Mariana Romo-Carmona, professor at Goddard College in Vermont and Queens College in New York, spoke about her first encounter with war-prompted terror Sept. 11, 1973, in Chile, South America, and New York's terror Sept. 11, 2001, and their effects on her life concerning race and homophobia expounding on her speech titled "Worlds Colliding: Race, Culture and Homophobia in the 21st Century" as part of Racial/Ethnic Harmony Week 2001.

When Romo-Carmona was 21, she said she remembers well when army tanks and armed regiments strolled down the streets of Chile on Sept. 11, 1973. She said she remembers fighter jets circling overhead the capital area, preparing to bomb their own country. Still, Chile was like its own island, distant and far away from everything else.

"Chile was too far away to be on the front page," she said. "When the coup happened, something inside of me snapped. I was no longer a traveler or an immigrant -- I was an exile in a country in a state of siege."

Racial/Ethnic Harmony Week events: Friday • 10 a.m.-noon -- Diversity Workshop, Juanita Cox-Burton. Location to be announced. • 10:30 a.m. -- Keynote Address by William Stavropoulos, chair of the board of directors and former CEO of Dow Chemical Company, Midland, Mich. Titled: "The Importance of Diversity in the Workplace." K-State Engineering Complex, Fiedler Hall Auditorium, Room 1107. • 1-3 p.m. -- Intermediate-Level Diversity Workshop, Juanita Cox-Burton, Manhattan City Hall, 1101 Poyntz Ave., City Commission Room. • 1:30-2:30 p.m. Joseph O. Onijala, workforce diversity manager of the Boeing Corp., Wichita, K-State-Salina College Center Conference Room. • 6-7:30 p.m. -- Religious Visitation and Worship-Eastern Orthodox. K-State Danforth Chapel. • 6-8:30 p.m. -- Movie Night: "Mississippi Burning." Introduction and discussion by Lou Williams, professor of history at K-State. K-State Salina College Center Conference Room. -- Compiled by April Middleton

She said just as today, everything she talks about is tinged by sorrow because of the grieving of the attacks in New York, she grieved in 1973, also.

"The deaths of people I knew or might have known reached me in a nightmare," she said. "Every day, I awoke to imagine it had not happened."

She said these happenings in a place that seemed far away still could be compared to people's own lives.

"If our minds can cast our thoughts way beyond the confines of our universe -- beyond everything imaginable -- we might find a frightening storm, or we might find that these thoughts are also about the concepts of the relativity of our experience in the world," she said.

"We can imagine how the universe is nothing more than a drop of water. In this distance, all our distances are relative."

In 1975, Romo-Carmona said she had another realization -- she was a lesbian.

"I had always known, and I had never known," she said. "What happened was simply that I matured and became a full-grown woman, and I understand."

She said she was so much more than just a lesbian.

"I was a Latina, an immigrant, feminist, an activist, a person who danced and sang, a new mother," she said.

When she began working on her book, "Conversaciones: Relatos por padres y madres de hijas lesbianas y hijos gay," she said she had to begin speaking with parents about their children who were gays or lesbians, some of whom had died from AIDS.

"I thought there would be a world of difference between us, but I was wrong," she said.

She said the parents of these children had seen and known their children, and thus could not show hatred toward anyone else.

Romo-Carmona said she remembers distinctly Sept. 11, in New York City, sitting in her apartment, watching the television with her hands over her eyes.

"I thought, 'This is what happened in Hiroshima, except there were 60,000 dead and then 80,000 in Nagasaki,'" she said. "It was Sept. 11 again, and death had come close. I had been waiting for it like everyone else, looking up at the sky for the end that would come. But it did not come."

She also said she remembers the sounds of New York City on Sept. 11.

"The night had been filled with sirens, perhaps no more than usually in a city, but now we knew who the neighbors were," she said. "When there were no sirens, there was silence."

She said the tragedy in New York has changed people and their perceptions, helping them to put themselves in others' positions.

"As we get closer to the epicenter of this recent catastrophe, we know that nothing will ever be the same again, for here we have turned a corner," she said. "For many people on this land, Sept. 11 signifies the end of innocence. For many more, it doesn't."

"We live side by side with Americans who survived systematic genocide, with Americans who survived slavery, with Americans who survived concentration camps, the atom bomb, internment camps, torturing and persecution for being gay or a lesbian, civil war, dictatorship and every conceivable kind of horror, from large countries and small."

After listening to Romo-Carmona, Tone Mendoza, director of the Multicultural Research and Resource Center, said the persecution a person has to endure because of his or her sexuality, race or cultural, is comparable to the attacks in New York.

"Maybe it's not real evident the parallel of the bombing in New York and Washington and the conflict in Chile and the experience that's basically being addressed here as to what it is like to have a life that is not acknowledged or that is under threat every day," Mendoza said.

"And to be in an environment -- like being in New York City -- and all of a sudden have that threat like that in your face. Whether it's gay bashing or whatever, it's kind of like the bombing of the twin towers -- except it's your life instead of New Yorkers. It's you living it every day, wondering are you OK, are you real, is this real, is this my family?"

Tom Reynolds, junior in physics, said he went to listen to Romo-Cormona because there aren't many people who speak about homophobia.

"I thought it was a thing that isn't covered a lot, and I thought it may be worthwhile," he said. "I learned a little about what happened in Chile. It was worthwhile -- I'm glad I came."