“That is why today we begin an act of profound solidarity and of great human significance.  Chilean youth will go through the valleys, the countryside, the villages, the towns, carrying the message of redemption -- the will, the popular government’s creative and revolutionary decision, carrying this shining faith to tell the old man from whom he gets his experience that his Chile a different country, a community of all Chileans, independent economically and sovereign politically.  Youth must be the essential factor in the changes demanded by this uneven society in giving way to a new society....  As a governmental need, I will sign before you, on this fine afternoon, the decree that creates the General Secretariat of Youth.”
 
December 21, 1970
 
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Salvador Allende Gossens, “Missions and Tasks of Youth and Agrarian Reform,” in Salvador Allende Reader: Chile’s Voice of Democracy (New York: Ocean Press, 2000), 67.