Salvador Allende
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Salvador Allende
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29th President of Chile
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| In office 3 November 1970 – 11 September 1973 |
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| Preceded by | Eduardo Frei Montalva |
| Succeeded by | Augusto Pinochet |
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| In office 1966 – 1969 |
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| Preceded by | Tomás Reyes Vicuña |
| Succeeded by | Tomás Pablo Elorza |
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| Born | June 26, 1908 Valparaíso, Chile |
| Died | September 11, 1973 (aged 65) Santiago, Chile |
| Nationality | Chilean |
| Political party | Socialist |
| Spouse | Hortensia Bussi |
Salvador Isabelino Allende Gossens[1] (26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was President of Chile from November 1970 until his death during the coup d'état of 11 September 1973.
Allende's involvement in Chilean political life spanned a period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he was a senator, deputy and cabinet minister. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections, until his election in 1970.
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[edit] Early life
Allende was born on 26 June 1908 in Valparaíso.[2] He was the son of Salvador Allende Castro and Laura Gossens Uribe. Allende's family belonged to the Chilean upper-class and had a long tradition of political involvement in progressive and liberal causes. His grandfather was a prominent physician and a social reformist who founded one of the first secular schools in Chile[3].
Allende attended high school at the Liceo Eduardo de la Barra in Valparaíso. As a teenager, his main intellectual and political influence came from the shoe-maker Juan De Marchi, an Italian-born anarchist[3]. Allende then graduated with a medical degree in 1926 at the University of Chile.[3].
He co-founded the section of the Socialist Party of Chile (founded in 1933 with Marmaduque Grove and others) in Valparaíso[3] and became its chairman. He married Hortensia Bussi with whom he had three daughters. In 1933, he published his doctoral thesis Higiene Mental y Delincuencia in which he criticized Cesare Lombroso's proposals [4]
In 1938, Allende was in charge of the electoral campaign of the Popular Front headed by Pedro Aguirre Cerda[3]. The Popular Front's slogan was then "Bread, a Roof and Work!"[3]. After its electoral victory, he became Minister of Health in the Reformist Popular Front government which was dominated by the Bourgeoisie and the Radicals[3]. Entering the government, he relinquished his parliamentary seat for Valparaíso won in 1937. Around that time, he wrote La Realidad Médico Social de Chile (The social and medical reality of Chile). After the Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, Allende and other members of the Parliament sent a telegram to Adolf Hitler denouncing the persecution of Jews[5]. Following Aguirre's death in 1941, he was again elected deputy while the Popular Front was being re-named Democratic Alliance.
In 1945, Allende became senator for the Valdivia, Llanquihue, Chiloé, Aisén and Magallanes provinces; then for Tarapacá and Antofagasta in 1953; for Aconcagua and Valparaíso in 1961; and once more for Chiloé, Aisén and Magallanes in 1969. He became president of the Chilean Senate in 1966.
His three unsuccessful bids for the presidency (in the 1952, 1958 and 1964 elections) prompted Allende to joke that his epitaph would be "Here lies the next President of Chile." In 1952, as candidate for the Frente de Acción Popular (Popular Action Front, FRAP), he obtained only 5.4% of the votes, partly due to a division within socialist ranks over support for Carlos Ibáñez and the prohibition of communism. In 1958, again as the FRAP candidate, Allende obtained 28.5% of the vote. This time, his defeat was attributed to votes lost to the populist Antonio Zamorano. In 1964, once more as the FRAP candidate, he lost again, polling 38.6% of the votes against 55.6% for Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. As it became clear that the election would be a race between Allende and Frei, the political right – which initially had backed Radical Julio Durán – settled for Frei as "the lesser evil".
Allende's socialistic ideology and friendship with Cuban president Fidel Castro made him deeply unpopular within the administrations of successive U.S. presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon; they believed there was a danger of Chile becoming a communist state and joining the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Allende publicly condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956) and of Czechoslovakia (1968) while he later made Chile the first Government in continental America to recognize the People's Republic of China (1971).
Various U.S. corporations (including ITT, Anaconda and Kennecott) owned property and mineral rights in Chile. The Nixon administration feared that these companies might be nationalized by a socialistic government, and was openly hostile to Allende. During Nixon's presidency, U.S. officials attempted to prevent Allende's election by financing political parties aligned with opposition candidate Jorge Alessandri and supporting strikes in the mining and transportation sectors.
[edit] Relation with the Chilean Communist Party
Allende had a close relationship with the Chilean Communist Party from the beginning of his political career. Actually, on his fourth (and successful) bid for the presidency, the Communist Party appointed him as the alternate for its own candidate, Pablo Neruda.
On 15 March 1953, during a ceremony paying tribute to the then recently deceased Joseph Stalin on Teatro Baquedano, on Santiago, Allende stated[citation needed]: "Stalin was for the Russian people a flag of the revolution, of creating execution, of human sentiment enhanced by paternity; symbol of edifying peace and heroism without boundaries; worshipped by his people, he astonished the world correcting his own mistakes in a human effort and worthy of superation. But above all this aspects, almost hierathics, of his personality, there is his huge faith in Marx and Lenin's doctrine, his irrevocable marxist conduct. Everything he did was on the people's service, with Lenin's image in the eyes and with the fire of marxism in the heart. [...] Stalin has died, there is an unspoken protest in the consciences and sorrow in the souls. Men of the Soviet Union, we the socialists share your mourning, which has universal commotion. Your consolation: knowing that there are men that do not die. Stalin is one of them."
Later he would state: "The Communist Party is the party of the working class, the Communist Party is the Party of the Soviet Union, the first socialist state in the world, and whoever wants to create a socialist government without the communists is not a marxist; and I am a marxist."
During his presidencial term, Allende's proximity to the Communist Party led him to take the more moderate positions held by the communists, in opposition to the radical views of the socialists. However, this situation tended to revert toward the end of his mandate.[6]
[edit] Election
Allende won the 1970 Chilean presidential election as leader of the Unidad Popular ("Popular Unity") coalition. On 4 September 1970, he obtained a narrow plurality of 36.2 percent to 34.9 percent over Jorge Alessandri, a former president, with 27.8 percent going to a third candidate (Radomiro Tomic) of the Christian Democratic Party (PDC), whose electoral platform was similar to Allende's. According to the Chilean Constitution of the time, if no presidential candidate obtained a majority of the popular vote, Congress would choose one of the two candidates with the highest number of votes as the winner. Tradition was for Congress to vote for the candidate with the highest popular vote, regardless of margin. Indeed, former president Jorge Alessandri had been elected in 1958 with only 31.6 percent of the popular vote, defeating Allende.
The CIA alleged that Allende's campaign received $350,000 from Cuba.[7]
On October 22 General René Schneider, Commander in Chief of the Chilean Army, was shot resisting a kidnap attempt by a group led by General Roberto Viaux. Hospitalized, he died of his wounds three days later. This attempt followed two others on the 19th and 20th. Viaux's kidnapping plan had been supported by the CIA, although it seems that then-US Secretary for Foreign Affairs Henry Kissinger had ordered the plans postponed at the last moment. Schneider was a known defender of the "constitutionalist" doctrine that the army's role is exclusively professional, its mission being to protect the country's sovereignty and not to interfere in politics.
General Schneider's death was widely disapproved of and, for the time, ended military opposition to Allende[8], whom the parliament finally chose on 24 October. On 26 October, President Eduardo Frei named General Carlos Prats as commander in chief of the army to replace René Schneider.
Allende assumed the presidency on 3 November 1970 after signing a Statute of Constitutional Guarantees proposed by the Christian Democrats in return for their support in Congress. In an extensive interview with Regis Debray, Allende explained his reasons for agreeing to the guarantees.[9] Some critics have interpreted Allende's responses as an admission that signing the Statute was only a tactical move on his part.[10]
[edit] Presidency
Upon assuming power, Allende began to carry out his platform of implementing socialistic programs in Chile, called La vía chilena al socialismo ("the Chilean Path to Socialism"). This included nationalization of large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking), and government administration of the health care system, educational system, a program of free milk for children (given out arbitrarily by GAP "Group of Personal Friends of the President"), and a greatly expanded plan of land seizure and redistribution (already begun under his predecessor Eduardo Frei Montalva,[11] who had nationalized between one-fifth and one-quarter of all properties liable to takeover).[12] The Allende government's intention was to seize all holdings of more than eighty basic irrigated hectares.[13] Allende also intended to improve the socio-economic welfare of Chile's poorest citizens; a key element was to provide employment, either in the new nationalised enterprises or on public work projects.
Chilean presidents were allowed a maximum term of six years, which may explain Allende's haste to restructure the economy. Not only did he have a significant restructuring program organized (the Vuskovic plan), he had to make it a success if a Socialist successor to Allende was going to be elected. In the first year of Allende's term, the short-term economic results of Minister of the Economy Pedro Vuskovic's expansive monetary policy were favorable: 12% industrial growth and an 8.6% increase in GDP, accompanied by major declines in inflation (down from 34.9% to 22.1%) and unemployment (down to 3.8%). However, these results were not sustained, and in 1972, the Chilean escudo had runaway inflation of 140%. The average Real GDP contracted between 1971 and 1973 at an annual rate of 5.6% ("negative growth"); and the government's fiscal deficit soared while foreign reserves declined [Flores, 1997]. The combination of inflation and government-mandated price-fixing, together with the "disappearance" of basic commodities from supermarket shelves, led to the rise of black markets in rice, beans, sugar, and flour.[14] The Chilean economy also became the victim of a US campaign against the Allende government[15].
The Allende government announced it would default on debts owed to international creditors and foreign governments. Allende also froze all prices while raising salaries. His implementation of these policies was met with strong opposition by landowners, employers, businessmen and transporters associations, some middle-class sectors like some civil servants and professional unions, the rightist opposition, led by National Party, the Roman Catholic Church (which in 1973 was displeased with the direction of educational policy[16]), and eventually the Christian Democrats. It also was a reason for growing tensions with foreign multinational corporations and the government of the United States.
Allende also undertook Project Cybersyn, a system of networked telex machines and computers. Cybersyn was developed by British cybernetics expert Stafford Beer. The network transmitted data from factories to the government in Santiago, allowing for economic planning in real-time.[17]
In 1971, Chile re-established diplomatic relations with Cuba, joining Mexico and Canada in rejecting a previously-established Organization of American States convention prohibiting governments in the Western Hemisphere from establishing diplomatic relations with Cuba. Shortly afterward, Cuban president Fidel Castro made a month-long visit to Chile. The visit, in which Castro held massive rallies and gave public advice to Allende, was seen by those on the political right as proof to support their view that "The Chilean Path to Socialism" was an effort to put Chile on the same path as Cuba.
October 1972 saw the first of what were to be a wave of confrontational strikes. The strikes were led first by truckers, and later by small businessmen, so