The Fact of Interdependence
McCarthy, Abigail
THE FACT OF INTERDEPENDENCE ABIGAIL McCARTHY How will we ever sort it out? We have so often done harm by doing what we thought was good. At every national conference we face bitter...
...At every national conference we face bitter accusations from third world delegates...
...He is a truly principled, intellectual and charismatic leader with a sense of history and committed to a better life for all Chileans...
...In addition millions of Americans gave to churchand charity-sponsored food assistance programs...
...Allende lost...
...Frei, suc(Continued on page 247) 6 December 1974:230...
...We are almost incurably missionary in spirit, no matter how suspect the word missionary today...
...I have written at length of this elsewhere (Private Faces~Public Places, 1972) but the events can be summarized quickly: Observers at the world conference of Christian Democrats in Santiago were asked to meet with Frei and Tomic (who was to oppose A1lende in a later election after being ambassador to the United States...
...And, as always in Latin America, doing so in cooperation with Chileans...
...Since all human effort is mixed in motive, there is truth in the allegation...
...He might not have been pushed to the choices he made in his recent administration...
...polarization was not as extreme...
...Among her listeners were Americans darkly suspicious of all our efforts at aid in the past--disposed to see in them only disguises for "economic imperialism...
...Things might have developed very differenly in his administration at that time...
...It is at least arguable that a sparse nomadic population would have adapted in the long drought and had a much higher rate of survival...
...At the same time meetings were arranged with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, interested journalists, and finally, very quietly, with the President himself...
...Castroism and terrorism were not so strong on the continent...
...But Chile was a country of sound democratic institutions and our interdependence grew in many ways...
...Between 1954 and 1969, free food or commodities received on easy credit terms accounted for more than 30 percent of total food imports of developing countries...
...Thereafter, very substantial help was poured into Frei's campaign--possibly through the channels of the CIA and international labor, I do not know...
...Now we have come to the decidedly uncomfortable knowledge that we were disposing of our surpluses and helping our own economy in the process...
...The sub-Sahara is one current and very painful example...
...The whole problem of world hunger has been compounded by our pattern of aid...
...According to people who have talked to him recently that is his own conviction...
...We of the developed nations sank deep wells and taught the agricultural arts to the nomadic people of the region...
...This is mere speculation, but legitimate to consider...
...Granted, our first presence in Chile was that of American business exploiting and developing the copper mines...
...It was an avowed purpose of the Alliance for Progress that the United States should cooperate with every effort for democracy and independence in Latin America...
...A rise in population and new food dependence patterns followed...
...Why have our efforts gone so "aft agley...
...So it was that our first anti-Allende effort took a form that might seem acceptable to many Americans even today...
...Advisers to the Administration in the early 1960s thought they saw in the rise of the Christian Democratic party a third force between the repressive and the exploitative on one hand, and the Communists on the other...
...But it is equally true that we were motivated almost as much by a desire to share the good as we saw the good...
...The Chileans had a right to choose him...
...In the past most Americans thought that we were sending food abroad at some sacrifice, and the majority of them approved if we can judge by election results...
...Dan Morgan in the Washington Post...
...Frei won...
...Then it was arranged for Frei and the leading Christian Democrat of South America, Rafael Caldera of Venezuela, to come to Washington as speakers at a conference arranged just for that purpose...
...Climatologists tell us that the conditions there did not result from a climate shift alone (they are in dispute about whether there is indeed a climate shift...
...We cannot shift abruptly to technical assistance now...
...He was a Chilean of the Chileans...
...the opposition was not as intense...
...Certainly, one can hazard the thought that it might have been better to let events take their course...
...A sadder thought is this: Eduardo Frei might very well have won on his own...
...The tragedy of Chile shows how very complex the problem can become, no matter how needed or wellintentioned our intrusion into the affairs of another country seemed at any given point...
...said a woman speaker from Sri Lanka this summer...
...In Chile this was shaping up as a three-way struggle among the forces of President Allesandri, either Edouardo Frei or Radomiro Tomic of the Christian Democrats and Salvador Allende...
...Suppose Allende had won...
...Political aid is even more questionable...
...For our part, we hope that the thousands of foreign experts tmder whose advice we suffocate in the Third World, will not now be joined by their female counterparts in social anthropology, however well-intentioned...
...And doing long-range harm: "Over the years developing nations became extremely dependent on food assistance...
Vol. 101 • December 1974 • No. 9
