Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America by Tanya Harmer (review)

Tanya Harmer's illuminating book explores the life of Beatriz Allende, the oldest daughter of Salvador Allende, within the tumultuous setting of Cold War politics, widespread revolutionary ideals, and dramatic changes in Chile and Latin America in the late 1950s and 1960s. Her richly detailed narrative makes the era come alive through the person of Beatriz, a complex woman who was ahead of her times in some ways and a product of those times in other ways. Harmer aims to show that women were key actors in Chile, although many were "offstage" (1). She analyzes the era's prevalent gendered notions of a woman's role as primarily motherhood, while also showing how Beatriz and many other women resisted restricting themselves to that role and pushed to be included in all aspects of the political struggle, including taking up arms.

Like others of her generation, Beatriz was raised in an environment of middle-class privilege, but she dedicated her life to combating poverty, inequality, and injustice, first through her medical practice and then through her political work. Beatriz, like her father, was a staunch defender of the Cuban Revolution. Harmer explains that there was worldwide sympathy for the Cuban Revolution after 1959, extending to the centrist Christian Democrats in Chile (36). Beatriz was part of an anti-imperialist cohort of Latin American youth that admired the Cuban model and believed that armed struggle was inevitable and necessary. But Beatriz was limited by—as she also challenged—gender roles and expectations, as well as her complicated status as the daughter of a celebrated political leader who believed in a democratic, constitutional road to socialism. Beatriz straddled two worlds in the 1960s, between her participation in the institutional politics of the Socialist Party and her clandestine involvement with a guerrilla movement in Bolivia (chapter 5). She gravitated toward the radical wing of the Socialist Party and the newly formed Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (Revolutionary Left Movement). Events in Chile and worldwide convinced her and others that powerful elites would never accept a peaceful transition to socialism. At the same time, Beatriz respected her father and worked on his campaigns, remaining loyal and refraining from publicly challenging him (e.g., 152–54).

Harmer deconstructs Beatriz's relationship with the Cuban intelligence officer Luis Fernández Oña, whom she eventually married. The author conducted a number of interviews with Luis and concluded that both sympathetic and antagonistic accounts of their relationship have been inaccurate. Beatriz was neither a tool for the Cubans to be close to Salvador Allende, nor a victimized wife whose husband was the sole cause of her suicide (6). She and Luis shared a closeness and a commitment to revolutionary change, and Beatriz willingly functioned as an intermediary between Cuba and Chile.

Harmer provides much interesting detail, weaving together the political and the personal. The author had access to Beatriz's correspondence and interviewed many of her friends and colleagues. Harmer discusses in depth little-known episodes such as Beatriz's key role in assisting Bolivian and Cuban insurgents who had fought with Che Guevara, and facilitating their escape from Bolivia into Chile (with her father's consent and collaboration, 121–22). During Allende's presidency Beatriz served in government as her father's private secretary, as a bridge between sectors of the left, and as a trusted adviser and liaison (165). On the day of the coup, Beatriz, seven months pregnant, insisted on staying with Allende in La Moneda to fight until the end. Allende, however, ordered the women in the building to leave.

Beatriz settled in Cuba with Luis and their daughter, where she became a leading voice of resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship and managed an international campaign of solidarity with Chile. Harmer argues that "perhaps her greatest legacy is her work in building up a global solidarity campaign after 1973, not with arms but with typewritten words, administrative toil, and diplomacy" (3...