Salvador Allende

This is a tragic, moving tale of a courageous political leader who tried to make the world a better place for the most disadvantaged of his country's citizens. Ironically, it's the interviews with the US ex-ambassador to Chile which seem the most insightful. The ambassador got it exactly right: Allende never had a chance. The forces arrayed against Allende in his attempt to transform Chile into a democratic socialist regime were simply overwhelming: the US, international finance capital, the Chilean bourgeoisie, most of the Chilean middle classes, and the Chilean army.

In a sense, Allende should have known better: he had before him the unsuccessful examples of republican Spain in the '30s and Guatemala in the '50s. In neither case had it been possible to introduce far- reaching social and economic reforms which aroused the unconditional hostility of the capitalist ruling class and neighboring reactionary states. And Allende would have had no more success if he had armed the workers and campesinos, since the Chilean army showed no signs of demoralization and disintegration—the conditions under which a "people's army" has a chance to triumph over a well-armed, disciplined professional army. The people in the people's army would have been slaughtered tout court.

Perhaps his only chance came with the assassination of Rene Schneider, Allende's pick as head of the Chilean armed forces. He could have used the assassination as an excuse for a thorough house- cleaning of the military high command, assuming he could have found some of Latin-America's famous "left-wing colonels" who would have been necessary to carry out the purge. But it would have been a risky proposition that just as easily could have precipitated the military coup that came 3 years later.

The film should also prompt some rethinking of the concept of the "dictatorship of the proletariat"—a concept that's had rather bad press in recent decades. One of Allende's closest friends tells us that Allende was a committed Marxist socialist but certainly not a Leninist, because he did not believe in the dictatorship of the proletariat. Allende, we're told, believed in democracy. But the problem was that the democracy Allende believed in was in reality a dictatorship of another kind: the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Despite its façade of multi-party elections, Chilean democracy was a stacked deck, inevitably manipulated in favor of the ruling classes.

So Lenin was right: only by forcing the collapse of the coercive apparatus sustaining the rule of the bourgeoisie could the working classes create a state that serves their interests. What distinguishes the dictatorship of the proletariat from the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie is not that one is a multi-party system and the other a single party system (there's no lack of single-party states in the history of the rule of the bourgeoisie). Rather, it's the stacking of the deck in favor of working people versus stacking it in favor of the owners of capital.

I awaited this film's opening in Chile with great anticipation. The distributor had waited over a year to show it in the very place where the events took place. After reading that it had won a prize at Cann I began to have my doubts about it's veracity and my doubts were confirmed in the first 10 minutes. This film is a white wash of the events that took place during presidency of Salvador Allende. The film conveniently leaves out the fact that 65 percent of the electorate rejected Allende at the polls and only through deal making with members of the legislature did he become president.

With 35% of the voting public behind him (hardly an mandate) Salvador Allende began to dismantle the entire Chilean economic structure in his attempt to turn this nation into a workers paradise like that of the Soviet Union that he admired so much. He began by appropriating foreign owned agricultural assets and dividing them up into small plots and turning them over to the people that had been employed by those interests. When he discovered that the demand for free land among the 'workers' was still great he began to dismantle privately owned Chilean farms. The legislature, many of whom owned those farms, balked at that idea, so with the help of his goon squads he simply turned a blind eye his party's organized land invasions. With much of the land now out of production due to the inability of the new owners to produce at anywhere near the level necessary to feed the nation, scarcity of farm products in the cities became a problem. Prices of food increased dramatically. To pacify the people he decreed a doubling of the price for labor. Now all of Chile's exports became too expensive to compete in the world market which dried up the supply of foreign exchange to pay for ever increasing imports of food. Prior to 1970 Chile had been a net exporter of agricultural products.

Within 18 months his vision of workers with rakes and hoes across their shoulders, singing patriotic songs as they marched off to the fields and the copper mines to labor for the fatherland came true, except they were marching on the presidential palace asking why there wasn't any bread to feed their children. Newspapers had stopped publishing, the buses had stopped running. That's when the opposition began to get vocal and when the murders to silence that opposition started to take place. The Chilean military continued to stand by and watch as Allende and his crew destroyed the middle class and drove the upper class from the country. When Chileans, in the winter of 73 began to eat the dogs roaming the streets, when the mines were shut down due to the lack of a market for their product, with the transportation industry bankrupt due to lack of products to transport, as a civil war was breaking out, then and only then, and with the blessing of the majority of the legislature did the military act.

This "documentary", done in the Michael Moore style of half truths and omissions, fails to paint a true picture of the terrible events of those 3 years in Chile by painting a picture of Salvador (how ironic) Allende as a good hearted but miss guided victim. He was not good hearted, he was not miss guided, but perhaps he was a victim, a victim of events he created. The people of Chile were the true victims.

28 years before 9/11, there was another 9/11 which represented a key date in the history of Chile, South America and the whole world. This was the date in 1973 when a bloody coup in Chile deposed Salvador Allende the first Marxist president elected democratically anywhere in the world and put an end to the Chilean experiment of a democratic transition from capitalism to socialism. Allende committed suicide when the armed forces attacked the presidential palace.

Unfortunately this film is too biased and too nostalgic towards the time of Allende's rule to be an objective rendition of the man and of his place in history. The times were troubled and Allende was a disputed figure in the history of his country and of the whole world. True, he was democratically elected, but his policies plunged Chile into economic crisis. He was deposed by a coup and a right-wing dictatorship followed with repression and flagrant human rights abuses, but he was also an ally of Castro who saw in his policies another way of making revolution. We'll never know if his tentative to build a socialist yet democratic society would have succeeded. The authors of the movie take a completely pro-Allende position, there is no opinion or point of view trying to explain the other side, to answer questions like why did the middle class oppose him, or how his democratic views could go together with supporting or being supported by Castro. The tone of the commentaries is nostalgic and apologetic, almost propagandistic. People who want to get a better understanding of this episode of the history need to wait for a more balanced and objective film or book in the future.

Even though documentaries tend to be slightly peculiar and boring most of the time, I found this account of the life of Salvador Allende to be quite intriguing. I loved the varied of opinions that were given from many people from his family members, to a United States government worker. Also, the variety of media used to depict certain events in his life was captivating. I especially loved watching the artist draw his house going up in flames. It made me feel as if I was there on that very day, watching the catastrophe unfold. The charcoal smudged across the page, just as I suspect the smoke veiled the scene that day. This movie has an artistic semblance that I believe goes unnoticed.

I have recently seen Patricio Guzman s documentary on that great human being that was Salvador Allende. The intelligent,highly educated, witty, honest,democrat, brave, and above all, profoundly humanitarian president that the contemporary world has ever seen is marvelously portrayed on this film which is surely now becoming a blockbuster around the world. By the way I was 20 and living in Chile when Allende died and can testify that none of the attacks against the late president made by persons who dislike him are true. On the contrary he was just like the film shows and I dare to say he was by far much more, since it is practically impossible to wholly depict such a huge character like the Great Salvador allende in a short two hour film. But any way the film is by all means well worth watching.