Brasilia, October 15 (RHC)-- The virtual International Meeting of the São Paulo Forum paid tribute this Thursday to Salvador Allende in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of his victory and of the Popular Unity in Chile after the 1970 elections.

"Allende's legacy constitutes in the present an unavoidable framework, through a present view, to continue the struggle of the peoples against neoliberalism," said the executive secretary of the Sao Paulo Forum, Monica Valente.

Valente affirmed that the 1000 day Presidency of Allende "demonstrated the unity of all the forces, of the left, progressive, popular, under a peculiar socialist program at the end of the 20th century."

The presidents attending the Forum of São Paulo agreed in their messages in the virtual event that the celebration of half a century of the triumph of the Popular Unity, headed by Salvador Allende, should serve to seek lessons from the events that are happening today on the planet.

The President of Cuba, Miguel Díaz Canel, defended the thesis of vindicating socialism as a mechanism of hope for the peoples, the main legacy inherited from the Chilean leader and which serves today to confront the neoliberal system in the continent.

He stressed the importance of the peoples before the advance of capital and the articulation of the struggle to overthrow the imperial onslaught, recalling that 50 years ago the rise of socialist ideas in the continent advocated by Chile unleashed a fascist wave with crimes included.

"Chile entered the dark night of fascism, which extended its claws throughout the Southern Cone, under the cover of Operation Condor, that is, the transnational of terror. The coup plotters imported schools and Yankee methods to fulfill the mandate of the North. Neoliberalism began to impose itself as the magic formula for development. But no lie lasts too long. The Chilean model of the Chicago Boys, sold as successful, has ended up being as despised by its people as the coup management of Augusto Pinochet," indicated Díaz Canel.

He added as a lesson: "It is a duty and an opportunity to stop, even for a few minutes and from a distance, what that government meant, what Popular Unity meant, what the articulation of the forces of the left meant around a socialist ideal and by what ways and methods imperialism managed to break it, imposing by blood and fire an economic model that excludes the majorities and represses them even in their so-called democratic periods."