On 11 September 1973, President Salvador Allende of Chile, the world's first and only democratically elected Marxist president was deposed in a violent coup d'etat. Early in the morning the phone lines to the Moneda (the presidential palace) were cut, loyal army officers were arrested and shortly afterwards bombs from four Hawker Hunter jets began slamming into the Moneda. Allende refused to leave his post, making broadcasts to encourage the Chilean people till the last radio station was taken out. He was eventually found dead, with the gold-plated AK-47 (a gift from Fidel Castro) by his side.How he died remains a subject of controversy. The coup had been in the works for months, even years, before it actually happened. In fact, the moment Allende's electoral victory in 1970 became a possibility, domestic and international forces were mobilised to secure a prompt and dramatic end to the Chilean experiment, known as the v.a chilena.
Why did this happen? In the 1950s there were already signs that the economics designed by J. M. Keynes in Europe, President Roosevelt in America and Ra.l Prebisch in South America to counter the Great Depression of the 1930s years were running out of steam. And by the early 1970s, it was clear that the global economy was entering a period of crisis with no clear end in sight.Communism was perceived to be on the march and in that intense Cold War atmosphere, Chile was for Henry Kissinger, a 'dagger pointing at the heart of Antarctica' while its people - who had elected Allende precisely because of his programme of non-violent and radical social transformation - were deemed to be 'irresponsible'. Story of a Death Foretold, based on new documents and transcripts, is a radical retelling of the coup. In the course of the book, Guardiola-Rivera explores many overlooked aspects of the story including the importance of Project Cybersyn - a massive state of the art, if unwieldy, computer system, intended to make management of the economy more responsive and rapid and which created a form of social networking that predated and resonates with social messaging used for political purposes.
Such statistical information is today part of normal business and government administration but then was revolutionary in its ambition. Allende was far ahead of his time in many ways, and in this new history Guardiola-Rivera shows how his legacy has lessons for the world today, from the uprisings of the Arab Spring to the desperate attempts of the EU to manage the consequences of the 2008 crash.