The Secretary of Foreign Relations, Alicia Bárcenas -who was also ambassador to Chile- led the commemoration ceremony for Allende, victim of the fascist coup d’état perpetrated by General Augusto Pinochet with the backing of the United States government.

In addition to Isabel, José Miguel Insulza, former Secretary General of the Organization of American States, the Chilean ambassador to Mexico, Beatriz Sánchez, and numerous intellectuals from the southern country, some of whom have still lived here since the military coup, were present at the event.

Bárcenas said that this criminal act opened a scar in the history of Chile, but also in the history of our entire continent, and she described the coup as a rupture of the constitutional order that we have not yet been able to deeply heal.

I think that is where our responsibility lies because we, from a distance, were observing Salvador Allende’s transformative project, the chancellor considered.

She recalled that Allende came to Mexico in 1972 at a very difficult stage because we were coming out of the 1968 movement (Tlatelolco massacre), the repression of Corpus Christi in 1971, that is, a very bloody moment for Mexico as well.

And the arrival of President Allende gave us hope to the young people who were in these social movements.

He inspired us to have a social vocation and showed us that another world was possible based on democracy, because he was the first socialist president in the world who won democratically.

For this reason, from the government of Mexico we will accompany these commemorations, and we do so from the heart and from the soul of a people who, like the Chileans, revere their historical memory and pave a path for the future.

And she concluded with a quote from Allende: “Someday America will have a voice of the continent, a voice of a united people, a voice that will be respected and heard because it will be the voice of the people who are masters of their own destiny.”

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