ALLENDE SMILES IN HIS GRAVE [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

ALLENDE SMILES IN HIS GRAVE

The Statesman
28 Mar 2014

Perhaps it would not be a mistake to read Michelle Bachelet’s return to power as a reaffirmation of
the Chilean people’s faith in the legacy of an assassinated President and all those who lent their weight behind his visionary programme of empowerment of the oppressed and the marginalised, writes vidyarthy chatterjee

IT is difficult to overlook the element of renewed poetic justice in the recent re-election of socialist leader Michelle Bachelet as President of Chile. Salvador Allende, the world’s first freely-elected Marxist head of state who was brought down in a CIA-sponsored military coup 40 years ago, must be shaking his head and smiling in his grave. That coup claimed the lives of thousands of Allendistas (followers or supporters of the slain President). Bachelet’s father was among those who were eliminated for siding with Allende.

Bachelet, her country’s first woman President, and her Left-Centre coalition, were first elected in 2006. She was followed in office by a conservative billionaire named Sebastian Pinera who proved to be a disaster for a country with the highest per capita income in Latin America. Bachelet’s re-election is being interpreted in some circles as a vote for social justice and responsible governance, which had badly suffered during Pinera’s presidency.

When the news came in of Bachelet’s victory, I was reminded of distinguished Chilean filmmaker Miguel Littin’s comment that “a country which forgets its past has neither a present nor a future”. For years after Allende’s assassination and the fall of his Popular Unity government, it seemed as if the Chilean people had decided to look the other way when it came to discussing that tragic chapter in the country’s past.

More:
http://www.thestatesman.net/news/46687-allende-smiles-in-his-grave.html