Salvador Allende

Salvador Allende Gossens (June 26, 1908 – September 11, 1973) was a Chilean physician and socialist politician who served as President of Chile from 1970 until his death. He was the first Marxist elected to lead a Latin American country through open multiparty elections, and his presidency ended in a military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet.

Born in Valparaíso into a politically active middle-class family, Allende studied medicine at the University of Chile and worked as a pathologist. He helped found the Socialist Party of Chile in 1933 and entered Congress as a deputy in 1937. He served as Minister of Health from 1939 to 1942 in the Popular Front government, championing public-health reforms, and was elected to the Senate in 1945, where he sat for a quarter century, eventually as its president.

Allende ran for the presidency four times, finally winning in 1970 at the head of the Popular Unity coalition with a narrow plurality. His government nationalized copper mining, accelerated agrarian reform, expanded public housing and education, and established diplomatic relations with Cuba and China. The program polarized the country amid hyperinflation, supply shortages, opposition from the conservative parties, and covert United States destabilization.

On September 11, 1973, the armed forces shelled and stormed La Moneda presidential palace. Allende delivered a final radio address to the nation and died inside the building; a 2011 forensic investigation confirmed suicide with a rifle given to him by Fidel Castro. His overthrow ushered in seventeen years of military dictatorship and made him a worldwide symbol of democratic socialism.

The name Salvador comes from the Late Latin Salvator, meaning savior. He bore a name common across the Spanish-speaking Catholic world.