Marta Harnecker Understanding the Past to Make the Future: Reections on Allende’s Government

An electoral victory Thirty years after the September 11 that will always remember, we need to ask ourselves what lessons we can learn from the Chilean experience. 1 In September 1970, something occurred which deeply moved the Left in general, and the Latin-American Left in particular: the electoral victory of in . It was the Žrst time in the history of the Western world that a Marxist candidate had gained the presidency through the ballot box. In the face of this victory , the opposition forces had the following alternatives: they could either respect the simple majority (Allende had only 36 per cent of the votes), as traditionally had been done in Chile, or they could impede, by any means necessary, the Marxist candidate from assuming government. The most conservative forces in Chile tried to put

1 In writing this article I have combined information about the Allende experience from my forthcoming book (Harnecker forthcoming), and a text prepared for a book about the Žlm ‘The Battle of Chile’ by Patricio Guzmá n (1975) and subsequently published partially as Harnecker 1995. [ Editorial note :For a general overview of the Chilean experience during the last quarter of the twentieth century see also T aylor 2002.]

Historical Materialism , volume 11:3 (5–15) ©Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2003 Also available online – www.brill.nl 6•Marta Harnecker this last option into practice. They initially tried to get Congress to elect their own candidate (and runner-up with a second relative majority) Jorge Alessandri, into the presidency. 2 In pursuing this objective they resorted to various tactics: a run on banks, the expatriation of US dollars, a campaign of fear, abandonment of companies and so on. For their part, the ‘Freísta’ 3 sector – the more conservative sector of centrist Christian Democracy [Democracia Cristiana, DC] – was also very tempted to follow this road. However, they understood with great lucidity that such a trajectory would bring the country to chaos and civil war, and so the majority of the party chose to respect the winner. To have voted for Alessandri in Congress would have sent a message to over a third of the Chilean population that the democratic and electoral roads were closed to them and that they should turn instead to violence and insurrection. But this support for was not for free; its price was that the Allende government accept the Statute of Constitutional Guarantees, through which the government promised not to touch the armed forces, the educational system and the media. While this agreement was reached, a sector of the ultra-Right (supported by the US government) concentrated its energies on plotting against Allende’s victory, bringing together diverse political sectors of the opposition, elements of the armed forces and of the outgoing government. Spurred on by the murder of the pro-constitutional commander of the Army , General René Schneider, the victorious UP[Unidad Popular, Popular Unity] coalition focused part of its national campaign on gaining the support of the armed forces on the basis of its constitutional character.

The UP offensive Despite this opposition, Allende assumed of Žce with the support of the Christian-Democratic Party on 4 November 1970, thus inaugurating a new period in the country’ s history. The government immediately moved onto the offensive. In order to carry out the structural transformations outlined in its electoral programme, the UPgovernment drew on some important legal instruments available to the state. The Law of approved during

2 In Chile a candidate can be elected without the absolute majority of the votes, as long as he is ratiŽed by Parliament. Though the tradition has always been to ratify the candidate with the relative majority, the question was, would that tradition be rejected with the election of Allende? 3 After the former Christian-Democratic President Eduardo Frei.