Resurrecting Allende

...Since the unveiling of the statue, however, the site has become the monument in the Plaza...

...The result is a monument to Allende in which the late president's face and torso are real likenesses, while his lower body is wrapped in an inverted Chilean flag, as though he were floating virtually legless...

...Senator Hernmn Larrain of the new-right Independent Democratic Union (UDI) declared Allende's administration "dark, very negative, and, perhaps, one of the worst moments in our history...

...It is, perhaps, not surprising that a ceremony to bestow permanent honor upon one of Chile's most famous politicians and presidents would suffer from divisive polarization...

...To the surprise of the official event organizers, a thousand Chileans raised their voices in revolutionary song...

...Throughout the monument's political and physical evolution, its future was always in jeopardy...

...1 2 That proposal was quickly squelched...

...I will be the third president of the Concertaci6n...

...In a harsh floor speech, RN congressman Juan Enrique Taladriz held Allende and the UP government responsible for the calamities of the 1970s, particularly the misfortunes of those whose properties had been expropriated...

...C~mara de Diputados, Sesi6n 3ra, October 4, 1990, p. 187...

...7 Few of the progressive senators rose to challenge these arguments and champion Allende's memory...

...Allende returns today symbolically to this place, a testimony to his heroism in the midst of the tragedy of '73," President Ricardo Lagos, a one-time Allende disciple, told European and Latin American guests and the several thousand Katherine Hite is an assistant professor of political science at Vassar College and the author of When the Romance Ended: Leaders of the Chilean Left, 1968-1998 (Columbia University Press, 2000...

...On April 19, 1995, the anniversary of the founding of the Chilean Socialist Party, the Allende Foundation-a private group consisting principally of members of the extended Allende family-sponsored a public fundraising drive on Santiago street corners to raise the money for the monument...

...I hope they don't make a mistake again with Lagos...

...On the exclusivity of the monument inauguration ceremony, see Rafael Otano, "A quidn pertenece Allende...

...But in June 1993, the Socialist senators held their noses and voted unanimously for the Guzmin monument...

...The vote was 40 in favor, 14 against and three abstentions...

...1 0 In an editorial, the newspaper La SeA noted that Santiago was an "enormous city," ani given the controversies, other sites should be ch "In nations like France or the United States...n, would conceive of placing various minor st together with those of Louis XIV or Linco...

...I Portales, a founder of the Chilean republic, had commanded a spot in the center of the third bordering the Plaza, where he faces La Moneda the far side of the square...

...Thousands of Chilean families suffered irreparable losses as a direct or indirect consequence of the [UP] government," Taladriz proclaimed...

...She asked me all kinds of questions...

...Again and again, the congressional debates struck at the core of bitter, polarized historical memories of victims and perpetrators...

...Building stat- have been den ues of historical figures is commonly used to honor in Chile's convey national unity and stability-to transform what are often conflict-ridden historical memories into concrete, authoritative symbols of a proud past...

...As a Socialist, however, and as a former UP government official, Lagos's deliberate silence regarding Allende was painfully obvious...

...He was very sensitive, not very practical, but very sensitive, and I felt that through homage to Allende I was paying homage to my father...

...The statue celto fit ebrates Frei's famous "Chileanization of copper" and r side his agrarian reform laws...

...Instead, they argued that Chile would appear "strange" in the eyes of the international community to President Eduardo Frei (1964-1970) in La Plaza de la Santiago, Chile...

...While Allende's daughter Isabel argue this would in fact make Portales the central figl the Plaza, many historians and traditionalists I the idea of moving Portales offensive to his me: Portales was a personal favorite of Pinochet, saw him as the nineteenth century hero who lized Chile's course in an authoritarian manner Chilean sculptor Arturo Hevia came up wil solution: Like Jorge Alessandri, Salvador Al could stand on Calle Morand6, though much to La Moneda...

...La Tercera (Santiago), July 4, 2000...

...Not surprisingly, the dominant voices in both the House and Senate belonged to the Chilean right, who waged an ugly campaign of obstruction and delay...

...Nevertheless, Hevia approached the Allende project by visualizing the fallen leader as a heroic figure...

...Indeed, the young Chileans welcomed the graying performers with wild, enthusiastic cheers...

...6 Palestro linked Allende to the poor, the workers, the dispossessed...

...Hevia designed Allende's monument to incorporate air vents hidden by engraved plaques...

...Their events have sometimes overlapped as tense, painful shouting matches...

...9 But the public collection and the images of the Socialist Party's satisfaction with the effort on behalf of an Allende monument triggered an outpouring of rightist letters and articles in the press that ranged from mild disdain to outright disgust...

...Hevia also drew inspiration from a model to whom he was very close-his father...

...4. A classic example of the ways in which past expropriations continue to obsess the right took place during the brief congressional discussion over the Frei monument...

...I always respected his opinions very much, and I know he felt them in his heart...

...th the In his second proposal, Hevia presented a far more lende amorphous foundation for the statue...

...1 5 While the Socialist Party wrestles with its relationship to Allende both internally and within the Concertaci6n alliance, the Communist Party identifies closely with the late leader...

...if the senators failed to approve the monuments, given the abundance of streets, plazas and monuments to Allende throughout the world...

...On June 5, 1992, the Allende monument legislation first came up for a vote in the Chilean Congress...

...22NM2LA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 22 NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICASCHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER But many opponents of the statue claimed would be no room in the Plaza for Allende...

...said Socialist Congressman Hector Olivares, a former political prisoner and exile who identified himself as a "proud friend" of the late president...

...If the Chilean right had had its way, the late president would have been denied his place of honor in Chile's historical memory...

...Allende never disappeared citizens from this country nor ordered torture in his government...

...his championing of public health care and 1940 appointment as Minister of Health...

...The RN's refusal to participate left the House one short of the necessary 40 votes for a quorum...

...Once their sculptures were finished two would face one another on the two side stre, the Plaza to La Moneda's right and left...

...the presidential figure procenter jects an image of confidence and authority...

...Historiadores rechazan ubicaci6n de nuevos monumentos en Plaza de Portales," La Segunda (Santiago), May 5, 1995, p. 25...

...ago's peasant-supporting him from below...

...Throughout his 2000 presidential campaign race, center-left candidate Ricardo Lagos struggled with that ghost, choosing to absent the late president from his campaign rhetoric...

...2 By contrast, obtaining congressional approval for monuments to the late presidents Jorge Alessandri (1958-1964) and Eduardo Frei (1964-1970) had taken a mere three months from start to finish...

...On September 4, 1998, as a final fundraiser and a tribute to Allende, the Allende Foundation sponsored an open-air concert in which nationally and internationally known performers played and sang before an audience of 65,000 in the National Stadium...

...his election to the Chilean House at the age of 29...

...It was...

...Perhaps we can attribute this, at least in some small part, to the establishment of the Allende monument in the Plaza, calling, even in a ghostlike way, for Chileans to come to terms with this fallen leader, to own up to Chile's past and the Allende tragedy...

...6. C~mara de Diputados, Sesi6n 2da, June 2, 1992, pp...

...Intended to be a proud, somber event, the commemoration was, in fact, filled with tension and dissent...

...Then-senator (and current Education Minister) Sergio Bitar, a former member of Allende's cabinet and a former prisoner and exile, focused on "tolerance," "diversity" and "reconciliation...

...It began with a protracted, fitful journey through Chile's Congress, followed by discord over the actual design of the monument, and then a heady debate in the press over where the statue should actually stand...

...In the Frei monument, as the President authoritatively gestures outward, there are two Chileans-a miner and a newspapers claimed the statue would ,lize a calm, mature, united nation that, ing learned something from the pain," was moving toward an "authentic reconciliation...

...Passage of the law authorizing the Allende monuments took four full years...

...his 1945 election as senator and his presidency of the Senate in 1966...

...Many worried the Plaza would be converted fro: Plaza of Portales to the Plaza of the Three Thi reference to the generalized historic claim th, Chilean electorate had always roughly aligned one-third to the right (symbolized by Alessandri), one-third to the center (symbol- Some ized by Frei) and one-third to the left (to be symbolized by Allende's symbc statue...

...great Chilean flag, bolstering Allende from below...

...Predictably, the approval process on the legislation gave way to a tense political struggle to define and redefine the period of Allende's presidency...

...who According to the sculptor, the selection panel stabi- instructed him to "take the people out and try to make it more abstract...

...Editorial, "Ubicaci6n de monumentos y Plaza de la Constituci6n," La Segunda, May 8, 1995, p. 8. 12...

...The one Constituci6n, public Senate discussion of the Allende monument legislation in June 1994 was dominated by several right-wing senators, most of whom issued lengthy denunciations of Allende...

...The bill listed Allende's many tnhlr n, hivrnmnnte h i including his early politit could have had ical leadership as a medical student and a night president would school professor for ed his place of workers...

...Indeed, the President's speech was virtually drowned out as the dissidents hurled eggs, tomatoes and coins, shouting, "Lagos, traidor, defiende al dictador...

...1 4 Lagos' one response to Zaldivar was an attempt to disassociate himself from that past: "I will not be the second socialist president of Chile...

...Lagos, you traitor, defending the dictator...

...Many of the Party's members and Vol XX)(VII, No 1 JuLY/AuGusT 200319 Vol XXXVII, No 1 JuLY/AUGUST 2003 19CHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER sympathizers, separated by a metal fence from the official invitees, booed the speakers...

...Congressman Horvath stated such a proposition was all too reminiscent of the painful years of Frei's agrarian reform and should therefore be stricken from the legislation...

...His daughter, he said, was fascinated...

...he monument now plays a role in the passing of Chile's memory from one generation to the next...

...8 ehind the scenes, Senate proponents of the monument bill averted a nasty public struggle and potential defeat through an unsavory compromise: In exchange for UDI votes for the Allende monuments, Socialist senators agreed to support a law authorizing a monument to the late UDI Senator Jaime Guzmin, a leading civilian architect of the Pinochet regime and its 1980 constitution, who was assassinated in 1991...

...The government's Council on National Monuments concurred...

...I thought a good s that deal about this experience," Hevia said, "and I conVol XXXVII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 2003 23CHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER cluded that, well, the socialists are now so renovated that they don't want the people near them...

...The bill then passed to the Chilean Senate, where it took another Monument two years to be voted through...

...He opposed the statue "in order not to relive that period that is better left forgotten...

...Each September 4, the anniversary of Allende's inauguration, and each June 26, Allende's birthday, the Communists and Socialists hold separate commemorations at the same sites...

...RN senator Francisco Prat argued that Allende had attempted to lead the country down a violent path toward totalitarianism...

...4 Congressman Carlos Ignacio Kuschel, who delivered a longer, more damning address, excoriated the Allende government for starting the violence that had wracked Chile, and credited the military regime with averting civil war...

...7. Senado, Sesi6n 5ta, June 14, 1994, p. 512...

...His image appears in every Communist-organized demonstration and event...

...Alessandri and Frei placements had already established...

...Clearly, a handful of Chilean officials had hoped such would be the case with the Allende monument...

...For the monument's foundation, Hevia ure of depicted a group of families-workers with their found children-advancing through the street, waving a mory...

...Several older musicians later registered surprise that so many young people knew all the words to their old songs...

...Gladys Marin, hold a floral offering: "Allende Lives...

...El Mercurio, July 18, 1999, cited in P4rez Ferrada, "Frases celebres de la campa/ia...

...Hevia draped Allende in the Chilean flag, much the same way as Balmaceda is depicted, giving his likeness a ghostlike quality notably lacking in the statues of Frei and Alessandri...

...5. Camara de Diputados, Sesi6n 2da, June 2, 1992, p. 47...

...41-42...

...On July 9, 1992, the House approved the monument legislation...

...The only technical difficulty wa an obelisk standing where Allende would be was actually an air vent for La Moneda offices underneath the Plaza...

...Those three statues v form a neat triangle...

...ike the statue itself, the ghost of Allende remains an inescapable presence in Chilean politics...

...I will always be with you, remembered as a man of dignity who was loyal to his nation...

...My father was a socialist, a man very involved with the plight of the people," Hevia recalled...

...As last year's September 11 anti-Pinochet protests took place, organizers chose the Allende monument as a key site for demonstrations...

...16 Resurrecting Allende 1. The tension surrounding the inauguration was a stark contrast to Allende's official reburial and funeral a decade earlier...

...It outlined a step-by-step process for erecting a lasting historical tribute to the former president...

...True democrats and patriots, he argued, were forced to suspend democracy in order to save it...

...Chileans who had gathered for the commemoration...

...On June 26, 2000, in Santiago's Plaza de la Constituci6n, Chile's center-left Concertaci6n government unveiled an official monument to Salvador Allende, the socialist president who was overthrown in the bloody coup of September 11, 1973...

...Leading politicians and historians led a loud campaign against locating the statue in the Plaza de la Constituci6n, in front of La Moneda, the presidential palace...

...That the statue was built at all represents a small, symbolic step for Chile in recognizing and accepting his enduring legacy in Chilean political life...

...Interview with Hevia, June 28, 2002, Santiago...

...Seven members of the RN simply refused to vote, even though they had just acted on other legislation and were, in fact, present on the House floor...

...As Lagos and Allende's widow Hortensia Bussi de Allende unveiled the statue, a loudspeaker, set up unofficially in an office window above the crowd, began to play "Venceremos," the hymn of Allende's Popular Unity (UP) government...

...Traditional enemies of Allende dominated the congressional debates, denouncing him as the worst leader in Chilean history and hardly worthy of commemoration...

...Members of the traditional right-wing party, National Renewal (RN), managed to block the vote by claiming that a quorum did not exist in the House...

...2. Diario Oficial (Santiago), July 11, 1994...

...That day, the state-sponsored newspaper La Naci6n claimed that the statue would symbolize a calm, mature, united nation that, "having learned something from the pain," was moving toward an "authentic reconciliation...

...After we left we were walking in silence when we suddenly ran into Allende's statue...

...Conversation with Martin Rodriguez, Santiago, July 3, 2002...

...Before the cameras, prominent Chilean politicians, including then-president Eduardo Frei, Jr., wrote large checks...

...In September, the Allende Foundation and Santi municipal leadership decided that the best way Allende would be to uproot Portales from the fa of the Plaza and move him to the Plaza's c instead...

...The Communists begin at 11:30 AM, and the Socialists commence at noon...

...Indeed, the story of the monument is the story of how Chilp rnntinAe W10n ,pr later, to struggle with the pain and controversy of If the Chilean rig Allende's government and the coup that led to its way, the late his death...

...this design subcloser sequently won him the contract...

...Many traditionalists claimed that the additi the Alessandri and Frei statues had already cr two statues too many in what was known as "la de Portales," and that the plan to erect an Al monument in the Plaza was just an over-th idea...

...But from the moment the project was launched until the present, the monument has evoked a virulent public reaction from Pinochet supporters and only low-key support from many of the historic allies of Allende who now hold office...

...traditional allies largely remained silent, trying not to call attention to their own records and relationships to the late president...

...Vol XXXVII, No 1 JuLY/AUGUST 2003 >z 21CHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER A commemorative march to the Allende monument on September 11, 2001...

...1 3 A special panel, headed by the well-known Chilean artist Jos6 Balmes, asked Hevia to amend his first proposal, which was a far more elaborate design and very similar to his monument to Frei, the charismatic Christian Democratic president...

...Nevertheless, while the Chilean left has struggled internally over how to project the past for future generations, progressive sectors of society have also proven capable of coming together to embrace a vibrant political and cultural history that resonates with contemporary Chilean youth...

...9. Editorial, "El monumento para Salvador Allende," La Naci6n, April 19, 1995, p. 5. 10...

...167-194...

...Accepting a political equivalency between Guzmin, an authoritarian political philosopher on the extreme right, and Salvador Allende was obviously repugnant to the Socialists...

...8. Senado, Sesi6n 5ta, June 14, 1994, p. 502...

...The heads of the Chilean Communist Party, one of the principal members of Allende's Popular Unity coalition, had not been invited to join the dignitaries on the podium...

...Statues of two former presidents, Jorge Alessandri and Eduardo Frei, had already been approved for the Plaza de la Constituci6n...

...We walked into La Moneda and she was very impressed...

...To be sure, a handful of Allende partisans did forcefully respond to these attacks...

...The Allende monument bears an unmistakable resemblance to that of President Jos6 Balmaceda, the late nineteenth century liberal leader who killed himself in the immediate aftermath of Chile's civil war...

...hav In July 1995, newspapers announced that the Public Works Ministry, headed by then-Minister Ricardo Lagos, would propose that the Allende monument be placed in the center of the Plaza...

...For several years, this site was Allende's tomb in the general cemetery...

...and his four runs for the national presidency, culminating in his electoral victory of 1970...

...The selection of Hevia, a self-declared rightist who publicly stated he would be happy to sculpt a monument to Pinochet as well, drew heavy criticism from the left...

...Hevia iginal said he had something analogous in mind for I that Allende...

...On an outing to La Moneda, the father of a six-year-old girl told me he found himself explaining Allende's fate to his daughter "as if it were some kind of action thriller...

...of the Chilean Socialist Party...

...For Chile's Communists, who have become but a fraction of the political and cultural powerhouse they once were, Allende is an icon of towering proportions...

...On the one hand, Lagos represented the Concertaci6n, a coalition of centrist and center-left parties that had governed Chile in the ten years since the transition from dictatorial rule...

...he process of erecting a statue in Allende's memory-from official approval through design and construction-took the better part of a decade...

...After a decade-long struggle over a monument for Allende, perhaps Chile's political elites have inserted Allende into a historic continuity in ways they had not anticipated-a continuity that recognizes mobilization and protest as part of a democratic tradition...

...Chilean Communist Party members including leader...

...During the actual House debate, the right took to the floor to put their vitriol on the record...

...President Salvador Allende's last address from the presidential palace, just before his death in the military coup, September 11, 1973...

...Allende would then take Portales' or place...

...1 Their anger was fed by the Concertaci6n's efforts to win the release of General Pinochet after his arrest in London, an effort that many leftist critics believe fits the pattern of the government's betrayals on issues of social justice...

...Objections to the placement of the statue became central to the criticism...

...Bitar insisted that the role of the Senate was not to be the judge of history...

...The law actually called for three monuments to the fallen leader-one each in Santiago, Valparaiso and Punta Arenas...

...At the same time, the likeness and placement of the statue serve to defy powerful intents to obscure Allende from the public view and relegate him to some dark memory of the past...

...Those on the commission for the monument design, including Allende sympathizers, selected a rightist sculptor but rejected his proposal for a statue boldly identifying Allende with the Chilean pueblo...

...House representatives raised concern regarding language in the law permitting the commission to consider acquiring private land for the monument site should public land prove somehow inappropriate...

...5 In the memory of "el compafiero Allende" the late congressman Mario Palestro charged that a certain olvido-a collective forgetting-was taking place in the Chilean transition, a forgetting that would in part be countered by the monuments to Allende...

...Juan Rauld, "Monumento a Allende: Ubicaci6n mbs probable es el centro de la Plaza de la Constituci6n," La Segunda, July 22, 1995, p. 22...

...the Allende Foundation recommended that Allende, too, belonged in the Plaza...

...See Alfredo Joignant Rond6n, El gesto y la palabra: ritos politicos y representaciones sociales de la construcci6n democrctica en Chile (Santiago: LOM Ediciones,1998), pp...

...I showed it to her, she looked at it, and said: 'Allende must have really been a very courageous man...

...his participation in the 1933 founding istorical memory...

...The effort to authorize the statue began in May 1991 as a piece of legislation proposed by members of Allende's Socialist Party and the center-left Party for Democracy...

...3. See El Mercurio (Santiago), June 5, 1992...

...All subsequent quotes from Hevia are taken from this interview...

...3 Rightist House members stalled the legislation a second time, successfully challenging the electronic vote tabulations by charging that six affirmative votes were mistakes...

...Yet as memories are ever-evolving processes, Allende seems to be increasingly respected for dying for his beliefs...

...There are many who continue to scorn the Allende statue...

...Lagos' challenger in the Concertaci6n primaries, Christian Democrat Adolfo Zaldivar, explicitly evoked Allende: "The people made a mistake electing Allende...

...16...

...I moved around firing shots and gesturing and making noises, pah, pah, pah...

...In turn, a year later the UDI senators voted unanimously for the Allende monuments...

...By implication, the olvido to which Palestro referred included today's poor and disenfranchised...

...La Segunda, May 14, 1999, cited in M. Angelica P4rez Ferrada, "Frases celebres de la campana," El Mercurio OnLine, Sunday, December 16, 1999...

...Indeed, since its inauguration, the statue has served as a site for a repertoire of collective actiona place for protest, a stop on the march, a memorial where flowers and wreaths are laid, a space that Chilean youth armed with wine and guitars can claim as their own...

...Allende never left this world with blood on his hands...