Biographies

Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende was born on the 26th of June, 1908 in Valparaiso. He was the son of upper-class, politically active parents named Laura Gossens Uribe and Salvador Allende Castro (that’s not an ill omen at all). Early on in his life he helped found the Chilean socialist party, and headed up the elctoral campaign for the Popular Front. He denounced the persecution of Jews in Germany after the Kristallnacht. He opposed the Soviet Union’s various belligerent actions, and recognized the People’s Republic of China as a sovereign state, making Chile the first nation in continental America to do so. He shunted from one position of political power to another, doing nothing particularly important besides condemn actions in other countries, make friends with one of the most heartlessly charming dictators in the world, and acknowledge the existence of gigantic nations.
Finally, in 1970, he was elected president of Chile. Supposedly, he received something like $350,000 from Cuba, but basic logic and examination of data has shown that in the US at least, money doesn’t win elections, rather, succesful elections get money. Regardless, Allende implemented a massive, nationwide socialist program called la vía chilena al socialismo ("the Chilean Path to Socialism"), which, predictably, greatly improved the economy in the first year before causing an economic collapse.
Allende’s policies became more and more radical, possibly because he was under pressure from the more radical members of his political coalition and possibly because he was desperate to save the economy. Repeated strikes and mutinies in the military, as well as the increasing power of the Chilean black market, made saving the economy an excercise in futility. It would’ve been a credit to Allende’s government if he could’ve prevented anarchy from taking over altogether, and he can’t be much blamed for failing to do so when a world superpower has decided they don’t want him in power anymore.
Allende intended to give a speech concerning the national crisis on September 12th of 1973, however the Chilean military staged a coup a day in advance. He gave a famous farewell address in which the sounds of battle were clearly audible in the background, and in which he rather clearly stated his desire to fight ot the death. He supposedly comitted suicide with an AK-47 given to him by Fidel Castro, so I guess it’s so much for fighting, but he got the death part right. In a documentary by Patricio Guzman, he commits suicide with a gun instead of a rifle, at least according to wikipedia, which I find somewhat confusing because I was under the impression that rifles are rifles.
There’s still something of a debate as to whether or not it was quite constitutional for Allende to nationalize the largest industries in Chile and get the small businesses of his nation so agitated that they went on a collective strike and beat the living tar out of people who broke said strike. That seems pretty clear-cut to me, this isn’t big oil we’re talking about, this is ma and pa shops, but I guess in the desperate search for a socialist leader who wasn’t a heartless dictator, people are willing to ignore a few flaws. Like the fact that he ignored the democratic institutions of his nation and did whatever he wanted with the government, something which apparently you only receive flak for if you’re a crazy, war-mongering Republican as opposed to a crazy, dictatorial Socialist.