Luis Nicolás Corvalán Lepe (14 September 1916 – 21 July 2010) was a Chilean politician, teacher, and writer. He was the general secretary of the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh) for more than three decades and was twice elected to the Senate of Chile.
Corvalán was detained by the Government Junta following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état. The USSR worked relentlessly for Corvalán's freedom, preparing plans for a military strike against Chile to rescue him, and orchestrating an international pressure campaign aimed at securing his parole. In 1976, the junta released Corvalán in exchange for the freedom of the Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, with the prisoner swap occurring in Switzerland. He later underwent plastic surgery to disguise his features before secretly returning to Chile to help organize opposition to the presidency of Augusto Pinochet.
Luis Corvalán was born on 14 September 1916 to Moisés Corvalán Urzúa and Adela Lepe Roa near Puerto Montt, Chile; one of six children. His father abandoned the family when Corvalán was five. He was certified as a primary school teacher in 1934.
After spending the period 1935-1936 teaching in Iquique and Valdivia, he started contributing to the communist newspapers Frente Popular and El Siglo.
Corvalán joined the Communist Party of Chile (PCCh) in the city of Chillán in 1932, at age 15, shortly after the end of the presidency of Carlos Ibáñez del Campo. In 1950—during a period when the PCCh was outlawed—he was elected to the party's central committee.
Party leadership and elected office
In 1958, the Communist Party was legalized in Chile and Corvalán was selected as its general secretary. Also in 1958, Corvalán was elected to Concepción municipal council. He was subsequently elected to the Senate of Chile, where he represented Ñuble, Concepción and Arauco from 1961 to 1969. He was re-elected in 1969 to represent Aconcagua and Valparaíso.
In his political positions, Corvalán displayed steadfast support for Soviet policies. In 1967 — during a period when the USSR was experiencing tension with Cuba over the matter of Aníbal Escalante — he criticized Cuba's interventions into the political affairs of other Latin American nations, writing in Pravda that "the specific characteristics of one revolution, such as the Cuban revolution, can be repeated in another place but not in the same form". The following year, he supported the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia.
On domestic questions, he was open to collaboration with non-communists, taking the party into the Popular Action Front with the Socialist Party and several minor parties, despite challenges posed between the Communist Party's organizing strategy of a cross-class coalition and the Socialist Party's vision of a worker-centered approach. A 1964 analysis by the U.S. embassy in Chile concluded that Corvalán based the decision to align with Salvador Allende's socialists on a "sureness of expectation that serious disagreements with Communists on Allende’s part will not arise" and that "even should Allende be tempted to turn on Communist partners once in office he would be unable do so". The coalition between the Communist Party and Socialist Party later continued in the Unidad Popular movement.
Corvalán has been credited with the growth of the Communist Party during the period of reemergence and, by 1970, it was receiving up to 20 percent of the vote in congressional elections and counted among its members the poet Pablo Neruda, the writer Francisco Coloane, and the songwriter Víctor Jara.
In 1970, Allende was elected president of Chile at the head of a Unidad Popular government. Corvalán was a central figure in the ruling movement and The New York Times credited him with pushing Allende "left faster than was thought practical and probably faster than the President wanted". Still, Corvalán occasionally criticized the president's management, blaming his policies for the country's high inflation. In 1970, Corvalán visited Moscow to press for more Soviet aid to Chile.
Arrest and campaign for release
Two weeks after the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, Corvalán was placed under arrest on a charge related to alleged subversion of the Chilean armed forces. He was initially held at the O'Higgins Military Academy in Santiago. In response to a letter of inquiry from the secretary-general of the Organization of American States, foreign minister Ismael Huerta wrote that:
With respect to the Chilean citizen, Mr. Luis Corvalán, I must inform Your Excellency that he is detained in the Military Academy of Chile, where he is enjoying excellent treatment, as journalists and foreign personages have verified. Mr. Corvalán will be brought to trial, under the country's applicable laws, for the crimes he is accused of. The Government of Chile assures Your Excellency that, at his trial, the standards established by the Chilean legal code for all citizens of the country will be strictly observed.
During an October 1973 session of the United Nations General Assembly, a shouting match erupted among delegates after Soviet ambassador Yakov Malik issued a demand that the UN intercede to prevent Corvalán's execution, which was rumored to be forthcoming. Chilean ambassador Raúl Bazán denied that any such execution was planned, prompting a heated exchanged between Bazán and Malik that Saudi Arabian ambassador Jamil Baroody tried to break up. This prompted Bazán to call Baroody a "fool", which, in turn, provoked Baroody into an argument with the Chilean. F. Bradford Morse, representing the United States, attempted to calm the conflagration before Leopoldo Benites, presiding, was able to restore order.
Corvalán was subsequently transferred from the military academy to the prison colony on Dawson Island.
In 1975, the KGB conducted satellite reconnaissance of Dawson Island and drew up plans to launch an assault against it. In a 1998 lecture, Nikolai Leonov described the importance to The Center in "how to pay this respect to our class colleagues, our ideological brothers, if you will" and went on to provide some operational details of the proposed strike which would use spetsnaz delivered by helicopters operating from a disguised merchantman to overpower the island's guards and airlift Corvalán to a waiting Red Fleet submarine. The helicopters would then be destroyed in deep ocean so as to leave no physical evidence of the attack. According to Leonov, when KGB staff presented the plan to Kremlin leadership "they looked at us as if we were half crazy".
The Soviet attack on Dawson Island never occurred and, later that year, Corvalán was moved to a mainland prison due to a bleeding stomach ulcer. In August, he underwent surgery for appendicitis.