Never forget. You’ll hear or read that a lot around this time both in the US and in Chile as we… commemorate? mourn? Let’s say, remember, the traumatic events that occurred on similar Tuesday mornings on September 11th. This Monday marks 50 years since Chile’s 9-11 and the slogan we say there is “Ni perdón, Ni olvido”. A loose translation would be, Never forgive! Never forget! A slogan verbalizing a sentiment that is absolutely taken for granted in English; in the US it is so obvious that you ain’t forgiving shit then why would you mention it.
 
It’s like, “oh, we’re getting revenge, just don’t forget it guys.”
 
Yeah, I’m not here to list all the attacks the US has been involved in since 2001. I’ll just say, I agree with the sentiment. Never forget is valid, and necessary. After all, if we don’t learn from our mistakes, we are bound to repeat them, right? I mean, I have dedicated my life to making movies about this past, combat erasure, fight forgetting, avoid invisibility. I’m totally with it, but I have a confession to make:
“Never forget” feels to me like a personal attack. Because. Well…I forget.
 
I forget repeatedly. But I’m not forgetting simple shit, no, I have a photographic memory. I remember everything except the one thing that most of you consider the most important thing about yourself. Your damn name.
 
Look, If we have ever met, we shook hands, you said your name and I, in a blink of an eye, completely forgot it after you said it. No lie. I even probably repeated it back to you to appear normal but nope, that shit is gone. Like a fart on a bike. And please, it’s nothing personal; it happens with everybody. It’s not on purpose and definitely not because I don’t care. I’ve just been programmed that way. And yes, just like both 9-11s, US imperialism is to blame.
 
See, I grew up in the 80s when every South American country was into dictatorships and Central America was at war. And in the middle of trying to change all that were my parents, clandestine revolutionaries with fake names. Imagine James Bond with no car, used clothes and a name like Juan Bondo. But my parents’ “names” were Ángel and Claudia. Actually, it was Pablo and Claudia first but then Pablo had to get an Argentinian passport to escape across borders, and so he became Ángel. I don’t remember that change at all (hint: here starts the issue, aka trauma). I know now that you can convince a 4 year old of just about anything so dad changing names was nothing.
 
Growing up with Ángel and Claudia was cool. We travelled all through Latin America and I had a ton of aunts and uncles everywhere. Hella names to learn, names that btw were not real, but I didn’t know that. The point is, most of them were beautiful people that showed me love, idealists and survivors that cared for me like I was their child also. They were all family, and then, they disappeared. Vanished. Poof.
 
I grew older, and the dictatorship ended, and all revolutionaries at some point must die or go back to being normal. My father couldn’t tell me what that meant for him; it was my mom who took on the responsibility of telling me that the man I had grown up with for the past 10 years wasn’t named Angel, he wasn’t Argentinian, he was Chilean, and his name was Igor. All my innocent mind could muster was, “You lied to me.”
 
We moved to Chile, and I would see my parents run into old comrades all the time. They would start remembering and would ask things like, “What ever happened to Aldo?”
“Oh his name was actually Manuel, but we knew him as José. Either way, we don’t know where he is.”
He disappeared.
 
What does a name matter?
I remember his face, his smile, the time he took me to the movies, the worn soccer ball he gifted me the last day we ever saw him. Never forget THAT.
 
We went to a lot of marches then. Chants ringing in my ears sung by thousands of voices all repeating the names of the dead, of the martyrs and the ghosts. One person would yell: “Coooooomrade Jecar!” and thousands would respond “¡PRESENTE!” For me, that was epic; it shook me to the core. How someone was brought back to life in that moment. Their presence felt, invoked by thousands saying their name. It felt so important, I felt I knew them too, so I memorized all their names. There were so many, painted on banners, plastered on walls, printed on black and white picket signs asking, “Where are they?”
I memorized their names the way kids here memorize founding fathers, Pokeman cards, skins on Fortnite, or Warriors players.
 
And that’s just it. Do you remember the name of anyone who died on 9/11?
 
If I told you Salvador Allende was a janitor in Building 6 you’d probably believe me.
 
Never forget.
 
Because, to keep it real, I felt nothing when the Twin Towers got attacked. I actually played Biggie’s song Juicy on repeat out of my dorm room just to hear “blow up like the world trade” a few more times. Because when you grow up with loss after loss after loss and you know the US is responsible, you kind of want them to feel your pain too. You fantasize about the empire falling.
 
Don’t worry. I’ll try to get you a happy ending.
 
Soon after that it was Pablo, aka Ángel, aka Igor that checked me. He made me look at that video of the person falling from the building. My dad, the guy who put his life on the line to fight Yankee imperialism cried that day. He told me what my “uncle Aldo” said before he left: “Promise me that whatever happens after this, you will not hate anyone.” Justice is not the replication onto others of what happened to you, but the unequivocal acknowledgement of your loss and the assurance that it won’t ever happen again. To anyone.
 
So yeah, forget a name. What I cannot forget is who they were. And how you are.
 
What we do with these memories. What we do with this anger and this pain.
 
And I hope we don’t ever forget, at the risk of seeming ridiculous, that the true revolutionary is guided by great feelings of love.