SALVADOR ALLENDE

[Dealey Joe]

Salvador Allende Gossens (Spanish pronunciation: [salβaˈðoɾ aˈʝende ˈɣosens]; 26 July 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America.[1]Allende's involvement in Chilean political life spanned a period of nearly forty years. As a member of the Socialist Party, he was a senator, deputy and cabinet minister. He unsuccessfully ran for the presidency in the 1952, 1958, and 1964 elections. In 1970, he won the presidency in a close three-way race, formally elected by Congress as no candidate had gained a majority.Allende adopted the policy of nationalization of industries and collectivization. Amidst strikes by the far-right Patria y Libertad and CIA opposition under the Nixon administration, as well as by militant leftist opposition, demonstrations were held for and against Allende's presidency.[2] On 11 September 1973 the military, citing a call by the Chilean Congress to end his presidency,[3] illegally staged a coup against Allende.[4][5][6] As the armed forces surrounded La Moneda Palace, Allende gave his last speech vowing not to resign,[7] and allegedly committed suicide thereafter.[8] After Allende's ouster Chile was led by a military junta, and then as a dictatorship by General Augusto Pinochet.Allende was born on 26 July 1908[9] in Valparaíso.[10] He was the son of Salvador Allende Castro and Laura Gossens Uribe. Allende's family belonged to the Chilean upper class and had a long tradition of political involvement in progressive and liberal causes. His grandfather was a prominent physician and a social reformist who founded one of the first secular schools in Chile.[11] Salvador Allende was of Belgian and Basque[12] descent.Allende attended high school at the Liceo Eduardo de la Barra in Valparaíso. As a teenager, his main intellectual and political influence came from the shoe-maker Juan De Marchi, an Italian-born anarchist.[11] Allende was a talented athlete in his youth, being a member of the Everton de Viña del Mar sports club (named after the more famous English football club of the same name and which regularly competes at the highest level in Chilean football), where he is said to have excelled at the long jump.[13] Allende then graduated with a medical degree in 1926 from the University of Chile.[11]He co-founded a section of the Socialist Party of Chile (founded in 1933 with Marmaduque Grove and others) in Valparaíso[11] and became its chairman. He married Hortensia Bussi with whom he had three daughters. In 1933, he published his doctoral thesis Higiene Mental y Delincuencia (Crime and Mental Hygiene) in which he criticized Cesare Lombroso's proposals.[14]In 1938, Allende was in charge of the electoral campaign of the Popular Front headed by Pedro Aguirre Cerda.[11] The Popular Front's slogan was "Bread, a Roof and Work!"[11] After its electoral victory, he became Minister of Health in the Reformist Popular Front government which was dominated by the Radicals.[11] While serving in this position, Allende was responsible for the passage of a wide range of progressive social reforms, including safety laws protecting workers in the factories, higher pensions for widows, maternity care, and free lunch programmes for schoolchildren.[15]Upon entering the government, Allende relinquished his parliamentary seat for Valparaíso, which he had won in 1937. Around that time, he wrote La Realidad Médico Social de Chile (The social and medical reality of Chile). After the Kristallnacht in Nazi Germany, Allende and other members of the Parliament sent a telegram to Adolf Hitler denouncing the persecution of Jews.[16] Following Aguirre's death in 1941, he was again elected deputy while the Popular Front was re-named Democratic Alliance.In 1945, Allende became senator for the Valdivia, Llanquihue, Chiloé, Aisén and Magallanes provinces; then for Tarapacá and Antofagasta in 1953; for Aconcagua and Valparaíso in 1961; and once more for Chiloé, Aisén and Magallanes in 1969. He became president of the Chilean Senate in 1966.Salvador Allende in 1964.His three unsuccessful bids for the presidency (in the 1952, 1958 and 1964 elections) prompted Allende to joke that his epitaph would be "Here lies the next President of Chile." In 1952, as candidate for the Frente de Acción Popular (Popular Action Front, FRAP), he obtained only 5.4% of the votes, partly due to a division within socialist ranks over support for Carlos Ibáñez. In 1958, again as the FRAP candidate, Allende obtained 28.5% of the vote. This time, his defeat was attributed to votes lost to the populist Antonio Zamorano.[citation needed] In 1964, once more as the FRAP candidate, he lost again, polling 38.6% of the votes against 55.6% for Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. As it became clear that the election would be a race between Allende and Frei, the political right – which initially had backed Radical Julio Durán.[citation needed] – settled for Frei as "the lesser evil". Allende's socialist beliefs and friendship with Cuban president Fidel Castro made him deeply unpopular within the administrations of successive U.S. presidents, from John F. Kennedy to Richard Nixon; they believed there was a danger of Chile becoming a communist state and joining the Soviet Union's sphere of influence. Allende, however, publicly condemned the Soviet invasion of Hungary (1956) and of Czechoslovakia[17] (1968) but he later made Chile the first Government in continental America to recognize the People's Republic of China in 1971.Allende had a close relationship with the Chilean Communist Party from the beginning of his political career. On his fourth (and successful) bid for the presidency, the Communist Party appointed him as the alternate for its own candidate, the world-renowned poet Pablo Neruda.During his presidential term, Allende took positions held by the Communists, in opposition to the views of the socialists. Some argue, however, that this was reversed at the end of his period in office.