Just a few steps separate the monument to Salvador Allende and the side door of the La Moneda palace from Morandé Street in Santiago where the lifeless body of the socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende was taken out on September 11, 1973. That short distance yesterday became the epicenter of the commemoration of the fifty years of the military coup, led by General Pinochet, which overthrew the world’s first democratically elected Marxist leader.

The northern façade of La Moneda, rebuilt after the bombing of the palace ordered by Pinochet, was yesterday the backdrop for the act of tribute to Allende organized by the Government of leftist President Gabriel Boric in the midst of an atmosphere of internal polarization with the opposition right. , which has had no qualms about justifying the coup d’état at the same time that countless countries and former rulers of all political stripes participated in the commemoration with messages condemning authoritarianism.

“A coup d’état or violating the human rights of those who think differently is never justifiable. And that’s why we rebel, we rebel when they tell us that there was no other alternative. Of course there was another alternative,” Boric stated in a clear response to the statement issued hours earlier by the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), where the coup was described as “inevitable.” “Unity and reconciliation are not achieved with neutrality and distance, but by unquestionably taking the side of those who were victims of horror. Reconciliation does not involve trying to equalize responsibility between victims and perpetrators,” Boric added.

Of Pinochet origin, the UDI is one of the most influential parties of the opposition right, which refused to participate in the event. “Between 1970 and 1973, a social, political and institutional breakdown occurred with respect to which September 11 became inevitable,” reads the UDI statement released shortly before the official commemoration. The declaration of the party, founded in 1983 under the protection of the dictatorship, angered the left, the victims and their families and human rights organizations because, as other right-wing parties have done in recent weeks, in essence They blame Allende himself for the coup. “The political project of the Unidad Popular, to guide Chile towards a socialist revolution, was progressively resisted by a majority,” the text says.

Boric was the main speaker but not the one who was most emotional in a day dominated by tears. Senator Isabel Allende, daughter of the martyred president, could not help but cry after explaining her last conversation with her father in La Moneda, before she “implored” her and her sister Beatriz de to leave the palace. she. “She asked us to denounce what was happening, to be a moral lesson for those who attack freedom, against democracy, against life,” said the popular Chilean politician. “I don’t forget his last hug, his warmth, his infinite love, his humor,” the senator added. “We knew she wouldn’t leave the palace,” she also said.

Before starting the event, Boric greeted all the guests sitting in a long front row under a large tent installed in the Plaza de la Constitución. There were foreign leaders in office there, such as those from Mexico, Colombia or Uruguay; or former presidents such as the Spanish Felipe González or the Colombian Juan Manuel Santos. Or Chris Dodd, former US senator and friend of President Biden who serves as special advisor for the Americas.

But with whom Boric was most effusive was his two predecessors present, the socialists Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet. Both signed this week, along with Boric and also former presidents Eduardo Frei (Christian Democrat) and Sebastián Piñera (conservative), a declaration in defense of democracy. Boric’s greeting to the Spanish Baltasar Garzón – the first judge to prosecute Pinochet –, to Isabel Allende and to the granddaughter of the missing president, Maya Fernández, current Minister of Defense, was also the object of special applause by those present. Fernández is the daughter of Beatriz Allende, who ended up committing suicide in Cuban exile four years after leaving La Moneda that day, shortly before her father’s suicide.