On forgotten, forgettable, unforgettable and ‘forgetted’
Ladies
and gentlemen, we all forgot and keep forgetting do we not that there’s
a 9/11 every year and there’s been 9/11s since human beings started
carving up time into months, days, hours, minutes and seconds, screwed
the season in the rush and made it eminently suited to be translated
into money a few centuries later. There are 9/11s then and 9/11s now.
Tragedies and tragedies. Happy days and sad ones. Births and deaths
and the innumerable in-betweens. All this and more on this 9/11 and
that, in that country or this or somewhere else you and I have never
visited or even heard of.
I am not going to be random, sorry. ‘9/11’ in the popular imagination
is a specific, as the above experiment I suggested would prove. So
here’s another ‘specific’. The Chile of Victor Jara, street artist and
poet, lyricist and singer for the working class, whose hands were
chopped off so he could not play or hold his guitar not many minutes
before they killed him. This Chile of Pablo Neruda. The Chile of a
US-backed coup d’etat that overthrew the democratically-elected
Government of President Salvador Allende; the violent intervention that
saw the Presidential Palace being bombed and thousands of unarmed
supporters of the popular President being massacred in cold blood.
Twin towers of the World Trade Centre burning. Pic. courtesy:
Google |
Political tension
That was a 9/11 whose before, after and in between is brilliantly
captured in a three part documentary by Patricio Guzman titled ‘Battle
of Chile’, chronicling the political tension in Chile in 1973 and the
violent counter-revolution against the Allende Government. It is the
9/11 that brought to power a love-child of US foreign policy, General
Augusto under whose tyrannical rule over 3,000 people were killed,
80,000 interned and over 30,000 tortured, including women and children.
It was a 9/11 that Uncle Sam orchestrated and cheered every bloody
minute of the way.
I remember a 9/11. Another specific 9/11. It was a 9/11 when the
sequel to Guzman’s documentary, ‘Obstinate Memory’ was screened in
Ithaca, NY. ‘Obstinate Memory’ is described as a collection of fractured
biographical narratives of those whose lived experiences were erased
from public memory in post-dictatorship Chile. Twenty years after ‘The
Battle of Chile’ was filmed, Guzman returned to Chile with a copy of the
documentary. He showed it to various audiences (including persons
present in it and/or their near and dear) and recorded reactions. I
remember, that 9/11 of 1998. Guzman asks an audience of undergrads what
they thought of Pinochet, Allende, the Communist Party which he led and
other related issues prior to screening the documentary. The students
were candid in their answers. Most of them were critical of Pinochet but
had generally accepted the official narrative: Pinochet saved Chile from
Allende and Communism and had he not, things would have been worse.
No comment from the filmmaker. He just showed the film. There was
silence thereafter. Then he asked a student what he remembered of that
9/11, the 9/11 of 1973. Silence. Long silence. Then he spoke.
‘I remember that day. I remember that day because I was very happy. I
was very happy because there was no school that day.’
Passing of time
Then he broke down and wept like a baby. It had taken him over 20
years to remember that 9/11 in its full significance, to reawaken
obstinate memory from a slumber that lasted two decades. It took him
that long to understand that there is forgetting and that there is ‘unforgetting’,
that there is forgettable and unforgettable. That forgetting doesn’t
just happen all the time, on account of event-clutter and the passing of
time. That there is, in short, a word that ought to be in all languages
but is not: ‘forgetted’.
This is what it is all about. Let me speak for myself. I remember the
9/11 of 1998. I wept that day because I realized that I could never
forget people who I knew who were tortured and killed in the bheeshanaya
of 1988-90. I wept for Victor Jara. Today is not an 9/11. It is a 9/12.
Of the year 2010. Today I remember that I had forgotten the 9/11 of 1998
and the 9/11 of 1973. I remember today that these things were
‘forgetted’ just as much as they were ‘forgotten’. I remember that the
privileged 9/11 of 2001, monumental tragedy and reason for mourning
though it is no doubt, is nevertheless also a ‘forgotting’ instrument. I
forgot.
It all came back because my friend Lydie Meunier alerted her Facebook
friends to something they might have forgotten but should not.
This was what she wrote: ‘On September 11, 1973 the US Government of
Richard Nixon launched the military coup (or was it a terrorist attack?)
that led Augusto Pinochet to become Chile’s bloody dictator for 16
years, ousting the presidency of democratically elected Salvador Allende.’
There is something obstinate about memory. There will always be a
Lydie Meunier reminding us that we can be afflicted with ‘forgettedness’.
There will always be a Patricio Guzma.
There will be remembrances. There has to be.
9/11. Two numbers. One stroke. A date. TWO DATES (at least). Let us
remember
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