Allende, Salvador (1908–1973)

Salvador Allende Gossens was president of Chile from November 4, 1970, until September 11, 1973. On that day, a military coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet stormed the La Moneda presidential palace. The coup resulted in the dissolution of the Socialist government and in Allende's death. Augusto Pinochet's subsequent 17-year rule as leader of the military junta was responsible for a climate of political oppression that saw the death or “disappearance” of opposition members and revolutionary activists. Allende now stands as one of Chile's most notable historical figures and has become a controversial sociopolitical icon, both in Chile and throughout Latin America, with a legacy variously hailed and reviled.

Though he would spend most of his early formative years in the port city of Valparaíso, he was born June 26, 1908, in the Chilean capital of Santiago, son to Salvador Allende Castro, a lawyer and notary, and Laura Gossens Uribe, an accountant. He married Hortensia Bussi in 1940, with whom he had three daughters, Laura, María Isabel, and Beatriz. His grandfather, Ramón Allende Padín, founded Chile's first secular school in 1871, was a congressional representative for the Partido Radical (Radical Party), and was Grand Master of Chile's Masonic Order. Allende attended primary school in the desert north of Chile, in Tacna, where he witnessed the plight of copper mine laborers as they struggled against conditions of indentured servitude. Allende's formative years, spent as a member of a radical political family, thus played an important role in fostering the concerns for social justice and economic equality that would shape his life and undergird his political career.

Allende became a medical student in 1926, eventually earning his degree as a surgeon. His doctoral thesis was titled Higiene Mental y Delincuencia (Mental Hygiene and Delinquency). During the course of his university years, he became president of the Students' Center of the School of Medicine at the Universidad de Chile. Allende was arrested several times as a result of his vocal opposition to the dictatorship of General Carlos Ibañez. In 1933, he cofounded the Chilean Socialist Party, which adhered to Marxist thought but wanted to distance itself from the Sovietinfluenced Communist Party. In 1937, he was elected to be a deputy in Chile's National Legislature as member and leader of the Frente Popular (Popular Front). In 1939, then President Pedro Aguirre Cerda appointed him to be Minister of Health. He became a senator in 1945 and eventually became its president, a post he would maintain until he was successfully elected, after a few failed attempts, to become president of Chile.

He was elected president of Chile in 1970, on a Socialist platform that touted “La vía chilena al socialismo” (“the Chilean way to socialism”). He is known to have been a somewhat charismatic speaker who was well liked and revered by a significant portion of Chile's population, especially those who resonated strongly with his vision of social and economic reform. His program of reform included nationalizing large-scale industries (notably copper mining and banking), reorganizing the health care system, retooling the educational system, and furthering his predecessor Eduardo Frei Montalva's agrarian reform (wherein land was seized from wealthy owners and subsequently redistributed), among others.

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