On the morning of September 11, Salvador Allende found himself trapped in the presidential palace known as La Moneda as the military launched its putsch. One of the first acts of the golpistas (coup
plot-ters) was to silence all pro-Allende broadcast media and replace their programming with martial music and military communiqués. By midmorning, Radio Magallanes, the station operated by the Partido Comunista de Chile (Chilean Communist Party), was the only loyal-ist station still transmitting its own programming. At around 9:00 a.m., Allende, el compañero presidente (the comrade president), deliv-ered his now-famous final address to the nation on Radio Magallanes before giving his life defending the presidential palace from the mili-tary’s onslaught. The skeleton crew staffing the studios of Magallanes had the presence of mind to record Allende’s extemporaneous remarks and spirit the recording out of the country to be heard in the rest of the world.1 His words are still remembered by those Chileans who supported him until the end and who survived the years of repression that followed his ousting:
Radio Magallanes will surely be silenced and the calm metal of my voice will not reach you. It doesn’t matter. You will continue to hear it. I will always be at your side. At least my memory will be that of a dignified man that was loyal to his country. The people should defend themselves, but they should not get themselves needlessly killed. The people should not allow themselves to be crushed or shot, but neither can they humiliate themselves.
Workers of my country, I have faith in Chile and her desti-ny. Other men will overcome this gray and bitter moment when treachery attempts to impose itself. Rest assured that, sooner rather than later, the great boulevards will once again open up and free men will walk down them to build a better society.
Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!
These are my final words and I’m certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain. I am certain that it will be, at the least, a moral lesson that will punish criminality, cowardice, and treason.2
Not long after the broadcast of Allende’s final address, the Chil-ean Air Force began bombing the presidential palace, and military personnel raided the studios of Radio Magallanes. Just before it was forced off the air, however, the station broadcast an emblematic song from the repertoire of the Chilean nueva canción (New Song), a
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cal genre that had emerged in the latter half of the 1960s and that featured socially conscious lyrics accompanied by folkloric instru-mentation and vocal arrangements (see Chaparro, Seves, and Spener 2013; González, Ohlsen, and Rolle 2009; McSherry 2015; Morris 2014;
and Rodríguez Musso 1988). The song “No nos moverán” was per-formed by the group Tiemponuevo (NewTime) of the Pacific port city of Valparaíso,3 who recorded it on the Discoteca del Cantar Popu-lar ([DICAP]; Singing of the People Collection) label operated by the Juventudes Comunistas (Communist Youth). The musical promoter René Largo Farías (1977: 27), who had founded the famous peña folc-lórica (folk music club) Chile Ríe y Canta (Chile Laughs and Sings) and who at that time worked for the Allende government in the Ofi-cina de Informaciones y Radiodifusión (Office of Information and Radio Broadcasting), located in La Moneda, remembers hearing “No nos moverán” as Magallanes went off the air:
The transmission plants of all the government radio sta-tions had already been bombarded, silencing their voices in a criminal operation without precedent in the history of the American continent. Only Radio Magallanes remains on the air. I hear Guillermo Ravest [director of the station]
calling on the people to defend themselves. The song “No nos moverán” is heard. It is suddenly interrupted. . . . The Hawker-Hunters [British jet bombers] begin to whistle across the skies of Santiago. (Farías 1977: 27)4
Guillermo Ravest, the director of Radio Magallanes, has this memory of the song and how it came to be played on that fateful September day:
I didn’t play any significant role in the popularizing of “No nos moverán.” I was the director of Radio Magallanes from 1972 until the eleventh of September of 1973. Of about thirty radio stations broadcasting in Santiago at the time, barely six supported the government of Salvador Allende. . . . Of course our programming featured almost all the songs of struggle, protest, politics, and bearing witness, including “No nos moverán.” It was played more and more often with the
grow-ing intensity of the undercover actions of the United States and the counterrevolution fomented by the Chilean right: fas-cism and fascists (Patria y Libertad) [Fatherland and Liberty]
and by domestic and foreign business groups.
Logically, once the military coup was underway, the song
“No nos moverán” was broadcast on that September 11, 1973, multiple times. In this way, directly and indirectly, we defi-antly responded with the song to the coup and the military communiqué that ordered all the pro-Allende radio stations to cease broadcasting. If we didn’t, we would be attacked by both ground and air forces. We were the station that most re-sisted the leaders of the coup by broadcasting the last speech of the constitutional president, Salvador Allende. (Guillermo Ravest, pers. comm., September 28, 2012)
The lyrics of “No nos moverán” were especially poignant as a final, defiant statement of faith in Chile’s experiment with socialism on the day it came to a tragic close. Although they had been writ-ten several years earlier, they foretold the coming of this day, though without the expectation of such a quick and total defeat:
No, no, no nos moverán No, no, they will not move us No, no, no nos moverán No, no, they will not move us Y él que no crea Let he who doesn’t believe it que haga la prueba: put it to the test:
¡No nos moverán! They will not move us!
Unidos en sindicato, United in a labor union,
¡no nos moverán! They will not move us!
Unidos en sindicato, United in a labor union,
¡no nos moverán! They will not move us!
Y él que no crea Let he who doesn’t believe it que haga la prueba: put it to the test:
¡No nos moverán! They will not move us!
Construyendo el socialismo . . . Building socialism . . .
Ni con un golpe de estado . . . Not even with a coup d’état . . . In his history of the cultural policies and practices of Allende’s Unidad Popular (UP) government, César Albornoz (2005: 175)
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lights that the final broadcast of this song by Radio Magallanes marked not only the defeat of a political project but also the end of a cultural era that rose in tandem with it. “No nos moverán” was, he notes, the last song linked with the Chilean New Song that would be heard on the radio for many years to come. Allende’s overthrow also ushered in the era of neoliberalism as a model for social organization and devel-opment for the majority of the world’s population, as the economic advisers to the new military government used the regime’s extraordi-nary powers of repression to impose policies inspired by the monetar-ist, “free-market” teachings of University of Chicago economist Milton Friedman (N. Klein 2008; Letelier 1976). In fact, it was Pinochet, not Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan, who was the first head of state to adopt the set of policies that eventually came to be known as “the Washington Consensus,” so called because of their enforcement by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, both headquartered in the U.S. capital (Babb 2012).