Salvador Allende
Early life
Source :Wikipedia
Allende was born on 26 June
1908[18] in Santiago.[19][20] He was the son of Salvador
Allende Castro and Laura Gossens Uribe. Allende's family belonged to the
Chilean upper middle 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.[21] Salvador Allende was of Basque[22] and Belgian[23][24][25] descent.
Allende attended high
school at Instituto
Nacional General José Miguel Carrera of Santiago and 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.[21] Allende was a talented
athlete in his youth, being a member of the Everton de Viña
del Mar sports club (named after the more famous English
football club of the same name),
where he is said to have excelled at the long jump.[26] Allende then graduated with
a medical degree
in 1933 from the University of Chile.[21] During his time at medical
school Allende was influenced by Professor Max Westenhofer, a German pathologist who emphasized the social
determinants of disease and social medicine.[27][28]
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. During the
Fifties, Allende introduced legislation that established the Chilean national
health service, the first program in the Americas to guarantee universal health
care.[33]
Salvador Allende in 1964.
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.
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.
Declassified documents show
that from 1962 through 1964, the CIA spent a total of
$2.6 million to finance the campaign of Eduardo Frei
and spent $3 million in anti-Allende propaganda "to scare voters away
from Allende's FRAP coalition". The CIA considered its role in the victory
of Frei a great success.[34][35] They argued that "the
financial and organizational assistance given to Frei, the effort to keep Durán
in the race, the propaganda campaign to denigrate Allende—were 'indispensable
ingredients of Frei's success'", and they thought that his chances of
winning and the good progress of his campaign would have been doubtful without
the covert support of the Government
of the United States.[36] Thus, in 1964 Allende lost
once more as the FRAP candidate, 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 had a close
relationship with the Chilean
Communist Party from the beginning of his political career. On
his fourth (and successful) bid for the presidency, the Communist Party
supported him as the alternate for its own candidate, the world-renowned poet Pablo Neruda.
1970 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% to 34.9% over Jorge Alessandri, a former
president,
Upon
assuming the presidency, Allende began to carry out his platform of
implementing a socialist programme 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 (with the help of a United States educator, Jane A.
Hobson-Gonzalez from Kokomo, Indiana), a programme
of free milk for children in the schools and shanty towns of Chile, and an
expansion of the land seizure and redistribution already begun under his
predecessor Eduardo Frei
Montalva,[46] who had
nationalized between one-fifth and one-quarter of all the properties listed for
takeover.[47] Allende also
intended to improve the socio-economic welfare of Chile's poorest citizens;[48] a key
element was to provide employment, either in the new nationalized enterprises
or on public work projects.[48]
On
early September 1973, Allende floated the idea of resolving the constitutional
crisis with a plebiscite.[C] His speech
outlining such a solution was scheduled for 11 September, but he was never able
to deliver it. On 11 September 1973, the Chilean military under general Augusto Pinochet, aided by
the United States and its CIA,
staged a coup
against Allende.[109][110][13]
Death
Just
before the capture of La Moneda (the Presidential
Palace), with gunfire and explosions clearly audible in the background, Allende
gave his farewell speech to Chileans on live radio, speaking of himself in the
past tense, of his love for Chile and of his deep faith in its future. He
stated that his commitment to Chile did not allow him to take an easy way out,
and he would not be used as a propaganda tool by those he called
"traitors" (he refused an offer of safe passage), clearly implying he
intended to fight to the end.[111]
Shortly
afterwards, the coup plotters announced that Allende had committed suicide. An
official announcement declared that the weapon he had used was an automatic
rifle. Before his death he had been photographed several times holding an AK-47,
a gift from Fidel Castro.[112] He was found dead
with this gun, according to contemporaneous statements made by officials in the
Pinochet regime.
Lingering
doubts regarding the manner of Allende's death persisted throughout the period
of the Pinochet
regime. Many Chileans and independent observers
refused to accept on faith the government's version of events amid speculation
that Allende had been murdered by government agents. When in 2011 a Chilean
court opened a criminal investigation into the circumstances of Allende's
death, Pinochet had long since left power.
The
ongoing criminal investigation led to a May 2011 court order that Allende's
remains be exhumed and autopsied by an international team of experts.[113] Results of the
autopsy were officially released in mid-July 2011. The team of experts
concluded that the former president had shot himself with an AK-47
assault rifle.[114] In December 2011
the judge in charge of the investigation affirmed the experts' findings and
ruled Allende's death a suicide.[115] On 11 September
2012, the 39th anniversary of Allende's death, a Chilean appeals court
unanimously upheld the trial court's ruling, officially closing the case.[116]
The Guardian
reported that a scientific autopsy of the remains had confirmed that
"Salvador Allende committed suicide during the 1973 coup that toppled his
socialist government."[113] It went on to say
that:
British
ballistics expert David Prayer said Allende died of two shots fired from an
assault rifle that was held between his legs and under his chin and was set to
fire automatically. The bullets blew out the top of his head and killed him
instantly. The forensics team's conclusion was unanimous. Spanish expert
Francisco Etxeberria said: "We have absolutely no doubt" that Allende
committed suicide.[113]
With affection,
Ruben
