Venceremos by Gabriel San Román

Author:Gabriel San Román
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: PM Press
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

THE ELECTION RESULTS AND INAUGURATION

RUNNING AGAINST TWO MAJOR CANDIDATES, RATHER THAN ONE, AS WAS THE case in 1964, Allende was able to claim victory in the September 4, 1970, presidential election. He earned a plurality of the vote with a leading tally of 36.2 percent. By Chile’s electoral laws, Allende had to have his relative majority victory ratified by Congress. With the first democratically elected Marxist in the Western Hemisphere on his way to donning the presidential sash, some opposition forces began discussing a coup strategy. The Nixon administration was active among them. As the Staff Report on Covert Action in Chile notes, “On September 15th, President Nixon informed CIA director Richard Helms that an Allende regime would not be acceptable to the United States and instructed the CIA to play a direct role in organizing a military coup d’etat.”32 A critical obstacle to that strategy was the presence of the army commander-in-chief, General René Schneider. As a dedicated constitutionalist, Schneider rejected any notions of a coup and stood by the electoral legitimacy of Allende’s victory. A botched kidnapping plot would eventually lead to the general’s death. It did not provoke a coup and was actually counterproductive for forces opposed to Popular Unity by increasing popular sympathies for the president-elect. “On October 4th, Congress confirmed the election of Allende; he received 153 votes to Allesandri’s 35.”33 Despite efforts to prevent it, Allende was formally sworn in as Chile’s president on November 3, 1970.

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