Commentary: Salvador Allende: his role in Chilean politics.

Salvador Allende Gossens was born in 1908 and died in the coup against his government on 11 September 1973. He was four times candidate for the Presidency—unsuccessfully in 1952, 1958, 1964, and finally successfully in 1970. He qualified as a medical doctor in 1932 but from his student days he was also active in politics, helping to found Chile’s Socialist Party in the same year as his graduation. He was elected to Congress as a Deputy in 1937, but his rise to political prominence came with his appointment as Minister of Health in the administration of the Radical President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, who formed a Popular Front government in 1938. Chile was one of only three countries to form a Popular Front government in those turbulent times—the others were France and Spain. This gives some indication of the importance of leftwing radical politics in a country about as far remote from Europe as it was possible to be. Chile had had a powerful leftwing movement since the days of communist and anarchist agitation earlier in the century. In 1912 a Socialist Workers Party was formed in the mining port of Iquique, and it soon laid firm roots in the country’s northern mining areas and provided a radical leadership for a fast-growing labour movement. Chilean politics was profoundly affected by the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and by 1920 the party had re-named itself the Chilean Communist Party and joined the Third International. However, submission to Soviet leadership led the Communist Party into divisive support for Stalin’s purges and committed it to a narrow class-oriented strategy that eschewed alliances with middle sectors and left it politically isolated. The inflexibility of the Communist line meant that when the Great Depression hit Chile, it fell to a different group on the Left to take the political initiative. In 1932 the government was overthrown by a left-wing military officer, Colonel Marmaduke Grove, who for 100 days established a ‘Socialist Republic’ in Chile, implementing a series of progressive measures that captured the popular imagination amid the economic crisis. Although short lived those involved in the experiment went on to form the leadership of the Socialist Party, founded a year later by a group that included the young Salvador Allende. More ideologically eclectic and less internally disciplined than the Communists, the party offered a home to an odd coalition of Trotskyists, anarchists, and social democrats, who found a unity of purpose in their opposition to Stalinism. Grove’s own populist style enabled the party to reap electoral benefits as the impact of the depression hit home, giving the Socialists a mass appeal that spread across both the working and lower middle classes. Thus by the mid 1930s, almost uniquely in Latin America, Chile had developed a strong partisan Left divided along similar lines to the communist and socialist parties of Western Europe. If the political formation of Chile resembled in some ways that of Europe, the social system was that of an underdeveloped country. Infant mortality was high, health conditions were poor and health services inadequate, malnutrition was common, and employment conditions were far from safe or healthy. In this context a radical doctor like Allende would find plenty of reason to enter politics to try to shape policy in a new way to benefit the poor. It was a year into his appointment as Minister of Health that Allende published his book La Realidad Medico-Social Chilena, a text that reveals not only Allende’s humanitarian concern for Chile’s poor, but also his political judgement that only radical structural change would rid the country of the social causes of ill health. The book argues that the poor lack sufficient incomes to clothe and feed their families, that workers lack protection against harsh climate and employment conditions, that working families lack decent housing and sanitation, and that these conditions lead directly to intolerably high levels of infant mortality and ill health. Allende concludes the book by setting out a number of immediate measures that might alleviate some of these conditions, such as better-coordinated health services and compulsory employer-funded work accident insurance. However, he also stresses that in order to truly tackle the nation’s social problems there is a need for radical structural measures such as agrarian reform and the nationalization of foreign-owned firms so that profits from the sale of the nation’s natural resources could be spent on social welfare. As a minister in a coalition government there were obviously constraints on Allende’s ability to advance this broader social and economic agenda. He did, however, manage to introduce a number of innovative measures such as the so-called ‘milk bars’ in Santiago which provided lowcost milk and dairy products to the poor. He sponsored a public exhibition in Santiago with the aim to demonstrate and denounce the poor housing conditions in the country. While the Popular Front was active in promoting the state-led industrialization of the country, in expanding public education provision, and in democratizing many aspects of political and civil life, the compromises of office eventually took their toll on the Left. The Socialists contested the 1941 elections independently and, following divisive internal debate, eventually abandoned the government. Under pressure from