Allende-mania sweeps Chile for coup anniversary

Reuters ^ | 09 Sep 2003 | Louise Egan

[Tailgunner Joe]

He has been dead for 30 years but Chile's former president, Salvador Allende, is still idolized and demonized in his country, three decades after the Sept. 11, 1973, coup that toppled him.

The doctor who became the world's first democratically elected Marxist president is idolized by the left for his dream of a peaceful socialist revolution, cut short by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's brutal 17-year anti-communist crusade.

Allende's horn-rimmed glasses and neat mustache have been omnipresent for weeks as an Allende-mad media has inundated Chileans with details about the charismatic, upper-middle-class orator who sent Cold War shivers through Washington.

"Allende is a martyr who symbolizes a utopia and the fact that so many people defend him shows that his message of equality is still valid," said Marta Lagos, director of MORI polling firm.

Ricardo Lagos, Chile's first socialist president since Allende, ruffled feathers among conservatives with plans for a special tribute to the dead leader in the presidential palace, where the 65-year-old killed himself during the coup with an AK-47 given to him by Cuba's Fidel Castro.

Lagos insists the tribute is only fair after years of denigration.

Allende may be an icon of the left -- more than 100 cities around the world have streets named after him -- but others say he was a disaster.

His radical policies of land reform and nationalization are blamed for provoking the coup. Over half of Chileans disagree with the government's tributes, one poll said.

"This just goes to show that today, like 30 years ago, Allende divides the country," rightist Senator Rodrigo Alvarez said.

DREAM TURNED NIGHTMARE

Allende won the presidency on his fourth try in 1970 with just 37 percent of the vote. His dream of empowered workers and state-run industry turned into a nightmare amid a severe economic crisis and increasing polarization.

A spooked U.S. government also poured money into opposition groups, according to declassified documents.

"If we let the potential leaders in South America think they can move like Chile and have it both ways, we will be in trouble. ... I want to work on this and on the military relations -- put in more money," U.S. President Richard Nixon said according to a memo of a Nov. 6, 1970, meeting with the CIA.

Allende's final words in his improvised radio address to Chileans, while under siege, became a slogan against Latin American dictatorships in the 1980s.

"Others will surmount this gray, bitter moment in which treason seeks to impose itself. You must go on, knowing that sooner rather than later the grand avenues will open along which free people will pass to build a better society."

Allende's 35-year-old granddaughter, Carmen Sepulveda, said the media coverage of the man family lore says was a great joke-teller makes her "incredibly happy and proud."

"Yesterday, I went to a homage to him and I cried the whole way through it," she said.

[Tailgunner Joe]

Pinochets attack Allende tribute

[ambrose]

Disgusting revisionist history in action...

[x1stcav]

The coup that deposed the Marxist Allende was one of the finest moments in the history of the Cold War. Grenada, El Salvador, and Nicaragua were others.

[Squawk 8888]

This reminds me of all the tributes we see here about Pierre Trudeau. I suspect that those who praise him either weren't alive while he was in power, or have short memories.

[Travis McGee]

Communist true-believers will never ever quit trying to force their socialist paradise down our throats.

[Question_Assumptions]

"Allende is a martyr who symbolizes a utopia and the fact that so many people defend him shows that his message of equality is still valid," said Marta Lagos, director of MORI polling firm.

The word "utopia" is meant to mean "no place" (from Greek ou not, no + topos place). So Allende symbolizes a fantasy that will never exist. Of course his supporters won't get that little point.

It wouldn't be so bad if they were just harmless nuts but communists tallied up at least 100 million murders in less than a century and people are still starving to death in North Korea's "people's utopia". No, I don't want to give them another chance at crafting a utopia. It isn't worth the millions of lives their take trying, and failing, to achieve it.

[B-Chan]

¡QUE VIVA CHILE!
¡QUE VIVA PINOCHET!

x

[Libertarianize the GOP]

http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/bump-list

[T'wit]

>> The doctor who became the world's first democratically elected Marxist president

Allende barely edged out two other candidates in a three-way race, with a piddling 36% of the vote. During his regime, he never gained majority support. Leftists crow about this as a "democratic" triumph when in fact the right and center voters ran up a landslide 64% against Allende.

Meanwhile, ponder this: In the century between Marx's Das Kapital (1867) and Allende's "victory" (1970), the socialists never won one. They claimed to represent "the people" but in no country anywhere did the people ever freely put them in office. For the left to brag about one flukey 36% plurality in the whole world for a whole century and more, tells you how futile and repulsive their doctrines are.

[Free ThinkerNY]

The only good Red, is a dead Red.

[Better Dead Than Red]

I took an Advanced Placement English course in High School and I had to read some of the books written by Allende's daughter Isabelle. I bought them on Amazon.com and now Amazon always recommends her books to me.

[Cuttnhorse]

The vast majority of Chileans will admit that without Pinochet, Chile would be another third-world Sh-- Hole, like its neighbors. The fact remains, Argentina, Peru, and most of the rest of South America need a Pinochet to step in. I'm convinced that Latins do not have the discipline for democratic rule.

[Cuttnhorse]

Isabelle is his niece and I get sick of hearing about her. She is fawned over by all the press down here...but lives in San Francisco, married to a gringo.

[rellimpank]

--another historical tidbit--General Pinochet received a larger percentage of votes when he lost the election that ended his time in office than Allende received when he "won"--

[Cuttnhorse]

I know several Chileans that weren't sure who they would vote for when the entered the booth. Most thought that it was time for a change; voting for Pinochet would have given him another 6-years in office, or 25-years in total, and many Chileans felt that was too long. If I recall he received 47% of the vote, while the winner, (Eduardo Frei?) received 53%.

[Cuttnhorse]

Also, I lived for one year 3-houses from Pinochet's Santiago home and could always tell when he was at the house because of the obvious increased security.

Occasionally there would be protestors but I never saw more than about 20-nuts, always outnumbered by the press...in a city of 6-million.

[Cuttnhorse]

Many Chileans will be celebrating today, celebrating that Chile is not a wreck like the rest of South America...thanks largely to Augusto Pinochet.

[wimpycat]

My husband and his father's side of the family are from Chile.

Don't believe what you hear about Isabelle Allende being Salvador Allende's daughter or niece.

She's related to him, but she's neither daughter nor niece. She's a distant cousin. She, of course, exaggerates the relationship because it helps her sell her novels.

And just so you'll know which side my in-laws' bread is buttered on, my father-in-law has a framed picture in his den of one of my brothers-in-law, an officer in the Chilean Navy, shaking hands with Pinochet.

The leftists simply can't get over the fact that Pinochet ruined all their Marxist dreams. They've got a special sore spot for Pinochet, especially since Pinochet actually allowed elections and had the unmitigated gall to actually step down. Even the Spanish judge that tried to prosecute him spends all his energy on Pinochet, but doesn't have a damn thing to say about surviving members of the Fransicso Franco dictatorship...or Chavez in Venezuela...or Castro in Cuba. Even Christopher Hitchens can't get over it. You mark my words; if you want to see a leftist pop a blood vessel, say something favorable about Pinochet.

I've seen the neighborhood where Pinochet lives. My husband's aunt lives in the same neighborhood. It's a nice, old neighborhood, and there are paramilitary police with machine guns stationed near his house....at least there were when I was there, back in 1997.

Chile is a nice country, the best one in South America, and it is due to Pinochet's refusal to let Chile become a third-world marxist hellhole.

[Cuttnhorse]

Good points wimpy....I am living in Chile and when we lived near Pinochet's compound we had great security. Always a guard on the street 24-hours a day.

There are many Chileans who feel Pinochet saved the country.

[T'wit]

Your tidbit is highly illuminating! Good point.