Remembering to Reimagine:
A Symposium on Salvador Allende, Unfulfilled Promise, and the Future of International Law
INTRODUCTORY BLOG
Available on 19 December 2023
Remembering to Reimagine: A Symposium on Salvador Allende, Unfulfilled Promise, and the Future of International Law
by Wanshu Cong and Francisco-José Quintana
Fifty years ago, a military coup d’état put a brutal end to the democratic socialist experiment led by President Salvador Allende in Chile. The coup ignited a reign of terror that led an iron-fisted socio-economic restructuring of the country. In commemorating this half-century anniversary, this symposium aims not merely to mourn the violence and its enduring scars. We also aim to reclaim the (international) legal ideas and imagination that underpinned some of the Unidad Popular government’s initiatives and ambitions, elucidate how these projects were thwarted, and unearth enduring lessons that could illuminate our path forward today.
Available on 19 December 2023
Salvador Allende, Populism and An International Law of Solidarity
by Dr Claerwen O’Hara and Dr Valeria Vázquez Guevara
Today, populist politics are often depicted as hostile to international law. Specifically, there is an assumption that populism favours nationalism over multilateralism and has an antagonistic relationship with international institutions. However, as scholars such as Christine Schwöbel-Patel and Marcela Prieto Rudolphy point out, the conflation of populism with nationalism reflects a Western-centric mode of thinking. Across the global South, and in Latin America in particular, there is a long tradition of combining populist politics and internationalism. Chilean President Salvador Allende, a democratically-elected Marxist who emerged as one of the most influential Third World leaders of the-twentieth century, is someone who unsettles the contemporary ‘populist versus internationalist’ binary.
Available on 20 December 2023
Allende’s Workshop: Technological Diplomacy and the Stakes of Solidarity
by Anna Saunders
In the wake of mid-century decolonisation, many newly independent states sought ways to structure their economic relations so as to avoid new forms of exploitation. At the same time, the complex interrelationship between technology and society made it essential for these states to avoid replicating the technological patterns of their former colonisers. Although efforts to address the technological question were necessarily joint ones, perhaps no single government did more to centre the question of technological cooperation on the international stage than the democratic socialist government of Salvador Allende (1970–1973).
Available on 20 December 2023
Critical legal theory situated: the work of Eduardo Novoa Monreal as the legal adviser of Salvador Allende
by Fabia Fernandes Carvalho and João Roriz
In 1973, a jurist was preparing the legal defence of his small Third World country against one of the largest multinationals of that time. The case involved the nationalisation of the copper industry in Chile. If Cuba encouraged socialism through revolution and arms, Salvador Allende’s Chile (1970-1973) promised socialism through democracy and economic reforms. The nationalisation of copper—Chile’s leading natural resource—was at the heart of Allende’s vision of a new utopia.
Available on 21 December 2023
International Order and the Politics of Freedom of Information in Chile
by Wanshu Cong
This post considers Allende’s socialist revolution in Chile as one of the earliest and toughest battles for not only a more just and equal international economic order but a more democratic and people-empowering structure of international information flow. This latter struggle of Allende’s Chile, surrounding domestic and international mass media practice, the structure of international communication, and the power imbalance between states and transnational media and telecommunication corporations, encapsulated all the crucial challenges and demands that would later characterise a movement, known as a New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO).
Available on 21 December 2023
The Good, The Bad, The Assemblage: ITT, IBM and Chile
by André Dao
On 4th December 1972, less than a year before his death during the military coup, Salvador Allende addressed a plaintive (and prophetic) plea to the UN General Assembly: ‘Distinguished representatives, before the conscience of the world, I accuse ITT of trying to provoke a civil war in my country, the supreme state of disintegration for a country. This is what we call imperialist intervention.’
Available on 22 December 2023
Rights, Reports, and Regionalism: The Chilean Coup and the Inter-American Narrowness
by Francisco-José Quintana
On 20 September 1973, US National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger received a phone call from Frank Mankiewicz, a Latin America expert from the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Mankiewicz sought to advise Kissinger, soon to become Secretary of State, on the US response to the coup d’état in Chile. Just days prior, on 11 September, General Augusto Pinochet had led a military coup to overthrow the democratically elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende.
Available on 22 December 2023
“We’re going wrong”
Human rights and constitutionalism after 50 years of Chile’s coup d’État
by Jorge Contesse
Chile has commemorated 50 years of the coup d’état that overthrew the Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende, in a very different atmosphere from what would have been thought not so long ago. For those who defend the most elementary tenets of respect for democracy, constitutionalism, and human rights, it was difficult to conceive just a few years ago that fifty years after the tragic date, the consensus on these issues, which seemed settled, would be weaker than in the past. Chile still faces a social and political crisis that erupted violently in the streets in October 2019.