Salvador Allende

Victor Figueroa Clark

Description

This is a political biography of one of the 20th century’s most emblematic left-wing figures - Salvador Allende, who was president of Chile until he was ousted by General Pinochet in a US-supported coup in 1973.



Victor Figueroa Clark guides us through Allende's life and political project, answering some of the most frequently asked questions. Was he a revolutionary or a reformist? A bureaucrat or inspirational democrat? Figueroa Clark argues that Allende and the Popular Unity Party created a unique fusion which was both revolutionary and democratic.



The process led by Allende was a symbol of hope for the left during his short time in power. Forty years on, and with left governments back in power across Latin America, this book looks back at the man and the process in order to draw vital lessons for the left in Latin America and around the world today.
Introduction

1. Early Life and Youth

2. Reaching Political Maturity

3. Becoming the Leader of the Left

4. Between Revolutions

5. The Popular Unity

6. The Coup

7. What followed Allende?

8. Life and Legacy

Notes

Index

Sujets

• Political Ideologies
• Political Science
• Communism
• Chilean coup d'état
• Socialism
• Post-Communism
• Chile
• 9
• 11
• Chili

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 12 août 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781849649353
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Salvador Allende
Revolutionary Lives
Series Editors: Brian Doherty, Keele University; Sarah Irving, University of Edinburgh; Professor Paul Le Blanc, La Roche College, Pittsburgh
Revolutionary Lives is a series of short, critical biographies of radical figures from throughout history. The books are sympathetic but not sycophantic, and the intention is to present a balanced and, where necessary, critical evaluation of the individual’s place in their political field, putting their actions and achievements in context and exploring issues raised by their lives, such as the use or rejection of violence, nationalism, or gender in political activism. While individuals are the subject of the books, their personal lives are dealt with lightly except insofar as they mesh with political concerns. The focus is on the contribution these revolutionaries made to history, an examination of how far they achieved their aims in improving the lives of the oppressed and exploited, and how they can continue to be an inspiration for many today.
Published titles:
Leila Khaled: Icon of Palestinian Liberation
Sarah Irving
Jean Paul Marat: Tribune of the French Revolution
Clifford D. Conner
Sylvia Pankhurst
Suffragette, Socialist and Scourge of Empire
Katherine Connelly
Gerrard Winstanley: The Digger’s Life and Legacy
John Gurney
www.revolutionarylives.co.uk

First published 2013 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © Victor Figueroa Clark 2013
The right of Victor Figueroa Clark to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 0 7453 3308 3 Hardback ISBN 978 0 7453 3307 6 Paperback ISBN 978 1 8496 4933 9 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4934 6 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 8496 4935 3 EPUB eBook
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed digitally by CPI Antony Rowe, Chippenham, UK and Edwards Bros in the United States of America
To Salvador and all the children of exile, to my parents, and above all to Marcela.
There are men who struggle for a day, and they are good.
There are others who struggle for a year, and they are better.
There are some who struggle many years, and they are better still.

But there are those who struggle all their lives, and these are the indispensible ones.
Bertolt Brecht
Contents
Acknowledgements

1 Introduction
2 Early Life and Youth
3 Reaching Political Maturity
4 Becoming the Leader of the Left
5 Between Revolutions
6 The Popular Unity
7 The Coup
8 What Followed Allende?
9 Life and Legacy

Notes
Index
Acknowledgements
My thanks are due to the many people who helped me during the writing of this book, especially those family and friends who read early drafts of the manuscript and sent invaluable articles, interviews and other sources my way. Thanks also to David and Sarah at Pluto for their incisive comments, and to Carla and Boris at the Salvador Allende Foundation in Santiago for their help with the Foundation’s excellent archive of speeches, books, documents and audiovisual materials. Gracias also to Marcelo Navarrete for his invaluable research.
Finally, my warm thanks to Jorge Arrate, a Minister in Allende’s government, a brilliant presidential candidate, and the man who really made me think about the meaning of ‘ Allendismo ’.
More information relating to Allende’s life and the history of Chile can be found on the Revolutionary Democrat facebook page ( www.­facebook.­com/­SalvadorAllendeRevolutionaryDemocrat ). Intended to accompany the book, the page contains extra information, excerpts from interviews, music, photographs, interview footage and other clips that will enrich your understanding of Allende the man, and of the Chilean left as a social and political movement for change.
All photographs courtesy of the Salvador Allende Foundation.
1
Introduction
Most politicians are known for what they did in life rather than for the way they died. In this, as in so many things, Salvador Allende was an exception. More people know about his overthrow than know about what his government did, or how he became president of Chile. Allende’s life, like that of so many other revolutionaries, has been stripped of context and reduced to the symbolism of his last moments when, surrounded by the smoke and flames of a bombed and burning presidential palace, he took his own life.
Allende’s last words to the Chilean people were probably the greatest words of farewell ever uttered by a political leader, and they had an immense impact on people around the world. Yet there is much more to the life of Salvador Allende than the last seven hours, or even the last three years of his life. These were the culmination of his political ambitions, and the triumph of his political methods, but they were also the last stage in a long process of struggle and organisation that had its roots in the beginning of the twentieth century at around the time Allende was born. Allende’s death and the overthrow of his government are often told as a dramatic tragedy, but Allende’s significance for Chile and for the wider world also lies within the story of his life, intertwined in history of the popular movement that he led.
Chile’s Popular Unity government was of tremendous interest during the early 1970s. The successful implementation of a ‘peaceful road’ happened to chime with the USSR’s public recognition that a ‘peaceful road’ to socialism was possible, and it was of great interest to a Western European and North American left that shared its political methods if not always its revolutionary goals. The Chilean process was also of great interest to the Third World and the countries of the Non-Aligned Movement, who recognised in Allende’s Chile a country that struggled with the same problems of exploitation and underdevelopment. Allende’s victory in September 1970 was therefore an event of global importance, which inadvertently and inevitably dragged Chile towards what one of Allende’s erstwhile friends called ‘the precipice of the Cold War.’ 1



Map of Chile
Allende’s victory was just as important to his ideological opponents. For the Chilean elite it marked the failure of constitutional means to hold back social pressure for fundamental changes. For Christian Democrats it highlighted the abject failure of their ‘revolution in liberty’, the effort to make deep social changes within capitalism, and while aligned with the United States. Further afield it was also the death knell of Washington’s Alliance for Progress, a decade-old programme of economic and military measures designed to prevent revolution in the region and ostensibly promote ‘development’ through free trade and political liberalism. By the late 1960s it was clear that while it had successfully prevented revolution, often through dictatorship and repression, it had failed to achieve anything else. Chile, with its relatively well-developed political system and strongly rooted political parties, was therefore an important example of a civilian US-aligned government. Allende’s election thus hit an exposed nerve. The United States had been actively involved in preventing a Marxist government in Chile since the early 1960s, spending millions of dollars and penetrating Chilean politics at every level. This made it even worse that Salvador Allende, a self-proclaimed Marxist, had been elected and that to top it all one of the main pillars of his government was the region’s largest and best-organised Communist Party. The United States had helped overthrow Latin American governments for much less.
It was not just the failure of the Alliance for Progress and its efforts to subvert Chilean democracy that irked the United States. Allende’s government had an economic and foreign policy programme that put it on a collision course with Washington. The nationalisation of copper and other natural resources created an example that could be emulated by many other Third World countries, and its foreign policy directly challenged US efforts to align Latin American countries behind Washington by claiming Chile’s inalienable right to determine its own foreign policy, free of US dictates – a complete rejection of the Monroe Doctrine that had justified US interventionism in Latin America since 1823. For the United States the appearance of a Marxist government was completely unacceptable. Détente between superpowers was one thing, allowing Chile to ‘go communist’, as Kissinger put it was another. The US government was not the only enemy of the Popular Unity. Other right-wing regimes, transnational corporations and individual businessmen from around the world were also opposed to it. In Brazil, where in 1964 the military had overthrown Joao Goulart, a president with similar aspirations to Allende, there was particular opposition. The Popular Unity was therefore at the centre of an ideological conflict that went beyond spheres of influence and economic interest and to the heart of a global struggle.
The Popular Unity government and its overthrow were thus a defining moment of Cold War politics. It frightened and inspired in equal measure. In Italy its overthrow led to the ‘historic compromise’ between Communists and Christian Democrats, in France to the construction of a Socialist-Communis