POLITICS-CHILE: Tension Surrounds Unveiling of Allende Monument

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Jun 27 2000 (IPS) - Chile’s president Ricardo Lagos unveiled a monument Monday in honour of former president Salvador Allende in the capital amid the tense climate of protests led by leftist groups that lack representation in Congress.

The monument has been placed in front of the government palace, known as ‘La Moneda,’ where socialist president Allende is thought to have taken his own life during the coup d’etat led by Gen. Augusto Pinochet on September 11, 1973.

The unveiling ceremony, attended by national and foreign government officials, was not a tranquil event, due to demonstrators who protested an accord reached by the human rights dialogue panel earlier this month and called for more criminal charges to be brought against Pinochet.

Allende’s widow, Hortensia Bussi, his daughter, socialist legislator Isabel Allende, and several officials protected themselves with umbrellas against the coins, eggs, fruit and other objects thrown by the protesters – mostly activists from the Communist Party and other leftist groups who do not hold parliamentary seats.

President Lagos, the Allende family members, Santiago mayor Jaime Ravinet, senator Ricardo Núñez, president of the Socialist Party (PS), and Spaniard José Bono, president of the Castilla-La Mancha Autonomous Community, led the ceremony that brought a 3,000-strong audience to the Plaza of the Constitution.

The monument to Allende is in addition to others already erected on the plaza to former presidents: the late Jorge Alessandri (1958- 1964) and the late Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970), thus completing the trio of Chilean governments that served prior to the interruption of democracy resulting from the Pinochet coup.

Alessandri, a conservative engineer, Frei, a Christian-democrat attorney, and Allende, a socialist physician, reflected an alternating government power of right, centre and left – a scenario of “three thirds” that characterised the government balance ultimately broken by the violent military takeover in 1973.

In 1994, the Chilean parliament approved a measure, with support from all sectors represented there, that authorised the construction of three monuments, one for each of the three presidents, using funds collected through public campaigns and other donation channels.

Outside of this law, in the town of Palmilla, some 160 km south of the capital, the first monument to Allende in Chile was erected five years ago under the initiative of mayor and film-maker Miguel Littin.

Allende, a socialist and a mason, born in Santiago on July 26, 1908, reached the presidency following his electoral victory in September 1970 as candidate for Popular Unity, a coalition of socialists, communists, radical social-democrats and leftist Christians.

Three years later, on September 11, 1973, after a heroic but unsuccessful battle against the military insurrection and bombing of the presidential palace, Allende took his own life using a machine gun.

The Salvador Allende Foundation had held a contest for the design of the statue unveiled Monday. The winning sculptor, Arturo Hevia, defines himself as a political conservative and says he would be willing to design a statue for Pinochet, because “art must be above the conditional.”

Allende’s widow said at Monday’s ceremony, “It gives me great satisfaction that the monument is inaugurated by president Lagos, who belongs to the PS and the PPD (Pro-Democracy Party) and is the second socialist to reach La Moneda.”

On March 11, Lagos became the third successive president of the ‘Concertación por la Democracia,’ a centre-left coalition that has governed Chile since 1990, first with Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994) and then with Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994-2000), both of the Christian-Democrat Party.

Among the official guests at the unveiling were some standouts of the Chilean Communist Party, including writer Volodia Teitelboim. But the party’s secretary general, Gladys Marín, had to watch the ceremony from behind the crowd retention barriers.

The protesters shouted “traitors!” and threw coins at the government and parliamentary socialists, including senator Carlos Ominami, who was pelted with rocks but was unharmed.

In his speech for the monument’s unveiling, president Lagos confronted the protests of those who are against the agreement signed by the human rights panel June 13 in an attempt to recover information on the fates of some 1,200 people who disappeared during the Pinochet dictatorship.

The accord stipulates that the confidentiality of military officers and others who provide information will be protected, a measure many rights activists reject.

“We may have different views of the past, but we cannot have different views on the rights of man,” said the president, emphasising – just as he did when he signed the controversial accord – that human rights are the foundation of democracy.

He also responded to calls for former dictator Pinochet to stand trial, saying, “To those who demand trial, I remind you that in a democracy, justice is done in the courts.”

Among the foreign guests at the unveiling were Narcís Serra, former vice-president of Spain, French parliamentarian Pierre Forgues, former Italian foreign minister Franco Danielli, Gonzalo Martínez Corbalán – who served as Mexico’s ambassador to Chile in 1973, and the widow of Spanish poet Rafael Alberti, María Asunción Mateo.

José Bono, president of the Castilla-La Mancha autonomous government, which provided financial backing for the monument, spoke on their behalf.

Allende was an example of democratic consequence, patriotism and dignity, said Bono, adding that “all corrupt politicians and coup leaders, with or without uniforms,” explode against his upstanding image.