A FAREWELL TO THE NATION - POST DATA, 2019

By J.R. Monroy

Rhetoric is a powerful skill to destroy enemies or to capture the people's soul. In politics since Pericles or Demosthenes in ancient Greek to the present Siegle, power of speech has driven people for noble causes or to survive a national crisis. This modest article was inspired in the last improvise speech of President Salvador Allende, broadcast by radio late in the morning in September 1973.

In political evolution of the human race as one goes back on time, we can find an increasingly numbers of cases of political and military situations when leaders with their rhetoric coming forward from that time to our present or to visualising a prospect future. In other words, its looks like there exists a common denominator which teaches us to understand how power politics can create a pre-condition which involves charismatic personalities that dialectically are reflexions of a specific epoch.

A short list of memorable historical speeches could illustrate how in different periods of human social and economic evolution, we can learn from past experiences on how high politics in an specific epoch brings us understanding of political power, perhaps more clearly economic dominant power. I selected at random the following memorable speeches who were at their times clues for a dialectic penetration to conceive them as homogeneity facts created by their own circumstances.

Pericles, (431 BC), "Funeral Oration", (218 BC), Hannibal, "addressing his Soldiers", (1095), Pope Urban II, "Speech at the Council of Clermont", (1187), Salah ad-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub, better known as Saladin, "The Recovery of Jerusalem", (1453), Emperor Constantine XI, "The Final Stand, (1558), Elizabeth I " Speech to the Troops at Tilbury", (1653), Oliver Cromwell,"Dismissal of the Rump Parliament", (1794), Maximilian Robespierre, "Report on the Principles of Political Morality", (1805), Napoleon Bonaparte, " Speech Before and After the Battle of Austerlitz , (1819), Simon Bolivar, "Address at the Congress of Angostura", (1823), General Bernardo O'Higgins, Speech "Relinquishing the Chilean Presidency", (1865), Abraham Lincoln, "Second Inaugural Address", (1917), Vladimir Lenin, "An Appeal to The Red Army", (1917), Woodrow Wilson, War Message to Congress", (1917), David Lloyd George, "Germany Expected to find a Lamb and Found a Lion", (1938), Dolores Ibarruri, better known in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), as La Pasionaria, "Farewell to the International Brigade", (1939), Adolfo Hitler, "Reichstag Speech", (1940), Winston S. Churchill, "We shall Fight on the Beaches", (1940), Charles de Gaulle, "The Flame of the French Resistance", (1941), Franklin D.Roosevelt, " A Date Which Will Live in Infamy", (1941), Joseph Stalin, " Address on the Anniversary of the October Revolution", (1944), Mao Zedong, "Serve the People", (1945), Ho Chi Ming, "Declaration of Vietnam Independence", (1948), Golda Meir, "If We Have Arms to Fight With, (1954), Syngman Rhee, " I Am Aware that This is a Hard Doctrine", (1973), President Salvador Allende "Last Speech by Radio before he was killed, (1987), Roland Reagan, "Tear Down This Wall", (1990), Margaret Thatcher "Last Speech in the House of Common as Prime Minister", etcetera, many more speeches have inspired us to find multiplicity of explanations reflecting our past-time to understand the present times of our common way of social life. It is a difficult task to avoid even speculations for as a French Historian said that History is a House of Many mansions.

This year the world of the literature and drama is commemorating 400th Anniversary of William Shakespeare death (1616), undoubtedly a great occasion to be remembered by the English Speaking nations. Shakespeare’s contribution to literature is comparable to the monumental work of Cervantes, creator of the “Don Quijote de la Mancha”. Both writers were critics of their rulers and of their own experience as writers or loyal servicemen. One of the most fascinating drama and tragedy written by the genius Shakespeare was Julius Caesar, probably written in 1559. It tells the story of the conspiracy to kill Caesar, his assassination, and the civil war that followed, as Caesar ‘s ghost bloodily pursued the chief murderers across the Roman world.

 It is possible to compare Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar tragedy with the political episode of President Salvador Allende martyrdom of the 1973, when an alliance of enemies and traitors, even in his government – several generals occupied Ministries in the last two years of his term -, who were responsible in part for the crisis and anarchy fomented by themselves in a dogmatic opposition to the elected president.

?President Allende’s government was for a short period of three years, and his programme included important social, economic, cultural and political reforms. His political ideals  was to end a half century status quo of a poor nation with un-resolved problems in education, health, standard of living of the working and middle classes. At that time unfortunately the world was divided by antagonistic diabolical forces even with nuclear menaces to the peaceful third world nations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. It was the Cold War Allende’s prior enemy inside and outside the country, which took the form of a powerful enemy that corrupted the political elites and the leaders of the opposition to the Popular Unity (Unidad Popular).

 What Allende’s should have done to preserve the liberties and at the same time, transform the old conservative status-quo which was since the Independence (1818), totally under the dominance of the landholder oligarchy, who organised the society as image of themselves, maintaining centennial social, educational and economic privileges, excluding the middle and the labours classes from any participation in the system? This is in my view, the question to be answered according President Allende’s political ideas of collectivism and popular democracy, possible following Abram Lincoln’s similar ideas to create a nations of libertarian citizens with free opportunities for all members of the society without races or creeds exclusions. Unfortunately, the conspirators impeded him to call a people’s plebiscite or popular consultation the next day of the coupe d’ etat.

 This equalitarian society was an utopia under Allende’s times, however several political attempts were experimented in the 1930’s, by transitional class alliance between political parties of the centre radical liberals and socialist to transform the Chilean society of the 20th century. One of the most successful collective social experiences was the election of President Pedro Aguirre Cerda, (1938-42), who, leading a coalition of democratic political parties, including the Chilean Communist and Nationalists under the slogan of Popular Front started a social process of reforms of the social structure and introducing a national programme for economic and industrial development.

 This economic progress of Chile was unique case in the history of Latin America because, it Involved the participation of the trade unions and the implementation of a national plan to create a heavy and light industry with participation of the State and private capitals. This economic process was called “import substitution”, and was a continental development in Latin America from Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, and Argentina.

 This historical phenomena of economic independence from USA and Europe, was possible, because of the WWII, this conflict obviously indirectly favoured the renaissance of the local industries in Latin America. The Chilean social and political progress was sufficient to create a prosperous industrial-financial sector. In fact, in 1939, the Popular Front founded the 'Corporacion de Fomento de la Produccion', (CORFO), a governmental agency, which was model for other Latin American countries and the financial and technical support the second phase of Chile’s industrial development, I.e. advance plan for electrification, petroleum production, refining, establishing modern steelworks at Huachipato, developing sugar and beer production, fostering paper industry, modernising transport, railways and national airlines, etc. In summary, an intensity industrialisation process was encapsulated with brilliant results and with social and economic benefits for the population, raising the standard of living in the cities, creating job opportunities through the State Management in transport and energy enterprises, etc.

In the 1970’s the Chilean economy passed by a series of crisis and obstacles, i.e. inflation per example was one of the main calamity, and was confronted with a series of technical measures which were not sufficient to calm and to stabilize the fiscal policies of the governments from the 1950 to 1969, creating a permanent social discontent, mainly in the public sector.

However, one of the main causes of the inflation, was the existence of a structural dualism in the economic system. The coexistence of an agrarian archaic sector with dominance of a group of landholders, imped to introduce new technologies and capitals to the exploitation of the largest states (latifundios of the central Valley, approx., 2000 kilometres long.), which were not rational exploited and not fully incorporated to the national economy. The solution was to introduce an agrarian rational distribution of the land to make possible a reactivation and modernisation of the economic system. The Agrarian Reforms was introduced in a slow process by Presidents Jorge Alessandri, (1958-64), Eduardo Frei, (1964-1970), and Allende (1970-73).

Forty three years has passed since Allende was killed defending his political honour and beliefs. What is Allende’s message today to the democrats and to the young politicians in Chile?

Recently the Chilean press informed the sad death of an important political personality, who was elected President of Chile, under an electoral system and Constitution created by Pinochet in 1980. It was common for the people to accept the rules arbitrary imposed by the authoritarian regimen, without any citizen consultation at all. From 1973 to recently, the real democracy was a far away bridge to catch up, the participation of the people, as was indicated in the Constitution of 1925, was totally omitted and only the coming Municipal elections in October will be held under a new electoral system. To sum up, the real Chilean democracy still is dreaming for a new generation, recently in parallel to the State funeral of ex-President Patricio Aylwin (1918-2016), thousands of secondary and Universities students marched and protested in the streets of central Santiago, demanding to the rulers to introduce democratic reforms in the educational system to revert it from an expensive private to a free public educational system as it was in 1973.

Copyrights (c) JRM. All Rights Reserved JRM Publications, London, 2019.

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