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Note: The following page was developed for a presentation conducted by the Center for Latin American Studies at the Urban Dreams Summer Institute at the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) during July of 2000. The page, a work-in-progress, identifies some resources available on the internet which may be used to learn about Chile, life under the Pinochet dictatorship and general human and civil rights themes -- a centerpiece of the Urban Dreams grant. Work underway with OUSD teachers and district staff will evaluate these resources and develop additional thematic pages to support teachers' work in the Bay Area. Chapter 1 DEATH AT AN EARLY AGE I should not be here to tell this story. It's that simple: there is a day in my past, a day many years ago in Santiago de Chile, when I should have died and did not. That's where I always thought this story would start, at that mo-ment when history turned me, against my will, into the man who could someday sit down and write these words, who now writes them. I always thought this story was meant to start on that morning when the Armed Forces of my country rise against our President, Salvador Allende, on the 11th of September of 1973, to be exact, and the death I have been fearing since I was a child enters my life and, instead of taking it, leaves me to survive: I am left here on this side of reality to remember what ends forever that day in me and in the world, still wondering why I was spared. And yet I cannot bring myself to begin there, that day I should have died. from: |
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