People around the world are remembering today, September 11, 2013, as the 12th anniversary of the 9-11 attacks in New York City, in which more than 3,000 innocent people from the U.S. and other countries died.

People around the world today are also remembering a different 9-11 from 40 years ago, in which the United States was not the victim but the victimizer. This was September 11, 1973, the day when the U.S. government set in motion a military coup in the South American nation of Chile. At least 3,000 innocent people were killed there too, with hundreds or possibly thousands more “disappeared”; their bodies have never been found.

Just as in 2001, the “other 9-11” of 1973 was on a Tuesday morning. By the end of that day 40 years ago, the Chilean air force had bombed the La Moneda presidential palace to force out the democratically elected president Salvador Allende, had taken over the media and offices of government, had put a military state of emergency in place and had begun rounding up Chilean citizens and putting them in stadiums and arenas — makeshift concentration camps where thousands were imprisoned, tortured and even executed.

The “other September 11”: How many U.S. citizens know about this infamous day, four decades on? And among those who know, how many of them really care?

Well, I do. I know and care about the pain that the September 11 military coup caused to the Chilean people, a pain that has not really healed over these many years. And I want to take a few moments here to salute the Chileans and to express my solidarity with them, as the world pauses to reflect on the events of that day and the course of history since then.

Salvador Allende, a medical doctor by profession, had first come into office as president of Chile in 1970, despite massive amounts of money secretly funneled by the United States government to Allende’s opponents in the election campaign. Although Allende had aligned himself with socialist and communist platforms, essentially he was a constitutionalist and a strong supporter of the working class of people. He believed in revolution, yes, but a nonviolent one.

He vowed that if elected, Chile would nationalize some of its industries, particularly mining, that were firmly in the grip of U.S. and other western powers, alleviate the mass poverty of that country and distribute the wealth of the nation in a more balanced way. Once elected, Allende kept his promises and Chilean society was changing.

“The Dream” — that was how much of the Chilean populace saw it: a chance for the poor, the workers, the women, the young people and minorities of all kinds to finally have a say in their government and their society. For the U.S., “The Dream” represented a real threat to its politico-economic control of Chile and other Latin American nations. So, from 1970 through the summer of 1973, the U.S. government worked steadily to lay the groundwork for a coup by Chile’s military to overthrow Allende.

The Chilean poet and author Pablo Neruda, recipient of the Nobel Prize and perhaps the most celebrated writer of modern times, summed up the situation back then aptly with this poem, titled “Portrait of the Man,” in which he expressed what many Chilean people had felt about Washington’s hostility to Chile’s new democracy (translated from the original Spanish):

It is necessary to judge those hands stained
by the dead he killed with his terror;

the dead from under the earth
are rising up like seeds of sorrow.

Because this is a time never before dreamed of.

And Nixon, the trapped rat,
his eyes wide with fear,
is watching the rebirth of flags shot down.

He was defeated every day in Vietnam.
In Cuba his rage was driven away
and now in the buried twilight
this rodent is gnawing at Chile
not knowing that Chileans of little importance
are going to give him a lesson in honor.

And indeed, a lesson in honor is what the Chilean people gave then-U.S president Richard Nixon and the U.S. government.

As the danger of a possible military coup increased in the summer of 1973, many of President Allende’s strongest leftist supporters in Chile constantly urged him to allow the Chilean people to take up arms against the Chilean military if necessary. Allende, a leftist himself, refused, saying that Chile now had a democratic constitution in place and that the Chilean people should stand by that constitution no matter what.

Allende must have been politically astute and experienced enough to know that if he had allowed the people to take up arms against their own armed forces (which were closely aligned with the U.S.), then it would have been a massacre of the people by the military. In the end, the people of Chile stood by Allende and the Chilean constitution, and did not take up arms against the military forces of their own nation. A lesson in honor, to be sure.

And then, the whole damn thing came crashing down.

The U.S.-sponsored coup by Chile’s military on Tuesday morning, September 11, 1973, put one of Allende’s top generals, Augusto Pinochet, in place as the de facto dictator-in-chief. Allende died at the presidential palace that day, and blood literally began to flow in the streets of Santiago and other Chilean cities as a new reign of terror and fear began. Pinochet held power until 1990, following his defeat in a public referendum held on his presidency. But for the Chilean people, the painful memories of their own 9-11 still run deep and have not completely healed even today.

If it is possible for a nation to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), then Chile today is suffering from it. The economy and political system of Chile are squarely back in the U.S. camp now, but there is little or no talk anymore of Allende, The Dream and true democracy in today’s Chile, where a generation or two of young people have grown up under a materialistic, capitalistic economy. It is almost as if Chile has been shocked into silence these many years.

But the Chilean people’s pain is still there. Forty years after Chile’s 9-11, it is still there — even if it is too hard to talk about, like a cancer in the family that no one really wants to face up to. And it is the United States that still has blood on its hands from the September 11 attacks of 1973 in Chile.

It is time for the American people today, with a new president now “gnawing” at Syria and other countries in the Middle East, to understand that they are not the only ones who remember September 11 every year. In some ways, the 9-11 attacks of 1973 were a precursor to what was to happen on that same day in 2001 in New York City. The chickens of a different time and place had come home to roost, so to speak. And no one — not Nixon or then-U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger (the main orchestrators of the Chilean coup) or anyone else in the U.S. government — has ever been held accountable for the “other 9-11”.

And that being so, on this national day of mourning today for 9-11 in the United States and for 9-11 in Chile, I will close here with the words of Salvador Allende himself, spoken during his final radio address to the nation and broadcasted from the presidential palace in downtown Santiago, as it was being bombed and the U.S.-sponsored coup of 1973 was well underway. (audio version here)

Allende thanked the people of Chile for having supported him over the years but urged the people not to go out into the streets at that dangerous time, presuming there would be a bloodbath. He spoke of the “treason” of the Chilean armed forces, which were then in the process of subverting democracy. But looking back today, we can see that the treason of September 11, 1973 could well be applied to the centers of power in Washington DC and Wall Street, New York as well:

Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this dark and bitter moment when treason seeks to prevail. Keep in mind that, much sooner than later, great avenues will be opened again, through which the free man will pass to build a better society.

Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

These are my last words, and I’m certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain. I’m certain that, at the very least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice and treason.