Chile coup turned widow into political force:HORTENSIA BUSSI de Allende, who has died aged 94 in Valparaiso, was the widow of Salvador Allende, the socialist president of Chile from 1970 to 1973.
Known by everyone in Chile as “La Tencha” (from Hortensia), she became the symbolic rallying figure of the Chilean opposition to the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet in the years after the 1973 coup in which her husband died. She lived for most of those years in Mexico but travelled the world to campaign against the Pinochet regime, finally returning to Chile in 1988.
Hortensia Bussi was born in Valparaiso, a Chilean naval port, to a well-off family.
She met Allende, the socialist senator for Valparaiso, in the aftermath of the Chillan earthquake of January 1939 which killed more than 30,000 people, when he was minister of health in the Popular Front government of Pedro Aguirre Cerda.
A proud, attractive and aristocratic figure, Hortensia Bussi was a non-political wife, but she accompanied him in his unsuccessful campaigns for the presidency in 1958 and 1964. She was a delightful and entertaining woman. With Allende’s eventual triumph in 1970, Hortensia became the first lady of Chile, a task that she performed with elegance and grace amid the turbulent politics of the time.
The determination of the US government of Richard Nixon to overthrow the Allende government, coupled with the fierce opposition of conservative forces in Chile, created an atmosphere of permanent political crisis.
Although “La Tencha” was the first lady, it was no secret in Chile that Allende spent half the week with his diary secretary and longtime lover Miriam Contreras.
The 1973 coup brought bombing raids on the palace and on the Allende home at Tomas Moro. Hortensia Bussi survived these attacks at her home, but her husband committed suicide in the palace while under siege.
She was flown by the military to a secret burial for her husband and left immediately for Mexico, where she was greeted by the entire cabinet of President Luis Echevarria.
The coup that overthrew Allende was in many ways the making of Hortensia Bussi. She had lived for a long time in the shadow of her unfaithful husband, and the coup turned her into a significant political figure in her own right.
As Allende’s widow, she became a famous campaigner for human rights, as well as a symbol that helped to unify Chile’s fractious exiles, an immense diaspora. She travelled to east and western Europe, to the Soviet Union and China, and to the countries of Latin America that broke free from military embrace. Everywhere she addressed meetings and conferences to keep alive the spirit of the Chilean democratic tradition. She unveiled road signs and streets named after her husband, and was even a candidate in 1977 to be rector of Glasgow University.
The US was less welcoming, frequently denying her a visa and then being forced to give way after legal challenges. She remained an indefatigable campaigner, returning to Chile in 1988 as the country prepared to reject Pinochet’s rule in a referendum. Elections in 1990 brought a new coalition government of which the Socialist party was a member.
She settled back in Chile but played no further part in public life. She was rarely seen outside her home in the subsequent two decades. Yet thousands attended her funeral last week, including President Michelle Bachelet.
Hortensia Bussi had three daughters with Allende: Isabel, Carmen Paz and Beatriz. Carmen Paz and Isabel, a Socialist party deputy in Congress, survive their mother.
Mercedes Hortensia Bussi Soto de Allende: born July 22nd, 1914; died June 18th, 2009