“Mission accomplished. Coin taken. “Dead President”. With these words that General Palacios addressed to the highest military command, September 11, 1973 Shortly after the end of the attack on the government palace, an important stage in Chilean history ended, the stage of the democratic road to socialism, and another began: that of the iron military dictatorship under the command of General Augusto Pinochet, who established a regime of terror that lasted almost 18 years.
Half a century after September 11th There is something that lives and remains in the memory. Not only in the memory of the majority of the Chilean people, but also in the memory of the world: the image of the courage and bravery of the ousted President Salvador Allende, who resisted the attacks of the army tanks and the plane in La Moneda Palace, carried out bombings and finally committed suicide committed by shooting himself in the head with a rifle given to him by Fidel Castro.
The doctor and socialist politician committed suicide with a rifle given to him by Fidel Castro
Since then, the life of Salvador Allende and his lesson in courage has become a myth and has grown in importance over time. Not so much because his story is the story of a statesman or a charismatic leader who knew how to conquer the masses, or because there were controversial episodes in his private life, but rather because After losing three consecutive elections as a presidential candidate, he managed to unite socialists and communists in a common project: Bring Chile to socialism through the ballot box, democracy and the popular mandate, not through armed struggle.
Whatever the case, the truth is that the image of the bravery and courage of Salvador Allende surviving the siege of La Moneda wearing a combat helmet still endures over time and is a scene as essential as it is primary to the construction represents a myth like Allende’s, among many other reasons, because the Chilean President’s last minutes were implicated in it a halo full of secretsto the point that for many years the debate centered on whether his death was the result of suicide or whether it was actually (“dead President”) a premeditated crime.
In this sense, fifty years after the military coup, books are like biography Salvador Allende by Mario Amorós edited by Capitán Swing and the novel Allende and the Suicide Museum by Ariel Dorfman edited by Galaxia Gutenbergrevisit the character of Allende, but they do so between historicity and myth, between the veracity of the facts and the magic of fiction, which is clear proof that the Chilean president is not only a myth, but also stands in the light of Events, a symbol of inexhaustible values.
Mario Amorós and Ariel Dorfman revisit the legend of Allende in two anniversary books
The biography of Mario Amorós (Alicante, 1973), originally published in 2013, is not a typical biography as it has no intention of delving into the most hidden aspects of Allende’s private life (neither is the case for this edition, by the way). Attachments and questions related to his ties to Freemasonry have been deleted), but to trace his political career. However, this does not mean that the biography as a whole does not present the human profile of a man who remained faithful to his people and his ideals to the end of his life.
Alonso offers a portrait of someone close to him. That of a young man affectionately known as “Chicho” by his closest friends and relatives, who was born into a wealthy middle-class family in Valparaíso in 1908, studied medicine and, with the help of an anarchist carpenter, approached the emancipation ideas of socialism and later was part of various left-wing groups and began his political career in 1937 when he was elected deputy of Valparaíso.
But in addition to this profile, Alonso also offers something the profile of a doctor with a social vocation, that of an enthusiastic activist involved in the founding and expansion of the Socialist Party, that of a health minister during the Popular Front government, and that of a tenacious candidate who, after his defeat in the presidential elections of 1952, 1958 and In 1964 he became President of Chile in 1970 with 36.3% of the vote and the support of the Christian Democratic Party to embark on a series of social reforms that would soon meet many obstacles and opposition from the United States government, which, through the CIA, was seeking a way to overthrow him.
Today, its long shadow is torn between historicity and the magic of fiction
These years, the years of Allende’s government and Popular Unity, are revisited in his new novel by the writer Ariel Dorfman, who worked with Allende as a cultural advisor during the three years of his government and, after the coup d’état in Augusto Pinochet, was forced into Going into exile (first to France and later to the United States, where he currently lives) and from where he made several complaints about the violation of human rights in Chile.
In any case, through a plot in which Dorfman himself appears as both narrator and character, the author of “Confidence” and “Apparitions” connects the memory of those years, of this time, with historical events that, however, always revolve, with the tools offered by fiction to a fact: Allende’s suicide. A suicide that many questioned and this Dorfman, at the request of one Joseph Hortha (a Dutch businessman with a socialist heart who needs to know what really happened to see if Allende can be part of his suicide museum, a somewhat demented installation in a living room of his house). try to clear it up.
In a journey that is a geographical journey but also a journey in time, a political but also sentimental journey, both men travel through Washington DC, New York, Santiago, Valparaíso and London as if they were two wild detectives behind an uncovered investigation for she. It constantly gets out of control. In any case, the search for the truth about Allende’s suicide is not in vain, because at the same time they share Confidentialities and secrets and they analyze the years of Allende’s reign, the political and international situation, his death, and he never stops coming to terms with his own past. A past full of guilt and trauma hidden in this story, which both of them struggle to make come true.
Beyond everything, history cannot stop and, as every year on September 11th, returns once again to La Moneda Palace, where Salvador Allende, besieged by bombings and tanks, resisted until the last moment and ended his life with a shot in the head his myth was born. A myth that, fifty years later, neither forgetting nor bombs could bury. Perhaps because, as Mario Alonso points out, Salvador Allende’s concerns and values are not only still valid. They are also indestructible.