Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens [salβaˈðoɾ ɣiˈjeɾmo aˈjende ˈɣosens] (June 26, 1908 in Valparaíso – September 11, 1973 in Santiago de Chile) was a Chilean physician and politician. He served as President of Chile from 1970 to 1973. His presidency was an attempt to establish a socialist society in Chile through democratic means. Allende was overthrown in a military coup in 1973, during which he committed suicide.
Allende became politically active in the late 1920s as a medical student at the University of Chile. He participated in protests against the dictatorship of Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo and was elected vice president of the Federation of Chilean Students (FECH). In 1929, he joined both the Freemasons[5] and the group “Avance” (“Forward”).[6] In both organizations, he made important contacts for his later political career.
After the suppression of an uprising against the Ibáñez dictatorship led by Marmaduque Grove, Allende was arrested but later released. Shortly thereafter, he became secretary of the Socialist Party, founded in 1933, for the Valparaíso region.
In 1952, Allende ran for president for the first time, but only finished fourth. In 1954, he served as Deputy President of the Senate. In 1958, he was again the presidential candidate of the left-wing alliance Frente de Acción Popular (FRAP), but narrowly lost to the businessman Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, who was supported by the right-wing parties. In 1964, he ran for president again, but was decisively defeated by the Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei. The reasons for this final electoral defeat were the last-minute support of the conservative parties for the more progressive Frei, as well as the massive support of the Christian Democrats by the CIA.[7]
In 1966, Allende was elected President of the Senate. In 1968, calls for his resignation followed his personal protection of the survivors of Che Guevara’s guerrilla force in Bolivia. In the same year he condemned the Soviet invasion of Prague.
Namegiving
After the end of the military dictatorship in Chile, Allende’s body was transported from Valparaíso, where he had been buried behind closed doors after the coup, to Santiago de Chile and interred in the main cemetery. Several hundred thousand people attended the funeral. A statue of Allende stands next to the presidential palace, La Moneda.
After his death, Salvador Allende was honored primarily in the socialist countries of Europe. In the Berlin district of Köpenick, the Salvador Allende Quarter is named after him. There is also an Allende Quarter in Wittenberge (Brandenburg). In the university town of Greifswald, in the GDR, the vocational school of the VEB Kombinat Ingenieur-Tief- und Verkehrsbau Rostock (State Industrial Estate Combine) bore the name Dr. Salvador Allende. An “Allende Memorial Stone” stood in the schoolyard. This educational institution was closed after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Two of the former buildings were converted into student housing and prop storage for the theater, in front of which the memorial stone is located. In Jena, a square in the Lobeda-Ost district, and streets in Bautzen, Chemnitz, Ludwigsfelde, Magdeburg, Neubrandenburg, Rostock, Frankfurt (Oder), Waltershausen, Weimar, Wittenberge, and Zwickau are named after Allende.
In Bernburg (Saale) in Saxony-Anhalt, the then new residential area on Kirschberg was named Dr. Salvador Allende Settlement in 1973, and a memorial plaque was erected at the corner of Dr. John Rittmeister Street, which was “stored indefinitely” in 2007.[33] The secondary school in Klötze (Saxony-Anhalt) bears the name “Dr. Salvador Allende,”[34] as does a primary school in Chemnitz.[35] A primary school in Rheinsberg (Brandenburg)[36] bore his name until 2018.[37]
In the Federal Republic of Germany, the former Bornplatz in the Hanseatic City of Hamburg was renamed Allende-Platz in 1983. It is located next to the grounds of the University of Hamburg, in the immediate vicinity of the former Talmud Torah School. In Oer-Erkenschwick, the Socialist Youth of Germany – The Falcons – has called its educational facility the Salvador Allende House since it opened in the late 1970s. There is also a Salvador Allende Street in Berlin, Bremen, and Frankfurt am Main. In Berlin, there is also the Salvador Allende Quarter.