As part of PHotoEspaña 2025, Casa América, in collaboration with the Embassy of Chile, presents from tomorrow Thursday to November 15 the exhibition Chile 1971: los primeros días de Allende, by photographer Michael Mauney.
In March 1971, Michael Mauney (North Carolina, USA, 1937) arrived in Chile as a photographer for the magazine Life to portray Salvador Allende, the first democratically elected Marxist head of state. The Chile he found breathed hope. In the streets of Santiago, people walked with the certainty that they were living a historic moment. There was no sign of what would come next: no shortage, no polarization, no queues, no threatening stoppages. The word «blow» was just a distant whisper.
Carlos ‘El Negro’ Jorquera, head of the press and Allende’s right-hand man, cancelled meetings with them at the last minute, studying every step they took. In those years, any American could be a CIA agent disguised as a journalist. Mauney transformed those waits into opportunity. With his camera he toured the capital capturing the daily life of a country in transformation: executives and workers sharing at dawn, children playing in towns, newsstands and lustrers in the Plaza de Armas, passengers hanging from microphones.
When Jorquera finally opened the doors of the presidential office to him, he began an intimate journey through Allende’s days. Accompanied him as he announced the new Indigenous Law in Temuco and at a wedding in El Monte. He saw him resting with his family in the presidential palace of Viña del Mar, walking through La Moneda and playing with his dogs in his private residence.
After Life published the story, Mauney kept 461 color photographs in her personal file. Unlike the rest of his work, these images remained with him for more than five decades. Fifty-three years later, those images that he preserved as a treasure were donated to the National Library of Chile and are now shown to the public for the first time.
