The Murder of Allende is the first book about the 1973 Chilean coup to be published in this country that is written by a Chilean. It is thus to be welcomed because it tells us a great deal more about the internal politics of that unhappy country than the previous books in English on the subject by James Petras, Gary MacEoin, and Robert Moss which were principally devoted to denouncing the American (Petras, MacEoin) or the Soviet (Moss) role in Chile. It is written by a well-known Chilean journalist who makes no secret of his sympathy for the revolutionary left—the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) and the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party of Chile. Exaggerated views of the influence of the American military permeate the book—indeed, according to Rojas’ account, the Chilean military never make a move without first checking with the Canal Zone and the Pentagon—but the author has so much information (and misinformation) about the internal politics of Chile—especially of the Chilean military—that there is no doubt that the book is a net addition to the growing literature on the Allende experiment.
The problem, however, is to distinguish the “insider” type of information, which Rojas had as a reporter covering the presidential palace and specializing in military-civilian relations, from the mythmaking of the left, in which he frequently engages (Puro Chile for which Rojas wrote was somewhere between the New York Daily News and The National Inquirer in journalistic reliability) resulting in an account which is about one-third fact, one-third rumors from the leftist cocktail circuit in Santiago between 1970 and 1973, and one-third imaginary- and often quite imaginative-reconstruction of what should have happened—but almost certainly did not. Since the documentation is exceedingly skimpy (“authoritative sources,” “sources within the military hierarchy,” European press reports, plus, among the few American sources, Crawdaddy) it is exceedingly difficult to separate fact from fiction.
The Chilean specialist can spot a few outright falsehoods; e.g., the 1971 Christian Democrat-proposed constitutional amendment forbade government takeovers of industry without a Congressional law after, not before, October 1971; the 500 businesses which were nationalized, intervened, or requisitioned were almost never paid for; the black market rate for dollars did not drop in half during the 1972 strike; and it seems highly unlikely that Chilean naval intelligence assassinated the naval aide to Allende in July 1973. Other areas are much more difficult to evaluate—in particular, the supposed messages from one member of the Chilean high command to another which are said to have been intercepted by ham radio operators, and the details on the positions of various military leaders during the Allende period.
Probably the most interesting part of the book is the attack on the official version of Allende’s suicide. In several chapters of criticism three questions emerge: 1) Why did Dr. Guijón, the supposed witness to the suicide, return “for his gas mask” when those who had been with Allende exited from the presidential palace behind a white flag?; 2) What happened between the time of Allende’s death around two p.m. and the entrance of the first civilians around four p.m.; and 3) Why was Allende’s body still sitting upright on a sofa after he had supposedly blown his head off? Rojas’ theory is that the suicide was staged afterwards by military intelligence (SIM), and that Allende died fighting. The fact that his widow was never allowed to see the body lends some credence to this view.
The Silva book is translated from Swedish and published in England. It tells in their own words a by-now sickeningly familiar story of the torture of prisoners after the coup, summarizes the politics of Chile from a pro-Allende point of view, and includes Allende’s moving last speech on September 11. It also identifies the Cuban news agency as the source of the story that Allende had agreed to surrender if there could be written guarantees of the “social achievements” of the workers.
Neither book is a reliable historical source but the one by Rojas is the most complete discussion in English of the politics of the Chilean military during the Allende period and will at least provide some useful hypotheses for future students of this until-recently neglected area. I also find it interesting that of the hundreds of books written by Chileans on the topic, this journalistic and biased account is the one that American commercial publishers have chosen to publish.
