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