ABSTRACT: The president of Chile, Salvador Allende, died just a few days ago, September the 11th, as a consequence of the coup d'etat. The populace is trying to resist the armed forces by force of arms. In the editorial that appeared in "Liberazione", when the outcome of the popular insurrection was still uncertain, it is stated that fascism had already won when it succeeded in imposing a violent clash. Allende was killed "because he was tolerant and uncompromising, because his refusal of violence which was total but political, skilful but constant and hard, threatened to deprive the minority of power, the forces of repression and exploitation, of their favourite and indispensable weapon if they hoped to beat him".

(from "Liberazione", the Radical daily, September 1 6, 1973)

We do not know yet if Chile, as has been written, is really preparing to become a new Vietnam. We lack the information, the knowledge, perhaps the ideological attitudes for quickly discovering the signs of a possible trend in the chaos of emotions, of questions and uncertainties in which, it is not hard to confess, we find ourselves.

We are among those who, carried along by the wave of 1968 with its radiant Springs and "hot" autumns all those long years ago, chanted the slogan during demonstrations and communal battles: "one, two, three... a hundred Vietnams". We did not believe it and, perhaps, we were not certain we wanted them.

With regard to what they call "Vietnam " - an epic, to be sure - we have always asked ourselves, perhaps manifesting petit bourgeois scruples (perhaps - but we don't know), what would be the opinion of the the million and more peasants killed in three decades (?) and of the other millions of victims, of the price they paid for this our victory.

For days, besides the drama of the event itself, there was the added problem for us of "Liberazione" to know how to present it in the paper. We close twelve hours earlier than the last editions of ordinary dailies: impossible to hope to offer information. "Lotta Continua" and "Il Manifesto", meanwhile, with their certainty of their judgements, with their militant and revolutionary enthusiasm, exalted the admirable reply that was made to the cowardly and criminal coup. Dry, almost as enthusiastic as war bulletins, were the headlines of our comrades of LC that fell around us giving us something like guilt feelings for our uncertainties that we had thought were honest in the face of the certainty of the protraction of this new victory of death which began with that of Allende and which is now ready and certain for millions and millions of comrades, of workers, of men and women;

we who for years have cried "enough!" to the "left of the funerals..." But now that the testimonies and documents, information and memories are beginning to furnish enough material, any other delay would be irresponsible and an evasion.

Already yesterday we began to spell out a certainty, writing: "By killing Allende they have succeed i imposing a traditional conflict. Now the only imperative left is that of winning. But now the battle is no longer fought under the sign of a great, humble, exalting hope to construct something new.

The fight is to reconquer in part that which was lost, to live, to resist, to liberate oneself. To this extent one can already speak of a first fascist victory. Allende was killed because he was tolerant and uncompromising, because his refusal of violence which was total but political, skilful but constant and hard, threatened to deprive the minority of power, the forces of repression and exploitation, of their favourite and indispensable weapon if they hoped to beat him.

Chile: only just ten million inhabitants. The most orderly, moderate, exemplary South American country, only yesterday, for those who go along with the game of confusing the apparent solidity of its institutions with the health of a society and a country. Without guerrillas of any consistency, without even proposed "revolutionary" alternatives, governed by an alliance of capitalists, clergy, and the military strong enough to lend

a semblance of "constitutionality" to its own class power and its subservient role to U.S. imperialism. A country without history to the degree that it was possible to propose the squalid "modernity" of a Frei as an event of international importance.

Three years ago came the "Allende cocktail". A rich bourgeoisie, an enlightened laity, an authoritative mason of the old school,

a humanitarian Socialist, a rationalist who understands the logic of the class struggle as a determining and essential element of any possible progress, a democrat - not in the abstract, not ideologically, but because he believes that the people, the masses, here and now, are the necessary and indispensable protagonists for the creation of a better society. Nothing,in short, of the "revolutionary". He works for the unity of the people - that is, of the Socialists, the Communists, the democrats, the opponents of the clergy; he leads a broad spectrum to victory in the elections; he becomes Chief of State. Attacked in every way, fought by a hostile parliament, adrift in a sea of raging passions and hatred, caught between the singers of a true and immediate revolutionary catharsis and the opportunism of the traditional left, there is one thing that he fears more than any other: violence, above all, the temptation of one's own violence or that of one's party. Humbly he submits to checks and compromises; each day

he begins again his Socialist and democratic work - with tolerance, always holding dialogue, but knowing each day how to proceed one millimetre in the right direction.

Chile becomes a point of reference for hopes and fears of a kind that only something new can excite so intensely in just three years.

Allende: layman and Mason; against the Christian Democrats and the clergy; non-violent and tolerant towards the battlefield the violent choose that is historically and logically necessary for the vilest minorities of power if they are to impose and protract their dictatorships; a Socialist with a human face and an iron will, against the desperation and the opportunism of the bureaucrats...

They had to kill him. The unknown quantity was absolute, as it always is when history has a new face, is creative, is discovery.

We are all morally at odds with Chile, involved in a confrontation that is a matter of life and death for many , for far too many. But the stakes in the coming months and years, there too, as we have stated, are the old victories or the old defeats.

Order, in a word, reigns in Santiago.

Franco Fortini does not cease to admonish us that the more

uncompromising we are in being Communists or revolutionaries, all the more must we recognise and consider that the truth of life and of history is tragic. He is right.

It is a tragic contradiction: Allende - the old-style revolutionary and new-style pacifist - is now dead and a martyr.

Irremediably. We will continue along his road with the will to win and to save ourselves. We owe it to him.