Shepherd Bliss worked as a Methodist minister in Chile during the government of Dr. Salvador Allende. In the 1970s he directed the Latin America Project at the Godard Cambridge Graduate School of Social Change, and Education for Action at Harvard/Radcliffe. He now farms organically at Kokopelli Farm, PO Box 1040, Sebastopol, CA 95473.

After Gen. Pinochet's violent 1973 coup in Chile, my good friend Frank Teruggi's family invited me to his funeral in Chicago. They wanted me to be a pall bearer, perhaps even to say a few words. I did not want to go. But when a plane ticket arrived from his girlfriend, I knew I had to go. They would not open the coffin to allow us to view his tortured body. We were all shut down and stiff.

Frank was a small, feisty young man who loved street theatre, making jokes, and having fun. I recruited him from Berkeley to work with me in Chile. Frank was wonderfully creative, but lacked discipline. I was raised in the military family that gave its name to Ft. Bliss, Texas, and had been an officer in the US Army, so I helped him bring order to his good work for people. Frank lifted my spirits with his impish humor and clowning antics.

Chile may seem a long way from California. Its large, bustling capital, Santiago, where I lived, may seem world's away from my quiet, peaceful farm near tiny Sebastopol, where I now tend berries and chickens. But having served as a Methodist minister in Chile during the democratic government of Pres. Salvador Allende, Chile remains in my heart and close to home. As international efforts heighten to bring the brutal dictator Pinochet to justice, I painfully revisit Chile nearly every day. His arrest in England brings back memories locked away long ago.

I need to tell my story, though some details still remain cloudy. As ecological writer Barry Lopez asserts, "The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive."

I arrived in Chile in 1971, in my twenties, fresh from seminary and ordination. Chile reminded me of a Southern version of my home state--two long slivers running down their continents' rocky edges with the Pacific Ocean on one side and a mountain range along part of the other. Both are good wine country, verdant and varied with deserts, rugged coasts, rolling hills and high mountains. Before Gen. Pinochet, Chile was the most democratic nation in South America, never having experienced a coup.

Chile during the administration of Dr. Salvador Allende was a happy place--except for a few wealthy aristocratic families and the military. Dr. Allende, a physician, brought health care, education, employment, and nutrition to millions of impoverished people. He deepend his country's democratic processes. Driving by our dairies here in Sonoma County, I recall Dr. Allende bringing milk to many children that had been deprived of it.

I remember people often celebrating in the streets--chanting, singing, and eating. In a recent Nation article Marc Cooper recalls "a nation taking control of its destiny, breaking from dependence, reclaiming its natural resources, empowering and transferring wealth to the poor."

Friendships grew quickly during that exciting time. I met a young woman from Ecuador, Mercedes Roman, a devout Catholic. Her long, black hair, olive skin, and compassionate caring were etched into my heart. I fell deeply in love for the first time in my adult life. I courted her in the old fashioned way, won over some family members, and wanted to marry her.

But on my twenty-nineth birthday, Sept. 4, 1973, the third anniversary of Dr. Allende's election, a half million Chileans gathered in the square, pleading for weapons to defend themselves. Allende erred tragically. He was naive. As the military and other right wingers armed to topple his government, he innocently believed that his country's long democratic tradition would prevail. People were defenseless when the waves of terror swept through the streets, into homes, and across the country. The violent militaristic pursuit reached beyond Chile's borders into other Latin American nations, taking lives even in the US.

Mercedes and I kept in touch for a few years after the brutal Sept. 11, 1973, coup. I returned to the US, accepting a position at Harvard; I chose safety and security. She continued working for the church, though many Christians were rounded up and some tortured and killed. Mercedes was beaten by the police, but she continued her humanitarian work. Because of US complicity with the Pinochet regime and its support by Nixon, Kissinger, and the CIA, Mercedes was not too happy with America. She did finally get a visa to come here, and I looked forward to seeing her. But when she got to the New York airport, she was not allowed to enter. She could be seen through the wire fences, breaking down from interrogation in fear of being tortured again. I have not seen Mercedes again. As I think about her now, a line from Chile's Nobel prize winning poet Pablo Neruda comes to mind, "Love is so short, forgetting is so long."

Chile's National Stadium, where I once heard Neruda read poetry, became a killing field, where the military crushed the hands of popular guitarist Victor Jara so that he could not play. Neruda--subject of the recent popular Italian romantic film "Il Postino"--was among the victims of the coup. The military destroyed his manuscripts and home in Isla Negra; he died broken-hearted later that month. An invitation he wrote after the Spanish Civil War in his poem "I'm Explaining a Few Things" rises in my mind as a description of what happened again in Chile in 1973, "Come and see the blood in the streets./ Come and see/ the blood in the streets./ Come and see the blood/ in the streets."

But for twenty-five years I did not want to come. I did not want to feel the blood frozen in my heart. Our dreams went down in ashes as La Moneda Presidential Palace burned, rocketed by Hawker Hunter jets. The dreams of a more humane society that led Frank, Mercedes, myself and others to Chile were brutally shattered, as was a world-wide movement toward democracy.

I am 54 years old now and live comfortably on an organic farm in Northern California. I have a good life. But I cannot forget. I still do not drink Chilean wine or eat its imported fruit. All this is tainted by the US-supported coup and the "blood in the streets." I am not yet ready to forgive, I do not hear remorse from the torturers, nor the admission of guilt by the executioners, nor the assumption of responsibility.

I have never thought of returning to Chile, until this year. With Pinochet arrested, I have considered a visit. The long arm of his DINA (secret police), that reached even to Washington DC, to assassinate diplomat Orlando Letelier, no longer frightens me. I have unfinished business in Chile. I did not have time to close my bank account when I left. As I look at my old bank book, I wonder if the Bank of the State of Chile would pay me what is owed to me...with interest over the last quarter century? Money alone would never cover that debt. As I look at my residency papers from Chile's Immigration Department, a name stares up at me--Pinochet. Not the general, but a relative. The name stabs at me.

So a distant Chile and California are connected, at least to this native son. With the growing global economy, it becomes more apparent how everything is connected. Human rights violations can protect US economic interests. As US citizens we need to understand our government's interventions and how they affect people throughout the world and here.

Only after truth can there be reconciliation. Justice, or even the possibility of justice (since we may not get it for Pinochet) can open a heart that has been broken and closed. Justice can free those imprisoned by terror. As the movement to bring Pinochet to justice continues, parts of me that have been cold all these years start to unfreeze.

Sustained international attention on Pinochet's crimes forces dictators to listen, including those in power and those retired to comfortable villas in Europe and elsewhere with blood on their hands and money in the bank. I want potential dictators, of whatever political persuasion, to consider the consequences of brutal actions for which they may be held accountable elsewhere in the world by international law.

Chile may seem a long way away, but in the hearts and minds of some of us, it is close to home.