In September, 1976, a bomb exploded beneath a car driving on Embassy Row in Washington, D.C. The explosion killed Orlando Letelier, who had been a foreign minister for the government of Chile under Allende. When Pinochet came to power, Letelier fled to the US and was working for the Institute for Policy Studies.
Someone else died in that explosion. Her name was Ronni Moffitt. She was 25 years old. She, along with her husband of four months, worked at the Institute. He was also riding in the car.
I will never forget that day....
I was 24 years old, and had my first job out of college, working for the National Endowment for the Arts. I was involved in government funding of the arts, a job I loved. I was working in Washington, D.C. I had my own apartment, and I was dating a young lawyer who worked for the Treasury Department. I was on my way to work that September morning. It was a gorgeous day.
And then some people decided to blow up a car with a woman in it who was like me. She had done just what I had done that day. Got up, showered, got dressed, kissed her husband, sat down in a car headed to work, and then...she was drowning in her own blood, because her carotid artery and her windpipe had been severed. Her husband watched her die.
When I heard about it, I was shocked and appalled. It had been such a blatant murder. Everyone knew Pinochet had ordered Letelier's death. To carry it out in broad daylight on Embassy Row by blowing up a car...it was mind boggling.
But her death bothered me even more. Maybe it was because she was my age, and she was doing what I was doing - working in Washington, just starting out.
There was a protest march a few days later, because it seemed no one was being held to account. The day before, I went to my boss and told him I was taking the day off and going to the march. No problem (we were the Arts Endowment, the "coolest" agency in town. The government was lucky we even WENT to work).
That night, my boyfriend and I had dinner. I had assumed he would go. He had seemed to be just as angry as I was about the murders. But then he told me it might not be a "good idea" for him to take the day off for that. Okay. Whatever.
The next morning, I went down to the assembly site, and found a poster with Ronni Moffitt's picture. That picture of her made me tear up so it was hard for me to see at first. But I raised my poster and linked arms with the others and marched. I don't remember what we chanted, I just remember marching and chanting and holding that poster and thinking this was all I could do for her right then. I wanted to do more.
So when I read that Pinochet had died, comfortably, all I could remember was Ronni Moffitt, dying by the side of a road, choking on her own blood, as her husband watched. They called her death "incidental" to the murder of Orlando Letelier. Knowing now what I do about Letelier, I doubt he would have felt that way. I certainly didn't.