The Gate 8 sector of Estadio Nacional is left empty in memory of the estimated 20,000 people held in the stadium following a 1973 military coup in Chile. Dario Gauna/LatinContent/Getty Images

SANTIAGO, Chile -- Tune in to Saturday's Copa America final, and you might see it, probably during a wide shot. It's the empty sector of the Estadio Nacional, Gate 8, bathed in a dirty yellow glow and sticking out like the missing piece in a puzzle amidst the raucous Chile fans.

Painted on the back wall is the warning this nation has chosen to heed.

"Un pueblo sin memoria es un pueblo sin futuro" -- A people without memory are a people without a future.

If the home crowd behind Gate 8 unfurls the same giant bleacher-covering flag displayed in previous games, the metaphor will be inescapable. Patriotism and the haunting memory of what was done in the name of that flag, past and present, co-existing side-by-side.

The empty sector is a memorial to the estimated 20,000 people held in this very stadium following the Sept. 11, 1973, coup that overthrew the president, Salvador Allende, and installed a military junta. Within hours of General Augusto Pinochet's taking power, Allende supporters were rounded up and interrogated up and down the country. Many were held here at the Estadio Nacional. Some were taken next door, to the bowels of the Velodrome, where they were tortured.

Thus began a 17-year regime that split the nation. Pinochet presided over a repressive de facto dictatorship. More than 40,000 Chileans were tortured. Tens of thousands, fearing for their safety, were forced into exile. Thousands more were killed or simply disappeared.

If Jorge Sampaoli and Chile win the Copa America, it would be a further step toward exorcising the demons of the country's not-so-distant past. Gabriel Rossi/Getty Images

The nightmare only ended when, under pressure from abroad, Pinochet legalized political parties in 1987, and a year later, the country held a referendum to determine whether he would continue in power until 1997 or there would be free elections. Chile voted "no" to Pinochet, and in 1989, Patricio Aylwin became the first democratically elected leader since Allende nearly two decades earlier.

What strikes you is that these weren't events that happened long ago, buried by the passage of time. Folks who lived through this are still with us today. As brutal as the Pinochet Era had been -- when he died in 2006, he was facing charges of murder and human rights violations, as well as embezzlement and tax evasion -- there are those who remind you things aren't black and white.

I was at university in the 1990s having lunch with a classmate and his father, a Chilean businessman.

"What happened in those years was horrible," he said. "But I think many of us are also a bit hypocritical. It was the Cold War. The developing world was just a series of pawns for the United States and the Soviet Union. Allende received just over a third of the vote, and yet he became president. And he implemented a series of reforms that were disastrous. There's a reason more than 40 percent of us voted to keep Pinochet in power in the referendum. Those who supported him weren't all Fascists or stupid or rich. The reality is that without Pinochet, we would have become Cuba, only with worse weather."