of infinity

in which silence and the screams are the goals of this song.

What I have never seen, what I have felt and what I feel

will birth another moment.

Victor Jara was killed hours later. 

His poem was found, copied, and smuggled out. Its lines have far outlived the tragedy that was the US-backed September 11, 1973, Chilean coup.

Today, the Chile Stadium is renamed Victor Jara Stadium. 

Colorful murals of Victor Jara adorn the walls out front. Inside, near the rafters, is a small museum in honor of the iconic singer.

Down in the seats, a single printed copy of Victor Jara’s last poem is taped to the front of a row of worn green wooden bleachers.

One simple black and white page, reminding visitors of the horrors that happened here…

The resolve to fight and live on. 

And the hope that would not die.

[Episode 33 – Liquor Store Resistance]

The year is 1973.

Santiago, Chile.

Ana Maria’s father runs a liquor store just down the street from their house. Every night when he goes to lock up, pairs of feet follow him. Feet in tired shoes. Nervous feet. Wanted feet. Feet on the run. 

He guides them into the basement of his shop and maybe rolls out a blanket or two. They lie, alongside cases of the Chilean beer Escudo, or Shield, and hope that it will protect them. Sometimes they even try a bottle. They whisper to each other in the darkness. They develop plans. They talk of fighting. Or fleeing the country. Or they reminisce of better times. Times only just past. 

They sleep beside the Escudo… under the watchful eye of rows of Chilean Pisco, Cabernet Sauvignon, or Syrah.

They have restless, agitated dreams. Dreams they cannot run from. Dark dreams that descended on Chile in September, 1973, and enveloped the country in a thick grey fog. A fog that will not go away. A fog that plucked people from off the street and removed them, never to be seen again. 

But these feet are survivors.

In the morning, Ana Maria’s father comes to open the shop. He brings food. A large bowl of cazuela. Bread. Sandwiches. His wife cooks.

“I’m famished,” he tells her every morning. “So hungry.” It’s hard to tell if she knows why.

The feet eat quickly and quietly. Then they lace their shoes, grab their bag and slide out the back door into the empty street.

Thrushes and sparrows dart from tree to tree, singing their early morning song. The sun hasn’t yet crested the Andes. 

The feet walk quickly. Determined. They have no other choice. They have to… before the fog descends again. Sometimes, in 1973 Chile, it’s hard to tell which is worse, the bad dreams or the reality.

[Episode 38 – The Women of Calama]

For nearly 20 years, the women of Calama traveled into the desert each day to search for their loved ones.

Monday through Sunday, sun-up to sundown, they scoured the harsh desert earth with strainers and rakes.

Searching and hoping. 

The crunch of the ground beneath their feet. The harsh wind whipping at their clothes. The hot sun on their faces.

“For us there was no wind, there was no cold, there was no heat, there was no hunger,” Violeta Berríos says.

Her partner, Mario Argüelles Toro, was a taxi driver and a local leader in the Socialist Party. It was his death sentence. 

Mario Argüelles Toro was detained and tortured just weeks after the September 1973 coup d’état by Chilean General Augusto Pinochet.

On October 19, 1973, Mario was taken from prison, executed, and disappeared alongside 25 others for their support for the former democratically elected President Salvador Allende.

Executed during what they called the Chilean army’s “Caravan of Death.”

The men’s partners and mothers responded, transforming their sadness into action. 

They founded the Group of Family Members of the Politically Executed and Disappeared Detainees of Calama.

They took to the desert, scratching at it each day, demanding that it reveal its secrets.

And after years, finally, it did.

In 1990, in a place called Quebrada del Buitre, or Vultures Gorge, on the edge of a hillside overlooking the expansive Atacama desert, the women found fragments of bones and pieces of teeth.

This was the location their loved ones had laid buried for 17 years. But most of their bodies were no longer there. 

Just as the women were getting closer, General Augusto Pinochet had ordered their remains dug up, removed and buried someplace else. An evil scavenger hunt, in which the rules are rigged and the dice are staked.

Between 1990 and 2003, the women would find the partial remains of 21 of the victims.

Today, a memorial lives on a hillside just off highway 23, heading east out of Calama. 

This was once barren desert for miles, but it now lies beneath a sea of wind turbines. The sun burns overhead. The wind threatens to knock you over.

The memorial is in the shape of a circle. Almost like a small amphitheater, with stairs leading down. In the middle is a patch of dry Atacama earth. Rocks and small marble stones are laid there in the shape of a cross. Pink and red flowers have been placed throughout. Pink concrete columns rise into the air. Each of them bears a name inscribed on a little plaque. The name of each of those who was detained, tortured, executed and disappeared here in the Atacama desert.

This is the location of the mass grave, where the women of Calama finally found the fragments of bones that proved their loved ones had been here.

Behind the memorial is a crater in the ground, where the grave was opened, and where they exhumed what they could. Rocks, in piles or in tiny circles, mark the locations where parts of their loved ones were found.

The memorial is a sentinel in the desert. A beacon of memory. Memory of lives lost. Of the horror and the pain of the past. But also the memory of the women’s determination. Their hope and struggle. Their resistance in the desert…

The women are still searching for and demanding justice.

[Episode 62 – Chile’s Bulnes Bridge] 

Aquiles Cordova adopted a bridge. 

It is not a pretty bridge. Four lanes of busy traffic rush across Puente Bulnes during most hours. To the North, it buttresses against two overpasses that lead to a bustling highway. Below it, run the milky grey waters of the Mapocho River, after passing through downtown Santiago. Chile. 

Trash and discarded clothes catch against the rocky shoreline or the concrete legs of the bridge. They flap in the current. It reminds Aquiles of a past that no one wants to remember, but which everyone must. 

On special days, Aquiles Cordova holds memorials. 

Once a month, he leads cleanup brigades. 

Every so often, he invites muralists to come. They paint the walls. Huge life-sized pictures of faces and figures. Names and phrases like “Never Again”.

50 years ago. In another time, this bridge was a favorite execution site for the military and police of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. 

Hundreds were shot and pushed over the bridge into the rushing waters below, in the early months of the Pinochet dictatorship.

Today, Aquiles Cordova will not let it be forgotten — ever. 

For him, it’s personal. The day after the September 11th coup, 1973, a young Aquiles Cordova found himself on the edge of Puente Bulnes, staring down the barrel of a gun. A young soldier on the other side, shouting orders. 

Aquiles’s life flashed before his eyes. He saw it all: birth to present. Like a movie real on high speed.

And then… he was allowed to go. He was one of the lucky ones.

Aquiles Cordova has grey hair now. 

He will never forget. 

He won’t let anyone else forget, either.

###

Hi folks, thanks for listening. I’m your host Michael Fox.

Today’s episode was a little different. I hope you enjoyed it.

If you like what you heard, I hope you’ll stay on the lookout for my upcoming second season of Under the Shadow. I dive deep into Plan Condor, the South American dictatorships of the 1970s and the role of the United States. I’ve been working on it for the last year. Of course, Pinochet’s Chile is front and center. You can watch for it in the first half of 2026.

As always, if you like what you hear and enjoy this podcast, please consider becoming a subscriber on my Patreon. It’s only a few dollars a month. I have a ton of exclusive content there, only available to my supporters. And every supporter really makes a difference.

This is the latest episode of Stories of Resistance, a podcast series produced by The Real News. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance and hope like this. Inspiration for dark times. If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review.

Thanks for listening. See you next time.