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Barrabás
A politician in the Socialist Party. The Candidate vies for the presidency of the unnamed South American country of the novel for 18 years before finally being elected near the end of the book. After losing the presidential election so many times before, the Candidate knows he will win, and he tells Jaime as much. Jaime and the Candidate are close friends—they meet during a routine medical call—and spend much time playing chess and discussing socialism. After the election, the President is overthrown during a military coup d’état and later dies. While the official cause of death given by the opposition government is suicide, Pedro Tercero later tells Blanca that the President was murdered by the opposition. While it isn’t explicitly stated, the character of the President is presumably based on Salvador Allende, the first socialist president of Chile and the real-life cousin of author Isabel Allende’s father. Like the President, Salvador Allende was also overthrown in a military coup d’état and died under similar circumstances.
The Candidate/the President Quotes in The House of the Spirits
The The House of the Spirits quotes below are all either spoken by The Candidate/the President or refer to The Candidate/the President. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 12
Quotes
“We’re not interested in a military coup, General,” the head of Embassy intelligence replied in studied Spanish. “We want Marxism to be a colossal failure and for it to fall alone, so we can erase it from the people’s minds throughout the continent. You understand? We’re going to solve this problem with money. We can still buy a few members of Congress so they won’t confirm him as President. It’s in your Constitution: he didn’t get an absolute majority, and Congress has to make the final choice.”
“Get that idea out of your head, mister!” Trueba exclaimed. “You’re not going to bribe anyone around here! The Congress and the armed forces are above corruption. It would be better if we used the money to buy the mass media. That would give us a way to manipulate public opinion, which is the only thing that really counts.”
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At first his long democratic experience impeded his ability to set traps for the new government, but he soon gave up the idea of obstructing it by legal means and came to accept the fact that the only way to unseat it was by using illegal ones. He was the first to declare in public that only a military coup could halt the advance of Marxism because people who had anxiously waited fifty years to be in power would not relinquish it because there was a chicken shortage.
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The Candidate/the President Quotes in The House of the Spirits
The The House of the Spirits quotes below are all either spoken by The Candidate/the President or refer to The Candidate/the President. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 12
Quotes
“We’re not interested in a military coup, General,” the head of Embassy intelligence replied in studied Spanish. “We want Marxism to be a colossal failure and for it to fall alone, so we can erase it from the people’s minds throughout the continent. You understand? We’re going to solve this problem with money. We can still buy a few members of Congress so they won’t confirm him as President. It’s in your Constitution: he didn’t get an absolute majority, and Congress has to make the final choice.”
“Get that idea out of your head, mister!” Trueba exclaimed. “You’re not going to bribe anyone around here! The Congress and the armed forces are above corruption. It would be better if we used the money to buy the mass media. That would give us a way to manipulate public opinion, which is the only thing that really counts.”
Related Characters:
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
At first his long democratic experience impeded his ability to set traps for the new government, but he soon gave up the idea of obstructing it by legal means and came to accept the fact that the only way to unseat it was by using illegal ones. He was the first to declare in public that only a military coup could halt the advance of Marxism because people who had anxiously waited fifty years to be in power would not relinquish it because there was a chicken shortage.
Related Characters:
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Page Number and Citation:
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