Salvador Allende | Unisex Organic Oversized T-shirt

Material: 100% organic combed ring-spun cotton

Fabric weight: 200 g/m²

Fit: loose, with dropped shoulders

Set-in sleeves

1 × 1 ribbed neckline

Self-fabric neck tape at the inside back

The fabric of this product is certified for its organic cotton content.

Alejandra de la Torre depicts Salvador Allende in a fresh, vibrant drawing. Yet at the left tip of his glasses, a cross disrupts the portrait’s vitality.

This motif, which recurs throughout the artist’s work, takes on the meaning of a target here. For United Souls, it marks Allende as the man imperialism sought to eliminate.

The drawing’s power lies in this tension between the brilliance of its colours and the sign of a looming threat. A vivid portrait that passes on the memory of Allende and the political project others sought to destroy.

THE CHILEAN ROAD TO SOCIALISM
SALVADOR ALLENDE (1908–1973) – CHILE

Salvador Allende was the first president democratically elected on a socialist programme: the famous “Chilean road to socialism”. He was the first leader of a non-communist country to be democratically elected on a Marxist platform.

The central aim of his programme was to redistribute wealth through the nationalisation of natural resources, including copper. This was one of the reasons Richard Nixon’s administration involved the United States in the coup of 11 September 1973, which overthrew the government and installed Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

In the radio address Allende managed to broadcast from La Moneda, the presidential palace, as it came under bombardment by the coup forces, he expressed his confidence in the future shortly before giving his life. The seeds sown in the consciousness of the Chilean people could not be uprooted by force.

Half a century later, in May 2021, the Chilean people voted for radical structural reform and an end to neoliberalism. It was one of the left’s greatest victories since the end of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship.