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Allende's family dated back to the early days of Chile. His physician grandfather was a Masonic grandmaster and the founder of the first nonreligious elementary school in predominantly Roman Catholic Chile. Allende's father was a notary who died while his son was serving one of many prison terms for socialist activity. Allende was allowed to attend the funeral. At the graveside he delivered an impromptu speech pledging himself to seek freedom for the people and social justice. He became a doctor but gave up medicine for politics. He campaigned doggedly until, on the fourth attempt, he was finally elected President.
Once in office, Allende moved swiftly to change the economic face of the country. His Christian Democratic predecessor, Eduardo Frei, had already introduced agrarian reforms and pushed government participation in industry. But Allende inaugurated a far more sweeping program of government ownership and operation, beginning with total ownership of the giant copper operations, whose U.S. owners had been woefully slow in training Chileans for more important, better paying jobs. Cement, steel, electricity and telephones were also nationalized, along with both foreign and domestic banks. Labor unions were given control of new plants that went up in belts around Santiago, close by tidy neighbors of the middle class. With the government's tacit consent, peasants seized huge estates owned by absentee landlords, and in their zeal even took land from small farmers.
In office Allende made at least two crucial political mistakes. One was to forget−or at least ignore−the fact that he had entered office as a minority winner. In the tumultuous 1970 election, Allende led the two other candidates, but gained only 36.3% of the popular vote. According to the constitution, the Chilean Congress was called on to choose the winner. It followed tradition by selecting Allende, the front runner. He thus became President even though nearly two thirds of the voters preferred other men. But he ruled as though he had the nation behind him.
March of the Pots. Allende's second mistake was to assume that the middle and upper classes would placidly accept his "Chilean road to socialism" so long as all things were done constitutionally. They never did. "If we have to burn half of Chile to save it from Communism, then we will do it," threatened Roberto Thieme, leader of an extremist right-wing organization called Fatherland and Liberty. More moderate opponents were less outraged but equally adamant against Allende's plans to broaden state controls. Opposition parties, controlling both houses of Congress, fought him all the time he was in power.