Salvador Allende: Biografa sentimental

Eduardo Labarca Translation of Part One, Chapter One and Part Four, Chapter Six by Nathan D Horowitz

Part One: A nonexistant place Part Two: Birth and first steps Part Three: The ascent Part Four: At the peak Part Five: The fall Part Six: The red sofa Part Seven: Last words Index of names Acknowledgements

Part One: A nonexistant place Chapter One On Friday, September 4, 1970, Salvador Allende Gossens won the Chilean presidential election with a relative majority, 36% in a field of three candidates. Allende ran as the candidate of the leftist Popular Unity coalition, defeating Radomiro Tomi of the centrist Christian Democrat party and former president Jorge Alessandri of the rightist National Party. The version of Allendes activities that day that the press and the books of that era present is incomplete. 1 Everyone agrees that he gets up early that Friday morning and goes to a police administrative office to prove his
Eduardo Labarca Goddard, Chile en rojo, Ediciones de la Universidad Tcnica del Estado, Santiago de Chile, 1971, pp. 375-384.
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presence in Santiago, which prevents him from voting in the extreme South of the country, where he is registered. Everyone agrees that his wife, Hortensia Bussi, known as Tencha, goes with him to vote in Girls High School 7, in the capital. They agree that he has lunch with his family and some friends in his house at 392 Guardia Vieja Street, where more people are constantly arriving: leaders of his campaign, family members, friends. Its been repeated that from his study, he follows the results of the campaign, and the vote counting, by radio, television, and telephone. Its known that the people around him include his daughter Beatriz; Osvaldo Puccio, who has been his secretary for twenty years; Miria Contreras, La Payita, his most intimate collaborator; a doctor, Eduardo Coco Paredes Barrientos; his bodyguard, Mario Melo Pradenas; and a couple of other people. Those who arrive gather in the living room and Allende circulates from place to place. Details have been given of the tension of the wait and the slow delivery of the results. It has been recalled that Allende tries to relax the atmosphere, and that at one point he tells La Payita that she is beautiful. The appearance of tanks in the street after 10 p.m. has been mentioned, as has the telephone call at five minutes before midnight, in which General Valenzuela, the military officer in charge of maintaining order in Santiago on election day, comunicates to Allende his authorization to allow his party members to gather in the Alameda, Santiagos main avenue, which is equivalent to recognizing that he has obtained the relative majority and won the election. Thats what everyone has said. Films made of those days show the arrival of tens of thousands of the triumphant candidates supporters to the Alameda. Allende can be seen on the balcony of the Student Federation of Chile (FECH), as, at 1:25 a.m. on Saturday morning, he begins his victory speech with the help of a battery-powered megaphone. He speaks with energy, he is emotional, he weighs each word. He finishes just before 2 a.m., and at that point, the Ministry of the Interior communicates to him the final results that confirm that he has won. Allende appears surrounded by cameras, microphones, and national and international journalists in an improvised press conference in the same place that lasts approximately half an hour.

What does Allende do after that? Where does he go just before three in the morning? The versions of the winning candidates itinerary starting with the moment he leaves the FECH headquarters are imprecise. Some say that he goes home to sleep in his house on Guardia Vieja in Tenchas company. Others, that he only remains with her for a moment and then, for reasons of security, he goes to the home of a friend of his, the engineer Eduardo Paredes Martinez, Cocos father. Neither of these versions is true.2 The author recalls:

I was a political editor of El Siglo, a daily newspaper. On September 4, I stayed at the newspaper office all day, at 363 Lira Street, four blocks from La Alameda. The reporters and correspondents were phoning in from different places. Various other journalists and I took notes and sent the information to the print shop. We were listening to three or four radios at the same time. After 5 p.m. we began to receive the results and the things began to speed up. A couple of hours later, Allendes victory over Jorge Alessandri, the candidate of the right, seemed very probable. We began to hear a sound outside that grew in volume. Hundreds and then thousands of people were passing underneath the windows of the newspaper office, heading for La Alameda. They came from poor and working class neighborhoods in the South of the city. They sang, pounded on bass drums, danced, yelled, and chanted Allendista slogans. Lira Street thundered from wall to wall, the building trembled, our bodies vibrated. Night fell and the human flow began to calm. On the radio we could hear the speech that Allende was giving to the crowd at FECH. We feverishly took notes. When he finished, the mass of people, as noisy as they had been before, passed by again over the course of half an hour. Finally, silence. Now, said the assistant manager, Sergio Villegas. He closed the door and I remained alone in front of the typewriter. A small lamp illuminated the piece of paper in the semi-darkness. My work consisted of writing a report for the front page of the next mornings paper: to give a
In that era, the author did not deem it appropriate to reveal in his book Chile al rojo the further events that are described here.
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lively version of the events of that historic day, and shed light on what was to come. I was filled with adrenaline and I inspired myself as I could. Villegas wrote the headings and I developed my text page by page. He revised, amended, and sent each page down to the print shop. The trucks were waiting to take the newspapers all over the country. We were running late, and at one point Villegas said to me, Give it to me half a page at a time. We went on that way, and the last pages, he took directly out of the carriage of the typewriter. We finished. Sergio and the journalists who were still there went home, but my feet didnt want to carry me. I went down to the print shop and waited for the rotary press to start roaring. I drew near the outlet. The chief of the workshop took the first copy and I took the second. The ink smudged my fingers. The headline of the September 5, 1970 issue was:

ALLENDE PRESIDENT OF CHILE The People Celebrate the Triumph in the Streets

I went out into the freshness of the night and, proud, I went walking with the newspaper in my hand down the deserted street toward the Alameda. The street lights lit up the trash left by the crowd: torn posters, sticks, bottles, papers that had been stepped on. The municipal workers were beginning to clean up the Alameda and a police patrol car circulated listlessly. I walked to the FECH headquarters, but the building from whose balcony Allende had spoken was closed. I crossed the Alameda, heading toward the cordillera, and went down Namur, planning to take a short cut my path to the Po Nono Bridge and arrive a little earlier to where I was going to sleep, a place on Santa Mara Avenue where I lived alone. I went around the United States consulate, where one day the National Chamber of Commerce would be installed, and took a right down Coronel Santiago Bueras Street. A few meters down, at the corner where Bueras has a dead end alley that extends off to the right, I suddenly ran point blank into someone I knew, who appeared from the shadows: Mario Melo, an exArmy officer, Salvador Allendes bodyguard. We had met at the big campaign events, and when we said goodbye to each other for the evening, Mario would give me a

martial slap on the back with his powerful right hand. Now, in the euphoria of the victory, I came close to him to give him a hug, but he drew back. I saw that he was armed. Wheres the man? I asked him. Mario didnt say a word. He just pointed a thumb towards the interior of the little dead end alley. There was no commentary. I knew what that sign meant. The dawn was humid. Mario Melo looked cold. What is the man doing there? What is Salvador Allende doing in the early morning hours of his victory? With what ceremony does he celebrate the culminating success of his life in that dead end alley which, from the point of view of security, is like a mousetrap? Who is he with? In that instant, in that corner of the capital, two orbits of Salvador Allendes life intersect. One of them began in his youthful years when he resolved to dedicate himself to politics. That orbit arrives at the deeds of the last few hours, when Allende has reached his goal: the triumph that opens the doors of the government to transform the country in accordance with his dreams. It is a masculine trajectory, of struggle, of fire, and ultimately of death. But there is another orbit that comes from even earlier times. Its origins are submerged in the eminently feminine environment that surrounded Salvador Allende since his birth. That orbit revolves around the necessity that Allende has always had to surround himself at certain moments with women. To attract them, incorporate them into his world. To seduce them and pay them visits. To impress women, or one selected woman. To be alone with a woman. To offer a woman the cup of victory, or forget with a woman the bitterness of defeat. The two orbits will intersect in the three years that are beginning now, to unite on the day of the presidents death. In his feminine orbit is the apartment on the alley off Coronel Bueras Street, the place the people close to him just called Bueras. For history, for the public, there is Guardia Vieja and, before it, Victoria Subercaseauxthe residences of the Allende-Bussi matrimony, known by the names of the streets on which they were situated. During his presidency there appeared Toms Moro, the official residence, and Caaveral, a place then known only through rumors. But up to the moment in which the author writes these lines, in the official history there has

been no place for Bueras, a non-place. Although it does not exist for history, Bueras existed for Allende and the persons of his confidence. It was his creation, a consubstantial part of the life of the eminent historical personage Salvador Allende, who used to say of himself that he was de carne de estatua, the kind of person of whom statues would be made. Where is the boundary between the private life and the public life of the great ones? Does such a boundary exist? Does anyone have the right to determine it? What kind of history would claim to discriminate between what is correct and worthy of knowing, and what is incorrect and should be hidden eternally under the rug? History is an exercise of retroactive transparency and illumination, not a moralizing discipline or an excuse for self-righteousness based on some tablet of law or the word of this or that prophet. While dusting off the archives, talking with the survivors, rescuing documents and delving into archives and libraries, the author of these pages has tried to save, for the collective memory, essential aspects of the life and personality of Salvador Allende which otherwise would disappear with time and with the death of the witnesses. In some way he has felt moved to deconstruct the Allende who has been known up to now in order to reconstruct him, with the help of abundant information, in a form that is richer, more complex, more complete. The author has become a messenger through whose mouth speak many people who are afraid to do it themselves. Together with the women who accompanied Salvador Allende publically, in this book there is space for certain women who are exceptional but unknown, and from whose beauty, intelligence, and sensuality Allende, a political animal of overflowing energy, nourished himself during his prolonged struggle. Without these women, would Allende have been able to reach the heights? In his passionate hours, Allende gave himself entirely, and its not fitting to discriminate between women who have a right to be named and others whose memory must be paved over. The author does not judge anyone, and only hopes that Allende and each one of them finds his or her place in this book. This is not an authorized biography. This is not a complacent

biography. This is a truthful biography. Allendethe politician, the manhas no owner. The figure of Salvador Allende belongs to the universal history of the 20th century, and will be seen as such in the future. Allendes personality was powerful and complex, and Bueras, and what Bueras represented, were expressions of a key zone of that personality. To those who wish to puzzle out the essences of his ascent to the peak and his final fall, Bueras is a necessary piece. Everything that throws light on the life of a hero contributes to protecting his memory from manipulations. Even the most indiscreet revelations, instead of diminishing him, humanize him. They make him grow. Without knowledge of Bueras, there would be a pile of blank pages whose emptiness would contaminate any reasoning with incomprehension. Allende was a man of passion, and Bueras deserves its place as the transparent expression of that passion. Bueras was an apartment without a view of the street, 35 square meters, a single room, located on the ground floor which the Chileans call the first floor. Within the married life of SA, it was a bachelor pad, almost a students apartment; to it could be applied that very Chilean French denomination of garonnire. Its principal charm and only source of natural light was an interior patio, five by eight meters, which Salvador had partially paved and where he had installed a big ceramic pot and a big armchair of strong wood in which he was accustomed to sit. From the windows of the floors above, sometimes a piece of clothing would fall off a line, or a piece of paper would blow down, or drops would fall from a rack of potted plants that someone had watered. The apartment was and is locatedbecause the building is still therein the alley that extends off of Bueras, known as Nueve de Bueras. Its Apartment 4 of Number 170-A. The three-story building, which originally belonged to the Office of Public Employees and Journalists, was constructed during the period in which Salvador Allende was Minister of Health of the government of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda by an architect who was very well known in those years, Enrique Camhi. It was opened in 1940. The small building presents the angular, unornamented

lines of the functional rationalism of the Bauhaus school.3 For more than 20 years, Bueras was Allendes secret haunt, his second home, known only to his closest friends, some of whom, like the Socialist leader Agustn lvarez Villablanca, lent their name and figured as owners or administrators of the room on Allendes behalf.4 After President Allendes death, the DINA (Direccin de Inteligencia Nacional, or National Intelligence Directorate), the secret police of the military dictatorship, fixed its eye on Bueras and install surveillance devices to try to catch La Payita or other big fish from the deposed regime. Starting in the 1970s, the Bueras apartment was successively registered as the property of diverse buyers and inheritors. But before that, in the golden age of Bueras, diverse figures of Salvadors multi-class feminine choir5 passed through it, fleetingly or often, and some even resided there for a time. The other orbit of Allendes life, that of the leader marching toward power, is personified there in the small hours of the morning by Mario Melo. Hes part of the emerging GAP, the grupo de amigos personalesgroup of personal friendsof the president, according to the denomination improvised by him in answer to a question from a journalist. This irregular armed escort will accompany Allende in the three year period of his presidency and will be faithful to him until the end. Melo, son of a director of the Radical Party of Chilln, had been a captain of the Black Berets, the army commandos whose barracks was in Peldehue, 40 kilometers from Santiago. Dark, solidly built, with marked Mestizo features, he was known in the School of Paratroopers and the Batallion of Special Forces for his military spirit, toughness, and physical strength, and as a karate expert. In June of 1970, three months before the
When the author visited the place in July 2007, the neighbors were vaguely aware that Allende had been around there, and one maintained that La Payita had been with him there. In Apartment 4 lived don Elas Cid, the old employee of the last owner, Eliana Loyola Santibez, a seller of antiques, who upon her death had left it to him in life usufruct. The administrator of the building had closed the exit to the patio with a fence, and garbage was accumulating there. 4 Conversation with Gonzalo Piwonka, Santiago de Chile, November 28, 2005. 5 Julio Donoso, El porqu de las cosas, Letra Clara, Madrid, 2002, p. 99. Curiously, in July 2007 the Bueras apartment belonged to six Donoso Krauss brothers, as bare owners; they were nephews of Julio Donoso, who had inherited it through the last will of doa Eliana Loyola, who died in 1997. According to the documents that the author was able to see, she had bought it in 1974, after Allendes death, from Silvia Verdugo Maluenda.
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election, he was discharged from the army in one of the less-known episodes of those turbulent times. 6 The events, in which Melo actively participated, are associated with the name of Luciano Cruz Aguayo, the most charismatic director that the Revolutionary Left Movement, or Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR), has had in its short history. Luciano Cruz, medical student, son of an army colonel, was the first Mirista president of the Federacin de Estudiantes de la Universidad de Concepcin. Over 190 centimeters tall, enormous of body and broad of smile, he was a force of nature. Admired by men and loved by women, he constituted the opposite of the bureaucratic or calculating revolutionary. He distinguished himself in the street battle against the Grupo Mvil de Carabineros and in the capture of a radio station in Concepcin, whose journalist Hernn Osses Santa Mara was released naked in the University City. The tribunals initiated a process and MIR went underground. Luciano moved to Santiago. In the capital between August 1969 and June 1970, the MIR robbed several banks in actions of revolutionary recuperation to finance its activities. This was during the final months of the Christian Democrat government of Eduardo Frei Montalva, and the police were looking for Luciano, for the Enrquez brothers, for Bautista van Schouwen, and for Andrs Pascal Allende, son of Laura Allende and nephew of the Popular Unity presidential candidate. When he had no safe house, Luciano would spend the night in Peldehue itself, in the regiment and school of the Black Berets, where his brother was an officer. In the military unit, Luciano wore a uniform with a numbered patch like the rest, and his clandestine stays were long. The guards knew him and he was able to come and go from the enclosure; he even participated in some of the training. In the evenings he took part in social gatherings in the dormitories and, as he had in the University of Concepcin, he spoke of politics and conquered the hearts of his conversation partners. Around Luciano there began to
The antecedents of this episode, which the author knew in general terms, were made precise in conversations with Erick Zott, a member of the MIR at the end of the 1960s and beginning of the 1970s, in Vienna, August 22, 2003, and April 6, 2004.
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form a nucleus of some 20 restless officers and enlisted men. Among them, Mario Melo stood out, and he ended up as a MIR militant. In the first months of the year of the presidential election, Juan CarlosLucianos pseudonymand his men controled the strategic points of the School of Paratroopers and Special Forces, without the commander smelling what was happening right under his nose.7 Foolishly, the paratroopers went to the MIR meetings in military uniforms and jeeps, carrying their SIG service rifles. At one point, ten Black Berets went to Concepcin in two vehicles from the School for Paratroopers. In Santiago, when a rightist group took control of the University of Chile Law School, Black Berets dressed as civilians cleared the place out in an instant. Military intelligence ended up getting suspicious, and in May and June, Mario Melo and the MIR militants were captured and disarmed one by one, and discharged in a summary proceding. Embarassed by the seriousness of the case, the authorities covered it up. In the last days of the campaign, Mario Melo became the personal bodyguard of Salvador Allende. La Payita recalled later that in that moment Melo was the only one who had any idea what was needed and added: Mario took care of everything. We even used to joke around with him, a young ex-army officer, very good looking and motivated by the idea of the Latin American revolution, because he not only took care of the candidate, he also took the time to sweep in front of the house, clean the dining room and the living room after meetings, and even went shopping with me, all in very good humor.8 In the cold morning of September 5, 1970, as Mario Melo is taking care of Salvador Allende on the corner of Nueva de Bueras, no-one can foretell the tragic
According to Max Marambio, the chief of the GAP, the MIR planned to take over the arsenal of the Unidad Militar (Max Marambio, Las armas de ayer, Copesa and Random House Mondadori, Santiago de Chile, p. 66). 8 Patricio Quiroga, Compaeros El GAP: la escolta de Allende, Aguilar, Santiago de Chile, 2001, pp. 47-8.
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destiny that was waiting for both of them. Ironically, though, Melos nightmare began during Allendes government, before the coup. On a training journey to Cuba, Melo found himself involved in a sitution which, for that place and time, defamed his character. In a confused incident, another boarder accused him of attempting to rape him. In those days in Cuba, homosexuality was a stigma. The Cubans informed Chile, and Melo was expelled from the MIR and from the GAP without the right to be listened to. Those who asked about him were told, His umbrella turned inside-out he turned queer. Many cut their ties to him, but until the end, La Payita maintained a warm, maternal relationship with him. After the coup, Melo became a wanted man. The military captured him on September 29, 1973 and took him to Peldehue. There, in front of the students of the School of Paratroopers, the traitor was suspended from a helicopter, which did a hair-raising dance, smashing him against the crowns of trees and against the regiments walls, until his semi-disintegrated body fell to earth. The author recalls: On the corner of Bueras street, Mario Melo looked cold. We exchanged two or three words about the weather, we said goodbye, and I drew away without attempting to hug him. As I was crossing the Po Nono Bridge, I ran into the journalist Irene Geiss, who was coming from the opposite direction, from the Channel 9 television station. Leaning our elbows on the railing, we chatted about the election while watching the waters of the Mapocho River as the sky began to get light. We went to our respective homes. I managed to fall half-asleep. At ten in the morning, I got out of bed as best I could and left for the newspaper, retracing the route I had taken earlier. This time I went in front of the United States Consulate and continued along Merced. When I reached Santa Luca Hill from the North, I went to greet my parents, who lived on the corner, at 382 Santa Luca Street. They were both Allendistas, and I wanted to congratulate them, especially my father, Miguel Labarca Labarca, Don Miguel, who had accompanied Allende since 1952 on all four of his presidential campaigns. When I was a high school student, Allende would come looking for Don Miguel several times a week, and I called him Uncle. Once he gave me a green overcoat that he didnt use anymore, and when I pointed out the worn out sleeves, he

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told me, Dont look a gift horse in the mouth. Don Miguels relationship with Allende was like a marriage, with highs and lows. The lows were generally due to the stubbornness and bad temper of Don Miguel, because Allende didnt like to fight with anyone. The day of the victory, Don Miguel refrained from going to Guardia Vieja, although he and my mother went to the FECH to listen to Allendes speech from the street. When I arrived to visit them on the morning of September 5, Don Miguel had already left for Guardia Vieja and my mother told me a curious story. As the sky was getting light, they heard a noise at the window. They got up, concerned, and saw Salvador Allende picking up pebbles from the sidewalk and throwing them something he had done on a previous occasion. My father went down and they hugged each other on the sidewalk. Allende said he would need him in a little while in Guardia Vieja. Allende was with Mario Melo, certainly coming from Bueras, which was four blocks away. From my parents house, he probably headed for the house of the engineer Eduardo Paredes, Cocos father, where he received an early telephone call from Fidel Castro, congratulating him. Allende slept little or not at all, and at midday, at Guardia Vieja, freshly shaven and wearing an impeccable tie, and with Mario Melo watching his back, he received a visit from the defeated Christian Democrat candidate, Radomiro Tomi . Together with her victorious husband, Hortensia Bussi smiled with bright eyes. Sent by the newspaper, I arrived in the middle of a swarm of journalists, and met Don Miguel. Euphoria vibrated in the air. I ran into Miria Contreras, La Payita. We shook hands and a current of ten thousand volts circulated between us.

Part Four: At the peak Chapter Six On Tuesday, August 24, 1971, President Allende leaves for a trip from Arica with a diverse retinue. Accompanying him is Hortensia Bussi, content to know that for the

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next ten days, she will be honored as first lady in three different countries without anyone competing with her (at least as far as she imagines). The president wants to strengthen relations with his colleagues of Ecuador, Colombia and Peru, Andean countries of strategic importance. Faced with the growing aggressiveness of the United States against his government, he needs tranquility in his Latin American flank. The previous month he met in Salta, Argentina, with the Argentinian president, General Alejandro Lanusse. His contacts with regimes of varied political orientation have a goal: to knock down the ideological boundaries that divide the continent, and to promote regional integration. Although the planned program is quite full, Allende and those with him on the presidential plane experience the trip as a relaxing excursion. In Chile, the tensions have become oppressive, but from far away, the conflicts relativize. La Moneda, the presidential palace, is in good hands: those of Jos Pepe Toh, the Minister of the Interior, serving in his capacity as Vice President. On the plane are traveling the chancellor Clodomiro Almeyda; the Commander in Chief of the Army, Carlos Prats; and other military personnel, high-ranking functionaries, a contingent of the GAP, and a number of journalists, including the author of the present book. At the insistence of Hortensia Bussi, the military aides-de-camp are accompanied by their wives. There are also doctors, public relations officials, secretaries, technical personnel. The airplane seems like La Moneda with wings. Only La Payita is missing. She has stayed behind, in charge of the secretariat, with the duty of telephoning the president with any news. Generously invited along, journalists travel in the tourist class section of the plane. Especially in the seats to the rear, the atmosphere is festive. The pisco sour flows freely, and one may request whisky, though not the presidents scotch. Salvador Allendes talent is on display starting the moment the plane touches down at Quitos Mariscal Sucre airport. In the VIP lounge, the president dedicates obvious attention to the attractive wife of the Chilean ambassador to Ecuador, Jorge Costa Canales, with whom he has flirted before. At the exit, a student throws his jacket at the feet of Hortensia Bussi: So that someone from a country like Chile may

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step on it! he exclaims. The first lady smiles and walks around it: No, thank you.9 The sympathies for Chile and its electoral revolution are sincere, and burst out at every moment. In the formal environment of Quito, Andean and colonial, President Jos Mara Velasco Ibarra reigns. An eloquent and charismatic orator, 78 years of age, he famously said, Give me a balcony and I will be president of Ecuador! Velasco Ibarra, thin and with a skullike head, is in his fifth term of office, which will be abbreviated in the customary fashion, by a military coup. At the end of his life, he will have led the country, either as constitutional president or as dictator, for a total of twelve years and ten months. Of his times in exile, he has spent three years in Chile. The Ecuadorian president and his wife offer a private luncheon to Allende and Hortensia Bussi in the Casa de Gobierno, which occupies a magnificent colonial palace. In the evening, in the Hotel Quito, the same place where the Chilean delegation is staying, Velasco Ibarra holds a large-scale reception for the visitor. The Chilean president and first lady have not been adversely affected by the 2900-meter altitude, thanks to Doctor Salvador Allendes method: dont get much exercise or drink any alcohol. But as Heraclitus wrote, expect the unexpected. The unexpected occurs at the reception at the Hotel Quito. The author recalls:

After filing my dispatch with Santiago by telephone from my hotel room, I went down to the reception at the moment Allende arrived with Hortensia in the large salon room. President Velasco Ibarra, his wife, and some ministers were waiting for them at the entrance to welcome them. As the Chilean president and first lady entered the salon, the attendees gathered around to look at them and greet them. At one point, it was the the Ecuadorian military officers turn, and it became apparent that a very attractive blonde woman who came with one of them called the attention of the head of state. The president took the feminine hand in his own and awarded its owner a gallant greeting. When an orchestra started playing, the president scanned the

El Mercurio, Santiago de Chile, August 25, 1971.

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horizon, detected his prey, and initiated an advance in her direction. Ignoring his own advice not to get exercise, he invited her to dance, while her husband, chief of one of the branches of the Ecuadorian armed forces, seemed to be discussing military strategy with General Prats. It had been said that Allende didnt know how to dance, and my admiration was great to see that he did it with some grace and much solemnity. When the music was over, the president continued conversing with his dance partner at the back of the room. Some of us Chileans exchanged nervous looks as we observed the risky manoever by our president, who was progressively backing the lady into a corner. The GAP, dressed in smoking jackets to conceal the unconcealable, spread out strategically. Tracked by many eyes, the president reduced the distance between himself and the lady and initiated a definitive charge. The husband, in full-dress uniform, was conversing a few meters away. The situation was highly explosive, and the guests whispered and drew closer to snoop on what was going on. At this point the savior appeared, Lucio Parada, Chief of Protocol of the Chilean Chancellery. The son of a general, Lucio was gifted with an energetic and jovial character, in which was mixed aplomb and a certain popular wisdom. He had become famous for escaping from an official cocktail party to participate, in coat and tails, in a meeting of the Popular Unity coalitions Ministry of External Relations Workers Committee, together with a pair of career diplomats, a secretary, two chauffeurs and a doorman. Now presence of mind was needed, and Lucio, although he was not a tall man, had more than enough. Conscious of the delicacy of the situation, the Chief of Protocol positioned himself three meters from the president and his lady. With his hands behind him and his chest stuck out, he blocked the circulation. When anyone came near, he would exclaim, The president is busy! The encounter between the president of Chile and the wife of the Ecuadorian army chief went on for some time in these unique circumstances. In the banquet offered in Quito by the president and first lady of Chile in return to their counterparts of Ecuador, at which the military chief and his beautiful wife are

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present, 269 kilograms of spider crabs are served, brought from Magallanes, Chiles southernmost province.10 The unexpected strikes again when the president flies to Guayaquil, the Ecuadorian port on the Pacific. Upon arrival at the airport, August 27, the Chilean party descends from the sky to the earth. The sky was Quito, the cold political capital of Spanish and Quichua roots, located in the mountains, the kingdom of the threepiece suit, the white shirt, and the tie. The earth is the coast, Guayaquil, hot and noisy, the Ecuadorian capital of economy and chaos. Allendes journey from the airport to the Hotel Atahualpa provokes an explosion. Its Friday and nobody seems to be at work. The whole city is in the streets. Tens of thousands of people acclaim the revolutionary president in his passage. White, black and mulatto boys run behind the presidential vehicle, they criss-cross in front of the GAP cars, they jump onto the back bumpers and cling to the open windows of the minibuses of the retinue. Some are in shirts with collars, some in T-shirts, many wear no shirts at all. Not a single tie can be seen. Salvador Allende orders the driver of his car to stop and he gets out to shake hands, caress children, exchange smiles. The president ends up nearly swallowed up in the crowd, the GAP line is broken through, and, suddenly, the foot of an enthusiastic admirer smashes down on the presidents own. Since his days in Tacna, the presidents weak point has been his left foot. The lesion he suffered as a child on a soccer field has periodically acted up. Occasional limps, x-rays, infiltrations, physical therapy, elastic bandages. The intense pain can be seen on his face. The doctors, who have not taken their eyes off him, help him back into the car. The caravan continues to advance through the screaming, out-of-control crowd. The president has been lamed. The doctors order rest, and release a bulletin in which they speak of a sprain of the left ankle.11 The program has to be modified.

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El Mercurio, August 27, 1971. According to Carlos Jorquera (El Chicho Allende, BAT, Santiago de Chile, second edition, 1993, pp. 36-7), Allende had had problems with his foot starting before the journey, because of a fall down some stairs at Jorqueras own house. Jorquera maintains that it was his right foot, an affirmation disproved by photographs taken at the time and by the bulletin released by Allendes doctors, scar Soto and Arturo Jirn, which says ... comrade president Dr.

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An unexpected stomp can lead to other unexpected events. In an evening flight, without anyone forseeing it, a cane arrives from Santiago for the injured man. The cane does not travel alone. It is carried in the hands of a ladyas if in Ecuador there were no canes. In the Hotel Atahualpa, where the president and his retinue are staying, the news flies down the corridors and saturates the intercoms, provoking sly winks: Did you hear who just came? With the solemnity of an empress and the smile of a courtesan, Miria Contreras Bell de Ropert, La Payita, crosses the vestibule of the hotel in triumph, holding up the cane like a standard. A short time later, the rector and the board of regents of the University of Guayaquil arrive. The ceremony in the university assembly hall having been cancelled, they come to award the title of Doctor honoris causa to the Chilean leader in his hotel room. In the photograph, the president appears seated and covered with a shawl, with his left leg elevated. While he listens to the people who are giving him the award, his right hand rests on a cane imported by hand from Chile.12 La Payita will continue on the official airplane until the end of the trip. Hortensia Bussi will look the other way and continue to shine before the public. In the small area, La Payita will hold the reins. As is habitual on such journeys, when the members of the retinue finish their tasks, they gather in the hotel bar. The author recalls:

I had dictated by telephone to Santiago my chronicle about the tremendous reception that Guayaquil had offered to the president of Chile, and about the sprain. Before making the dispatch, I had passed by the doorway of the presidents room and had seen him lying in the bed. His press chief, Carlos el Negro Jorquera, had answered a question I had relayed from some members of the press in Chile: the president would not interrupt his tour for any reason, which would continue in Bogota and finish in Lima. One of the doctors spoke to me of the beginning of a recovery.
Salvador Allende has had to stay in bed today, August 27, 1971, because of his having suffered a sprain to his left ankle, produced during the demonstration on his arrival in Guayaquil. (El Mercurio, Santiago de Chile, August 28, 1971). 12 Photograph by Alejandro Basualto, El Mercurio, Santiago de Chile, August 31, 1971, front page.

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Besides this news, I had embellished my chronicle with the information that the president was supporting himself with a cane, although without revealing that it was a flying cane. When I reached the bar, enjoying the sensation of a job well done, I greeted Commander Roberto Snchez, the gentlemanly air force aide-de-camp who was sitting at a table. When the bar was packed with Chileans, there was a sound like a trumpet blast next to the coat rack by the door: the journalist Mario Daz was trumpeting with his mouth and hands. Mario, who was not tall, paraded behind a strange figure wearing the official cap of the air force and the jacket of a highranking officer with golden guts, gold braid, on its shoulders. This was La Payita, the woman of the day. She snapped a salute and smiled radiantly at everyone present. Some celebrated the occurence, others of us were quiet. Commander Sanchez stood up in silence from the table, took his cap and jacket from La Payita, put them on, turned on his heel and walked out. The next stage is Colombia, where the Chilean president is received by his counterpart Misael Pastrana Borrero. On the tarmac, Allende reviews the troops, limping slightly. The visit gives place to expressions of support and some of repudiation. The GAP maximizes the security measures. The Chilean embassy has asked sympathetic organizations to send people to the airport to reinforce the security. Gloria Gaitn, daughter of the populist Liberal leader Jorge Elicer Gaitn, attends as a simple militant, together with other Gaitanistas and leftist sympathizers who greet the Chilean president and silence the catcalls of a small number of counterdemonstrators. The Gaitanistas wave Colombian and Chilean flags at the end of thick poles capable of being used as clubs in the event of any trouble. Allende receives the keys to the city of Bogota and the official activities begin. In the company of General Carlos Prats, the president visits the Jorge Elicer Gaitn House-Museum, where Gloria recieves them. Gloria, the president, and General Prats have a warm conversation.13

13

Conversation with Gloria Gaitn, Bogota, October 13, 2004.

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During a pause in the official program, the president escapes one night with two GAP members: Were going to look for information.14 The reencounter of Salvador with Eugenia Valencia will be emotional. They havent seen each other since the day they said goodbye in Santiago. Six years have passed. After the accident, all their communications have been by letter. They have much to tell each other. The small procession reaches the corner of Street 16 and Avenue Suba, to a house with a large patio.15 Eugenia greets Salvador. They embrace very closely with their whole bodies. Eugenia introduces her adolescent children, David, 16, and Colette, 15. In the reception participates Gregorio, a French poodle, covered with wooly fur like a sheep, who wins Salvador over. The children go up to their rooms. The GAP men make themselves discreet, Salvador and Eugenia are left alone.... In her nervousness, Eugenia has forgotten to press the button of the record player where she has put on Si vas para Chile, the record he has given her.16 Salvador wants to talk with the children, to get to know them. Eugenia and he climb the stairs with their arms around one another. There is a kiss. Salvador talks with David and Colette in their rooms. He is warm, caring with them. Hes interested in their homework. The emotion is strong, the teenagers feel it. Eugenia has prepared a tasteful and delicious meal. A GAP man enters the kitchen, samples the whisky and the canaps. Salvador has brought Eugenia a fine cloth and gifts for the children. 17 She has a small gift for him, too, whose identity has been forgotten. The time passes, he has to leave. They say goodbye. They will see each other again. Eugenia is radiant: she has been honored by a president. Allende is joyful: he has been with Eugenia again and has shared with her a moment in his triumphal tour.
14

Translators note: This phrase is not attributed to anyone in particular here. It is explained earlier in the book that it was a code for taking Allende to visit a woman. 15 The story of Allendes visit to Eugenia Valencias house is based on conversations with Colette Simmonds Valencia, Popayn, personally on October 18 and by telephone on October 19, 2004. 16 Letter written by Eugenia Valencia to Salvador Allende, dated September 7, 1971, Bogota, never sent; made available to the author by Eugenia Valencias daughter Colette. 17 Mara Cecilia Valencia de Gnecco, Mate, Eugenias younger sister, in a conversation in Popayn on October 20, 2004, said that Allendes gift to Eugenia was a large purse of beige leather.

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When the president of Chile and his retinue have left Colombia, Eugenia will write Salvador a letter ten pages long, dated September 7, 1971, which she will never send him: 18 It really was real! And Im still in a kind of enchantment, a kind of dream. It seems like a lie that you were here in my house, next to me, and you returned to me, in my daughters room, the first kiss that joined us on the mountain. Everything happened so quickly, and in such a beautiful way, that I have had to let some days pass to calm myself down, to let my feelings settle a bit (...). It hurts my soul so much to know that I cant be at your side (...). It hurts me truly and deeply, and I want you to understand it and know it. But lets not talk about sad things. I am grateful to life for having given me the opportunity to be with you again. Youre not a ghost anymore, and hopefully you wont be one again. And, whats more, to have seen you looking so well, so marvelously well, full of human warmth, and responded to so warmly by the people of my country, triumphant in your struggle, vigorous, radiant. (...) Im going to visit you in Santiago, when you want, when you can dedicate some of your time to me. President Pastrana has given his colleague a reception at the Palacio Bolvar. President Allende returns the favor with a reception in residence of the Chilean ambassador, Hernn Gutirrez Leyton. After making the necessary dispatch from his room in the Hotel Tequendama, the author arrives at the party just as most of the guests are leaving. He recalls:

The last drinks were being served. In true Bogota fashion, the whisky had flowed in torrents, but I prefered a pisco sour. The members of the Chilean delegation

18

Letter from Eugenia Valencia to Salvador Allende, op. cit.

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didnt want to leave, and were conversing in the empty salons, while the waiters collected the ashtrays and dirty glasses. The president was talking one-on-one with a lady on a sofa somewhat apart. From a distance, the GAP men kept their eyes open. The last few days had been strenuous, and this day particuarly so. The president had a right to relax, to be a human being for a while, to forget about the diplomatic ceremonies and negotiations. The woman was beautiful, distinguished. She wore a cape over her shoulders, and, on her breast, a brooch of Colombian emeralds. Watching them from afar, one felt tender. One could observe in both the pleasure of being together, their enjoyment of the conversation, their withdrawal from the world that surrounded them. They evidently knew each other from before, and as they spoke, they looked in each others eyes. There was an air of timelessness, one of those that no-one should interrupt. To their serenity contrasted the nervousness and the laughter of La Payita. Like everyone, she had been drinking, and she went about from one place to another. It was evident that the presidents tte--tte made her nervous. At one point she vanished. Perhaps she had gone to rest. But no. She reappeared descending the marble staircase of the residence. She did not come alone. She brought the economist Edgardo Floto, advisor to the delegation. But Floto, who was generally discreet, was in a costume; La Payita had dressed him up. He wore a dressing gown and a turban made of a towel on his head. In the solemn residence, where the president of Colombia had just been, the vision was incongruous. Grinning from ear to ear, La Payita dragged Floto to where Allende was talking with the guest. The president gave a brief smile and returned to the conversation. La Payita, determined to call attention to herself, circulated through the salons, anxious to get people to laugh at her buffoon. Pulling him behind her, she passed again and again in front of the sofa containing the president, who had ceased smiling. When the lady with the emerald brooch retired for the night, Allende accompanied her to the door. The woman, beautiful and haughty, limped slightly, supporting herself with a cane of embossed silver.

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In the reception, Eugenia Valencia has encountered La Payita. The president has also introduced Eugenia to Hortensia Bussi. Although vaguely informed about the encounter that had taken place in Chile between Salvador and the Colombian, the first lady has greeted her with courtesy, as if it were nothing. Before leaving Chile, though, Tencha had expressed uneasiness about the possible appearence of Eugenia on the Colombian leg of the tour, and speculated about ways to avoid it. 19 Eugenia will send Tencha and the president a bouquet of flowers from her land. Tencha will respond with an icy card: Mr. and Mrs. Salvador Allende are grateful for your attention. 28VII-71. In the letter that she will never send, Eugenia will write to Salvador, Hortensia was very amiable with me. The last stop of the presidential journey, on the way back to Chile, is Lima. Allende wishes to greet the president, his friend, General Juan Velasco Alvarado, the progressive despot of Peru. When Allende was elected president, Velasco Alvarado, who had been born in Piura, in the mountains, had breathed a sigh of relief. Now the little burro from Piura wil not walk alone.20 The visit sticks to the customary ritual of conversations, decorations with medals and diplomas, receptions, journalistic bulletins.... But President Allende alters his program and slips away in the evening. With a discreet group of GAP men, he arrives at a house on Salaverry Street. Chicho21 and Blanca Barreto v. de Rivero, the Blanquita of his childhood in Tacna, have an emotional reunion. Since Blanca Barreto was widowed in 1936, at the age of 35, Allende has made an effort in the course of more than three decades to maintain contact with her. Blancas life has not been easy, because she was left alone with three children, one of them, Oswaldo, a future diplomat, barely eight months old. Salvador has visited her when he has been in Lima. Blanca has two aunts in Santiago, sisters of her mother who married Chileans, and a constellation of cousins. As an emerging politician,
19 20

Confidential conversation. Eduardo Labarca Goddard, Chile al rojo, Ediciones de la Universidad Tcnica del Estado, Santiago de Chile, 1971, p. 10. 21 Translators note: Chicho was Allendes nickname since childhood; this is explained in an earlier chapter.

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Salvador gave lectures in Peru on public health, and in 1941 he returned, invited by the APRA, the party of Vctor Ral Haya de la Torre; in 1962, upon his return from a trip to Cuba, he gave a speech at an APRA function in the plaza of Chacra Rios, a neighborhood in Lima. Other times he has communicated with Blanca Barreto when he has had a stopover in the airport in Lima. Salvador has been pleased that his old friend has become a public figure in Peru. She has been a city councillor, supported by the APRA, in the prosperous seaside resort of La Punta, in Callao, from 1946 to 1948, the year that President Jos Luis Bustamante y Rivero, cousin of her deceased husband, was toppled in a coup by General Manuel Odra. She has served as president of the Tacna Club in Lima. At a 1969 new years party, before Allende was elected president, a Peruvian lady arrived at a costume party that took place in the mansion of Senator Aniceto Rodriguez and his wife Anita on Gran Avenida. Among those present, it was said that the guest was one of Salvadors old loves.22 Now in Lima, when the president and first lady of Chile receive their Peruvian counterparts in the Chilean embassy, Blanca Barreto attends as a special guest. During the reception, Chicho makes the introduction: Blanca Barreto, Hortensia Bussi, Miria Contreras.... Blanca Barreto receives the attentions of her childhood friend, who has now become a president. In this reception, Blanca and Salvador see each other for the last time. In April 1972, the next year, Oswaldo de Rivero Barreto, Blancas son, an emerging diplomat, traveled to Santiago as a member of the Peruvian delegation to the meeting of UNCTAD, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development.23 He brought with him a silver platter and turrn de Dona Pepatraditional Lima-style nougat candysent to Chicho by his mother, who had had a brain hemorrhage. To the surprise of the other diplomats, the president received Oswaldo de Rivero Barreto
22

Conversation with Eugenia Donoso, Geneva, August 9, 2004. Eugenia and her husband Julio Donoso Larran went to the party dressed as peasants. In Santiago on November 30, 2004, the author spoke in person, and on December 3 by telephone, with Ana Cisneros v. de Rodriguez, the owner of the house on that occasion. Ana Cisneros said she did not remember the guest, as a lot of people came to the party. 23 Oswaldo de Rivero Barreto, born August 2, 1936, will have a brilliant career as Perus ambassador to the United Nations and representative to the World Trade Organization and other organizations in Geneva; president of the World Conference on Nuclear NonProliferation and of the Conference on Disarmament.

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immediately. In the conversation in La Moneda, Allende became emotional and called him son. Back in national territory, the plane lands in Arica. The journey has been a success. Everywhere, the president of Chile has been universally acclaimed, something that doesnt happen in Chile, and at his side, Hortensia Bussi has received applause. Everyones spirits are relaxed. Theres only one last leg of the journey to arrive in Santiago. The president jokes with the journalists. La Payita, victorious in this tour, is happier than ever. They left her on the ground, but she snuck onto the presidential plane in full flight, mounted on a cane. In Santiago, the president is welcomed in a rally, proclaimed in posters that display his face: CHILE RECEIVES HIM IN TRIUMPH EcuadorColombiaPeru Anniversary of the Victory Saturday September 4 Plaza Bulnes6 PM Back in La Moneda, the president puts the finishing touches on the reorganization of his clandestine channels of communication. In the meeting with Eugenia Valencia in Bogota, he has learned that various letters sent by his Colombian friend to La Moneda have not reached his hands. The same has happened with Eugenias telephone calls, which have always smacked up against the wall of the personal secretary. La Payita has said that the president was in a meeting, and has not transmitted any message to him. To circumvent the blockade, in the meeting in Bogota, the president asked Eugenia to write to him through a diplomat who participated in the tour, who would bring the letters directly to his handswhich is how it happened in reality. The president establishes a similar process for the reception of correspondence from the dazzling wife of the general in Quito. In this case, the courier would be a journalist who was also part of the tour. As far as Negrita

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is concerned, the president has asked her to communicate with him through Oswaldo Puccio. When the president invites Negrita to La Moneda, the faithful Puccio will bring her to the presidential office through secondary passages. Even when the lawyer Alina Morales, from La Liga, visits him, the president will ask Oswaldo Puccio to bring her in discreetly, fearing La Payitas reaction. Not long after the end of the tour, someone comes to Santiago: la generala, as the blonde wife of the Ecuadorian military chief has been nicknamed by those close to the president. So as not to awaken her husbands suspicions, she has taken advantage of a trip to Europe to make a secret detour to the South. She comes to Chile at the invitation of Salvador Allende, who is delighted and rejuvinated by her arrival. The president installs the visitor in a spectacular 8th floor apartment at 296 Ismael Valds Vergara Street with a view of the Parque Forestal, lent by the beautiful Silvia Celis, who has been named cultural attache (or, in Pablo Nerudas words, sculptural attache) to the Chilean embassy in London. To this spectacular apartment with its exquisite view, the president will arrive to visit the lady at full speed, flanked by GAP vehicles with sirens wailing and machine guns at the windows. The EcuadorianChilean honeymoon will last for some days, and the president, with a fresh wind in his sails, will radiate contentment. Because an invitation is an invitation, and the generala has incurred considerable expenses, the president will send one of his collaborators, who will deliver to her by hand an envelope full of cash.

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