Lea Börgerding ha incontrato per Jacobin Magazin Tanya Hamer, autrice di una biografia della terzogenita del presidente socialista cileno Salvador Allende intitolata Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America. Nel libro, la Hamer, ripercorrendo la vicenda umana e politica di Beatriz – detta Tati – e indagando in particolare il rapporto con suo padre, con Cuba e con la dittatura, prova a far luce sulle influenze della Guerra Fredda sulla vita dei giovani e soprattutto delle giovani donne negli anni sessanta e settanta in America Latina.

I became curious about Beatriz’s life while researching my first book on the international history of Chile during the left-wing Unidad Popular coalition government. Based on my sources, I could tell that Beatriz — or “Tati” as she was known to her friends and family — was an important political figure in Chile during the early 1970s: not only was she key in facilitating relations between Chile and Cuba, and very close to her father, Salvador Allende, then president; but she also participated in internationalist revolutionary ventures in Latin America, maintained close ties with figures like Fidel Castro, and was married to a Cuban intelligence official.

She struck me as an extraordinary woman, who lived a remarkable revolutionary life at a young age and held positions of significance. Yet nothing had been written about her; Beatriz Allende was largely invisible in history books. Partly, this was to do with her death by suicide in 1977, a taboo subject both for revolutionaries and Catholics. But it was also undoubtedly because she was a woman.

For the most part, histories of revolution in Cold-War Latin America had focused on the leaders of revolutionary parties and insurgents who fought in guerrilla campaigns — the overwhelming majority of whom were men. I wanted to know what it had meant to be a female revolutionary in the age of Che Guevara, including the constraints and opportunities women like Beatriz had faced.

Immagine da el disconcierto.