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Allende's Chile: Contemporary History and the Counterfactual

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2009

Simon Collier
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Extract

Historians generally recognize that the writing of contemporary history is an exercise of some delicacy. Narrating the contests of the Christian sects at the time of Constantine, Edward Gibbon remarks that ‘the fierce and partial writers of the times, ascribing all virtue to themselves and all guilt to their adversaries, have painted the battle of the angels and the daemons. Our calmer reason,’ he goes on, ‘will reject such pure and perfect monsters of vice and sanctity.’

Type
Review Article
Information
Journal of Latin American Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , November 1980 , pp. 445 - 452
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ed. Bury, J. B., vols. (London, 1896–1900), II, 390. Gibbon's italics.Google Scholar

2 Teitelboim, Senator Volodia, quoted in Newsweek, 25 November 1972, p. 16.Google Scholar

3 What is History? (Penguin Books, 1964), p. 98.Google Scholar

4 Disaster in Chile, p. 4.Google Scholar

5 Sweezy and Magdoff (ed.), Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Chile, p. 12.Google Scholar

6 The Murder of Allende, p. viii.Google Scholar

7 Allende's Chile, p. 238.Google Scholar

8 Ibid, p. 246.

9 Raptis, Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Chile, p. 91.Google Scholar

10 Chile. The State and Revolution, p. 267.Google Scholar

11 ‘El dificil camino de transición al socialismo: el caso chileno en una perspectiva histórica,’ in Chile 1970–1973, pp. 33–87. On p. 54n Tapia confuses the universities of Essex and Sussex.Google Scholar

12 Writing a year or two before these events, and not about Chile, Barrington Moore Jr. noted, as a ‘major basis of popular support for reactionary movements wherever they occur’ what he describes as ‘the anger of the little man who sees a threat to the small stake he has acquired in the status quo through his own energy and efforts’ (Reflections on the Causes of Human Misery (London, 1972), pp. 152–3). If one were obliged to pinpoint a single vital factor in the UP episode, it might well be this one.Google Scholar

13 It is certain, however, that President Allende himself was intending to announce a plebiscite, a final attempt at resolving the crisis along constitutional lines, at the time of the September coup. Whether the coup was pre-emptive or not is a question which has not been answered.Google Scholar

14 The other was the former UP canciller, Clodomiro Almeyda.Google Scholar

15 Chile 1970–1973, pp. 195–8, 214–43, and 328–39. A very carefully worked out speculation in ‘alternative history’ roughly along the lines suggested by Tomic may be found in Harold Blakemore, ‘If I had been Salvador Allende in 1972–3’,Google ScholarIn Snowman, Daniel (ed.), If I Had Been…Ten Historical Fantasies (London, Robson Books, 1979) PP. 197–228.Google Scholar

16 It abdicated its independence with lightning speed after II September 1973.Google Scholar

17 ‘Political Constraints to the Establishment of Socialism in Chile,’ in Chile: Politics and Society, pp. 1–25.Google Scholar

18 ‘The Chilean Labor Movement: the Institutionalization of Conflict,’Google ScholarIbid, pp. 235–71.

19 Ayres, Robert, ‘Unidad Popular and the Chilean Electoral Process,’Google ScholarIbid, pp. 30–66; Prothro, James W. and Chaparro, Patricio E., ‘Public Opinion and the Movement of the Chilean Government to the Left,’Google ScholarIbid, pp. 67–114.

20 The Overthrow of Allende, p. 290.Google Scholar

21 The apparent general trend towards ‘institutional’ militarism in Latin America since 1964 has generated a number of very interesting hypotheses into which the Chilean case can be fitted: theories of neo-corporatism, the bureaucratic-authoritarian state, the need for an authoritarian reordering of politics to accommodate new imperatives of capitalist development, and so on. Such hypotheses concern long-range (or perhaps medium-range) economic and social forces at work, and their necessarily provisional nature means that they are not very easy to apply to the day to-day ‘stuff’ of contemporary history.Google Scholar

22 Both ex-President Nixon and Dr Kissinger have been unashamedly explicit on this point. The exact effects of American economic measures and the now well-documented activities of the C.I.A. form a large topic in their own right. Most of the writers here take the view that they were an exacerbating factor rather than a decisive one. Roxborough, O'Brien and Roddick think that the ‘coup would probably have occurred even if the USA had remained strictly “neutral.” ‘(Chile. The State and Revolution, p. 253). Sigmund views American actions as having intensified an already desperate situation.’ (The Overthrow of Allende, p. 287). He also makes the point that nothing much is known as to whether there was any kind of covert activity in support of the UP.Google Scholar

23 The Overthrow of Allende, p. 292.Google Scholar