CHILE--Of Heroes and Hero-Worship: Salvador Allende

 Saints and heroes. Many saints had feet of clay, and under Pope John Paul 11 they are being purged from the Vatican list of saints. It will take time before national heroes are painted warts and all. It is seldom mentioned that George Washington was an officer in the British army whose promotion was blocked because he performed poorly under General Braddock. I was surprised the other day by a program about Abraham Lincoln which discussed his sex life. My old mentor, the famous Spaniard Salvador de Madariaga, was loudly vilified in Venezuela because his biography of Bolivar depicted him as a flawed individual.

 Modern heroes undergo a similar sanctification. When I cam to the US in 1937 I was surprised that Americans travelling on the same ship descried Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a traitor to his class. American opinion was sharply divided, but now he has his monument in Washington and his paralyzed legs (his feet of clay?) were skillfully disguised. Now few criticize him: he is really above party politics,

 Salvador Allende is going through this process. I knew him, and, while I respected his idealism, I judged him slightly crazy. His friendship with Castro was a potential danger to the whole continent. Under the new Socialist government he is becoming an icon for the masses.

 This process has been shaken by the publication of Los Nazis en Chile (Barcelona: Seix Barral, pp. 600) by Victor Farias, a Chilean intellectual living in Berlin. A scandal was caused when the Madrid correspondent of Chilean National Television sent a number on reports on the book. Jim Whelan has kindly sent me a long article about it from El Mercurio(6/11/00).

 Here is a summary of the squabble. In 1972 the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal asked President Allende to extradite to Germany Walter Rauff, a war criminal who had escaped from detention in Italy with the help of the Catholic Church and of Chilean diplomats, many of whom were pro-Nazi. In 1963 Germany had requested that he be extradited, but the Chilean Supreme Court refused the request. Allende replied that the case could not be re-opened without unusual justification, and that he, as president, could not interfere in the judicial process. This would seem perfectly reasonable, but the Socialists, and especial his daughter Isabel Allende, denounced Chilean National Television for having broadcast the programs. The television board rejected the accusation.

 The Socialists did not want anything to stain the memory of Allende just before the inauguration of a statue of Allende in front of La Moneda presidential palace, where he had committed suicide after it was attacked by the army. Chilean television repeatedly showed scenes of that bloody 1973 episode. At the unveiling of the statue, his old collaborator President Ricardo Lagos gave an emotional speech before a large crowd of his followers. It was typical hero worship. Who knows? Presumable the same process will occur when Castro dies, assuming that his group in still in power. Probably an angry Castro will face the American Embassy, which its personnel will see every day. !Patria y muerte!

Ronald Hilton - 7/11/00