As a young man, Altamirano won medals in the high jump event at the
1946 and
1947 South American Championships in Athletics. In 1947 he graduated as a
lawyer from the
University of Chile, where he then served as a professor of public finance and economic law. A member of the Chilean Socialist Party from 1945, he represented the party in the
Chamber of Deputies in 1961–1965 and in the
Senate in 1965–1973. A
Marxist, Altamirano was one of the most prominent representatives of the left wing of the Socialist Party. On July 26, 1971, having been elected General Secretary of the Socialist Party, he called on President
Salvador Allende to dissolve the
National Congress. In 1973, sectors of the
Chilean Navy tried to convince leaders of the far-right paramilitary organization
Patria y Libertad to assassinate him. The plan, however, was not enacted. After the
1973 coup, Altamirano went into exile: after first fleeing to
Cuba, he spent the years of
Augusto Pinochet's
dictatorship in
East Berlin (1974–1979) and in
Paris (1979–1992). He wrote
Dialéctica de una Derrota ("
Dialectics of a Defeat") in 1977. During his years in exile, Altamirano would renounce many of his earlier radical political standpoints, instead becoming more of a moderate
social democrat. After the beginning of the
Chilean transition to democracy in 1990, Altamirano returned to Chile in 1993. According to lawyer Alun Jones, representative of the
Spanish justice during Spain's request to
Great Britain for the extradition of Augusto Pinochet, Pinochet had planned an attack against Altamirano just after
Francisco Franco's funeral in 1975. A declassified
FBI document suggests that Altamirano had become an obsession of
DINA director
Manuel Contreras, who wanted him assassinated at all cost, but that others within the agency cast doubts, because Altamirano seemed to be a decisive factor among the Chileans living in exile. The same document indicates that the neo-fascists associated with
Stefano Delle Chiaie were to
assassinate Bernardo Leighton instead. ==See also==