The drama took place in Chile, to the misfortune of the 
Chileans, but it must go down in history as something that 
happened
irreparably to all of us in this era 
and that stayed in our lives 
forever.
—Gabriel García Márquez 

A spectre is haunting history. U.S. imperialism, like a ghost, is everywhere and nowhere.

It is evident but discreet, manifesting its power even in its absences. This essay, through a brief—and specific—cultural history of September 11, seeks to explain how imperialist ideology unfolds across the political, the historical, and the personal.

The notion that U.S. imperialism shapes the way nations and states are organized—at least in the West—is hardly novel; it already represents the banal and procedural exercise of labor and citizenship under any sociopolitical structure in the first quarter of the 21st century. It would seem, then, that in many ways, U.S. imperialist ideology marks the starting point for almost everything, and that it is in the deviations from this artificial standard that other identities begin to take shape. A binary order is thus established, not necessarily obvious, but always present. For them, enterprise; for us, labor. For them, war; for us, savage violence. For them, History; for us, memory. For them, the future; for us, death. Them, the Americans; us, the unnatural.

It’s not that the United States has unlimited power or a magic button—as if they had the universal, Machiavellian ability to control at will the thoughts and actions of entire societies. It is that they are everywhere: from the more than 700 military bases around the world, the spread of their ideals through Hollywood and Taylor Swift, to the language of the internet or even coups d’état. Every day, on every front, they materially and strategically establish the hegemonic way of being in the world. In this way, the descent of imperialism into the ordinary is reflected in the cultural history of September 11. A quick Google search of “September 11” confirms the suspicion of any digital ethnographer: September 11 is American. It belongs to them—or rather, it is assumed to belong to them. They hold it tightly in pain, mobilize it with special care, and do not let it go.

The fact I aim to explain is that there are other September 11ths, on other scales and in other latitudes, but that are also important. This text speaks of three: September 11, 2001; September 11, 1973; and September 11, 2001, in San Luis Potosí, Mexico.

The First September 11

A spectre is haunting calendars, the spectre of September 11th. What images and sounds come to mind when this date is mentioned? The “logical” answer seems to be the horrific spectacle of the attacks in 2001, specifically in New York City. That is, the dramatic images of airplanes crashing into the Twin Towers, bodies falling into the void, the agonizing fire, and unbelievable collapses. The message, loud and clear, directed at the most powerful economic, military, and political circles in the U.S. The subsequent declaration of war against a new version of terror. What could be considered the true beginning of the 21st century.

The complete destruction of the Twin Towers, the hole in the west side of the Pentagon, the black cloud over Shanksville, Pennsylvania—these created a collective imaginary so powerful, and so dominant that in its name massive surveillance programs have been created, questionable legislation passed, a war waged in Afghanistan, an invasion of Iraq launched, and racism against Muslim and Arab communities proliferated—all alongside a surge in American patriotism. The first 9/11 represented such a massive mobilization of ideas that it also has been allowed to operate from a place of illegality, as in the case of military tribunals or the scandals related to torture and abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib. Additionally, the (over)memorialization of 9/11/2001 has become its own industry. The reconstruction of Ground Zero, for instance, followed a logic of corporate architecture, economic interests, and the culture of starchitects. Only under the regime of American imperialism could a shopping mall be built in commemoration of a great tragedy.

Why don’t the forces of memory and outrage mobilize in the same way for other tragedies? There are no better or worse tragedies, but there are scales. On September 11, 2001, 2,977 victims and 19 perpetrators died. Twenty years later, only in 2021—according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)—there were more than 48,000 gun-related deaths in the U.S., most of them suicides—a 9/11/2001 every 24 days, 16 every year. For comparison, it is estimated that for the entire European continent there are 7,000 gun-related deaths every year. As of March 2026, more than 1,243,367 COVID-19 deaths have been recorded in the U.S.—the equivalent of 415 September 11ths in six years. How is it that this doesn’t stop the world? Where is the massive mobilization for those who die not at the hands of terrorists but at the expense of their own government? Why does the pursuit of justice only occur when the threat is to the state? And who mobilizes when the threat is to life itself?

The Second September 11

It was also on a different September 11—this time in 1973—when terror took dramatic hold in Chile. The country’s armed forces, led by the paranoid and ruthless General Augusto Pinochet, seized control of the government. That day, the coup plotters took the presidential palace, La Moneda, by force. Salvador Allende, the socialist president (according to official versions), shot himself in the head as the military closed in—”more than one shot, less than a burst”; the gun was in automatic mode. Pinochet’s armed insurrection wasn’t entirely local, it was an internationally conceived and organized effort.

As Gabriel García Márquez described it, it was “a simple military operation” assisted and motivated by the U.S. government. The intervention was thoroughly designed by American agencies like the CIA and political figures such as Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon. It formed part of what is now historically known as Operation Condor, a campaign of political repression and state terrorism that, through intelligence operations and the assassination of opponents, sought to stop the social and economic progress the Chilean people were pursuing as they became the continent’s second socialist republic after Cuba. Other Latin American countries like Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Bolivia, and Uruguay were also victims of U.S. intervention, establishing by the mid-1970s a network of dictatorships across South America.

In Chile, the U.S.-backed advance resulted in the establishment of a regime of death and torture. The dictatorship lasted 17 years, with the early ones being particularly brutal. Pinochet never intended to exercise power through governance or rule of law. He was a commander of terror and extermination, a cruel totalitarian suppressor of any kind of political dissent. Torture methods included electric shocks to genitals, mock executions, sexual violence against women and children, forced disappearances, it was control exercised through the total and systematic fragmentation of bodies. The Valech Commission identified 1,132 torture centers across the country. In a 1974 publication, García Márquez estimated that just four months after the coup, the toll had already reached 20,000 people killed; 30,000 political prisoners subjected to torture, 25,000 students expelled, and over 200,000 workers dismissed. The official figures, presented in 2010 by the Valech II Commission, recognize more than 40,000 direct victims; 3,065 were murdered or disappeared, and 36,953 who were subjected to torture and political imprisonment.

More than 50 years after 9/11/1973, Chile continues to reclaim its own memory, and in a way, are stealing back what has always belonged to them. Through commemorative acts in front of La Moneda, including a minute of silence on the 50th anniversary at the exact hour the bombing began; statements defending human rights through the Santiago Commitment; the launch of the National Search Plan, a public policy dedicated to clarifying the circumstances of disappearance and/or death and the final fate of the victims of forced disappearance during the military dictatorship; and the repurposing of buildings and spaces like the Estadio Nacional—used during the dictatorship as a concentration camp and now serving (alongside its original use as the home of the Chilean national soccer team) as a site of solemn memory. Every September 11, groups and organizations gather there. “La escotilla 8”, which has maintained the stadium’s original design to recall its use as a detention and torture center, bears the inscription: “A people without memory is a people without a future.” In his final speech, Salvador Allende declared of the imperialist advance: “They have the force, they can crush us, but social processes are not stopped by crime… nor by force. History is ours, and it is made by the people.”

The Third September 11

history is ours, and a child haunts my father.

In the novel The Autobiography of My Mother, Jamaica Kincaid said that “you are a child until the people that brought you into this world are dead.” My father is about to turn 60, and he stopped being a child at 35. His father died at 66, on September 11, 2001.

Like many family stories, this one has only ever been told to me in fragments.

Throughout my life, the puzzle of my grandfather’s life and 9/11 for my father has slowly been sketched out. I remember many of the pieces imprecisely—and so, I remember them with a bit of guilt. I know that he was diagnosed that same year with an aggressive cancer—I couldn’t say what kind—and not long before, he had retired—I couldn’t say exactly how long before. My grandfather, Severiano (affectionately, Seve), by all accounts was a beloved man, a jokester, at one point a firefighter, a kind soul, and has been deeply missed for as long as I can remember. Every now and then, my mother retells the story of how, while stuck in traffic, Seve suddenly suggested that the slow and distracted drivers around them were “eating shit by the fistful.” My mom says an awkward, maybe mischievous silence followed; for some reason, my grandfather was embarrassed to say that in front of her. Maybe she and my dad had just started dating, and my grandfather, for a moment, forgot the importance of first impressions.

Maybe. I don’t know what bad driving has to do with “eating shit by the fistful,” but I often find myself sharing that same phrase with my own passengers when we’re stuck in traffic.

More than mourning the grandfather that couldn’t be, I think instead of the child who ceased to exist on that September 11—the child I never got to meet in the form of my father. I go back to Kincaid again when I say that the only thing a child really fears is the death of their parents. What kind of fear must you feel, then, when the world ends on the television and at the same time right in front of you? What happens after that? Maybe that’s the origin of the silence that’s forever attached to this subject in my family. Maybe that fear is the way my father and I express our own internalized masculinity, the kind that tells us that not speaking of pain will make us immune to it.

I also recognize that everyone has the right to tell their own story. What kind of son wants to make his parents relive the most traumatic episodes of their lives? Maybe, not knowing was also a form of paternal protection. One that is, so often, incomprehensible. Maybe, after all, my father wanted to protect me from the idea that the world can be like this. That 3,000 people can die in a single day, that extermination doesn’t happen by accident—on the contrary, that it’s organized—and that childhood ends in an instant. I am still a child thanks to my father, who, in incomprehensible ways, still protects me from the world.

What images and sounds come to mind when I think of September 11? Logically, I think of New York. I don’t think of Víctor Jara, a victim of the Chilean dictatorship. I don’t think of the coup or its horrors. I think a little of my father, but I don’t think of my grandfather. However, every now and then, I think of one afternoon in 2020—or maybe it was 2021—the day I heard the song “Préstame a mi padre” (Lend me my father) while sitting next to mine. The day I heard these lines:

Préstame a mi padre
Dame unos minutos para recordar qué se siente abrazarlo
O cómo decirle que allá en nuestra casa, todos lo extrañamos
Hace falta su risa y hasta sus regaños

Préstame a mi padre
Daría lo que que fuera por oír de nuevo todas sus historias
Porque me dijera: “¿cómo estás mi niño?”, y contarle mil cosas
De sentir de nuevo sus manos rasposas

Préstame a mi padre
Por favor Diosito, no lo regreso tarde

Lend me my father
Give me a few minutes to remember what it feels like to hug him
Or how to tell him that back home, we all miss him
We miss his laughter, and even his scolding

Lend me my father
I’d give anything to hear all his stories once more
To hear him say, “how are you, my child?” and tell him a thousand things
To feel again his rough hands

Lend me my father
Please, dear God, I won’t bring him back late

Every now and then, I think of the child my father once was, and I cling to him. As if the September 11ths never came. As if I could steal what is mine.

NOTE: The title of this piece is inspired by the title of the exhibition by Mexican artist Magali Lara: “Robar lo que me pertenece.”