Salvador Allende, the reference of the current Latin American left misunderstood 50 years ago

Most of the region’s left-wing leaders will attend commemorative events on Monday for the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état against Salvador Allendetoday a reference for world progressivism, but misunderstood in the 1970s, when in Latin America the armed socialist revolution was mainly defended.

At the ceremony, which will be held at the presidential palace The cointhe Mexican will attend Andrés Manuel Andrés López Obrador, the Colombian Gustavo Petro and the Argentine Alberto Fernandez.

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Petro and Fernández had already visited Chile before, but it will be López Obrador’s first visit to South Americawho has made very few international trips since coming to power in 2018, mostly to the United States.

Other progressive leaders will also attend Monday’s commemoration, such as the Prime Minister of Portugal, Antonio Costa; the former socialist leaders Felipe González (Spain) and José Mujica (Uruguay); and the president of the Federal Council of Germany, the social democrat Peter Tschentscher.

A painting in honor of Salvador Allende, on August 30, 2023 in Santiago, Chile. (EFE/ Elvis González).

“Allende’s career as the first democratically elected socialist president gives him a meaning that transcends time and borders,” Simón Rubiños, from the Latin American Strategic Center for Geopolitics of Argentina (Celag), tells EFE.

Rubiños also remembers that “practically all the presidents of the first progressive wave (the so-called ‘pink tide’ of the early 21st century) evoked his figure.”

For Carlos Malamud, from the Elcano Royal Institute, Allende “occupies an important place” in the history of the regional leftbut warns EFE that There is “an abysmal difference” between the weight of his figure and that of other leftist symbols, such as the former Cuban president Fidel Castro or the Argentine revolutionary guerrilla Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

“THE CHILEAN ROAD WAS NOT FOLLOWED BY ANYONE”

Allende’s great bet was the so-called “Chilean path to socialism”, a formula that sought to change the model through institutions and democracy. Although many suggested that he create militias in view of the imminence of a military uprising, he rejected the armed route until the end.

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“His figure represents the hope of contesting power without putting one’s life in the way,” Rubiños points out.

However, according to Malamud, “The Chilean path to socialism was not followed by anyone” in Latin America: “They left him alone and the solidarity with him, the people and the Chilean project was a great act of rhetoric.”

Along the same lines, Ascanio Cavallo, journalist and author of the essay “Bang“, points out to EFE that “Allende’s death was a great shock in the region, more than his ‘Chilean path to socialism’, in which much of the left never believed.”

A man takes a recording of a painting by Salvador Allende, on August 30, 2023. (EFE/ Elvis González). (Elvis González/)

From the Hernán Echavarría Olózaga Institute of Political Science, in Colombia, Carlos Augusto Chacón criticizes that Allende has always been presented as a president who came to power “with a great popular mandate,” when in reality “it was Congress that gave him the Presidency.”

In 1970 there was no ballot and, in the event that no one obtained an absolute majority, Parliament was in charge of choosing between the two candidates with the most votes. Allendewho won with 36.2% of the votes at the polls, later obtained the support of 153 parliamentarians, compared to 35 for the right-wing candidate.

The Allende project did have an echo in Europe, where “the Prague Spring and the crimes of Stalinism caused a large part of the western left “adopt a critical look towards the USSR and looked for democratic alternatives,” Nicolás Ortiz, from the Silva Herníquez Catholic University, told EFE.

His figure – he adds – has been claimed by the leaders of Podemos, in Spain, the Frenchman Jean-Luc Mélechon or the English Labor Party Jeremy Corbin.

SUICIDE OR MURDER?

Despite the exhumation and the ruling of the Chilean Supreme Court that established that Allende committed suicide in La Moneda before being reached by Pinochet’s troopsa part of the Latin American left continues to defend, 50 years later, that he was murdered by the coup plotters.

The last one to do it was López Obrador, who during the announcement of his trip to Chile described the death of the former president as a “vile crime.”

According to Chacón, this thesis seeks to “convert Allende “become a hero and try to demonstrate that the only way for the right to depose leftist leaders is to assassinate them.”

Daniel Mansuy, one of the leading intellectuals of the Chilean right, explains in his latest book that Fidel Castro was the great supporter of this thesis: “In the leftist morality of those years, a revolutionary hero does not commit suicide: he dies fighting,” he writes in “Salvador Allende. The Chilean left and Popular Unity.

The version of heroic death, in that sense, “would have emboldened the left,” while that of suicide – adds Rubiños – “leaves a feeling of desolation.”

Source: Elcomercio