Salvador Allende: first speech to the Chilean parliament after his election.

 Extracts from this speech follow. How sad that almost fifty years later the hopes and dreams of all of us from that generation have not been achieved, but in many ways the world has regressed with the rise of neoliberalism which is also destroying the environment of our planet.

 Appearing before you in fulfillment of the constitutional mandate, I attribute twofold importance to this message. It is the first message of a Government which has just taken office, and it corresponds to unique demands in our political history.   

For this reason I wish to give it special substance, because of its present significance and because of its implications for the future.

For 27 years, I have attended this House, nearly always as a member of the parliamentary opposition. Today I attend as Chief of State, elected by the will of the people as ratified by Congress.

I am well aware that here were debated and established the laws which set up an agrarian structure based on big estates; but here too, obsolete institutions were abolished in order to lay the legal foundations of the land reform which we are now carrying out. Here were established the institutional procedures for the foreign exploitation of Chilean national resources; but this same Congress is now revising these in order to return to the Chilean people what belongs to them by right.

Congress makes the legal institutions which regulate the social order in which they are rooted; for this reason, for more than a century, it has been more responsive to the interests of the powerful than to the suffering of the people.

At the very commencement of this legislative period, I must raise this problem. Chile now has in its Government a new political force whose social function is to uphold, not the traditional ruling class, but the vast majority of the people. This change in the power structure must necessarily be accompanied by profound changes in the socio-economic order, changes which Parliament is summoned to institutionalise.

This step forward in the liberation of Chilean energies for the rebuilding of the nation must be followed by more decisive steps. The land reform which is now in progress, the nationalisation of copper which is only awaiting the approval of Plenary Congress, must be followed by new reforms - whether these are initiated by Parliament or by Government proposal, or by the combined efforts of both powers, or by plebiscite, which is a legal appeal to the foundation of all power, the sovereignty of the people.

We have accepted the challenge to re-examine everything. We urgently wish to ask of every law, every existing institution and even of every person whether or not they are furthering our integral and autonomous development. I am sure that on few occasions in history has the Parliament of any nation been presented with so great a challenge.

Once again, history has permitted a break with the past and the construction of a new model of society, not only where it was theoretically most predictable but where the most favourable concrete conditions had been created for its achievement. Today Chile is the first nation on earth to put into practice the second model of transition to a socialist society.

This challenge is awakening great interest beyond our national frontiers. Everybody knows or guesses that here and now history is beginning to take a new direction, even as we Chileans are conscious of the undertaking. Some among us, perhaps the minority, see the enormous difficulties of the task. Others, the majority, are trying to envisage the possibility of facing it successfully. For my part, I am sure that we shall have the necessary energy and ability to carry on our effort and create the first socialist society built according to a democratic, pluralistic and libertarian model.

The sceptics and the prophets of doom will say that it is not possible. They will say that a parliament that has served the ruling classes so well cannot be transformed into the Parliament of the Chilean People.

Further, they have emphatically stated that the Armed Forces and the Corps of Carabineros, who have up to the present supported the institutional order that we wish to overcome, would not consent to guarantee the will of the people if these should decide on the establishment of socialism in our country. They forget the patriotic conscience of the Armed Forces and the Carabineros, their tradition of professionalism and their obedience to civil authority. In the words of General Schneider, the Armed Forces are "an integral and representative part of the nation as well as of the State structure, that is, they belong both to the permanent and the temporary spheres, and are therefore able to organise and counter-balance the periodic changes which affect political life within a legal regime". Since the National Congress is based on the people's vote, there is nothing in its nature which prevents it from changing itself in order to become, in fact, the Parliament of the People. The Chilean Armed Forces and the Carabineros, faithful to their duty and to their tradition of non-intervention in the political process, will support a social organisation which corresponds to the will of the people as expressed in the terms of the established Constitution. It will be a more just, a more humane and generous organisation for everybody, but above all for the workers, who have contributed so much up to the present and have received almost nothing in return.

The difficulties we face are not in this field. They reside in the extraordinary complexity of the tasks before us - to create the political institutions which will lead to Socialism, and to achieve this starting from our present condition of a society oppressed by backwardness and poverty which are the result of dependence and under- development - to break with the factors which cause backwardness and, at the same time, to build a new socio-economic structure capable of providing for collective prosperity.

The causes of backwardness resided and still reside in the traditional ruling classes with their combination of dependence on external forces and internal class exploitation. They have profited from their association with foreign interests, and from their appropriation of the surplus produced by the workers, to whom they have only awarded the minimum indispensable for the renewal of their labouring capacities.

Our first task is to dismantle this restrictive structure, which only produces a deformed growth. At the same time, we must build up a new economy so that it succeeds the previous one without continuing it, at the same time conserving to the maximum the productive and technical capacity that we have achieved despite the vicissitudes of our under- development - and we must build it up without crises artificially provoked by those whose ancient privileges we shall abolish.

In addition to these basic questions, there is another which is an essential challenge of our time - how can people in general - and young people in particular - develop a sense of mission which will inspire them with a new joy in living and give dignity to their existence?

There is no other way than that of devoting ourselves to the realisation of great impersonal tasks, such as that of attaining a new stage in the human condition, until now degraded by its division into the privileged and the dispossessed. Today nobody can imagine solutions for the distant future when all nations will have attained abundance and realised the satisfaction of material needs and at the same time have assumed the cultural heritage of humanity. But here and now in Chile and in Latin America, we have the possibility and the duty of releasing creative energies, particularly those of youth, in missions which inspire us more than any in the past. Such is the aspiration to build a world which does away with divisions into rich and poor - and for our part, to build a society in which the war of economic competition is outlawed - in which the struggle for professional privileges has no meaning - in which there is no longer that indifference to the fate of others which permits the powerful to exploit the weak.

There have been few occasions in which men have needed so much faith in themselves and in their capacity to rebuild the world and regenerate their lives.

This is an unprecedented time, which offers us the material means of realising the most generous utopian dreams of the past. The only thing that prevents our achieving this is the heritage of greed, of fear and of obsolete institutional traditions. Between our time and that of the liberation of man on a planetary scale, this inheritance has to be overcome. Only in this way will it be possible to call upon men to reconstruct their lives, not as products of a past of slavery and exploitation, but in the most conscious realisation of their noblest potentialities. This is the socialist ideal.

An ingenious observer from some developed country which has these material resources might suppose that this observation is a new manner that backward people have found of asking for aid - yet another plea of the poor for the charity of the rich. Such is not the case, but its opposite. With the internal authority of all societies brought under the hegemony of the dispossessed, with the change in international trade relations stimulated by the exploited nations, there will come about not only the abolition of poverty and backwardness but also the liberation of the great powers from their despot's fate. Thus, in the same way as the emancipation of the slave liberates the slaveowner, so the achievement of Socialism envisaged by the peoples of our time is as meaningful for the disinherited peoples as for the more privileged, since both will then cast away the chains which degrade their society.

I stand here, members of the National Congress, to urge you to take up the task of reconstructing the Chilean nation according to our dreams, a Chile in which all children begin life equally, with equal medical care, education, and nutrition. A Chile in which the creative ability of each man and woman is allowed to develop, not in competition with others, but in order to contribute to a better life for all.

Our road to Socialism

To achieve these aspirations means a long road and a great effort on the part of all Chileans. It also implies, as a basic prerequisite, that we are able to establish the institutional apparatus of a new form of pluralistic, free socialist order. The task is one of extraordinary complexity because there are no precedents for us to follow. We are treading a new path. We are advancing without guides across unknown territory, but our compass is our faith in the humanism of all ages and particularly in Marxist humanism. Our aim is the establishment of the society that we want, the society which answers the deep-rooted desires of the Chilean people.

For a long time, science and technology have made it possible to assure that everybody enjoys those basic necessities which today are enjoyed only by a minority. The difficulties are not technical, and - in our case at least - they are not due to a lack of national resources. What prevents the realisation of our ideals is the organisation of society, the nature of the interests which have so far dominated, the obstacles which dependent nations face. We must concentrate our attention on these structures and on these institutional requirements.
Postscript

The CIA arranged for Michael V Townleyto be sent to Chile under the alias of Kenneth W. Enyart. He was accompanied by Ado Vera Serafin of the Secret Army Organization (SAO). Townley now came under the control of  David Atlee Phillips who had been asked to lead a special task force assigned to remove Allende.

The CIA attempted to persuade Chile's Chief of Staff General Rene Schneider to overthrow Allende. He refused and on 22nd October, 1970, his car was ambushed. Schneider drew a gun to defend himself, and was shot point-blank several times. He was rushed to hospital, but he died three days later. Military courts in Chile found that Schneider's death was caused by two military groups, one led by Roberto Viaux and the other by Camilo Valenzeula. It was claimed that the CIA was providing support for both groups.

Allende's attempts to build a socialist society was opposed by business interests. Later, Henry Kissinger admitted that in September 1970, President Richard Nixon ordered him to organize a coup against Allende's government. A CIA document written just after Allende was elected said: "It is firm and continuing policy that Allende be overthrown by a coup" and "it is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG (United States government) and American hand be well hidden."

 David Attlee Phillips set Michael V Townley the task of organizing two paramilitary action groups Orden y Libertad (Order and Freedom) and Protecion Comunal y Soberania (Common Protection and Sovereignty). Townley also established an arson squad that started several fires in Santiago. Townley also mounted a smear campaign against General Carlos Prats, the head of the Chilean Army. Prats resigned on 21st August, 1973.

On 11th September, 1973, a military removed Allende's government from power. Salvador Allende died in the fighting in the presidential palace in Santiago. General Augusto Pinochet, sheltered by Margaret Thatcher when he visited the UK after they had both retired from active politics, replaced Allende as president.
 Chilean singer Victor Jarra, a poet, guitarist and folk singer, who was a friend of Phil Ochs was rounded up and along with other prisoners held in a football stadium. There the guards took him to a table in the centre of the stadium and smashed his fingers to pulp with their rifle buts and told him with mocking gestures to play his guitar. In a dignified way he walked to the terraces and conducted the prisoners, with his bleeding hands in an anthem in support of Allende. This was met with gunfire from the troops who killed Jarra and many others.