Salvador Allende
On September 11, 1973, he was overthrown by a military coup… The dictator of Pinochet crushed that democracy which had perfected itself over two centuries, and destroyed, day after day, for 18 years, the country I knew.
Thousands of Chileans were murdered and tortured and hundreds of thousands went into exile.
This homage that Guzmán pays to Chile’s ex-president reminds us of the radiant dream that a generation lived (where politics and utopia were synonyms).
The piece is direct. It has no explicative or demonstrative information; rather, it offers a space for reflection that is human and personal and at the same time historical.
The outcome is a generous film. “Salvador Allende” sold 120,000 tickets in France, with 34 copies in 5 months (from September 2004 to January 2005).
It premiered in theaters in: Belgium, Spain, Switzerland, Greece, Mexico, Austria, Italy, Canada, Argentina, Uruguay and Chile (50,000 viewers). (Excerpt from patricioguzman.com)
Watch the full documentary now
I admire that man greatly. Its painful to watch and learn of such an important figure (who took noble, courageous action for the better of the people) have his efforts destroyed by such malevolence. Even more painful that it was a malevolence fed by an outside force, that force being the government of my own country.
I would probably love this doc if I understood Spanish.
A very favorable portrait of Allende. He was an idealistic nationalist and man of priniciple; therefore, he had no place in politics.
The film failed to mention that his actions resulted in an economic crisis that almost completely destroyed the country economically and if one does the math, most of the country did not vote for him or Popular Unity in any of the elections.
No they in fact did mention that after one year of a great economy, Chile began to collapse due to CIA sponsored embargoes and partisans. You however, Robert, have failed to mention that it was only after the USA decided to destroy Chile and the actions that followed that there was a crisis at all.
Most of the country did not vote for him. Just like most of the country didn’t vote for any President before. That is how multi-party democracies work – pluralities.
And as a note the major reason he lost to FREI is because the CIA started a MASSIVE propaganda campaign to discredit and slander Allende. They bought out almost every paper and radio station in the country to do so. If left alone, Allende probably would have won then and there.
Of course, these are all well known things that anyone with the actual desire to learn about the coup and Allende can look up.
PS: He wasn’t a nationalist, he was an internationalist as most socialists are.
The most significant part of this video…to me in particular…was that this man was a dreamer.
A man who sought to use electoral politics to change the status quo in a country that had long allowed the minority to thrive off the labor, land, and rights of the majority “THE WORKERS AND THE POOR.”
HE SUCCEEDED!!! to a certain extend, however Allende was a dreamer in the cold war era that did not favor U.S. influence and power.
I can not help but feel anger hearing the ambassador continuously describe the desire of Nixon to see this democratically elected socialist president fall by any means necessary. His claim to “Make the economy scream” say’s it all in his ideological stance against a proclaim Marxist that would swing the balance of influence towards the USSR.
If this was so… then why did the left split in Chile
Why didn’t Allende proclaim arm struggle and ask the
people to rise as an army in defense of the vision they
had constructed for Chile.
It is heard several times throughout the documentary ‘This
is a unique case’ the path to victory was not through gorilla arm struggle, it was through the vote. And it was
for this very reason that it was necessary for the U.S. to
end Allendes presidency… The left in all of Latin America
had to know that neither through peaceful measure or through
gorilla fighting would another Cuba be allowed in the Western Hemisphere.
Unfortunately the U.S. had a major role to play in the coup that lead 18 years of harsh repression by a dictatorship.