Widow of Chilean president Allende dies
Hortensia Bussi, the widow of Chilean President Salvador Allende who helped lead opposition to the military dictatorship that ousted her socialist husband in a bloody 1973 coup, has died at 94.
Ms Bussi died while taking a morning nap.
“She died quietly, she did not suffer,” Doctor Paz Rojas told state television.
Ms Bussi’s husband, an avowed Marxist, was elected president in 1970 and was toppled three years later in an uprising by the military led by General Augusto Pinochet.
Mr Allende killed himself September 11, 1973, while under air and ground attack at the presidential palace, rather than surrender.
His wife, known as Tencha, had sought refuge at the home of a family friend.
The next day, she was flown on a small air force plane to the resort city of Vina del Mar for her husband’s burial.
She would later complain that the military sealed the coffin without letting her see his body.
Ms Bussi went into exile in Mexico, where she was active in campaigns against the Pinochet dictatorship.
She lived there with two of her three daughters – Carmen Paz and Isabel, who is now a congresswoman for her father’s Socialist Party. The third daughter, Beatriz, lived in Havana with her Cuban husband.
Ms Bussi returned to Chile in 1990 after civilian rule was restored and she spent the last few years virtually confined to her Santiago home.
