Chilean Montrealers remember another 9/11 — the 1973 coup

Hortensia Agurto was almost relieved when she read that her family's immigration application to Canada had been denied. It was the summer of 1975 and she didn't want to leave Chile despite the fact that it had been in the grips of a military dictatorship for almost two years.

The Canadian government didn't think she had to leave anyways. 

"According to the decision, my husband in particular didn't qualify — he wasn't in danger," remembers Agurto. 

Two months later, Raúl Jaime Olivares Jorquera was assassinated. He was 25.

Jorquera had worked for the presidential guard of Salvador Allende, the democratically elected socialist president who had been overthrown in a coup d'état led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet on Sept. 11, 1973.

"It's incredible how 50 years have gone by," said Agurto about the day when Chilean troops bombed the presidential palace with Allende inside, kickstarting the 17-year dictatorship.

Agurto and her two-year-old daughter were allowed into Canada almost immediately following Jorquera's death after her application was reviewed.

On Monday, they both stood in Montreal's des Amérique park, where members of the community had gathered for a vigil commemorating the anniversary of the coup. 

Agurto helped organize the event as a member of the Colectivo 11 de Septiembre Chile-Montreal — the September 11 collective — a Montreal group she helped found in 1999.

A large banner wrapped around a couple of tree trunks showed the faces of a few of the thousands of people who were executed during Pinochet's time in power or who disappeared at the hands of the state and are presumed dead.

"I had the chance to bury my husband, to go and see his grave whenever I'm in Chile but the families of the disappeared, it's a permanent torture for them [so] I fight thinking about them," said Agurto. 

There are several other events taking place this week in Montreal to commemorate the anniversary, including an exhibit at the Écomusée du fier monde, a museum about the working class, which runs until Oct. 22.

"The situation in Chile quickly made headlines here in Quebec," said historian Geneviève Dorais, who helped put together the research for the exhibit, which explores Allende's legacy in Quebec.

Quebec trade union leader Michel Chartrand had spent time in Allende's Chile to learn from the socialist movement and later mobilized to create the first Quebec-Chile solidarity group almost immediately after the coup.