"Luis Corvalan; rose to lead Communists in Chile; at 93" by Douglas Martin, New York Times | July 30, 2010
NEW YORK — Luis Corvalán — longtime leader of the Chilean Communist Party, whose support was critical to the rise in 1970 of Salvador Allende, the first elected Marxist head of state in the Western Hemisphere — died in Santiago July 21. He was 93....
The party, which grew to be the largest communist party in Latin America, was the backbone of the leftist coalition led by Allende, a doctor and leader of the Socialist Party. Without communist support, Allende’s narrow victory in the 1970 presidential election would have been arithmetically impossible.
Allende, who nationalized Chile’s industries once in office, committed suicide as he was being overthrown in a military coup in 1973.
CIA gave him the choice?
Mr. Corvalán, a close adviser to Allende, fled after the coup, and his only son died under torture while refusing to reveal his father’s whereabouts....
Related: Chile's Catholic House of Horrors
After the Allende government fell and Mr. Corvalán fled, the military authorities, hunting him, seized his son, Alberto. He was tortured but remained silent and died of his wounds.
Obituaries in the Chilean press said Mr. Corvalán left a wife and an unspecified number of daughters.
Mr. Corvalán was soon found and imprisoned. In October 1973, reports that he was about to be executed set off a raucous debate at the United Nations. The Chilean delegate insisted that no sentence had yet been imposed. Mr. Corvalán was later convicted of high treason.
In 1974, while he was being held at a Chilean prison, the Soviet Union awarded him the Order of Lenin and made his release a cause célèbre by repeatedly bringing up the subject in international forums.
With the United States acting as intermediary, a prisoner swap was arranged.
Another spy swap?
Soviet dissident Vladimir K. Bukovsky, who had documented that nonconformists were being sent to Soviet psychiatric hospitals, was released by the Kremlin and settled in England.
Yeah, good thing that will never happen here in AmeriKa.
Mr. Corvalán, released by Chile, went to Moscow and there lived the life of a VIP. According to some reports, he had plastic surgery and returned to Chile incognito in the 1980s to organize resistance to the Chilean government.
He reemerged publicly in Chile in 1989, the year General Augusto Pinochet lost a bid to retain power....
Also see: Chileans Cheer Return of Pinochet
Is that what killed him?
