Allende

Alegria, a friend of Chile's socialist president Salvador Allende, who was murdered in 1973, campaigned for him in three presidential elections and was Allende's cultural attache in Washington, D.C. This thinly fictionalized biography, complete with notes and bibliography, hews to the facts of Allende's life, adding real and imagined conversations, mood and texture. The result is a valuable, moving portrait that avoids hagiography. Alegria, a professor emeritus at Stanford and author of The Funhouse , portrays the Chilean leader as a man of explosive temperament whose program of democratic socialism was subverted by CIA dirty tricks, a reactionary oligarchy and his own naive faith: ``He wanted to make revolution, but with the unanimous consent of all involved.'' The CIA, as Alegria observes, invested $6 million in an effort to destabilize Allende's administration, and U.S. corporations abetted the right-wing, dictatorial junta that overthrew him. Writing with a lyrical lilt and a keen grasp of Chile's economic plight, Alegria follows Allende's transformation from medical student to activist, senator and democratically elected president. A new preface and postscript by the author and interviews with Allende's widow and colleagues enhance the value of this chronicle, first published in Chile in 1989. Illustrations not seen by PW. (May)