I was a Peace Corps volunteer in Chile at the start of General Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship. The justice system, the newspapers, even the universities accepted and implemented without objection the dictates of the military junta. Following the September coup, many leftists simply disappeared, never to be seen again. Families lost their fathers, brothers, mothers, sisters. People kept their heads down and their mouths shut.
Ten months into my service, a Chilean friend invited me to visit her family in Iquique in northern Chile. One evening, I was invited to meet with a group of families that had lost loved ones to the new regime.
To the families in that room I represented hope. I might be able to find out what happened to their loved ones. Such desperate hope was in their faces!
I told them that I was “just” an American citizen with no more authority or influence than the common man.
Now, the same thing is happening here. People are being “disappeared.” Family and friends are afraid that they will be next.
The judicial system, Congress, newspapers and the “common man” need to speak up for our democracy.
David Robert Askren, Mill Creek