Art in war. The militancy of Chilean allendist literature

The 1973 coup d'etat against the Chilean government of Salvador Allende and the subsequent dictatorship of Pinochet represented strategic events of a international dirty war, conducted and financed by the USA against the danger of a Marxist epidemic. First of all, the contribution clarifies the particularity of this total war, conducted - in the so-called "Chilean Laboratory" -with the use of brutal violence and of propaganda. This war tortured and eliminated an entire generation of young people, but their revolutionary dream was not desaparecido. Before the dictatorship, in fact, Chile experienced an incredible cultural ferment: muralists, musicians, filmmakers and writers supported Allende and grew up with him, so much so that they could be called "Allende artists". Their artistic militancy resisted the cultural blackout imposed by the military and managed to spread -both underground and in exile -Allende's cultural legacy. After a brief analytical review of the main areas of Allende's art, the contribution focuses on the militancy of memory in Allende's literature.