Alfredo Sepulveda in a bookstore in Santiago.Cristobal Venegas
The journalist, academic and writer Alfredo Sepúlveda (Santiago, 53 years old) has examined in depth what happened from the election of Salvador Allende on September 4, 1970 to the final result on September 11, 1973 with the coup and suicide of the president. In his book “La Unidad Popular, the thousand days of Allende and the Chilean road to socialism” (Sudamericana 2020) he describes in detail these 1041 days, in which he presents the facts, the lights and shadows of the Chilean road project socialism promoted by the former socialist president . And the president’s contradictions.
Questions. Historian Sol Serrano said in an interview with El País that she is happy that we are talking about popular unity on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the coup. Is it a pending exercise?
Answer. For the first time, we’re trying to make sense of a very simple thing: What happened? We didn’t have that question. At an academic level, of course, and there is an extensive bibliography. But even as I was writing the book, I found it difficult to find the answer to this question in another book.
Q Why do you think it took so long for us to get to this conversation on a broader level?
R. It was always a difficult conversation because it was shaped by the dictatorship. The dictatorship is like a filter for all of this. If we had had this conversation on the 20th anniversary in 1993, it would inevitably have been seen as some kind of justification for the crimes of the dictatorship. Because this question about what happened inevitably leads to a critical vision of popular unity in the deepest sense of the word. There are also light and dark areas.
The journalist and writer Alfredo Sepulveda.Cristobal Venegas
Q Are there still sectors that believe that this analysis somehow justifies the crimes of the dictatorship?
R. I think so. The spirit of this discussion is now emerging in the handling of the 50th anniversary commemoration. And this was also expressed in the case of the departure of Patricio Fernández, although with nuances, since the deputy Carmen Hertz never said that the matter could not be discussed. But there are some attempts to assert certain truths that are controversial to me. Carmen Hertz [de la bancada del PC] says that the state must define military dictatorship as a crime. I tend to agree with this, but I understand that not all of Chilean society will agree. And it doesn’t cause me any problem.
Q This is what Senator Isabel Allende, President Allende’s daughter, expresses when she says that “there will never be an official truth.”
R Exactly. In addition, the emotional stress is of course very strong, both during this time and in the period that follows. I thought about this book in 2014, 40. But it was very complex because the issue of human rights violations was still very much present and I felt like it was like giving a dress to the arguments that justified these violations. In this context, it was difficult to evaluate the Unidad Popular from a public and critical perspective. But when I wrote this book in 2020, on the anniversary of Allende’s election, it seemed like it was time. Half a century are big words. If not now, when actually?
Q How do you assess the government’s commitment to this anniversary? His initial story about memory, democracy and the future ultimately falls short of the left’s most maximalist positions.
R They left with a problem and the spirit of October 18th[dem Datum des sozialen Ausbruchs in Chile]. This is a milestone that happened to us recently and is hardly talked about. On the other hand, under these conditions, when stories or narratives are introduced by the state that have some official status, it will always be met with resistance and difficult to manage.[lafechadelestallidosocialenChile)EsoesunhitoquenosocurrióhacemuypocoysobreelcualhaymuypocaconversacióntambiénYporotroladoenesascondicioneselestablecimientoderelatosonarrativasqueprovengandelEstadoquetenganalgúngradodeoficialidadvanasersiempreresistidosycomplejosdemanejar[lafechadelestallidosocialenChile)EsoesunhitoquenosocurrióhacemuypocoysobreelcualhaymuypocaconversacióntambiénYporotroladoenesascondicioneselestablecimientoderelatosonarrativasqueprovengandelEstadoquetenganalgúngradodeoficialidadvanasersiempreresistidosycomplejosdemanejar
Q Was it a mistake for the government to make this anniversary its own?
R. I do think it was a misguided ambition. The government has become entangled and no longer has a story about it, but the analysis of what happened in the coup before and after was carried out today without the government. It is carried out by civil society, academia, study centers, people and the media. Beyond the commemorative events, it seemed to me to be a mistake to take the lead on history.
Q Ascanio Cavallo said that most of this generation’s leaders in government, including the president, did not understand the complexity of what popular unity was. Do you agree with him?
R I don’t know if they have an understanding and are keeping it to themselves, but obviously they haven’t expressed it and what is seen is more of the mythical story. For example, saying that popular unity was an attempt to bring about major social changes and that it was forcibly overturned by a dictatorship that wanted to lead us to neoliberalism. Well, there is a grain of truth in this story. Obviously it was a government that wanted to make big changes, but there is much more at stake. The goals of the Unidad Popular contradicted the Chilean historical tradition and were rejected by a large part of the population. The coup was obviously encouraged by the right and Allende’s opposition sectors, but it was not a neoliberal coup. Neoliberalism later emerged through successive coups within the same dictatorship. So I think the new generations in power have expressed this mythical story of popular unity, which was the first story that existed. But it’s as if 50 years haven’t passed yet.
“A step below the political hatred of the time”
Q In your book you mention that there were at least eleven coup attempts. In your opinion, was it inevitable?
R I think that this was probably inevitable since August 22nd (when the Chamber of Deputies signed a resolution declaring the Allende government unconstitutional). Before you can see that there are options. Allende always had the option of negotiating with the Christian Democrats and granting them degrees of power, and he always had the option of resorting to the military. What happens is that after August 22nd these options no longer exist. You probably think you have them, but you don’t anymore. And there are no new options other than the referendum.
Alfredo Sepulveda.Cristobal Venegas
Q The figure of Allende was also revisited on this anniversary. Beyond the mythical figure, even from its shadows. Do you have this impression?
R The shadow of him for me is that he does not define himself through the use of violence as a means of political action. I found no moral rejection of the use of violence as a method of political action in Allende’s career, but there couldn’t have been one because he was a Marxist in the 1970s. You have to understand it from this perspective. In President Allende’s practice, this came at a cost. Because for me, the opposition to the Chilean project “Road to Socialism” was the people’s power, represented by the MIR, which was outside the UP but was part of the left, by the Socialist Party, by the youth of the Mapu, for the christian left. And this people power represents the opposite of Allende: we must achieve this Marxist socialism outside the state. Not necessarily through war, but through mass mobilization. And Allende never breaks with them. You also have to understand that he was very alone. I think that’s more than the dark side, that’s the criticism I would make: that lack of definition that later, in 1973, it’s obvious that it had to be done and it wasn’t done. Now I believe that he did it on the last day, September 11, 1973, and that it was his last speech and his last suicide.
Q How do you interpret suicide?
R I think that suicide is a way of reaffirming something that he despised in many ways, namely the old democracy that he called bourgeois and in which he grew up. That is, the cultural forms of the Chilean representative regime. In his last speech there are no allusions to popular unity, Marxism, the left or socialism. These words are missing. And at least for me it was a good decision to see it. And the axes are the words “people”, “constitution” and “workers”, which was the content of the Chilean development model between 1932 and 1970, which was a kind of partnership between entrepreneurs and the state, they needed each other. I think when he realizes the reality of what’s coming, and I think he’s the only one who manages to summarize the future of the dictatorship, then he gives this speech justifying the past. And the past is this democracy in which it arose. He meets again the Allende of the classic Chilean parliamentary and representative forms.
Q Is Chile as polarized today as it was back then?
R No, I think that the level of political polarization in popular unity is comparable only to the Civil War of 1891. If you go back to memory and talk to the people who are still alive and who took part in that time, you realize that what was there was political hatred. It was a feeling of desire for the physical annihilation of your political rival. In August 1973 the entire political system was talking about a civil war. There was a lot of social outburst violence, for example, but I’m not sure there was political hatred at that level in 2019. I think fortunately we are still at a level below the political hatred of that time.
Q The right and the government have failed to bring together positions for a common 50-year declaration. It was possible?
R No, impossible, because deep in their hearts the right continues to see the coup as a political solution to a crisis for which there was no other solution. I think that in these 40 or 50 years we have made advances in civilization. There was a time when the right justified human rights violations, not now. In my opinion, there is an intellectual trap behind the calls to condemn the coup, because what practical effect can it have in the face of a political crisis that we could experience in 10, 15 or 20 more years? I don’t think so, because in theory, coups respond to the assumption of power vacuums. In my opinion, the compromise should be how we proceed in order not to repeat this power vacuum. And in some ways it’s a much harder question for any political actor. They ask him which of his core beliefs he is willing to abandon in the area of preserving democracy. And I don’t think anyone is ready to answer that question. They would get too naked in front of their opponents.