Joshua
Putnam
March
1994
Salvador
Allende and Me
It is impossible to write about
another person without also revealing one's self. For what touches us is always in some sense our own reflection,
though often distorted, as in a fun-house mirror. This is true not only for people whom we have actually met,
bonded or contended with. It is also
true of those characters, fictional or historic, whose stories we have woven
into our own lives.
As a young child, growing up in a
Marxist-Leninist commune during the Viet Nam War, there was one story which I
was told, much as other children hear stories of Jesus or Santa Claus, which
has remained with me. This is the story
of the life and death of Salvador Allende: socialist, pacifist and democratically
elected president of Chile.
In 1970 Salvador Allende was elected
president of Chile. As a socialist, he
promptly set about nationalizing the nation's major industries -- gas, mineral
rights and the phone system, previously owned by the American conglomerate
I.T.T. Allende also embarked on an
ambitious and popular program of land redistribution. In response, I.T.T., backed by the old Chilean oligarchy,
financed the brutal military coup of 1973 in which the Allende government was
overthrown, tens of thousands of the Allende's supporters
"disappeared," and the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, who was to
rule Chile with an iron hand for nearly twenty years, was established. The Nixon administration in Washington
colluded with American big business in allowing this atrocity to occur.
The story that I remember tells how
Salvador Allende, shortly after having been elected, paid a visit to Fidel
Castro, the only other Socialist leader of a Latin American state. At their meeting, Castro is said to have
presented Allende with the gift of a loaded machine gun. Allende, being a pacifist as well as a
socialist, said to Castro, "I will never use this." Castro replied, "You will."
It is also told that when the
Campesinos, as Pinochet's forces were called, were storming the Presidential
Palace during the last hours of the coup, Allende's loyal Presidential Guards
made ready a helicopter so that Allende could escape. When they came to get him from his office to make the flight, his
family was already safely on board. Yet
when they bid him come with them he refused.
Holding the machine gun which Castro had given him, Allende ordered the
guardsmen to take his family to safety.
"I will stay and fight," he told them. So Salvador Allende finally used the machine
gun Fidel Castro had given him, and died a martyr.
The official story disseminated by
the Pinochet government after the coup is slightly different. According to their media, Salvador Allende
committed suicide in his office during the final hour of the coup against
him. While this story is less damaging
not only to the Pinochet regime's image in history, but also to Allende's image
as a pacifist, I have never believed it.
I repeat it here only to show how different histories are embraced by
different parties to justify their present.
As I said before, we remember those persons and events, those stories,
which reflect a part of who we are, or would like to be, or are afraid of
becoming.
Why does this story about Salvador
Allende resonate so strongly with me?
What does it say to me, to my life?
Where in it have I caught a glimpse of my reflection?
During the years when I first heard
this story while growing up in the commune, my parents and the other members of
our community were constantly preparing for the Revolution which everyone
believed was only a few years away. The
socialist principles of class equality and resistance to imperialism were
ingrained in my mind like the ten commandments carved in stone. In fact, my earliest memory is that when my
parents used to tuck my brother and sister and me into bed each night, the last
thing they would do after singing us each a lullaby was to say
"Goodnight. Sleep tight. Don't let the bed bugs bite. And three cheers for everyone...except the
imperialists!" We would all
gleefully shout the last three words together; then they kissed us and put out
the lights.
Yet while preparing for war, my
parents also were teaching us about peace.
We traveled the country to attend demonstrations against the Viet Nam
war, often winding up getting briefly arrested and then released, occasionally
having to flee from police firing tear gas or mace. At Harvard, where my father teaches philosophy, there was a large
scale student protest movement. During
this period my father vocally supported the students in all of their most
radical actions. He also insisted on
teaching classes in Marxist philosophy, to which Harvard responded by trying,
unsuccessfully, to have him removed from the faculty. I remember the outbreak of the Harvard Square riots, seeing a
student get hit in the face by a police billy club, then my mother yelling
something like "We've got to get out of here!" and dragging us into
the subway.
This exposure, at such a young age,
to both the brutality of the government and the non-violence of the
demonstrators, made a strong impression on me.
Thus, although I lived in a revolutionary environment, I became, like
Salvador Allende, a committed pacifist.
That my parents did not attempt to dissuade me from this conviction,
even though it appeared to contradict elements of their political theory, I
think sprang from their sense that it would lead to more harmonious relations
between my brother and me, and from their unresolved doubts about their own
program.
I grew older, the war ended, and
with it the anti-war movement. My
parents retreated from their commitment to the Revolution and to
Communism. They left the Party and my
father returned to teaching Philosophy of Science, the area in which he had
earned his reputation. By the time
Nixon resigned, my parent's politics had become decidedly liberal and we had
moved out of the commune into an apartment in North Cambridge. Yet I was still passionately committed to
the radical ideals which my parents had instilled in me. In school each day, when the rest of the
class would rise to say the Pledge of Allegiance, I would cite my
constitutional right not to participate and walk out. I continued this practice throughout my public school
career. And I still remember sitting up
in our apartment watching TV the night that Nixon resigned, seeing him break
into tears as he left the podium. I
shouted for joy.
Shortly thereafter we moved into
another apartment in the decidedly more conservative suburb of Arlington. My first day at the local public school set
the tone for things to come. I was
beginning the second grade. Our
teacher, Mrs. Gillespie, was a shriveled up prune of a woman with a decidedly
sour disposition. She reacted with
anger when I raised my objection to the Pledge and moved to leave the
room. A minor confrontation ensued, in
which she attempted to tell me that I had to say the Pledge and I responded by
citing not only the constitution but the specific ruling of the U.S. Supreme
Court upholding the right of public school students to refuse to
participate. I am sure I also invited
her to call the principal, the school commissioner, my parents, and possibly
the President if she wanted to. I won
this little battle, but as I walked out of the room I heard her saying
something about "Commies."
Our war was not over.
Later that day, we received a school
snack before going out to recess. I was
near the front of the line, and when Mrs. Gillespie handed me my box of milk I
told her that I did not drink milk. This time she insisted firmly, taunting me to cite the court case
about school milk. As this was
happening, the other children in line behind me were growing quite impatient,
for I was preventing them from going out.
Yet I really didn't drink milk at home, for I hated the taste of
it. Mrs. Gillespie was shrieking at me
like a harpy. The other kids began to
taunt me. Near tears, I drank the foul
milk, which tasted like chalk in my mouth.
Once outside, none of the other kids would play with me. "Commie!" they called me,
repeating Mrs. Gillespie's remark.
As I left the school that day, I was
ambushed by a group of boys from my class.
"Commie! Commie!" they
shouted in unison. One of them punched
me. Another pushed me to the ground.
They kicked me and spat on me and laughed at me, but I did not fight
back for I still believed in pacifism.
Eventually, I managed to get to my feet and run crying to my home.
My mother wrote me a note strongly
upbraiding Mrs. Gillespie for the incident with the milk, reminding her that
some children are highly allergic to dairy products and that her action could
have caused me great harm. After that,
I did not have to say the Pledge of Allegiance or drink milk in school, but the
other children's hatred of me, their joy in using me as an unresisting
scapegoat, grew day by day. Thus I
became outcast from the games and adventures of my classmates, alienated from
them by social and political orientation and by an intellectual precociousness
which they did not share. Every chance
they got, whenever our teacher was distracted, they would pick on me in some
way. Each day for the next two years I
had to leave the school by the back entrance and sneak home to avoid being
beaten by other children. These were
the most unhappy years of my life.
One day in the fourth grade I found
myself surrounded about a block from home by eight or ten boys from my class
and the next grade up. One of them
jumped on me, wrestled me to the ground and began punching me. I wriggled free, ran a few steps across a
lawn, was tackled again by another. I
broke away and ran up the steps towards the front door of the house, thinking
to ring the doorbell and get an adult to help.
But one of the students chasing me pushed me from behind as I cleared
the last step. My left arm sailed
through the glass door on the front of the house. In shock, I pulled it back and looked at my wrist. There were two huge gashes in it and I could
see the major veins and arteries clearly.
Blood was everywhere. I screamed
and ran down the street towards my house.
Nobody tried to stop me.
The immediate result of this
incident was that I got twenty-eight stitches in my arm, which left two large
scars that are still clearly visible today.
Yet it also had another effect on me.
When I returned to school the next day, the other students were praising
the boy who had pushed me through the door.
Rage and hatred toward them seethed inside me like never before. For a few weeks, while my stitches were in,
the others did not harass me directly and I simply avoided them as before. But as soon as my wound was healed there was
another incident.
This time it occurred at school,
during recess. The other kids were
playing four square, and I stepped into line to take a turn. The boy in front of me turned and said that
I could not play with them, then moved to push me out of line. Something inside of me snapped. I punched him in the face as hard as I
could, again and again. He was so
shocked by my unprecedented act of resistance that he did not respond. Blood appeared from his nose and his mouth
as my teacher moved to intervene.
My mother has since told me that my
teachers were in fact quite pleased by this turn of events, for the escalating
abuse that I had been suffering had caused them great concern. My mother also said that on that particular
day, after I had punched the other boy, my school Principal called her to tell
her of the event. According to the
Principal, when I marched into his office the first words I said were "I
punched him right in the kisser!"
My principal told my mother it was one of the hardest things he had ever
had to do in his job to stop himself from smiling at that moment. After that the other kids left me alone, and
sometimes even befriended me. They also
found someone else to pick on.
At last I, like Salvador Allende,
had abandoned my pacifism under fire.
Two other times in later years, before I left the public school system
for the safety of a private high school, I was threatened by fellow students and
both times I reacted instantly, instinctively, with violence. Neither of them ever bothered me again. But in my heart I still felt a pacifist, and
a part of me regretted those acts, regretted their necessity.
As the years passed and I grew up, I
became less interested in national politics, but I remained passionately
committed to revolution. I came to see
myself not as a communist or a socialist, but as an anarchist. I rebelled against all forms of control of
human consciousness, against all restrictions on human freedom and
expression. I discovered that the most
oppressive force in society is alienation, by which we are all divorced from
one another, by which the media conspire to focus our attention on the
fantasies of commercialization and so called "national issues" at the
expense our real lives. I discovered
that touching others, openly and with love, affirming one another's freedom,
beauty and strength, is more radical than any political campaign. My commitment to these ideals led me to flow
through the transformations of puberty into a freely bisexual orientation
towards life.
At sixteen I left high school and my
parents to live in household of radical gay men, most of them quite a bit older
than myself. Though I stayed with them
only six months, this was an immensely positive experience for me, helping to
affirm in me the rightness of my ideals.
Twelve years later, the men I lived with in that house are still some of
my closest friends. Subsequently, I
lived with my first girlfriend for almost two years, learning what I could with
her about the dynamics of heterosexual intimacy. Over time, these twin threads of closeness to men and to women
would become thoroughly interwoven in my life.
In the mid eighties I moved to San
Francisco, where I lived with a beautiful woman and man, Sumi and Tom, for the
better part of two years. I also made
many other friends there, and became active in the gay community. Due to my openness, I fell in love many
times. Unfortunately, due to the AIDS
epidemic, far too many of those who I loved would be taken from me in a very
short time. By the time I left San
Francisco with Sumi, to return to Boston, someone I knew was dying at least
once a month and I could not bear to watch it any more. Although I avoided becoming infected, I was
definitely crippled by HIV.
Even in Boston I could not escape
the tragedy. For by this time one of my
closest friends from my teenage years had also contracted AIDS. And I would soon begin to make new friends
in Boston who were also HIV positive.
In the midst of this, our house mate, who was also one of my oldest
friends, died of a drug overdose. Two
years later, struggling with mental illness, Sumi committed suicide.
But though I have had to accept
these losses, my life continues to be enriched by the people I know and the
people I once knew. New friends, as
beautiful as the old, have come to comfort and teach me, and to share what I
have to offer. And the other old
friends of mine who have survived these years with me, both in Boston and in
San Francisco, have become much more tightly bonded to me as result. Together we still carry on the spirit of
those who left.
In April of last year I attended the
National March for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Rights in Washington
D.C. with two wonderful new friends, Damian and Rebecca. The day was beautiful, hot and sunny, and
the queers were estimated at as many as a million strong. We covered the Mall with our colorful
pageantry. Damian and Rebecca and I
marched with a group called the Radical Fairies, and several of my friends from
the West Coast were there with us. I
was in a state of ecstasy.
As we reached the grass of the Mall
at the end of the March, Rebecca told me she had never seen me so happy. Then we encountered my old friend Mitch, who
I had known from the time when I met Sumi.
Seeing him reminded me of Sumi, and how much she would have liked it
there at the March. I burst into
violent, uncontrollable tears. I cried
for a long time and Mitch and Damian both hugged me and tried to comfort me,
but I just kept sobbing. Then I looked
at Rebecca, and even though she had never known Sumi, she was crying just as
hard, crying for me and my sadness. I
could feel in that moment just how strongly Rebecca loved me and it stopped my
tears, stilled my heart. She touched me
in that moment, and I knew her touch as the essence of revolution, the
revolution which I believe in, which requires not force but love. By Rebecca's act of love, I was healed.
Afterwards, Rebecca and I walked
over to where part of the AIDS quilt was laid out on the mall and I wrote
Sumi's name on one of the panels.
Looking out over all those names, all those beautiful people who could
have been there with us that day, making our company so much greater, both
Rebecca and I cried again for a time, until Damian brought us some Kleenex to
dry our eyes. Then we made our way
slowly, reluctantly, back towards the Capitol dome and the train back to
Boston.
There are days when I have felt that
by leaving San Francisco when I did, to escape the emotional devastation I was
suffering there, I took a different path than Salvador Allende. For he refused to escape, to fight another
day, when the Campesinos came to close the door on his government. Even if he did use the gun which Castro gave
him to kill a few of his enemies, in a very real sense Allende committed
suicide.
Although in my pessimistic moods I
think that my revolution, like Allende's, may be doomed to failure, I am
unwilling to give up just because the sky grows dark. Perhaps Allende stayed behind not because he did not want to
continue the struggle, but because he could not withstand the grief he felt at
seeing so much he had worked for destroyed, so many of his comrades
killed. In this, I also feel connected
to Allende, for I understand grief and how it can drown one. If Rebecca and my other friends had not
pulled me from the waters when they went over my head, I too might be a name on
the quilt, a person remembered in someone else's story.
Though I still love the story of
Salvador Allende, I feel sorry that there was no one who could save him as my
friends saved me. I think that if he
had fled he might have found another field on which to wage his struggle, and
perhaps also another comrade to dry his tears.
I think that Salvador Allende--socialist, pacifist, father--might have
learned not only to love the revolution, but that the truest revolution is
love.
May 3, 1993
Death
Twice, best friend lost,
I cried. What is it
To die? No answer.
Ribbons of cloud in skies
Arched high above life's imperfect...
River below flows on
Under rusting bridges, over rocks;
Dead trees, Styrofoam cups, debris
Carried off downstream.
Death, my friend,
Reminds me
Not to end in this way.
Time is only
Only enough for...
Death is my friend. I avoid
Her, like the plague, as they say,
Like AIDS, but faces
Of those others who touched her
Still burn. I can
Know her too, if I desire
That freedom I deny
Myself,
That dangerous embrace.
Twice, best friend lost,
Mind aflame, rage and love,
Images of him, of her, of us
Together again
Swirled like tea in teacup rapidly stirred,
Then stilled. Reflected in tea
I saw teacup containing me.
Breath rippled my reflection.
The cup and I stayed
The constant chaos
From which changes emerge.
I am the North Star
At Big Dipper's end.
Consciousness is a vessel
From which universe poured stars
To shine in endless eyes.
If a star is unborn,
How can it die? My best friends
Are a circle, flowing
Through me, leaf and star.
Beginingless is endless is
What we are?
Only in dying, life.
-Joshua Putnam