Salvador Allende

Victor Figueroa-Clark

pp. 42-59

in: Steven Casey, Jonathan Wright (eds), Mental maps in the era of détente and the end of the Cold War 1968–91, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015

Abstract

Salvador Allende, Chile's president between November 1970 and September 1973, was a worldly man of long political experience, and as a senior Chilean politician, a well-travelled and well-connected statesman. Like many leaders emerging from the Third World during the latter half of the twentieth century, Allende was acutely aware of Chile's subordinate place in the global system. When Allende became president in 1970 Chile was not a country with global or even much regional reach, and Allende was not interested in territorial expansion. As a result Allende did not pore over maps in the way of world-shapers, expansionists and the militarily threatened. Yet Allende did have a less topographical idea of the geography of the world system that he and Chile existed within — a map of ideas, of concepts, of power structures and also a map of friends, enemies and potential adversaries. Allende did not survive to write his memoirs, and much of his administration's documentation was either destroyed or stolen during or after his overthrow in September 1973, but from what remains we can still outline the constant features, the areas of permanent focus, the well-trodden paths and the under-explored boundaries and the terra incognita of his view of the world.