Socialist Party of Chile - The Popular Unity Government

The Popular Unity Government

Further information: Popular Unity and Chile under Allende

In the year 1969, the skepticism for the "Chilean way to the socialism" was the majority in the Central Committee of the PS. Salvador Allende Gossens was proclaimed presidential preliminary candidate of its party with 13 votes in favor and 14 abstentions, among them that of its secretary general, Aniceto Rodriguez, of Carlos Altamirano Orrego and of Clodomiro Almeyda Medina. Nevertheless, the candidacy of Allende galvanized the forces of left, who constituted, in October 1969, the Popular Unity coalition of the Socialist Party, Communist Party, Radical Party, Popular Unitary Action Movement (split of the Christian Democrat Party) and former supporters of Carlos Ibáñez grouped in the Independent Popular Action alliance, that culminated with the presidential triumph of September 1970.

October 24, 1970 Salvador Allende Gossens was officially proclaimed President of the Republic of Chile. There was world expectation; he agreed to manage the coalition and to be a Marxist president with the explicit commitment to build socialism, while respecting the democratic and institutional mechanisms.

The position of the PS at first,, of the government of the UP, was radicalized with the choice of the party's direction, chosen in the XXIII Congress, carried out in the Serene One in January 1971, by the senator Carlos Altamirano Orrego; who proclaimed that the party he should transform into "the Chilean vanguard in the march toward the socialism".

In the municipal elections of April 1971, the leftist coalition reached the simple majority in the election of managers, which caused growing polarization due to the alliance of the Christian Democrats with the sectors of the right in the country. The retreat of the Party of Radical Left from the government, with its 6 representatives and 5 senators, meant that the government of Allende remained with less than one third of both houses of the parliament.

In the parliamentary elections of March 1973, the Popular Unity ruler coalition managed to block the initiative of the opposing Democratic Confederation to promote a constitutional accusation against the president Allende, to obtain this two thirds of the votes would have been required.