Never Forget: Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende was the first democratically elected socialist president of Chile.  Just to give a quick summary of his background so you can get to know him a bit better, he graduated from the University of Chile in 1932 with a medical degree.  Also, he helped in the founding of Chile’s Socialist Party.  From 1939 to 1942 he served as minister of health in the liberal leftist coalition of Presidents Pedro Aguirre.  He ran for presidency a total of four times but only won once in the year 1970.( http://www.biography.com/people/salvador-allende-37231 )

Allende ran with the Popular Unity coalition.  “…ambitious dreams of social transformation- nationalizing of Chilean copper, coal and steel, along with most banks, not to mention land reform”(299) from John Charles Chasteen’s book, Born in Blood and Fire.  Not only that but, he nationalized these U.S. owned companies without proper compensation.

The Popular Unity coalition wanted to better the lives of the lower class but the approach that was taken was not the best way to do this.  Allende increased wages and froze prices. Which ended up causing an inflation.  The policies were popular with the urban workers but not for the upper class.  They had hope that it would eventually get better so the workers hurried and over took companies that the government was too slow to nationalize.  ( http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/16237/Salvador-Allende )

By this time Chile’s status was bad, “By 1972 Chile was suffering from stagnant production, decreased exports and private-sector investment, exhausted financial reserves, widespread strikes, rising inflation, food shortages, and domestic unrest” (Britannica).  On September 11, 1973, a bloody coup took place in Santiago.  Allende died when this took place, supposedly by suicide.  Several of his followers were also killed during this event. One of the generals that lead the coup ended taking control, Augosto Pinochet, and Chile was then ruled by bureaucratic authoritarian regime, ending 40 years of Chilean democratic rule, the longest in Latin America. 

In my opinion, what Allende was trying to do was good, unfortunately it did not turn out the way he wanted it to.  It seemed like what he was doing was could have helped out the working class a lot.  The only thing was that some of the things he did, he should have known would have backfired.  For example, increasing wages and freezing prices.  I’m not an economics major, but even I can tell that if that is handled that wrong way, things will go south really quickly.