By the huge reception to this story, I decided to translate the full article from Eduardo Mackenzie to english. We hope this book to be translated to english too, right away.
LA
by Eduardo Mackenzie *
Paris, 12 of September of 2005
Salvador Allende did not commit suicide, nor died under the bullets of the military coup participants the 11th, September, 1973. During the assault against La Moneda palace, the president of Chile was cowardly assassinated by one of the Cuban agents who were in charge of their protection. While the military was bombing the place, the panic had seized among the president´s collaborators and he, in view of the desperate situation, had requested and obtained brief fire ceases and was, in the end, determined to stop all resistance. According to a witness of the facts, Allende, frightened by terror, ran by the corridors of the second floor of the palace shouting: "It is necessary to surrender". Before he could do it, Patricio de la Guardia, an agent of Fidel Castro and direct responsible of Chilean president´s security, waited Allende returned to his writing-desk and it shot him in the head with a machine-gun burst. Immediately, he put on the body of Allende a gun - making believe that he was murdered by the military attackers and returned in a rush to first floor of the flaming building where they waited for other Cubans to leave. The group left La Moneda palace in complete silence and after minutes took refuge in Cuba´s embassy, located near from the palace.
This version of the dramatic ending of Salvador Allende, who contradicts the two previous almost-official versions, either by Fidel Castro (the thesis of the heroic death in combat), or by the Chilean Military junta (the 'suicide' one), required only two old members of secret organisms Cuban - very informed about that bloody episode and today exiled in Europe- to com to life.
In a book that is finish publishing in Paris editor Plon Editions, entitled "Cuba Nostra, them secrets d'Etat of Fidel Castro", Alain Ammar, a journalist specialized in Cuba and Latin America, analyzes and confronts the declarations gave him by Juan Vives and Daniel Alarcón Ramirez, two ex- Cuban civil intelligence employees.
Exiled since 1979, Juan Vives is a former secret agent of the dictatorship and Osvaldo Dorticós Torrado´s nephew , the opereta´s Cuban president that reigned from 1959 to 1976, and "was forced to suicide" in dark circumstances in 1983. Vives told him that in November, 1973, in a bar at Habana Libre hotel, where some members of the security office used to meet on saturdays to drink beer and to interchange by informal ways rumours and information of all type, he listened the same story form the Patricio de la Guardia, head of the Cuban special troops present in La Moneda fatal september, 11th, 1973, that chilling confession.
During years, Vives did not want to present that information because , as he says, "it was dangerous to do it" and cause there was until that moment no other Cuban person in exile that could confirm the trustworthy featurer of those facts. When Ramirez knew that Daniel Alarcón, a.k.a "Benign" , one of the three survivors from the guerrilla of Ernesto Guevara in Bolivia, also was exiled in Europe, the idea to present those serious facts returned to gained force.
In the book of Alain Ammar, "Benign" confirms the whole Vives' story. Both knew Salvador Allende and his family. Both lived in Chile during Allende's government. Both listened, at different moments, the confession of the de la Guardia when they returned to Havana.
The book of Ammar accurately describes the last months of the "Unidade Popular" government and, mainly, it shows the advanced degree of direct control that Fidel Castro had managed to install -- by means of its hundreds of spies from the DGI (a Cuban service of intelligence), by means of its operators and implanted influence agents in Santiago --, on the Rescuing president Allende, his ministers and even his friends and more intimate collaborators. In fact, what they call "Chilean way to the socialism" had been turned aside by Castro until the point of even from within the Allende's government there were voices that criticized that brutal interference. Months before his death, Salvador Allende already "had been instrumentalized by Castro", explains Juan Vives. "But Allende he was not the man whom Havana wanted to be in charge in Santiago. Who Castro and Piñero [ right arm of Castroe in operations of espionage in Latin America, died recently in Cuba of a heart attack ] prepared for this, the body-guard of the same president Allende, were Miguel Henríquez, main leader of the MIR and Pascal Allende, number two at the MIR, just like Beatriz Allende, the daughter of the president, who also belonged to the MIR ". Beatriz will die in Cuba in 1974.
The control on the Chilean Chief of State had been become serious remarkably after the first attempt of military coup, the 29 of June of 1973, more known as "tancazo". When Havana knew that the Chileans who surrounded the president were scared, Fidel Castro let Allende know that he could not surrender in any case nor requesting asylum in an embassy. "If it had to die, it had to die like a hero. Any other attitude, cowardly and little brave, would have serious repercussions for the fight in Latin America ", remembers Juan Vives. For that reason Fidel Castro issued the order to Patricio de la Guardia "to eliminate Allende if he, in the last moment, surrendered to fear".
Shortly after the first attacks to La Moneda, Allende had said to Patricio de la Guardia that was about to request political asylum at Sweden embassy. The executive agent chief had even designated to Augusto Olive, his advisor of press, to do it. Probably for that reason Olive, a.k.a "perro" , also received and ultimatum by the Cubans before they closed batteries against the president of Chile. "Recruited by the Cuban DGI, Olive transmitted even the minimum thoughts of Allende to Piñeiro, that, as well, informed to Fidel", Juan Vives declared.
Another Chilean body-guard of Allende , a certain Agustín, also "was shot" by the Cubans at those dramatic moments, according to the declaration by "Benigno" to the author of the book. Weeks after the coup d'etat, Patricio de la Guardia had revealed, in effect, to "Benigno" the ending of Agustín, brother of a friend of him that still lives in Cuba, and it had given another important detail to him on the happening during that tragic morning in the palace of La Moneda: before the machine-gunning, the Cuban agent had grabbed Salvador Allende by force, who wanted to come out form the palace, and he had seated him on the presidential armchair shouting to him: "a president dies in his site".
The version of the point-blank shot of Allende was not absolutely stranger. At Septembed, 12th, 1973 several agencies, among them the AFP , summarized in four lines that fact. Published on the following day by Le Monde the cable said: "According to sources of the Chilean right, president Allende was killed by his personal guard at moments at which he requested five minutes of cease of fire to surrender to the military who were on the verge of entering the palace of La Moneda". Ammar indicates that this hypothesis "was immediately buried" because it was not profitable to anybody: "neither to the collaborators of Allende, nor to the Chilean left, nor to his friends abroad, nor to the military nor, mainly, to Fidel Castro...".
The confirmation that, until recently, this "hypothesis" received from Juan Vives and Daniel Alarcón Ramirez could be reinforced in the future by the testimonies of other silenced Cuban civil employees and by documents that are outside Cuba. In effect, in a bank of Panama the masterful piece of this magnicidio would rest. According to the authors of the book, Patriciode la Guardia, who was condemned to thirty years in jail during the process-farce against major general Arnaldo Ochoa Sanchez, and in residence vigil today, would have deposited a compromissing document in the coffer of a Panamanian bank which describes, among other things, the assassination of Allende by order of Castro, in a text that would have to be revealed in case of death of Patricio de la Guardia. Fidel Castro, according to the authors of the book, would have taken this threat very seriously and it caused Patricio to escaped to the execution, unlike Tony, his brother, that along with general Ochoa and two other civil employees of the Department of the Interior, were shot at July/13/1989.
The revelation of what happened to Salvador Allende is not interesting solely for the historians of the calamitous adventure of the Unidade Popular in Chile. It is interesting too, for the new Latin American friends of Fidel Castro, specially for Venezuela president Hugo Chávez. Hugo Chávez and others, the more reliable are them for Havana, just like had been president Allende - at least in the papers - could be being now object of identical kind ofr control and political domination by the same services that built so beastly against the president of Chile. The book of Alain Ammar approaches, in its 425 pages, many other subjects and episodes related to complicated and not always successful secret operations of Havana in Cuba and several countries. It is expected that a translation to the Spanish of that useful book could be quickly in bookstores (and english too).
* Colombian journalist, co-author (with Alain Delpirou) of the book:
"Les Cartels criminels. Cocaíne et héroïne, une industrie lourde en Amérique Latine", PUF, noviembre 200.
