Salvador Allende

June 26, 1908 – September 11, 1973

Chilean socialist physician who was President of Chile from 1970 until he died during the 1973 military coup.

Biography

Salvador Allende was born in Santiago in 1908 into an upper middle-class family with a tradition of progressive politics. He studied medicine at the University of Chile, where he led the student centre, and began practising as a physician and pathologist in Valparaiso in 1932. In 1933 he helped found the Socialist Party of Chile in that city.

Elected to the Chamber of Deputies in 1937, he served as health minister in the Popular Front government from 1939 to 1942 and pushed through social and labour reforms. From 1945 he sat in the Senate for 25 years and was its president from 1966 to 1969. He ran for president without success in 1952, 1958 and 1964.

In 1970, as candidate of the Popular Unity coalition, he won a narrow plurality and was confirmed by Congress. His government nationalised copper and the banks, widened land reform and expanded health and education programmes, but it faced a hostile Congress, a deepening economic crisis and covert opposition from the United States. On 11 September 1973 the armed forces staged a coup. As troops attacked La Moneda palace, Allende died in his office, by suicide according to the official findings.