CHILE: WHY ALLENDE FELL

...The latter, admittedly rather cursory term refers to several tendencies within the M.I.R...

...First, there was the erosion of the old political structures and the problematical status of the patrones, whose power was now threatened by the agrarian reform...

...the Chilean state" is that, having failed to obtain any compensation for the nationalized American companies, Kissinger didn't bother to urge the Club de Paris to extend the terms of its loans or to grant new credits to the Santiago government...

...The dislocation of the industrial economy pursued a more complicated path, but soon the same fatal dynamics emerged...

...For the Chilean government to meet its responsibilities to its creditors, over a quarter of the revenue of all exports would have had to be used to repay the foreign debt...

...The intellectual Left openly confessed the failure of the various populist movements in which it had at first been involved, but from which it had progressively withdrawn...

...Besides, the CP was not alone in the labor field: not only were the Socialists -there, but in many unions the Christian Democrats too were waging an often successful campaign to outflank both Communists and Socialists...

...It is true that Allende was not the first Chilean president to enter the Moneda palace under such conditions...

...Debray continues: I objected to this, reminding him of what he himself had said—that the era of the Popular Front was over in Latin America...

...At first glance, one might have thought that they were diametrically opposed: the Chilean Left was secular and "Marxist," while the Christian Democrats denounced "atheistic materialism" and "Communist oppression...

...But the excep408 FRANCOIS BOURRICAUD tional violence of this phenomenon during the Allende administration calls for special explanations...

...Because Allende was restricted by his flirtation with the ultra-Left, his control over his own followers became the key to success...

...The relationship of social forces and the distribution of political roles accounts more directly for the difficulties Allende confronted in trying to harness a team as disparate as the Unidad Popular...

...Such procedures, of course, are inconvenient...

...One maywonder if Allende really took these statements seriously...

...Thus the CP plank calling for the nationalization of the mines was not always very popular...

...that was even less the case when, after the introduction of rationing, it 'became obvious that the black market offered producers much better remuneration than the official market...

...The Christian Democrats, on whom Allende's election depended, hesitated for over a month...

...unorganized labor comprises the slum-dwellers (the inhabitants of the callampas, which are Chile's rough counterpart to the French bidonvilles), and the inquilinos or agricultural laborers...

...Still, there can be no denying that the power Allende assumed in 1970 was lost in the short span of less than three years...

...In this great stampede, the government lost all hold on the organs of state, even though the generals still proclaimed themselves loyal constitutionalists...

...I cannot judge whether the Allende regime will leave a comparable heritage but am inclined to believe it will find a place in history simply because it focused on the long overburdened rural population: this, in a way, was an immense achievement...

...But in order to pacify Frei and the right-wing Christian Democrats, Allende wrote a vague letter in which he pledged to respect civil liberties and the constitution...

...Yet, of all its failures, this was the least painful for the intelligentsia to acknowledge...

...But according to all evidence, at no point during the Allende period did they think of seizing power and monopolizing it by means of a coup d'etat...

...1) Owners who had been expelled, dispossessed, or threatened began to stop investing...

...Its diversity introduced whole layers of cliques and clienteles into the government, forcing the administrative branches into convulsive immobility...

...There is no need to dwell on the great gulf separating organized from unorganized labor in the matter of jobs, income, way of life, and political participation...

...The weight of these two blocs turned out to be very different from what had been assumed: the power of chaotization of the ultra-Left rapidly overpowered the Communists...

...Except on the emotional level, Allende could not really count on any unswerving support even from his own party...

...But by the end of 1972, this option had become impossible...

...In what way would the owners be indemnified...

...Second, the inquilinos and the peones were very poorly organized—when they were organized at all...

...To this juridical argument—which implies that all arbitration or mediation involving a government entails a violation of national sovereignty— Uribe adds a moral denunciation of the "hypocrisy" of the American government, which he accuses of having objected to Chilean proposals for the consolidation of the Chilean national debt...

...And Allende commented: "The revolutionary struggle may be a guerrilla campaign, a people's war, an insurrection, or a general election, depending on its specific content...

...For the big unions—the copper miners in particular—were highly aware of their role as protectors of a special interest, geared to what Americans call bread-and-butter issues...

...The CP defended all nationalizations but wherever possible discouraged the occupation of lands or factories...

...The incumbent, Eduardo Frei, exerted all his authority to dissuade his Christian Democratic friends from voting for Allende...

...What requires explanation is the rapidity with which the Chilean army shifted from submitting to civil authority to 'a repressive ideology...

...2) Business management followed a logic neither of profit nor of a planned economy...

...1) A newly galvanized...

...Although certain newspapers were already vitriolically attacking the Chilean president-elect, the State Department and the President's advisers seemed on the whole rather cool to the idea of forcible intervention...

...The Chilean Communist party had a long tradition, a solid organization, and well-tested cadres...

...The Chilean President's response is not surprising: "Our reforms are those that promote revolution...

...But in the Chilean case the reduction of agricultural production occasioned by the disorder and violence in the countryside was brutally aggravated by the deterioration of monetary mechanisms...

...it is certain that it was never achieved...

...A crisis in the production of subsistence commodities often accompanies agrarian reforms...

...A confrontation with the M.I.R...

...Any alliance of a "popular front" type put the Christian Democrats on red alert...

...The Chilean inflation was thus the outcome of a struggle between the following main contestants in the political arena: the government, which had failed to foresee the disastrous potential effects, not only of its release of -artificial and inflationary purchasing power on a seller's market, but also of its ill-advised nationalization policy and its recalcitrance toward its creditors...

...This is no Popular Front," answered Allende...

...In the same volume one finds Pablo Neruda, the Chilean ambassador to Paris, emphasizing the need for caution...

...Agrarian reform—granted...

...At the same time, by installing themselves as employees in official bodies, they not only gained impunity in their actions but also assumed the prestige that peasants, in their age-old submissiveness, always grant to representatives of the state...

...the political situation...

...The process of destabilization, which began early in 1971, has sometimes been reduced to a mere inflationary spiral...

...According to Armando Uribe's supernationalist thesis, the refusal of the expropriated companies to accept the decision of the Chilean magistrates (who, by reason of the companies' alleged excess profits and unpaid back taxes, had denied them any compensation) amounted to a rejection of the sovereignty of the Chilean judiciary, and thus constituted an intervention in Chile's internal affairs...

...But to put the economy back on its feet presupposed a minimum of industrial discipline, and plentiful enough deliveries of consumer goods to dry up the black market...

...Only then could a reasonable solution be proposed for the problem of the exchange rate and the flight of capital...

...As early as October 1972, the date of the first truckers' strike, Allende was doomed...

...How would the new agricultural cultivation be run...

...First, the ultra-leftists mobilized certain marginal groups who might have found themselves "excluded" even by a progressive government...

...The Christian Democrats were often in the forefront, not only of those defending the workers' immediate interests, but also of those championing claims for genuine "autonomy" in the management of nationalized industries...

...414 FRANCOIS BOURRICAUD...

...The first "symphony of pots and pans" (anti-Allende demonstrations of housewives), in late 1971, was labeled a "fascist provocation...

...The unions, which had long ago imposed relatively favorable contracts on the mining companies, were apprehensive, and not without reason, that the Chilean government might turn out to be a worse boss than the capitalist gringo...

...of Jacques Chonchol, they insinuated themselves into posts in the public administration, especially into such politically important branches as Agrarian Reform...

...There is no evidence that the urban middle class was longing for a helmeted and booted savior...

...0 [The original article ended here...

...If the ultra-leftists managed to make the utmost use of their capacity to unleash chaos, the Communists revealed an astoundingly limited capacity for tactics and strategy...

...Everyone knows that Chile could give the whole world lessons on inflation...

...It was in his own party that Allende encountered really die-hard resistance to this policy...

...Finally, when I speak of a compound of cynicism and silliness, I'm referring to my own belief that during the Paris negotiations the Chilean authorities initially tried to play their foreign creditors off against each other, especially the Europeans against the Americans...

...Thus the M.I.R.CHILE: WHY ALLENDE FELL 407 inspired "revolutionary troops" who were occupying farms and businesses, and who were organizing popular tribunals, suddenly discovered that they had become a kind of sacrosanct vanguard...

...The pluralism of parties and unions, and the vehement rivalry within the unions between leaders representing opposing ideologies, seems to have imposed on the Communists an essentially defensive mentality...

...With regard to foreign policy, the strategy of President Allende and his friends in Popular Unity really amounted to no strategy at all...

...It comprises a comparative study of the crisis leading up to Italian fascism, of the period pre412 FRANCOIS BOURRICAUD ceding the Spanish Civil War (from the end of the Primo de Rivera dictatorship until July 19, 1936), and of the dissolution (Auftosung) of the Weimar Republic, which culminated in Hitler's seizure of power...

...I simply don't find this argument very convincing...

...Yet, though Allende refrained from using such means, he did not disavow them...

...It's a shitty government, but it's our government...

...Caught in a vise between the provocations of the ultra-Left and the usual suspicions and imputations of the Right (which had never ceased denouncing them as the principal enemy), they were disposed simply to minimize their losses and avoid the worst...

...In addition to the Socialist party, the left-wing coalition included two distinct blocs: the Communists and the ultra-Left...

...All available evidence indicates that the Communist party gave its support or at least tacit approval to such a policy...

...But from the very start, Allende played a double role, alternating a "revolutionary" stance with a "legalist" one...

...I can see four: the policy of economic stimulation sponsored by the government in 1970, the subsistence crisis brought on by the agrarian reform, the dislocation of the industrial economy, and the crisis in foreign payments...

...In that case, nothing very new is being said—unless it is that prudence recommends exhausting all political avenues beforeresorting to insurrection...

...Italics mine...

...the large deficits that resulted were dumped squarely in the lap of the state, which once again proceeded to finance its operations with fiat money...

...In the presidential election of September 1970 Salvador Allende received only 37 percent of the vote: no candidate received an absolute majority...

...Of course, the importance of American investments in Chile cannot be exaggerated...

...Two events seem to have precipitated the military intervention...

...the industrial entrepreneurs, who were halting investment...

...He was a decent man, sincerely liked by his supporters, a man of unquestioned devotion to his cause...

...Thus he respected a tradition of multiparty regimes which holds that the government, especially if it is a minority government, does not "go after" the opposition, and does not threaten the persons, goods, or convictions of the ordinary citizens who compose it...

...For example, they saw to it that those peasants who would have been left empty-handed by too strict an interpretation of the law, or who would have fallen entirely outside the jurisdiction of the law, also benefited from the land redistribution program...

...the landowners, who were "hoarding" their produce...

...Allende soon found himself with only two possible options, and both required the army's support...

...Yettheir "social" orientation did not stop them from being highly wary of * Momios: play of words on momio (meager, insubstantial) and momia (mummy...

...Although in Chile, as elsewhere, such ideologies tend to lump all workers together in the mythic category of "the proletariat," it is more enlightening to distinguish between unionized and nonunionized workers...

...Second, one must allow for the President's repugnance to "shed blood" —or even run the risk of shedding it...

...Frei was fearful of an outright Communist takeover, rather than of leftist subversion...

...I concur unreservedly with this censure...

...That this was what Allende meant is clearly revealed in the rest of his dialogue with Debray...

...This, aside from its structural causes, had resulted from the overpayments the Chilean government, deeply in debt, was making in order to regain its credit abroad...

...would extend the sector of socially controlled property...

...Third, each of these "associates" was so hobbled by its own fantasies that it proved incapable of defining a strategy compatible with those of its partners...

...From the start, the government had only the feeblest methods for handling this situation...

...The following was added by the author for this appearance in DISSENT.] A Postscript on the American Role in Chile IN THE DEMONOLOGY of the "revolutionary Left," foreign monopolies occupy a position second only to the military...

...These factors hardly encouraged the arrival of new finance capital...

...First, it was a minority...

...A comparable process took place later in the poblaciones and in the cordon industrial of the large cities...

...For their part, the Christian Democrats were starting to balk...

...For example, by demanding nationalization without indemnification, they were actually insisting on taking over the totality of the foreign companies' debts to various third parties...

...The same goes for aid to the victims of the Junta...

...The death of Salvador Allende, either by suicide or assassination, and the pitiless repression that followed the liquidation of his regime, have complicated the observer's task...

...First, one must not forget that the Socialist party, or at least its more turbulent factions, wanted to -avoid at all cost a break with the M.I.R...

...2 It seems that the most violently "anti-imperialist" elements in the M.I.R...

...CHILE: WHY ALLENDE FELL 413 and excessive profits, which Santiago cited as reasons for its refusal to indemnify the expropriated firms, had actually been fairly computed or not...

...It implies the possibility of using elections to "radicalize" * Combat, Sept...

...Miristas, followers CHILE: WHY ALLENDE FELL 405 of Fidel Castro), including two tiny factions of Christian religious inspiration which were intensely radicalized, the M.A.P.U...

...A good example is the way the American authorities, reacted to the Peruvian junta's expropriation of International Petroleum, as well as to the nationalist vehemence of the Peruvian spokesmen...

...Its officers, as opposed to those of Brazil and Peru, do not seem to have been lengthily exposed to any ideology that would have encouraged them to see the army as a force above all parties and class interests...

...It is greatly to Allende's credit that he does not succumb to the authoritarian lure of the latter course, but it is by no means to his credit that he fails to recognize the necessary constraints which the democratic course demands...

...2) Allende could try to seek an entente with the parliamentary majority, or at least 410 FRAN^OIS BOURRICAUD with the Christian Democrats...

...The ultra-leftists' sheer power to unleash chaos may be explained by a curious combination of paternalism and faith in spontaneity...

...I am not suggesting that Allende's -ambivalence was a mere sleight of hand to win over the sympathies of the ultra-Left.* A * The French text reads gauchistes, a term that literally means "leftists" but has a strong critical edge...

...The capture of the army by its most ruthless elements merits some consideration, but for the moment, I see no entirely satisfactory explanation...

...But this "expansion of stability" did not last more than a year...

...this endemic suspiciousness was probably behind Frei's effort in 1970 to dissuade his colleagues from giving Allende the necessary congressional votes for his election...

...But Eduardo Frei took them for granted when, in submitting his agrarian reform bill, he agreed to a preliminary constitutional review...

...What I have called the ultraleftists' tactical use of "paternalism" consisted in presenting themselves in official roles, thus ensuring the neutrality (or even the active support) of the local authorities as well as the obedience of the peasants...

...The U.S...

...As if to exacerbate this fascination, Che's escapade, which his death metamorphosed into an epic, became a kind of enchanter's wand, with the power of totally inhibiting any skepticism toward "the strategy of guerrilla warfare...

...Whatever the divergences and confusions, many partisans of Frei and especially of Tomic had long felt closer to Allende than to the conservative Jorge Alessandri and his momios...

...I see three reasons for the weakness of this left-wing coalition...

...Could they not simply have agreed on a fixed list of nationalized firms, agreeing to refrain from further nationalizations or "interventions" by pure executive decree (for the latter had served as an implicit endorsement of the fantasy politics behind the occupations carried out by the M.I.R.-manipulated "workers' collectives...

...The Communists and the Socialists obtained somewhat more 406 FRANCOIS BOURRICAUD encouraging results...

...It could even be called legal, in the literal sense of the word...

...Though numerically insignificant, the ultraleftists exercised a disproportionate power...

...Still anxious to behave like "responsible" partners, they also recognized the danger of being eclipsed by the demagoguery of their "allies...

...Why did the ultra-Left offensive succeed...

...In accordance with the Chilean constitution, it was up to Chile's Congress to choose a president...

...Moreover, the entire Latin-American Left was spellbound by the Castro episode...

...What strikes me isthat during this period the tensions and dissensions within the armed forces become increasingly visible and bitter...

...To condemn the rupture of constitutional legality is a duty ,I support...

...For a revolutionary government such an action would seem pretty fair play...

...The Communists were not against it...

...In fact, they succeeded only in exasperating and frightening portions of the petty bourgeoisie, which otherwise probably would not have been particularly upset by the nationalization of the big foreign businesses or domestic "monopolies...

...When I speak of Allende's failure, I do not gloss over the relativity of the term...

...Industrialization—fine...

...To the food crisis and the dislocation of the industrial machine were added the combined effects of the foreign-exchange crisis...

...but even its adversaries wouldagree that it left an indelible mark on labor legislation...

...Perhaps the army "hard-liners" won the dispute when they were able to convince the "legalists" that the "unity of the army"—a condition to which all military men are sensitive—could not be maintained if the convulsive decomposition of the state were to go beyond a certain point...

...Yet nothing was more divided than this Movement of Popular Unity...

...To defend this tactic they pointed—with the complicity or at least acquiescence of the Executive—to the compelling "spontaneity of the masses...

...Much of Chilean labor has long been organized...

...I am not in a position to put together an exact picture of the tangled schemes that, following the June 29 attempt, led to the successful putsch of September 11...

...This seems to be the most appropriate perspective from which to study the implacable chain of events which in three years shattered the Unidad Popular and constitutionality of the Chilean state...

...Guerrilla warfare and revolutionary violence did not really enter into the universe of this Chilean politician, but the rhetoric of the "maximalists" (extremists) was so well-suited to the role he intended to play that he was finally seduced into their glib fallacies...

...Happily, just in time to defend him against allegations of opportunism, a new myth arose, reinforcing that of the companero Presidente: it was the myth of "popular unity," with its "central nervous system unquestionably activated by the working class...

...Thus the choice between machine guns and ballots is not a logical choice, even less a normative one...

...ONE REASON for Allende's misfortunes was that neither he nor his socialist friends ever really knew what they wanted...

...But one wonders if the ambiguities of his position originated in his own personality...

...The tendency to fall back upon anti-imperialist rhetoric is particularly dogmatic, though understandable in view of foreign capitalism's strong grip on Chile's economy...

...Everything suggests that they urged the President to seek it...

...p. 450...

...I answer, The proletariat...

...It was a compound of dogmatism, cynicism, and sheer silliness...

...Though I have no proof, my guess is that Salvador Allende and the Communist leaders too had largely underestimated the ultra-leftists' capacity in this respect...

...for his social origin gave him unusual authority (especially in his own party), as well as substantial though probably inflated self-confidence...

...But one can see how easy it was for the enemies of Popular Unity to capitalize on this...

...Was negotiation still possible between Frei and Allende in 1972...

...Could the President of the Republic have come to terms with Congress to keep his ship from going down...

...General Pratt, who had supported the President, was obliged by other staff officers to tender his resignation to Allende, thus paving the way for the partisans of a coup d'etat...

...It seems to implythat there is-some point in making a distinction between two kinds of situations: those in which democratic processes favor the material and spiritual improvement of the underprivileged, and those in which one must first "bring the whole house down...

...But these recommendations were too vague to hold the desarollistas together once they began to translate them into specific directives...

...What I have referred to as the ultra-leftists' tactical use of "spontaneity" consisted in the perpetual instigatory pressure with which they outflanked official positions...

...In the countryside, the situation was characterized by two factors...

...In Chile organized labor consists of the copper miners, coal miners and the steelworkers...

...government was determined to crush the Popular Unity regime at all costs...

...The inherent ambiguity of the Unidad Popular is apparent in this seemingly straightforward passage...

...in politics they were, at least verbally, extremely radical...

...It was simply imputed to the weakness of the populist leaders, who were accused of complicity with the enemy, that is, with big capital and imperialism...

...It is important to realize that their greatest successes were achieved in nonunionized industries...

...Allende failed to master his mount: in fact, he was thrown from the saddle, and that is failure...

...It is undoubtedly true that they viewed the formation of a Popular Unity government in Santiago with extreme displeasure...

...They were in agreement on the principal articles of the desarollista (development) catechism as it had been elaborated in the C.E.P.A.L...

...Thus the CP constantly reminded the workers, the copper miners in particular, of the need for industrial discipline...

...Two things were clear...

...On the whole, the ultra-leftists succeeded beyond their wildest dreams, and it is instructive to discover why...

...would enable the government to expose the weakness of the "paper tigers of the bourgeoisie," while at the same time the occupation of businesses by the M.I.R...

...At the time of Allende's assumption of office, one of the major tasks of Chilean business was to obtain a review of all outstanding arrears and overdue payments from the creditors of the Chilean state in the Club de Paris...

...Initially the M.I.R...

...Big American corporations like I.T.T...

...Even had they weighed such -a course, two obstacles would have discouraged them...

...Lenin," recalls Debray, "said that there were two types of reforms: those 'that try to foil revolution, and those that try to promote revolution...

...There are two basic points of view on this hard line...

...However, I cannot refrain from observing that many of those who today denounce the Santiago putsch were ecstatic over the golpe institucionaI, which in 1968 enabled the "progressive" Peruvian armed forces to depose President Belaunde and impose a strictly autocratic regime...

...The rapid depreciation of money is never an incentive to part cheaply with real goods...

...Had these conditions been met, it might have been possible to launch (with the necessary foreign assistance) a stabilization plan to put the Chilean economy back on the right track...

...the Communists...

...The liquidation of the Allende regime might have been carried out by officers committed to restoring power to civil authority as soon as possible...

...Of all the Latin-American military establishments, that of Chile (along with that of Uruguay) was supposed to be the most openly legalist...

...Henry Kissinger is supposed to have told Orlando Letelier, then Chilean ambassador to Washington: "Pay only one dollar if you like, but pay something...

...Moreover, Chile's foreign debt, both short- and middleterm, had become a truly staggering burden as a result of Frei's heavy borrowing policy...

...Also, a whole group of lower- and middle-range industrialists, threatened by wholesale nationalizations, had tried to liquidize their assets and convert them into money or foreign currency...

...This article first appeared in Contrepoint, November 1973, and is reprinted here with the permission of the author and editors...

...Thus, when the traditional structures started to fall apart, a sort of power vacuum was created...

...It was disposed to take the same "responsible" attitude that was adopted by their French and Italian colleagues in the years after the European Liberation: "loyally" supporting the government and mobilizing their rank and file to acclaim the campanero Presidente...

...He was a very gifted if unexceptional leader, and he had a remarkable sense of compromise, learned in the management of his party's internal affairs and during his parliamentary career...

...But it is indeed imprudent to invoke "legality" when, even in its most narrow sense, that legality contradicts the spirit of a nation's laws and institutions...

...There were also the deep divisions inside the Socialist party, where Allende's influence was counterbalanced by those of the leftists who had found in Altamirano, the Party's secretary-general, a pliant associate...

...Allende's ministry of economics, trying to make full use of the nation's fallow productive capabilities, adopted a policy of cheap money, massive salary raises, and public spending...

...this was clear by 1972, when practically all investment came from the public sector...

...The political interplay within pluralist regimes is regulated by what I shall call the principle of moderation...

...The proof is in the following passage by Regis Debray: Allende showed me a copy of the book on guerrilla warfare Che had inscribed for him: "For Salvador Allende, who seeks to achieve the same end by other means...

...But how fast should the expropriations take place...

...Meanwhile, the exodus from the countryside brought into the cities a wave of unemployed and relatively unskilled people— constituting for labor unions and political partisans 'a sort of fishpond in which they hoped to catch new adherents...

...In any case, the danger which apparently neither of them grasped was that in designating the army as the ultimate resource, they were exposing it to possible internal divisions...

...Second, in the balance of trade, income from the export of copper had leveled off or dropped, whereas expenditures for the import of foodstuffs rose sharply...

...The French Left now, in its embarrassment over the collapse of the experiment it had endorsed rather off-handedly, is resorting to the most threadbare explanations...

...Never would Allende have accepted a choice between the horns of what for him was not a genuine dilemma...

...I can make out three principal reasons...

...But should it be left in the hands of the Chilean bourgeoisie...

...He wrote: Either the government recognizes, in time, that the middle class constitute a major social force whose interests must be consulted and whose fears must be allayed—and we speak here not of a tiny group of capitalists, but of hundreds of thousands of people of quite modest means—or the Left decides that the course of democracy is a delusion and that it must begin to prepare for the Leninist or Castroite dictatorship...

...In 1970 the unions had hardly begun to penetrate to the agricultural wage-earners...

...These words are reported in Jorge Edwards's book, Persona non grata (Barcelona: Barrel, 1973), p. 454...

...He felt a sincere devotion to "the people," whom he regarded— not unlike others of his class or milieu— somewhat in the British spirit of noblesse oblige...

...The prospect of jumping into a hopelessly leaky boat, or tossing a life-saver to a drowning enemy, is never terribly appealing...

...Santiago adopted an absolutely intransigent position on indemnification...

...Perhaps AIlende asked -too high a price of Frei...

...In French Left opinion, the overthrow of Allende is a deplorable event without the slightest connection to the policies pursued since 1970 by Chile's "Popular Unity" government...

...First, the international situation in 1970 discouraged the Chilean Communists from any initiative that might have endangered Soviet-American relations...

...The second was a highly judicious selection of areas in which to work...

...But it is certainly not hard to see why the Christian Democrats felt they had been swindled...

...Popular Unity" movement might reimpose its grip on the economy...

...And should this expropriation be accompanied by indemnities...

...Allende's own postures had already made him their captive...

...Of course, the Communists were not simply wasting their time: they were advancing their pawns, infiltrating, colonizing...

...For Allende it was not a question of renouncing one of two means...

...The relationship between the Christian Democracy and the Unidad Popular was complex and elusive...

...So that if you ask me, Who will use whom?, I answer, The proletariat...

...And so the disaster is simply the result of a plot hatched by the usual devils: the fascists, the military, the "monopolies...

...In 1936 Leon Blum took great pains to indicate that his government would honestly take into account the interests of the middle class...

...Although this theme has now vanished from the litany of the nationalist Latin-American Left, it has long believed, or claimed to believe, that the Soviets were ready and willing to replace the Americans at a moment's notice...

...He was highly aware of the advantages a politician like himself might derive from this ambiguous combination of peace-loving humanism ("we wish to create a government that is democratic, national, revolutionary, and popular, because we know socialism cannot impose itself by decree") and "proletarian radicalism" ("Who will use whom...

...Once ensconced, they instigated jacqueries, armed the peasants, and made use of all possible means to make life impossible for landowners— including those whose properties lay outside the zone of expropriation laid down by the law...

...1) The army had escaped their influence...

...The galloping inflation was supremely indicative of the accelerated dislocation of all social mechanisms...

...I am aware that my analysis concentrates on a fairly short time span, and that many long-term considerations and other structural elements must eventually be taken into -account...

...It is not enough to deplore Allende's error of calling in the army to settle the truckers' strike...

...In fact, Soviet aid to Chile soon turned out to be quite modest if not utterly insignificant...

...This is most certainly true, but it is also true that I.T.T.'s lobby was far from having convinced the U.S...

...C.O.R.F.O.: Corporacidn de Fomento: a government agency responsible for allocating public and private money to industrial development programs...

...On the contrary, I suspect that at the beginning of the Allende affair Washington's position was not at all clear, and that a margin of action was available to the Santiago government...

...But the Chilean Christian Democratic party is characterized by an ambiguity also found in many of its sister parties: its leaders lean more to the Left than its constituents...

...But the Junta is controlled by men with very different views indeed...

...One must also understand that 'by entrusting the Ministry of the Interior to the army's commander-in-chief— even if a very dear and loyal friend—Allende was giving the house keys not to an individual, General Pratt, but to the leader of the military establishment...

...Allende's approach was the opposite: had he not proclaimed that "the era of popular fronts is over...

...In any case, the President seems never to have seriously considered the option of trying to dissuade los muchachos (the boys...

...This dogmatism led the Chileans to hang on to rigid, untenable positions in which they themselves actually had no meaningful stake...

...But whatever the crimes of the Junta, they neither abolish nor absolve the follies of the Allende administration...

...It is this failure that we must explain...

...As far as capital investment was concerned, the Chilean government was still bogged down in a dispute with the foreign companies it had nationalized (and which it refused in principle to indemnify), and it was still committed to an intransigeant position concerning the repayment and consolidation of its outstanding national debt...

...would have 'threatened to splinter the President's own party, a grave risk indeed considering the role of the Socialists in the governing coalition...

...Very soon the destabilization factors I have mentioned (accelerated agrarian reform, wildcat nationaliza* C.E.P.A.L.: Comisi6n Economica para America Latina (a U.N...

...By infiltrating not only the Socialist party but also such smaller parties as the M.A.P.U...

...But it was also severely handicapped, a fact neglected by those commentators who, at the time of Allende's election, envisaged a Communist take-over as the likely conclusion...

...But the catch was often disappointing, and during the Frei administration the Christian Democrats suffered many a blighted hope in their struggle to "organize" the slums...

...Industrial conditions were rapidly aggravated by "workers' collectives" whose erratic appearance in sectors for which no nationalization had been projected produced three kinds of effects...

...politician's sincerity is not worth questioning seriously unless he is a master dissembler, something Allende never was...

...3) At length the public sector, perpetually overburdened with -a collection of disparate enterprises of ill-defined status CHILE: WHY ALLENDE FELL 409 —at once "self-managing" and governmentsubsidized— eluded all rational administration...

...The paralysis of production and trade, the progressive deterioration of elementary social functions, and the frustration of the most trivial expectations had become insufferable to greater and greater sections of the middle class...

...Consequently, the absence of compensatory measures, designed to withhold from other social categories the equivalent of the purchasing power...

...As I have described its rush to the abyss, the Allende regime is amarvelous illustration of a process perceptively analyzed by Juan Linz in a manuscript entitled "The Breakdown of Democratic Politics...

...distributed by the government—plus additional income created by salary raises, the rise in employment, and deficits sustained both by the state and its nationalized enterprises—precipitated an avalanche of inflated purchasing power onto a market in which goods were already growing scarce...

...23, 1973...

...In the cities they used the same tactic: by multiplying the wildcat occupation of enterprises, including the premises of small and sometimes tiny businesses, they believed they were "destroying the power of the bourgeoisie...

...government and the traitors in the Chilean armed forces were in complicity to achieve this goal...

...In this way Allende might have made the fullest use of his mandate, not in the maximalist grand style perhaps, but more prosaically, as a "lame duck," or rather, to use the appropriate Spanish saying: entrada a caballo, salida en burro (" Came in on a horse, went out on an ass...

...Or perhaps each was restricted by intransigent die-hards in his own party...

...These tendencies, already apparent at the close of the Frei administration, were confirmed by Agriculture Minister Chonchol's precipitous implementation of an agrarian policy far more radical in its objectives and forceful in its means...

...The clever— in fact, too clever—amalgamation of these two roles enabled him to pull off a dubious move: by invoking some unabrogated decrees of the 1930s, the President arrogated the right to appoint government representatives, who, at his discretion, could replace the managers of companies—without any prior nationalization of those companies...

...For one must understand that by October 1972 the badly winded President had no other recourse (in case of serious hostilities or of progressively harder resistance by the middle class) than soldiers and police to ensure the transportation and delivery of food supplies...

...or as planners in the C.O.R.F.O.* At the end of Frei's administration, they had found the Chilean economy in the throes of serious underemployment...

...About 80 percent of Chile's exports was composed of copper, whose production was controlled by big American companies such as Anaconda and Kennecott...

...The public mood was best summarized by the joke that in 1971 circulated in the Chilean slums: Este es un gobierno de mierda pero es nuestro gobierno...

...Which was one more compelling reason for him to work out a compromise with Congress -after the settlement of the truckers' strike...

...Eventually Tomic was heeded by the rank and file...

...His allies also kept him busy...

...These brilliant results were achieved by allowing a 10 percent inflationary price hike for the year—an exceptionally good bargain for Chile...

...and the Izquierda Cristiana...

...I do not use the word in !a moral sense...

...Why did the Allende government not react to the creation of these parallel centers...

...The second was the inevitable clash between civilian political power and the military hierarchy, a direct result of the decision to bring top general-staff officers into the government...

...2) More important, the immense process of destabilization following the advent of Allende both embarrassed and entrammeled the Communists...

...Jorge Alessandri, a conservative, had done so in similar circumstances in 1958...

...Elections may rapidly render the situation truly revolutionary, pushing things to the point where the seizure of power becomes inevitable...

...A workers' front, perhaps, or a patriotic front, or a movement of popular unity, but always with a central nervous system directly 'activated by the working class...

...When M. Mitterand confidently hailed "the Chilean road to socialism," the Allende government's "stimulation" of the Chilean economy was still in its earliest phase, which in fact was very promising...

...The latter had several sources...

...was simply a group of students trying to make contact with "the masses...

...The real question was how to use both—in alternation, or in succession...

...Such divisions would almost certainly lead to military intervention as soon as the generals realized that the unity of their army was imperiled...

...The ties between the unions and the parties of the Left are equally ancient and relatively solid...

...The article we reprint below, by a sociologist who teaches at the Sorbonne and is a Latin-American specialist, extends the views developed in Plastrik's comment...

...Tomic, the candidate of the Christian Demo404 FRANCOIS BOURRICAUD crats who had won third place in the general elections, counseled the opposite course...

...At first reading, then, Allende seems to be saying simply that if guerrilla warfare no longer makes sense—say, in Sweden, England, or even contemporary France—it may constitute the ultima ratio in Bolivia, and under certain circumstances in Chile...

...We have used "ultra-Left" as the closest English equivalent.—ED...

...CHILE: WHY ALLENDE FELL 411 The process of political disintegration did not reach its nadir until the army in its turn was sucked into the whirlpool...

...In the large, concentrated industries, the unions were active and efficient in representing the workers' demands...

...The Communist party had less and less control over the only Chilean labor federation, the C.U.T.Ch., which had virtually been shattered under the cross fire of ultraleftist and Christian Democratic demagoguery...

...These facts are usually minimized or ignored altogether by those who, like Armando Uribe, believe that "the true aim of the September 11 coup was the destruction of the Chilean state...

...Yet the Christian Democratic leaders and those of Unidad Popular shared a "philosophy" of development and progress...

...managed to "show its teeth" by combining a display of force—including the formation in certain districts of illegal "popular tribunals"—with a demonstration of its efficiency in obtaining various concessions (i.e., after the implementation of rationing, a favored position in food allocations...

...What actually prevailed was a confused but painful feeling that "this cannot go on...

...Here the M.I.R...

...They seem to have had a highly exaggerated conception of their own ability to resist foreign economic pressure, as well as to find alternative support and aid to replace that of the United States...

...And so Allende became president of •the Republic, but only as the champion of a "favored minority," and after having committed himself to a pacto de caballeros with the parties of the Center...

...It has been slightly abridged.—ED...

...Or would it 'be 'better to nationalize industry, or to place it under state control, or to organize it in cooperatives...

...Hence it was necessary to import increasing quantities of foodstuffs, whose cost mounted as the state's monetary reserves were depleted...

...Could the end of dependence be achieved by the expropriation of all foreign companies...

...body...

...CHILE: WHY ALLENDE FELL 403 During the early '60s, the Chilean Left, like the whole Latin-American Left, lived in a state of both fascination with "revolutionary violence" and rumination over its many defeats...

...Moreover, the extreme polarization rendered the position of a centrist party, like that of the Christian Democrats, increasingly difficult...

...The fact that he was a patrician, if not an aristocrat, has not received enough attention...

...First, the great domestic and foreign-based corporations had, with the coming of Allende, "taken certain precautions...

...Yet there was still plenty of room for the ultra-Left in its quest for "the masses...

...The best argument Uribe can muster to prove that Henry Kissinger was plotting "the destruction of 2 "Paguen un dolar, pero paguen algo...

...Despite the pacto de caballeros, the President had taken all the bedclothes for himself, and hogged the bed as well...

...Lions) derailed the whole process, reinforcing the potentially inflationary effect of the economic program...

...Though he deemed these movements discredited by their "moderation," their "inefficiency," their "accommodating attitude toward imperialism," he did not go so far as to espouse the cause of guerrilla warfare (since his principal aim was to win the elections...

...Allende's systematically ambiguous utterances enabled him to join in the condemnation of populist parties (such as the Peruvian Apra, the Venezuelan Accion Democratica, and even the Christian Democratic party...

...are also alleged to have intervened directly in Chilean politics, and also to have urged the Washington authorities to launch a preventive coup to stop the Chilean president-elect from ever assuming power...

...Both Blum and the Communist leaders were preoccupied with surmounting a crisis, especially with repelling fascism...

...Inflation was still in the fizzy or frothy stage...

...and last, the unions, which, willy-nilly, had disrupted the management of business concerns...

...But also to acknowledge the relationship between what the leaders of the Chilean Unidad Popular did, or did not do, and what later happened to .them—is that too much to ask...

...True, this principle tends to favor conservative interests, or, more generally, "vested interests," large or small...

...As the situation deteriorated, Eduardo Frei's hard-line supporters also stiffened their terms...

...The government's experts—honest economists for the most part—had gained their professional experience not in business management or administrative positions, but as officials of the C.E.P.A.L...

...The durability of such an arrangement is debatable...

...But it is just as true that the Nixon administration had already adopted a cautious and temporizing policy toward Latin America—what's known in government jargon as a "low profile...

...This reassuring explanation fooled fewer and fewer people as it was becoming more and more difficult to procure food...

...Mesmerized by the example of Castro and Che, their tactic, from the beginning of the Allende regime, consisted in outflanking the President, in forcing his hand, in cutting off his avenues of retreat, in blocking all his options for compromise with the bourgeoisie, even of a tactical or temporizing nature—so much that Allende had no alternative but a direct leap forward...

...Armando Uribe simply has no proof that the U.S...

...Such an approach may also seem too slow, uncertain, and inefficient...

...I'm not in a position to know if the unpaid back taxes 'Armando Uribe, "Le livre noire de l'intervention amiricaine au Chile," Le Seuil, Paris, 1973...

...government of the advisability of this course...

...The results were a remarkable takeoff in industrial production—which rose 7 percent in fiscal 1971, reduced unemployment, depleted monetary reserves—and a rise in the real earnings of the least privileged social categories...

...Second, its various groups were so heterogeneous that no strategy acceptable to all its "rival associates" could be outlined...

...Eager to present Allende's downfall simply as the result of a vicious conspiracy, they refuse to admit that the putsch of September 11, 1973, had any relation at all to the bad judgment and irresponsibility of the Chilean Left...

...But Alessandri was not about to challenge anything or anybody...

...For example, he made no attempt to restore the notorious anti-Communist law on the Defensa de la Democracia, which had been abrogated on the eve of the 1958 elections...

...Moreover, the domestic situation in Chile greatly reduced the Communists' freedom of movement...

...In many ways, for example, the French Popular Front of 1936 was also a failure...

...and the Socialist party were pressuring the Chilean government to stick to its hard line on the indemnities question...

...There is also an ingenious Machiavellian scheme I heard aired on several occasions: the pressure of the M.I.R...

...The three principal articles of this creed were agrarian reform, industrialization, and, above all, the end of dependence on foreign interests...

...But Allende's statement also suggests something entirely different...

...To consummate the death of constitutionality, the process of disintegration and polarization must favor the hegemony of the most reactionary elements in the military...

...Not only could they not rely on its aid, but they might arouse its open hostility in the event of an armed contest...

...it implies here only that the stakes in such a political struggle are limited, and, to use Allende's own words, socialism cannot be imposed by decree...

...Everyone is outraged, and rightfully so, at the violence done to Chilean constitutionality and civilian rule...

...Even if the new masters of Chile have only the most confused ideas on how to bring about "national reconstruction," even if they waver between the Peruvian and Brazilian models, they have certainly decided to stay in power for an indefinite period, and by all possible means, not excluding the most cruel...

...And so the ultraleftists became the envoys of the companero Presidente, or, as he would have been called in the old days, su Excelencia...

...In effect, it means that these interests may be worn down only by slow and lengthy erosion or by negotiations with the owners, until the latter, through pressure and persuasion, acquiesce in the new situation...

...The first I have already mentioned: their clever infiltration of the Socialist party...

...The first was •the M.I.R.'s attempt to infiltrate the navy, which provoked a brutal rejoinder from its officers...