Half a century ago, in late 1972, scores of Chileans took to the streets of Santiago – I was one of them – to support President Salvador Allende, who was traveling abroad at a crucial moment for our country. The unprecedented process of advancing towards socialism by democratic means that we had begun was under siege. Inside the country, a heavily armed and violent Chilean conservative opposition was undermining the left-wing government, and outside lurked powerful opponents: Nixon and his Black Eminence Henry Kissinger; multinational corporations; international financial institutions and of course the CIA.
Attempts to overthrow the democratically elected president have so far been unsuccessful. A month-long insurgent strike by truck drivers and shopkeepers in October 1972 had just been thwarted by a massive mobilization of Chilean workers. But the future looked bleak. On many walls across Chile, far-right paramilitary fanatics had scrawled the words “JAKARTA KOMMT!”, a grim reference to the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Indonesians after the 1967 coup against Sukarno’s progressive government.
It was this prophecy of death and doom that Allende wished to avoid. His 1972 trip was intended to explain to the international community what was at stake in Chile and win the sympathy of the nations of the world. The cornerstone of this strategy was a fervent and hilarious speech Allende delivered to the UN General Assembly 50 years ago this Sunday, December 4, 1972.
Allende begins by emphasizing what distinguishes the Chilean road to socialism from previous revolutions: it is possible to achieve economic democracy through the full exercise of political freedom. The great transformations are taking place peacefully, strengthening civil liberties and respecting cultural and ideological pluralism. But regaining control of the country’s wealth has led to relentless aggression from transnational corporations like ITT and Kennecott Copper, which covertly sabotage the economy to foment civil war. Allende uses this situation of vulnerability to illustrate the tragedy of underdevelopment in Africa, Asia and Latin America: “We are potentially rich countries; we live in poverty. We wander from one place to another asking for credit…. and yet we are – a paradox typical of the capitalist economic system – large exporters of capital.”
Allende’s speech is still a master class on the “enormous wrongs being perpetrated under the guise of cooperation and aid,” a brilliant analysis of the chaos wrought by the exploitation of the developing world. He calls for solidarity with Chile in its attempt to solve “the great housing, work, food and health deficits” but goes further and stresses how all solutions to a range of global threats (wars, racism, nuclear weapons, “the immeasurable shortcomings of all kinds of more than two-thirds of humanity”) depend on the cooperation of the international community.
Allende’s words resonate heartbreakingly today. The world has changed, of course, but many of the challenges remain the same (accelerated by the climate apocalypse, which Allende, like other world leaders, failed to foresee in 1972). Even more heartbreaking is that ten months later our President would die in Santiago defending democracy and the constitution, the first of many deaths during General Augusto Pinochet’s seventeen-year dictatorship. It is a comfort that his message of hope and dignity continues to motivate the generations that have followed him.
In fact, two prominent members of those generations recently gathered in New York, along with Allende’s daughter Isabel, to commemorate the UN speech. One of them, 36-year-old Chilean President Gabriel Boric, was born more than 14 years after that speech, and the other, 50-year-old Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, had not yet celebrated his first birthday in December 1972. Both socialist leaders are currently besieged by the virulent resurgence of right-wing movements that reflect the same forces that destroyed democracy in Chile and turned the country into a laboratory for the free-market neoliberalism now in crisis across the world. For Boric and Sánchez, Allende’s speech spurred them on to keep searching for justice and sovereignty for their own peoples, and a reaffirmation of their belief that there can be no solution to humanity’s current problems without a different and egalitarian solution.
I was privileged to be invited to this meeting in Manhattan to introduce the speakers and comment on their words. As someone who bade farewell to Allende in 1972 with so many fellow citizens on the streets of our capital, it was deeply moving to hear, fifty years later, Allende’s courage, his comprehensive view of history, his liberation ethic and compassion, her belief in democratic socialism, inspired these two young leaders.
Although they had never met Allende and I had breathed the same air and worked with him during his last months in office, the three generations felt united by this speech, to which delegates from all over the world gave a ten-minute standing ovation. We can still hear – and we need to hear so many hopeful men and women of our time – the words with which Allende ends his speech: “It is our confidence in ourselves that increases our belief in the great values of humanity, in The certainty that these values must prevail cannot be destroyed.”
Ariel Dorfman He is the author of Death and the Maiden. Next year he will publish a book of poetry, Words from the other side of death, and a new novel, Allende and the Suicide Museum, which explores the death of Salvador Allende.