Made in 2004, Patricio Guzman’s “Salvador Allende” makes its debut at
New York’s Anthology Film Archives from September 5-13. Guzman, who fled
Chile after Pinochet’s coup, also directed “The Battle for Chile,” a
film trilogy on Allende’s government that I have not seen. Although
there is a tendency to sidestep painful political lessons from the 1973
coup in “Salvador Allende,” I strongly urge New Yorkers to see it. It is
an extremely moving account of the life and death of a socialist
politician, whose career would seem to speak to the contemporary
situation in Latin America, where a democratic transition to socialism
seems to be unfolding to one degree or another in Venezuela. Given the
hostility of the US and the upper classes in Allende’s Chile and Hugo
Chavéz’s Venezuela, a documentary such as “Salvador Allende” offers much
food for thought.
It is obvious from “Salvador Allende” and from reviews of “Battle for
Chile” (a film that I have not seen) that Guzman is a partisan of the
Popular Unity government, a coalition of working class and bourgeois
parties that campaigned successfully for Allende in 1970. Despite this,
the film is not uncritical. In a gut-wrenching segment that occurs
toward the end of the film, a group of worker-militants–now in advanced
middle-age–think back ruefully on the period and wonder why they were so
ill-prepared to resist the coup. One, barely holding back tears, says,
“We should have done more to strengthen the cords.” As somebody who
followed the events in Chile closely between 1970 and 1973, this
reference was obscure even to me. What was a cord?
After looking at some studies of the Popular Unity government after
watching the film, I can now answer this question. Cord is the nickname
for cordónes, the neighborhood and factory based committees that
Chileans recognized as a form of “people’s power.” If organized and
armed on a nation-wide basis, this institution and others like it could
have successfully beaten back the coup. Unfortunately, Allende’s
Socialist Party and the Communists were suspicious of the grass roots
movement and relied almost exclusively on official state institutions
such as parliament and the army to promote an agenda that while
progressive stopped short of the elimination of private property.
full: http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2007/09/03/salvador-allende/
