From Allende to Lula: Assessing the Legacy
Oxhorn, Philip
As Chileans and progressives around the world mark the 30th anniversary of the violent military coup that overthrew Chile's socialist president Salvador Allende, Latin America is arguably in...
...At president, as well as the increased role of the military opting to learn from in Venezuelan politics...
...linally-and fundamentally-the left has always faced the challenge of designing a viable economic policy for national development...
...At the same time, part of the problem reflects a certain lack of intellectual endeavor and imagination, particularly after the collapse of the Soviet Union, on the part of the left...
...First, the UP emphasized the importance of party structures and other forms of popular sector organization to mobilize support...
...ther things, designing The fact that Alberto Fujimori of Peru shared many n a less clientist view of Chivez's characteristics until he was forced to flee themselves to respect the country for exile in Japan is particularly trou- the independent orga- bling, because it underscores the true threat of populism...
...Even ,een elected president more so than Per6n, Chavez has demonstrated his would be trying to do disdain for organization and institutional mediation Lagos and Lula are by concentrating increasing amounts of power in the conviction, principled office of the presidency and attempting to establish a to building strong direct relationship with his followers...
...The violence in all its forms (physical, economic and social) that the coup unleashed did more than just target the left and the democratic "traitors" who opened the door to subversion...
...Allende was in many ways a tragic cratic institutions thought his experiment in demo10 NAM REPORT ON THE AMERICASCHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER cratic socialism promised to demonstrate the futility of political democracy in Latin America...
...ailed to realize that failed coup against one of the oldest, albeit flawed, America and the left democratic regimes in the region...
...The collapse of the Soviet Union and the varying, often quite substantial, levels of market reform in virtually all remaining Communist states added to this ambiguity because now even the ultimate goal has been put into doubt...
...His obscure and ig Lula will not...
...The turbulence facing elected left presidents today...
...This was seen as necessary for creating the kind of public image of Allende that would maintain a strong left opposition in Chile during years of fierce repression...
...The collapse of the Soviet Union and the end to grips with questions of political democracy and of the Cold War (Cuba aside), the debt crisis and the coalition politics, and with the very complex problem dismantling of the developmentalist state, and the of egalitarian economic development...
...While the impact of the U.S...
...These events left in Latin America today...
...Allende was a democrat by conviction, not out of convenience...
...He has published widely on democratization, civil society and popular sector mobilization...
...His profound commitment to the democs, Chavez burst onto ratic transformation of his country is a part of his tary officer who led a legacy that we cannot afford to ignore...
...They are well organized, programmatic parties in the best tradition of Allende's UP...
...Kirchner, comes from the progressive wing of the Peronist Party and his victory owes a great deal to the massive public repudiation of the neoliberal eco- nomic policies of the last, more conservative, Peronist president, Carlos Sa61 Menem...
...Chile understanding crucial differences among Latin had also suffered more than a decade of economic American governments that might aspire to the wear- stagnation and decline...
...Unlike populist leaders in Latin America, Allende avoided the ambiguous and amorphous ideological appeals that only served to mask the elitist, self-interested nature of the populist coalition...
...See L. Avritzer, "Democratization and Changes in the Pattern of Association in Brazil," Journal of Interamerican Studies and World Affairs, No...
...In this way, Allende stood in stark contrast to traditional populist leaders such as Juan Per6n in Argentina, Getdlio Vargas in Brazil and Lizaro Cirdenas in Mexico who similarly proclaimed goals of social transformation and inclusion...
...ical democracy in the early 1970s has moved furthest away from that legacy today...
...Of course, the Concertaci6n government program is arguably more ideologically moderate as a result of the inevitable compromises such a coalition requires...
...This is not true of the PT, whose experiments in innovative institutions such as participatory budgeting have become a model for the left (and others...
...To a certain extent, this reflected the government's materialist perspective on issues of redistribution: the belief that electoral support could be won, particularly from the middle classes, by progressively raising standards of living through increased social expenditures and higher public sector wages...
...Historically, this ambiguity stems from left's anti-capitalist stance and its association with radical policies of economic redistribution...
...Allende's support, beyond his personal charisma, was the result of and mediated by party and related organizations that were able to mobilize their memberships...
...Today, we are NACIA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS 12CHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER still searching for a viable alternative not only to neoliberalism, but also to the old statist development model whose limits contributed to the economic crises of the 1980s and subsequent neoliberal onslaught...
...Now, as in Allende's day, the left must come ences...
...so-called "peaceful road to socialism," he captured We should therefore avoid romanticizing both the attention of the world...
...This was crucial even if the autonomy of many civil society organizations associated with his coalition government was often subordinated to narrower partisan interests...
...Argentina's newly elected president, N6stor Philip Oxhorn is Associate Professor of Political Science at McGill University...
...After three failed presidential bids, Brazil's first elected leftist president, Lufs Inicio Lula da Silva, assumed office this year...
...He is the author of Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile (Penn State Press, 1995...
...This distinction, as well as the UP's electoral success and the extreme counterreaction to it, owed much to the strongly ideological and normative program Allende Vol XXXVII, No 1 JuLY/AUGusT 2003 11CHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER came to represent, even if its precise goals and priorities suffered from a lack of consensus within the coalition...
...While the world has changed in fundamental ways since then, simple intellectual curiosity about Allende's legacy today also entails an important ele- ment of political pragmatism for the left as it seeks to Vol XXXVII, No 1 JuLY/AuGusT 20039 0 0, 0 Vol XXXVII, No 1 JULY/AUGUST 2003 9CHILE: THIRTY YEARS LATER historical figure whose suicide under siege in the La Moneda presidential palace made him a martyr for the left, both in Chile and in a world caught up in the ideological polarization and polemics of the Cold War...
...Despite Fujimori's close political relationship appreciate Allende's with Peru's poor, he implemented some of the harsh- it with populism, the est economic adjustment policies in recent decades, cy today that promises and was responsible for the suspension of democratic Venezuelan President institutions and the widespread abuse of basic human s in many ways the rights...
...Allende's consequences of the unprecedented levels of political legacy provides an important axis around which to violence that wracked most of the region during distinguish the ways these challenges are met by the much of this 30-year period, all imply that any direct various political currents often associated with the link may be more apparent than real...
...more equal and just societi markedly distinct context of t the best of Allende's legacy fro the same time, both are attend Allende's mistakes by, among o fiscal policies that are based or of politics, and by committing a greater level of autonomy for nizations of civil society...
...Economic policies were always among the least thought out on the left...
...5 Their proven commitment to democracy, a progressive ideology and the building of strong party structures with deep roots in civil society legitimated their programs as well-intentioned, and their compromises as genuine rather than opportunistic...
...The purges within the Chilean armed forces that preceded and continued after the 1973 coup are only the most dramatic example of this violent and destructive logic behind the military coups of the era...
...When nature of Allende's legacy may be appreciated differ- Allende won the Chilean presidency by promising a ently than it was at the time of his death in 1973...
...Economic policy was one of the most grievous shortcomings of Allende's government...
...Many on the extreme left, on the other hand, viewed political democracy as a bourgeois trap...
...Even though Allende was not a populist leader in a political sense, his "economic populism" contributed to rising levels of inflation and an overheated economy that further polarized the country...
...5. Lagos also represents this promise, but in a much less dramatic way given the nature of the Concertaci6n and the fact that the Concertaci6n has now been in power for over 12 years...
...accepted the fundamental challenge of making political democracy in Chile more inclusive and just, a he task of assessing Allende's legacy 30 years challenge that is not all that different from the one after his death is complicated...
...The wisdom of Allende's democratic convictions is further evidenced in the popularity of leftist leaders today whose own democratic convictions are beyond doubt...
...Allende had a definitive project for Chile that transcended narrow, particularistic interests, even if its precise contours and the steps that needed to be taken to achieve it were not well defined...
...3. This success vis-a-vis the middle classes and the concomitant ideological moderation of both Lagos and Lula also reflects constitutional reforms that require candidates to win a majority of votes or face a run-off between the top two candidates...
...last two years of Allende's government...
...The fate of the Chilean Communist Party is most telling in this regard...
...government and multinationals-were important factors, )mic there is little doubt that the government's own inexperience, contradictory ,rience, policies and lack of consensus contributed in significant ways to the eco- as an nomic crisis that unfolded during the ay...
...This is especially urgent around the need for coalitions that respect the left's historical ideological and normative positions...
...The uncertainty of the left's economic policies is not unique to the UP experience, although that experience can serve as an important lesson for the left today...
...4 These same characteristics distinguish the Concertaci6n and PT from more populist alternatives throughout the region, the hallmark of which is their weak organization, ideological and programmatic ambiguity, and indifference or even authoritarian resistance to democratic norms...
...While Allende ultimately fa promise, the poor in Latin , throughout the world are hoping does succeed, that too will be torical legacy...
...Given the magof the subsequent three decades, in Chile, nitude of the changes since Allende governed, interLatin America and the world, means that drawing preting his legacy to a large extent involves speculatany links between Allende's experience as head of ing about how he might respond to this challenge the 1970-73 Popular Unity (UP) coalition govern- today...
...In contrast In the end, Allende gave his life to expose such al struggle to perfect false hope...
...In this sense, both Allende and Lula share something very important: Their elections offered the promise of a new model of democratic development and hope for a more just future...
...If he obtuse "Boliviarian" discourse is more akin to the part of Allende's his- equally malleable justicialismo used by Juan Per6n in the 1940s and 1950s to create the most durable populist movement in Latin American history...
...As Chileans and progressives around the world mark the 30th anniversary of the violent military coup that overthrew Chile's socialist president Salvador Allende, Latin America is arguably in the midst of a new resurgence of the left...
...Not since the 1960s and early 1970s have there been so many leftist governments in Latin America...
...3 Regardless of any alleged ideological moderation, both the Concertaci6n coalition (as well as Lagos' own Socialist Party, a member of that coalition) and the PT exhibit a strong commitment to political democracy...
...embargo and the right's extensive efforts to sabotage the economy-often subsidized by the U.S...
...many fail to recognize that political democracy must form the core of any progressive project if it is to truly address the long term interests of the dispossessed in Latin American societies...
...Hugo Chavez, for example, i antithesis of Allende's legacy f to Allende's decades of politic Chile's democratic institutions the public stage as a junior mili Hugo Chdvez and Lula speak in Brasilia after Lula's January 2003 inauguration...
...Both Venezuela and Ecuador have elected presidents who claim a similar progressive pedigree, and Chile itself is governed by a member of Allende's own Socialist Party, Ricardo Lagos...
...As the elected leader of the country, he paid the highest price imaginable for insisting that only the Chilean people who actually put him in office and legitimated his authority could remove him from office by respecting democratic constitutional norms...
...Ironically, the major left party that was closest to Allende's belief in the importance of politft must come to grips with questions political democracy and coalition itics, and with the complexities of alitarian economic development...
...The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998...
...Moreover, both the Concertaci6n and the PT are generally more respectful of the autonomy of civil society organizations than was the case of Allende's UP-a definite improvement from the perspective of opening up democratic spaces for inclusion...
...The principal ated to constructing exceptions are the so-called "Bolivarian Circles," es represent, in the which represent an atomized collection of sometimes he early 21st century, armed community organizations loyal directly to the m the early 1970s...
...As a direct consequence, its diminished electoral and social base has contributed to its growing political marginalization...
...While many were hopeful, Allende and the period during which he dominated those who were already distrustful of formal demoChilean politics...
...From Allende to Lula 1. For example, the fact of Allende's suicide was not publicly recognized until only recently, after his body was exhumed for forensic analysis...
...that have so altered the socio-political and economic The first challenge is the relation between ecolandscapes of Latin America also mean that the nomic transformation and political democracy...
...Suspect that had Allende b in 2000 instead of 1970, he many of the same things attempting...
...Chilean President Ricardo Lagos meeting in Santiago with Brazilian President-elect Luis Intcio Large segments of the populaLula da Silva just weeks before Lula's inauguration, tion remained politically excluded until women (1948) honor the most productive aspects of Allende's and illiterates (1970) were given the right to vote, legacy, while avoiding some of its pitfalls...
...2 As in 1970, the left today must define appropriate political strategies for coming to and exercising power...
...2. The party's equivocal stance toward the transition in the late 1980s, its refusal to more fully democratize internal party structures and its inability to retain the social base it had established among the popular sectors when Pinochet seemed to be consolidating his regime in the 1980s ensured that even with fairer electoral rules, the party's future would remain in serious doubt...
...Perhaps the best way to legacy for the left is to contrast other principal political tendency hope for the region's poor...
...This is especially noteworthy in the PT's case, given the notoriously weak nature of Brazil's party system...
...For the far right, it showed the dangers that political liberalization created by providing spaces for the nation's enemies to infiltrate the political system from within, turning centrist and even conservative democratic forces into the unwary agents of Communist revolution...
...While the goal might have been clear, how it was to be achieved, particularly in a democratic context like the one in which Allende believed, where property owners had important democratic rights, was always ambiguous...
...In Chile at least, this reform reflects another legacy of Allende's term in office...
...In Chile, this reflects the fact that Lagos' Concertaci6n coalition includes many of the centrist political groups that had in the end supported the coup against Allende in 1973...
...For those who advocated armed defense of the revolution, Allende's ultimate fail- The lel ure reflected the limits of political democracy for creating more just soci- of I eties, leaving armed insurrectionary struggle as the only viable alternative...
...In this and the growth of a complex, autonomous civil socisense, not all leftist governments are the same, and ety was severely circumscribed by the dominance of Allende's legacy provides an important gauge for political parties and a highly centralized state...
...42, 2000, pp...
...Both Lula in Brazil and Lagos in Chile publicly challenged authoritarian regimes when it was still risky to do so...
...Allende had assumed the presidency in 1970 with a plurality of only 36.3% of the votes and the authors of Pinochet's 1980 constitution were determined to prevent a leftist candidate from doing that again...
...Although Allende was never able to capture a majority of votes, his electoral strategy offers important lessons that are, to a greater or lesser extent, reflected in the success of both Lagos in Chile and Lula in Brazil...
...It would seem only natural to ask what Allende's legacy might mean for this growing "leftist renaissance...
...59-76...
...Approximately three decades later, both Lagos and Lula were considerably more successful in winning the electoral allegiance of large segments of the middle class...
...Their persistent public efforts beginning in the late 1970s to first restore and then improve democratic governance in their respective countries is in no small part the key to their political success, just as it was for Allende in a very different period...
...As part of this project for the nation, Allende could credibly seek to reach out to Chile's middle classes, even The uncertainty of the left's econ( policies is not unique to the UP expe although that experience can serve important lesson for the left tod though he largely failed in the ideologically charged context of the time...
...Rather than confirm either extreme, the aftermath of the 1973 coup demonstrated-albeit with hindsight for many and still not uniformly for all segments of Chilean society-that Allende's convictions were well placed...
...In many ways, Allende ing of his weighty historical mantel...
...See K. Roberts, Deepening Democracy...
...In this way, he attempted to lay out an alternative to the reformist "revolution in liberty" of his predecessor, Eduardo Frei, and the economic orthodoxy of the right...
...ment and the left today, necessarily involves disen- The challenges facing the left in power are not funtangling a number of historical processes that have damentally different from the challenges of the only an indirect bearing on Allende's own experi- 1970s...
...1 Similarly, it is important to recognize that while Chile was one of the most democratic countries in Latin America up until 1973, it was far from an ideal political democracy...
...Their democratic pragmatism and commitment political organizations dedic...
...In the case of Brazil, Lula's Workers' Party (PT) has similarly been able to appeal to growing numbers of middle class voters, and it might also be accused of moderating its ideological and programmatic base to do so...
...Critics of the so-called "electoral regimes" that leaders like Lula and Lagos helped to construct frequently ignore this essential legacy of Allende...
...or the left...
...One should not forget, of course, that the earlier period of leftist resurgence was rapidly followed by an unprecedented backlash that resulted in the most violent authoritarian regimes in the region's modern history...
...While the fact that he gave his life in defense of democratic governance is one of the most enduring aspects of his legacy, it is equally important to avoid projecting its exaggerated or distorted influence on subsequent history...
...While the return to democracy has helped reverse many of these costs through the dramatic curtailment of political violence and substantial reductions in poverty, the social debt created by 17 years of dictatorship is still being repaid...
...4. In the case of Chile, this may reflect the distancing of the left, particularly the Socialist Party, from civil society organizations more than a strong commitment to "deepening democracy...
...It was the poor and marginalized-those championed by the left-who inevitably suffered the most...
...pol Allende and his closest followers- egi though not necessarily the majority within his own increasingly radicalized Socialist Party-saw political democracy as both a means toward the achievement of a socialist society and as something of great value in and of itself...
Vol. 37 • July 2003 • No. 1
