Salvador Allende

Made in 2004, Patricio Guzmán’s “Salvador Allende” makes its debut at New York’s Anthology Film Archives from September 5-13. Guzmán, who fled Chile after Pinochet’s coup, also directed “The Battle for Chile,” a film trilogy on Allende’s government that I have not seen. Although there is a tendency to sidestep painful political lessons from the 1973 coup in “Salvador Allende,” I strongly urge New Yorkers to see it. It is an extremely moving account of the life and death of a socialist politician, whose career would seem to speak to the contemporary situation in Latin America, where a democratic transition to socialism seems to be unfolding to one degree or another in Venezuela. Given the hostility of the US and the upper classes in Allende’s Chile and Hugo Chavéz’s Venezuela, a documentary such as “Salvador Allende” offers much food for thought.

It is obvious from “Salvador Allende” and from reviews of “Battle for Chile” (a film that I have not seen) that Guzmán is a partisan of the Popular Unity government, a coalition of working class and bourgeois parties that campaigned successfully for Allende in 1970. Despite this, the film is not uncritical. In a gut-wrenching segment that occurs toward the end of the film, a group of worker-militants–now in advanced middle-age–think back ruefully on the period and wonder why they were so ill-prepared to resist the coup. One, barely holding back tears, says, “We should have done more to strengthen the cords.” As somebody who followed the events in Chile closely between 1970 and 1973, this reference was obscure even to me. What was a cord?

In the course of looking at some studies of the Popular Unity government days after seeing the film, I discovered the answer. Cord is the nickname for cordónes, the neighborhood and factory based committees that Chileans recognized as a form of “people’s power.” If organized and armed on a nation-wide basis, this institution and others like it could have successfully beaten back the coup. Unfortunately, Allende’s Socialist Party and the Communists were suspicious of the grass roots movement and relied almost exclusively on official state institutions such as parliament and the army to promote an agenda that while progressive stopped short of the elimination of private property.

“Salvador Allende” is filled with oblique references to this failure but focuses more on Allende the individual, whose tragic inability to remain in power obviously flows from his political roots. In one of the film’s very revealing interviews, the former mayor of Allende’s hometown Valparaiso, a self-described Communist and friend, states that Allende identified with the values of the French Revolution and never once defended Marxist ideas in private conversations, even though he was familiar with the literature. Another interviewee states that Allende’s earliest ideological influence was an Italian anarchist shoemaker. These two accounts add up to a portrait of somebody committed to the ideas of freedom, but not in the best position to realize them through the exercise of state power.

The film excels at bringing to life the long journey Allende made in Chilean politics. Contrary to the impression many people–including me–have of the Popular Unity government being something unique in Chilean history, the first popular front government was elected in 1938, a Latin American counterpart of the Spanish and French Socialist Party-led coalition governments. On that occasion, the 30 year old Allende became Minister of Health. Like Che Guevara, Allende was a trained physician. After the popular front was voted out of office, Allende continued to run for regional and national offices for the remainder of his political career. The film includes fascinating scenes of the young Allende speaking to crowds of working class people with joyful expressions on their face. If Allende lacked a clear vision of how their interests could be defended through the use of state power, he at least was always forceful about what those interests were.

If Allende was torn between revolutionary and reformist impulses, there was little doubt that his main coalition partners in the CP of Chile were far more dedicated to staying within the framework of bourgeois democracy and deferring to the rule of capital. On June 20, 1972, the NY Times editorialized:

President Allende has moved to resolve a severe crisis within his Popular Unity coalition in Chile by rejecting the radical counsel of his own Socialist party and adopting the more moderate and conciliatory approach urged by the Communists. In thus shifting back toward the center of Chile’s political spectrum, Dr. Allende has reduced the danger of large-scale civil strife and given his revamped Government its best chance to revive a sagging economy.

The Communists hurl such epithets as ‘infantile’ and ‘elitist’ at the M.I.R. and condemn its illegal seizures of farms and factories. They urge consolidation, rather than rapid extension, of the Allende Government’s economic and social programs, negotiations on constitutional reform with the opposition Christian Democrats and a working relationship with private businesses. Dr. Allende has now taken this road in an effort to curb unemployment and inflation and to boost production.

Whatever unwillingness he had to confront big business within Chile’s borders, Salvador Allende never backed down from global capital in various speeches, including one made to the United Nations on September 4, 1972 speech to the United Nations. Guzmán correctly points out that this speech was one of the first to recognize the problems of “globalization” in language that sounds strikingly to Naomi Klein or Walden Bello:

We are faced by a direct confrontation between the large transnational corporations and the states. The corporations are interfering in the fundamental political, economic and military decisions of the states. The corporations are global organizations that do not depend on any state and whose activities are not controlled by, nor are they accountable to any parliament or any other institution representative of the collective interest. In short, all the world political structure is being undermined. The dealers don’t have a country. The place where they may be does not constitute any kind of link; the only thing they are interested in is where they make profits.

Fundamentally, there was a disjunction between Allende’s obvious commitment to ending this dependency on imperialist corporations and his willingness to empower the only class in society that had the power to do so. In a delicate balancing act between a radicalized proletariat and peasantry and the more privileged classes in Chile and their American benefactors, Allende hoped to make incremental changes that would tip the scales in favor of the poor. Unfortunately, the rich and important sectors of the middle class would not respect parliamentary rules and began to plot to overthrow Allende, just as has been the case in Venezuela. While Guzmán is quite penetrating when it comes to the machinations of the rich, he tends to hold back when it comes to contradictions within the left.

Apparently, there is much more willingness in Guzmán’s “The Battle for Chile” to examine the clash between the Popular Unity government and its base. The World Socialist Website, which tends to sectarianism frequently despite its generally astute political analysis, was quite generous in its review of “The Battle for Chile,” which it regarded as a “heartfelt testament to Pinochet’s victims.” It made clear that the ambivalence about and or hostility to “people’s power” within the upper circles of Allende’s government were shared by the director, whose remarks in a Q&A following a screening of the film in London, demonstrated an unwillingness to come to terms with Mao’s observation that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun:

Guzmán described the trilogy at a question and answer session after the screening as a tribute to the Popular Unity government period and Allende particularly. This was clearly the intention of The Coup, but because of the way the film was made, a more critical picture of the situation in Chile still emerges. It is clear, for example, that the workers were a huge and potent force. In the middle of July workers took the streets of the Vicuna McKenna district. In the ensuing stand-off the mayor of Santiago had to be called in to move the police two blocks away. Workers are repeatedly seen demanding arms to defend Allende, arms which Allende was denying them. An old member of the Communist Party is seen warning that if the workers lose it will be like Spain after the civil war.

The issue of arms crops up repeatedly. Allende, who refused to create a workers militia, dismissed his police from La Moneda before the bombardment began, leaving only 40 bodyguards. As the coup approached, the military stepped up weapons searches in order to gauge the strength of the workers. At the question session, Guzmán expressly disagreed that the refusal to arm the workers had been a mistake. It would have been impossible, he said, because the military would have known it was happening. In any case, it was already known that the military were preparing a coup. In other words, once it began the coup was inevitably going to be a success. Yet even in the last few days before the coup, the streets of Santiago were filled with mass demonstrations in defence of Allende.

Despite both coming to power through the ballot, there are significant differences between Allende and Hugo Chavéz. First of all, Chavéz was a military officer himself with broad connections to leftist officers, perhaps the most striking characteristic of Venezuelan politics where an Air Force general is described by Richard Gott in “Shadow of the Liberator” as having “Trotskyist” politics. By contrast, Air Force officers in the US tend to be followers of the Christian Right.

But more importantly, the primary ideological inspiration for Chavéz’s movement is revolutionary socialism rather than 1930s style popular frontism. According to Gott, a number of Chavéz’s primary influences were Marxists to the left of the CP. In declaring for a 21^st century socialism, Chavéz has made repeated references to the failure of Soviet socialism in terms that reflect the influences of the Trotskyist movement. Of course, as is always the case with Chavéz, he makes up his own mind based on what he thinks is right. This includes his willingness to stand up to the bourgeois parties in Venezuela, unlike Allende who kept making concession after concession to the Christian Democrats who were plotting his overthrow. To show that he was deferential to their interests, he kept bringing military men into his cabinet and even put Pinochet in charge of public security not 6 months before Pinochet overthrew his government.

Guzmán reflects a tendency that was very strong on the Chilean left and that even included the radical guerrillas of the MIR. It found itself torn between support for Allende’s government and support for the “people’s power” in the street that could have been Chile’s salvation.

In reviewing one of the better leftwing critiques of the Popular Unity government (the aptly titled “Chile: The State and Revolution” by Ian Roxborough, Philip O’Brien and Jackie Roddick), I came across the words of ordinary Chilean workers from this period reflecting an acute awareness of the danger they faced. This interview with a “Socialist militant” from the Cordón San Joaquín appeared in Chile Hoy a month before the coup:

Chile Hoy: What do the majority of the comrades in the cordon think of the new cabinet? [one that included military officers]:

Socialist militant from Cordon San Joaquin: We have not discussed it yet. But certainly people are very confused. In fact, the demonstration today lacks a sense of combativity, there is no common purpose, and there are no clear slogans. One can see that the masses don’t look on the incorporation of military men into the cabinet with much sympathy. There is no clarity. The parties should tell the masses what their reasons are for choosing this road. Neither Calderon nor Figueroa (both leaders of the CUT, and ex members of the government, the first Socialist, the second Communist) filled this need in their speeches. And it would have been difficult for them to do it, in this climate of agitation. The president of Cordon Vicuna Mackenna, where the movement to take over factories after June 29th was strongest:

We saw this cabinet as a betrayal of the working class. It shows that the government is still vacillating and has no confidence in the working class. The generals in the cabinet are a guarantee for the capitalists, just as they were in October, a guarantee for Vilarin (leader of the striking lorry owners) and not for the working class. We’ve already been through this solution: More tyres and trucks for Vilarin . . . the same thing again. For this reason, we think that the situation is quite dangerous, because we think the army’s searches will continue and we believe that many of those now fighting will fall, including those of us who are at this moment struggling for People’s Power.

Youtube: the final speech of Salvador Allende