translated from Spanish: The problem of not understanding Allende

President Allende’s immense prestige for his political project and for his consequence in heroically facing the putsch of September 11, 1973, admiration for his trajectory and the dramatic lucidity of his last words, mean countless adherents not only in Chile, but in the five continents.
The composition of this insabasible legion of allendists is inevitably of enormous diversity, which entails different visions of its historical figure and leadership, especially about who corresponds to its legacy in the current situation of each country and the globalized world.
Therefore, since Chilean socialism it is vital to revalue their trajectory, especially for the new generations of social fighters in Chile, because their historical heritage is not only an admiration for their figure and courage, but in their ideas are the inspiration and pillars of 21st century socialism.

Allende, as leader of the people of Chile left a legacy: the “Chilean way to socialism”. She turned out to be the fruit of her tireless work, of the sustained contact for decades with the popular movement, workers, peasants, fishermen, teachers, employees, men and women, young people and older adults, representatives and/or spokesmen of indigenous peoples, scientists, intellectuals and artists, wise thinkers and people of action.
On the whole. Deeply immersed in Chilean socio-economic training, he concluded that the social transformation project for Chile could not be a simple copy of what was done in other realities. That the firmness of principles was essential to develop an original project, a strategy against the fundamental adversaries of social change, but not to implement in Chile a model outside the essential, unrepeatable singularity of Chile.
There is no doubt that his proposal for a “Chilean way” sprang from the people, from his dreams, certainties and hopes that Allende interpreted and applied on a path that was authentically Chilean. That’s why those who simplify Allende, deep down, don’t understand what he was as a social fighter.
Those who want to reduce it to a party, even a candidacy, are far from understanding what Allende was and mistakenly intend to declare themselves “allendists”, in an attempt to appropriate their historical, political and moral heritage, simply as a slogan outside of its complexity, of its democratic and libertarian essence.
Allende was a tenacious fighter for unity, a tireless bulwark of understanding popular forces, that is, a tenacious adversary of sectarianism and divisionist confrontation, which causes irreparable damage to the achievement of the democratic and social justice objectives that inspire the historical project of the left.
He was a social and political leader. Not a mesic. Regardless of strategic and tactical differences, Allende would never have called for rebellion from the bases of one of chile’s left-wing parties against the organization in which they played. His conduct was invariable, he maintained unrestricted respect for the parties with which he fought and understood himself for decades.
He also fought hard for the “electoral route” for Chile, through a broad alliance that became a majority, but never denosed those who did not believe in it. Even, transcending Chile’s borders, it was a source of pride in him the dedication that Ernesto Guevara, che, wrote to him in the book “Guerra de Guerrillas”, in which it was read: “To Salvador Allende, who by other means tries to obtain the same thing”.
That the perspective that the parties of Popular Unity be assimilated to a single way of thinking deeply contradicted it was installed, ideological pluralism was in it a primary factor. He truly believed in the Chilean revolution “with a taste of empanadas and red wine”. The attempt to uniformize political thinking in monolithic form was completely alien to its conception of life and country.
For this reason, he distanced the way from resolutions adopted in the popular unity parties that came from the Christian humanist matrix hurriedly self-defined as “Marxists”. More his annoyance grew when internal sectors in a given party, having majority control of some congressional event, came to call his organization “Marxists-Leninists”, as happened with the Youth of the Radical Party.
In his strong socialist convictions, accommodating “ideological fads” that became dogmatic intolerance and disqualifying the diversity of ideas and opinions into false repositories of truth, was a practice that rI totally threw out. Even more distant from President Allende would have been to promote a divisionist rebellion in support of his own presidential candidacy, that ultra-personalism was completely alien to his way of being and thinking.
In Chile there will be no other leader with his lucidity and historical perspective, so he must be respected and any attempt to appropriate his legacy for junior purposes has no handle. Allende, a popular leader and socialist militant all his life, his political thinking is a universal heritage belonging to the people of Chile.

The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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