Beatriz Allende


Beatriz Ximena Allende Bussi was a Chilean Socialist politician, revolutionary and surgeon. She was the daughter of former president of Chile Salvador Allende and his wife, Hortensia Bussi.

Biography

Known affectionately as Tati to her family and friends, she studied medicine at the University of Concepción and graduated as a surgeon. She married Cuban diplomat Luis Fernandez de Oña and had two children, Maya Alejandra Fernández Allende and Alejandro Salvador Allende Fernández.
When her father was elected as the president of Chile on 4 September 1970, Beatriz became his closest advisor and collaborator, networking with elements of the Chilean and international Left. During Pinochet's coup, despite being pregnant, she stayed with her father in La Moneda Presidential Palace, leaving only when President Allende ordered all women and children to evacuate. She was forced into exile with her mother, sisters and daughter to Cuba. While in exile in Havana, she served as executive secretary of the Anti-Imperialist Solidarity Committee.
Beatriz Allende worked at the Comité Chileno de Solidaridad Antiimperialista in La Habana as a secretary. Four years and one month after her father died and the 1973 Chilean coup d'état of Augusto Pinochet, she died by suicide with a firearm on October 11, 1977. Her body was buried in the Pantheon of Revolutionary Armed Forces in the Colon Cemetery in Havana.