'ALLENDE IN RETROSPECT,' BY PAUL E. SIGMUND. PROBLEMS OF COMMUNISM, MAY-JUNE 1974

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79-01194A000100550001-5
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: C
• Document Page Count: 15
• Document Creation Date: November 11, 2016
• Document Release Date: August 6, 1998
• Sequence Number: 1
• Publication Date: August 28, 1974
• Content Type: REPORT

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CPYRGHT
~i1~iali~~Il~&~
MAY-JUNE 1974 VOL. XXiII
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ABC POL SCI.
he Dialectics of Nationalism
the USSR
y Teresa Rakowska-Harmstone
he KAdbr Mystique
y Charles Gati
he Unique Role of the Swedish CP
y Daniel Tarschys
Ilende in Retrospect
y Paul E. Sigmund
wo Views of Stalin
y Harrison E. Salisbury
ulag: A Chronicle
f Soviet Extralegal History
y Robert Sharlet
our Ambassadors, Three Decades,
wo Questions
y Jean L. Laloy
uperpower Relations in the Postwar Era
y Clifford P. Hackett
oscow's Alignments In the Third World
y Roger E. Kanet
land: The Pangs of Progress
y George Kolanklewicz
ver: Mamad Illchiev, chief sheepherder of the Frunze
Ilective Farm In the Khodzhent Region of Tadzhikistan.
speeds to work. A May 1974 photo by A. Kuzyarin for TASS
via Sovfoto.
EDITOR: Paul A. Smith, Jr.
MANAGING EDITOR: Marie T. House
ASSOCIATE EDITORS: Clarke H. Kawakami,
Wayne Hall, David E. Albright
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Allende in etrospect
CPYRGHT
By Paul E. Sigmund
World attention has moved away from Santiago
since the bloody overthrow of Salvador
Allende last September, but the questions
that were raised at that time still need answering.
Where should the primary responsibility be placed
for the tragic events on and after September 11,
1973? Was it, as the Left contends, the result of a4
fascist counterrevolution aided and abetted by the
forces of imperialism? Was it, as the Right asserts,.
the only available response to Allende's attempt to
establish the dictatorship of the proletariat by a
mixture of guile and force? Did it mark the "death
of a dream" of the establishment of socialism by
democratic means, and was it thereby one more
demonstration that Marxism must use force to ac-
complish its goals? Were there internal and external
political and economic factors which made it im-
possible for Allende's experiment to succeed, or
was the downfall of the Unidad Popular (Popular
Unity) coalition government the consequence of a
series of ideologically-influenced analyses and mis-
taken policy choices which, if they had been differ-
ent, might have produced another result? A review
of the course of the Allende government with the
aid of the considerable new material that has be-
come available in recent months may help to answer
these questions.
Allende's opponents never tire of pointing out
that he was elected with only 36 percent of the vote
in a three-way race.' What they do not mention is
that in the congressional run-off between the two
front-running candidates he was elected president
by a lopsided majority vote of 135-35. He received
the support of the centrist Christian Democratic
Party (PDC) in the run-off in return for his agree-
ment to the adoption of a Constitutional Statute of
Democratic Guarantees protecting freedoms of ex-
pression, education and religion, and guaranteeing
the independence of the military from political con-
trol. The text of the statute, which was added to
the Chilean Constitution shortly after Allende's elec-
tion, reflected the fears of non-Marxist groups that
the new Marxist President would use the consider-
able wer of the 'ilea a ecu i e
Mpproved or ~e'feasl~ 1-91'~`~~9-
eventually destroy all opposition to a Marxist take-
over.
Political and Economic Strategy
When he took office, Allende promised that he
would follow a "second model" of Marxism-the
via Chilena to socialism, "with meat pies and red
wine." To prove that this model was "anticipated
by the classics of Marxism," he quote from
Friedrich Engels on the possibility of
... a peaceful evolution from the old society to the
new in countries where the representatives of the
people have all power and in accord with the consti-
tution can do what they desire when they h ve the
majority of the nation behind them.'
Yet it was precisely the question of majority sup-
port that was Allende's central problem in is de-
sign to carry out a peaceful transition to "socialism
with democracy, pluralism and liberty." The parties
in his coalition were in a distinct minority in the
Congress, and although there was no doubt about the
legitimacy of his election by that body, his victory
had only been possible because of the conditional
support of the Christian Democrats. The PDC, it
should be noted, included both Radomiro omic,
the party's 1970 presidential candidate, who had
gone to Allende's house to congratulate hi the
day after the popular election, clearly inferri g his
future support, and conservatives like Senato Juan
de Dios Carmona, who had fought within the party
to prevent it from voting for Allende in the r in-off.
In the immediate aftermath of the election th PDC
was controlled by the Tomic forces, who claimed
to be in favor of "communitarian" socialism, ration-
alization of copper, acceleration of agrarian reform,
and reduction of Chile's dependencia on the nited
States. One way, then, for Allende to achieve his
acknowledged goal of majority support fo the
transition to socialism would have been to ry to
emo-
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crats on the. points in his program with which they
were in agreement. This. might have provoked the
secession of some of the rightist members of the
PDC, but if an accord had been reached with the
party's leaders, it would likely have given Allende
a, majority in the Congress for at least part of his
program.
Flushed with victory and unwilling to come to
terms with the party which he had termed "the new
face of reaction" during the campaign, Allende chose
an alternative strategy. The next congressional elec-
tions were not scheduled to take place until March
1973, but the Chilean Constitution provided that in
the event of a conflict with the Congress over the
text of a constitutional amendment, the President
could call a national plebiscite. The strategic course
adopted by Allende was to attempt to expand popu-
lar support for his coalition and then propose a
constitutional amendment which, in accordance with
the Popular Unity electoral program, would replace
the existing bicameral legislature with a unicameral
house, to be elected immediately following the ap-
proval of the amendment.. The Congress would be
certain to reject the amendment, but if Allende
had the support of a majority in the country, he
could win the plebiscite and secure control of the
unicameral legislature that would then be estab-
lished.
Allende's strategy for the expansion of electoral
support was an economic one which drew as much
from John Maynard Keynes as it did from Karl Marx.
The Chilean economy, already operating below
capacity, had gone into a profound recession as a
result of Allende's election. The response of Pedro
Vuskovic, Allende's Minister of Economics, was to
"prime the pump." by adopting a deficit budget, in-
creasing public expenditures, and redistributing in-
come by skewing the annual wage readjustment for
the preceding year's inflation (35 percent in 1970)
in favor of the low-income sector of the population
(the lowest income groups received a 40-percent in-
crease). The utilization of unused industrial ca-
pacity, combined with strict enforcement of price
controls, more stringent collection of taxes, and re-
fusal to devalue the Chilean escudo in relation to
the dollar, were expected to contain possible infla-
tionary pressures which might result. (The Allende
government also had a cushion of nearly $400
million in foreign reserves left to it by the Frei
government as a result of high international prices
for copper, Chile's principal export.)
The strategy also contained a Marxist element
accentuation of the class struggle. At the same time
that appeals were made to the pocketbooks of the
lower-class. Chileans, there was also to be an effort
to increase their class consciousness (concienti-
zacion) through government publications and the
use of the media to remove the elements of "false
consciousness" instilled by "bourgeois" propaganda.
Expressing the diametric opposite of a claim often
voiced by his predecessor, Eduardo Frei, Allende
said in a press conference just after his installation,
"I am not president of all Chileans." And in his first
"State of the Nation" message to the Congress he
asserted:
. .. the People's Government (Gobierno Popular) is
inspired in its policy by a premise that is artificially
denied by some-the existence of classes and social
sectors with antagonistic and opposing interests.'
Allende's economic advisers anticipated an addi-
tional source of revenue for the government from
the "exploitative" profits of the industries that were
to be nationalized by the new government. The par-
tially American-owned copper mines were to be
taken over by a constitutional amendment-both to
lay to rest any legal doubts about the reversal of
the Frei Chileanization agreements of 1967 and
1969, and because a general consensus in Chile
favored nationalization.' Other companies were to
be rationalized after a controlling interest was gained
through the purchase of shares on the open market
by the government development agency. The latter
course seemed facilitated by the fact that the price
of shares had been depressed since the elections,
and further economic pressures could be created
by allowing wage increases but forbidding any rise
in prices. The legal adviser to the government,
Eduardo Novoa, also outlined other "legal loopholes"
in existing Chilean law which could be used for
"temporary" takeovers of companies, including
"intervention" because of labor disputes and "requi-
sition" because of a "breakdown in supply of an
article of prime necessity."
The takeover of large sectors of Chile's basic
industry and trade, as promised in the Popular Unity
program, was thus seen as an essential part of an
economic and political strategy aimed at achieving
and maintaining power. Combined with a rapid
acceleration of agrarian reform (again using existing
legislation-the 1967 agrarian reform law-but ex-
ploiting provisions such as one authorizing the
expropriation of "abandoned or badly-farmed land,"
with one percent payment in cash and the rest in
bonds), the planned takeover, meant that even if
the effort to create a unicameral left-dominated
legislature failed, the Allende government could
destroy the economic base of the "capitalist" oppo-
sition through a series of "irreversible" faits accom-
plis (hechos cansumados) which would give the
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government control of the economy and of the excess
profits that the private sector had used for luxury
consumption or had sent out of the country as profit
remittances to foreign companies. At the same time,
the fact that the policy remained within the letter,
it not the spirit, of the law meant that intervention
by the military was unlikely.
Allende's constitutionalist and legalist strategy
was not universally accepted within his coalition.
Most of his own Socialist Party-beginning with its
newly 'elected General Secretary, Senator Carlos
Altamirano-and several other groups further to the
left, such as the MIR (Movimiento de la lzquierda
Revolucionaria-Movement of the Revolutionary
Left) and the VOP (Vanguardia Organizada del
Pueblo-Organized Vanguard of the People), were
openly doubtful about the wisdom of relying on elec-
tions and "bourgeois legality" to achieve power and
advised preparation for an armed confrontation with
the forces of reaction, which they foresaw as inevi-
table. Allende's effort to portray the transition to
socialism as peaceful in character was not assisted
by the publication of his conversations with French
revolutionary theorist Regis Debray in early 1971.
In these, Debray declared that "in the last analysis
and until 'further notice, political power comes out
of the end of a gun," and Allende repeatedly stated
that his differences with apostles of violence like Che
Guevara were only "tactical," because the Chilean
situation required that he observe legality "for the
time being." Allende himself organized an armed
personal bodyguard, the so-called GAP (Grupo de
Amigos Personates), and--we now know-as early
as December 1971 received reports on the illegal
importation and distribution of arms to the MIR and
to his bodyguards.'
While there were thus intermittent hints of revo-
lutionary alternatives, Allende's basic.. economic
strategy was "socialist consumerism," ` combined
with a rapid expansion of state control in industry,
trade and agriculture, and his basic political strategy
was an expansion of the electoral base of the Allende
coalition by an appeal to the material interests and
the class consciousness of the lower classes. It was
the interaction of the various elements of this politi-
cal and economic strategy that finally produced the
breakdown of Chilean constitutionalism and the
intervention of the armed forces that the extreme left
of the Allende coalition had been predicting all along.
Initial Success
At the outset, the new economic policy was
astoundingly successful, although it had within it
the seeds of future disaster. Income redistribution
stimulated demand, while price controls and an arti-
YRGHT
icia y low exchange rate kept prices down. As a
consequence, a. mini-boom ensued. By March 971
the Sociedad de Fomente Fabril (Association for the
Development of Manufacturing), representing
Chilean business and industry, admitted that pr duc-
tion had increased by 6.3 percent over the figure
of '12 months before, and by May that figure had
reached 13.5 percent. The Institute of Economics
of the University of Chile later reported that unem-
ployment in the Santiago area dropped fro 8.3
percent in December 1970 to 5.2 percent in June
1971 and declined further to an unusually to 3.8
percent by the end of the year. The Consumer rice
Index stopped climbing entirely in December 970
and had only increased by 6 percent by the time
of the municipal elections of April 1971-its lowest
rise in many years. At the same time, salaries and
wages increased by 27 percent in real terms.
This wave of economic prosperity-combined
with the absence of the political repression that
some rightists had predicted would result from a
victory by the Marxists-led many, particularly in
low income groups, to vote for the candidates of the
Popular Unity coalition in the April municipal elec
tions. Allende's own Socialist Party bettered its elec-
toral showing in the 1969 congressional elections by
nearly 100 percent (a jump from 12 percent to 22
percent of the total), and the candidates of al the
parties supporting Allende received about 50 per-
cent of the vote, as compared with the 36 pe cent
which the President himself had received only even
months before. Yet, gratifying as the results were,
the coalition was still a few votes short of the bso-
lute majority that Allende required to win a plebi-
scite on a constitutional amendment. He was later
criticized for not calling the plebiscite at the time
when the regime's popularity was at its highest
point,' but in retrospect it does not appear at all
certain that he would have won-particularly since
by the time that the constitutional prerequisites for
such a vote had been fulfilled, the economic and
political situation would have been much less favor-
able.
The period after the municipal elections no ap-
pears to have been crucial for the long-term su ival
of the regime. The Right was still in disarray, the
Christian Democrats had elected a compromise
leadership which was not committed to either the
party's wings, and the short-run economic and oliti
cal indicators were favorable. Yet, instead oft king
action on the economic front to stem the loss of
foreign reserves and to dampen inflationary res-
sures-and on the political front to prevent the
movement of "the Christian Democrats into an alli-
ance with the right-wing opposition partie the
regime continued its previous policies, confidently
assuming that in the long run "the people" would
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support it and ignoring the warnings of "bourgeois"
economists that the loss of foreign reserves, the ex-
pansion of demand, and the sharp decline in invest-
ment would produce disastrous consequences in the
following year.
Political Polarization
The hardening of the Christian Democratic posi-
tion began in mid-1971. It was accelerated in June
by the assassination of the former Christian Demo-
cratic Interior Minister, Edmundo Perez Zujovic, by
extremists, at least one of whom had been released
from prison by Allende upon his accession to power.
A month later in a by-election in Valparaiso, the
victorious Christian Democratic candidate received
the support of the Right. The tacit alliance with the
Right led to the secession from the PDC of eight
deputies and a number of other party leaders to form
the pro-Allende lzquierda Cristiana (Christian Left).
This was counterbalanced however, by a split in the
other direction within the Allende coalition. Five of
the seven Radical senators (including two former
presidential candidates) and 7 of the 19 deputies
left the Radical Party (PR), and formed the Partido
de la lzquierda Radical (Party of the Radical Left-
PIR) in protest against the Marxist orientation of a
PR c ;!icy resolution which the dissidents described
as ' c; mplete!y removed from the characteristic and
distinctive ideology of our party" and opposed to
"the interest of the middle social strata" whom the
party had always represented! For a time, the PIR
continued to support the Allende government, but
within a year it had entered the ranks of the opposi-
tion.
In July 1971, the Christian Democrats had voted
in favor of the constitutional amendment national-
izing the copper mines, but from that point forward,
the pattern was one of polarization of Chilean politics
and society into two opposing blocks. The Allende
forces controlled the executive and pursued an in-
creasingly vigorous ideological purge of those who
were not entirely sympathetic to the government.
The opposition controlled the legislature, and in
October 1971 the Christian Democrats and the
rightist parties attempted to assert legislative con-
trol over the expansion of the public sector by voting
in favor of a constitutional amendment limiting the
use of the intervention and requisition procedures
and requiring that all transfers of private enterprises
to the "social" or mixed sectors be carried out in
accordance with specific legislation adopted by the
Congress. This legislative act, referred to as an
amendment on the "Three Areas of Property,". be-
came the focus of a continuing deadlock between
the President and Congress that lasted until
Allende's overthrow in September 1973.
Allende's refusal to accept the amendment or to
call a plebiscite to resolve his differences with the
Congress appeared to the congressional opposition
to be a decisive indication of his determination to
bypass the legislature in carrying out the Popular
Unity program, and from the time of the adoption of
the amendment onward, the Christian Democrats
began to cooperate with the rightist parties in op-
posing the executive. One method was to impeach
ministers for violation or (more often) nonenforce-
ment of the law. The first of many such impeach-
ments took place in January 1972. Another method
was to present a united electoral front against the
government. Informal cooperation between the
rightist parties and the Christian Democrats led to
striking victories in two by-elections in January 1972,
and a month later these groups formed the Demo-
cratic Confederation (Confederaci6n Democratica-
CODE) to prepare joint lists for the 1973 congres-
sional elections. A third area of cooperation was in
marches and demonstrations against the government,
the most famous of which was the March of Empty
Pots in December 1971,, in which thousands of
housewives, mostly of middle-class background,
marched, banging pots to protest food shortages.
Those shortages had developed because the pre-
dicted economic difficulties resulting from the
Vuskovic policy began to emerge in late 1971. The
balance-of-payments surplus had been depleted at
such an alarming rate (in 1971 there was a deficit
of $315 million, while in 1970 there had been a
surplus of $91 million) that in November 1971 the
Allende government called a moratorium on payment
of its foreign debts. Chile had already experienced
difficulties in securing loans from the Inter-American
Development Bank, the World Bank and the Export-
Import Bank as a result of its failure to compensate
the Anaconda and Kennecott copper companies
for the nationalization of their major mines. The
debt moratorium was bound to make it considerably
more difficult for Chile to secure foreign credits,
particularly for the short term.' In December 1971,
the Chilean government finally permitted a partial
devaluation of the Chilean escudo so as to decrease
the distortions created by its overvaluation, but this
created pressure on prices of goods manufactured
with imported components. Shortages of certain food
items-especially cooking oil, detergents, sugar,
toothpaste, and cigarettes-were ascribed by the
government to upper-class hoarding and to increased
consumption by low-income groups; however, the
dislocations in the countryside associated with the
very rapid expansion of the agrarian reform (Allende
took over almost as much land in his first year in
office as Frei had in six years) clearly had something
to do with the problem as well, and the situation
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C
could be expected to get worse with the harvest In
early 1972. A 100-percent increase in the money
supply as a result of the government's deficit spend-
ing was also beginning to produce inflationary pres-
sures now that the unused capacity of Chilean indus-
try had been taken up by the 1971 expansion. Most
important, a sharp drop in investment (Allende said
it had declined by 7.7 percent, but opposition
economists claimed it had fallen by 24.2 percent)
meant that the spectacular growth rate achieved in
1971 would be sharply reduced in 1972.
Yet the degree of the incipient crisis was not
Immediately evident from the figures for 1971. In-
dustrial growth had reached 8.3 percent, agrarian
production (based on plantings before Allende's
accession to power) had increased by 5.3 percent,
and unemployment had dropped to record lows. The
Communist Party in a report to a Popular Unity
"conclave" in early 1972 warned that "very strong
inflationary pressures could make our situation
acute," but the government took no action to deal
with the problem. The continuing optimism of gov-
ernment policymakers at this time was expressed
at a Round Table in Santiago sponsored by the Uni-
versity of Sussex and the Chilean Planning Office in
March 1972. In the course of discussion Radomiro
Tomic, the defeated Christian Democratic presiden-
tial candidate, asserted that the Allende government
had committed a "fatal political error" in failing to
establish an "institutional majority" in the Congress
through a "far-reaching agreement between socialists
inspired by Christianity and those inspired by
Marxism-that is, between the Christian Democrats
and Popular Unity-in the period following the 1970
presidential election." Allende's representatives con-
fidently replied that "with a gradual heightening of
the political consciousness of the proletariat, there
seemed to be no obstacles in the internal logic of
the Chilean bourgeois state to prevent the workers'
winning sufficient strength to gain control of the
legislature as well as the executive." '?
On the political front, there were individuals and
groups on both sides who attempted to stem the
movement toward polarization, which they correctly
foresaw would lead to the breakdown of Chilean
institutions. Two important efforts to arrive at a com-
promise on the issue of the constitutional amend-
ment on the "Three Areas of Property" were made in
the first part of 1972. In April the Left Radicals, who
had entered the Allende government in January,
carried on lengthy negotiations with the Christian
Democrats to hammer out a satisfactory agreement
on this issue, only to have it rejected by the top
command of the Popular Unity coalition parties. The
Left Radicals responded by leaving the government
and joining the opposition, a move Allende described
PYRGHT
tions in June between the head of the Christi n
Democratic Party and Allende's Minister of Justi e
broke down when the time limit set by the Christi n
Democrats expired and the PDC leadership refus d
to extend it.
The two sets of negotiations seem to have col-
lapsed for related reasons. In April the left wing of
the Popular Unity coalition was unwilling to accept
a compromise which would slow down or stop t e
forward movement of the government nationalizati n
program, while In June the right wing of t e
Christian Democrats could point to an impends g
by-election in mid-July as a reason for discontinuing
discussions. Both cases illustrated a general prob-
lem posed by the Chilean multiparty system. Once
political conflict became polarized, the extremes
held the rest of the opposing coalitions hostage and
prevented what could have been a convergence of
views in the center.
The negotiations were interspersed with a ser es
of demonstrations and counterdemonstrations by
the government and the opposition which always
stopped just short of open violence. Several ob-
servers, including the American Ambassador to
Cri!e, Nathaniel Davis, remarked on the pattern of
"brinkmanship" that the Chileans exhibited.12 So ial
and political tensions increased-but as long as
economic deterioration was not reflected in runa ay
inflation, the Chilean political system seemed able
to contain them.
The Turning Point
The strains in the system only became unman-
ageable in mid-1972, when the lid blew off he
fragile Chilean economy and let loose the pressures
that had been building up for at least a year. As he
deficit in government spending rose, particul rly
because of its subsidies to the "social area," its
foreign reserves dropped nearly to zero, and he
growth of industrial output slowed down. Allende
replaced Economics Minister Vuskovic with Ca los
Matus and appointed Orlando Millas as Fina ce
Minister. The Matus-Millas team sought to "find
stability at another level," ordering a drastic ur-
rency devaluation, raising prices in the nationalized
sector, and permitting limited agricultural price in-
creases. The result was a sharp jump in the cost-of-
living Index, which climbed from 27.5 percent at the
end of June to 99.8 percent at the end of September.
A wage readjustment to compensate for the Increase
in the cost of living only accelerated the inflation,
so that by the end of the year the official consumer
price index had reached 163 percent (see Table 1).
In September, industrial output began to drop in
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of increase)-a drop that continued every month
thereafter until the September 1973 coup." Agri-
cultural production (excluding livestock) also com-
menced to decline, and mineral production regis-
tered precipitous drops, although copper production
rose by 1.3 percent for 1972 owing to the fact that
had been forbidden to inspect. 1`) The judiciary
joined in the conflict, protesting the failure of the
Ministry of Justice to carry out court orders, while
progovernment demonstrators denounced the viejos
de mierda-"filthy old men"-in the Supreme
Court. As it became apparent that there was no real
a number of new mines came into operation. (On possibility of resolving their differences, the two
other elements of the worsening economic situation, sides turned to the armed forces as impartial arbi-
see Table 2.) ters, and the national holidays in mid-September
Chile's economic problems were paralleled in the 1972 were marked by rival efforts of the Congress
political arena. Several additional ministers were and the President to ingratiate themselves with the
impeached, including the Minister of Interior, who military.
was charged with abetting the illegal importation The political involvement of the military was
of arms from Cuba in March. (The Allende govern- accelerated by the next step in the Chilean tragedy-
ment claimed that suspect shipments from Cuba- the October 1972 strike. Respectively termed the
"bultos Cubanos"-were "works of art," but after "employers' lockout" and "the national strike" by.
the September 1973 coup, the government White pro- and anti-Allende forces, it began far from
Book published an inventory of over 2,000 pounds Santiago, in the remote southern province of Aysen,
of arms sent from Cuba in 13 crates which customs with a strike by small truckers. (Referred to by the
Table 1: Monthly Fluctuations in Consumer Prices government press as the "truck-owners," the mem-
and Industrial Output under Allende bership of the truckers' gremio-guild-was almost
1970
Oct.
35,6
-8.0
Nov.
35.3
4.3
Dec.
34.9
-0.3
1971
Jan.
28.1
-4.5
Feb.
22.8
-7.3
March
20.1
6.3
April
20.2
1.6
May
21.0
13.5
June
21.1
10.7
July
19.1
6.7
Aug.
17.4
10.7
Sept.
15.6
25.5
Oct.
16.5
22.6
Nov.
18.8
22.1
Dec.
22.1
19.5
1972
Jan.
24.8
18.5
Feb.
32.0
11.9
March
34.0
10.2
April
38.1
12.6
May
40.0
11.4
June
40.1
2.5
July
45.9
5.0
Aug.
77.2
3.6
Sept.
114.3
-7.8
Oct.
142.9
-7.7
Nov.
149.9
-8.1
Dec.
163.4
-11.1
1973
Jan.
180.3
-6.8
Feb.
174.1
-4.7
March
183.3
-2.8
April
195.5
-11.3
May
233.5
-11.0
June
283.4
-14.8
July
323.2
-10.7
Aug.
303.6
-11.9
Sept.
286.0
-22.9
Oct.
528.4
18.0
Nov.
528.9
5.1
e Percentage of change from the same month of the previous year.
SOURCE: Instituto Nacional de Estadisticas (National Institute of
Statistics),, Santiago; Sociedad de Fomento Fabril. (A i ti ot e
oeveiopmeAplpi' iforaRe4ease 1 N[
entirely composed of owners of one or two trucks
who feared an announced plan to establish a state
trucking agency which would have had priority
access to new trucks and spare parts). The strike
quickly spread across the nation, as the truckers
were joined by bus and taxi drivers, shopkeepers,
doctors, nurses, dentists, airline pilots, engineers
and part of the peasantry. The Christian Democrats
and the rightist parties supported the strikers, and
the work stoppage dragged on for over a month
resulting in an estimated loss of $150-200 million
in production. Agriculture was particularly hard hit
because the strike took place in the midst of the
planting season; indeed, there is no doubt that part,
though not all, of the 25-percent drop in the 1973
harvest was the consequence of the strike. Industry
was. not as adversely affected, since workers at-
tempted to keep factories going despite manage-
ment's efforts to cease production-and the October
strike saw the emergency of "Industrial Belts"
(Cordons) and "Communal Commands," which
seemed to embody the type of spontaneous "popular
power" that leftist theorists had spoken of as the
basis of a genuine revolutionary class consciousness
to replace the materialistic "economism" that had
characterized Chilean workers until this time."
When the workers seized closed factories, the plants
were usually "intervened" by the government, so
that an important result of the October strike was a
considerable expansion of the government-controlled
sector of industry and trade.
The most important outcome of the strike, how-
ever, was the direct involvement of the military in
the Allende cabinet. A condition of the settlement
of the strike was that the military take over key cabi-
net posts. This resulted most notably in the assign-
ment of the Ministry of the Interior to the Com-
CIA der-in-Chief 1194A000i ~~rle ~I0 ar1(;s Prats,
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Table 2: Some Indices of the Chilean Economy, 1970-72
ross domestic product (% change)
vestment (% change)
eal wages and salaries (% change)
ports ($ million)
mports ($ million)
3.7
8.3
1.4
8.6
-24.2
8.5
13.0
30.0
9.0
1129
1045
853
1020
1124
287
OURCE: Department of Economics, University of Chile.
so as to assure that the congressional elections
scheduled for March 1973 would be carried on freely
and impartially.
The involvement of the military and the prepara-
tions for the March elections brought about a lull
in the escalation of political conflict in Chile. Inevi-
tably, however, it also produced political divisions
within the military itself, which had hitherto been
relatively aloof from the process of polarization. It
was soon apparent, for instance, that General Prats
was willing to give the government the benefit of
the doubt in nearly every instance that its decisions
or actions were challenged. Conversely, the Navy
was noticeably less enthusiastic, and in January
Admiral Ismael Huerta resigned from the cabinet
over plans for the initiation of what he took to be
a food-rationing system. It is now also known that
the first plans for a possible coup were made by
intermediate-level officers at the end of 1972."
Food distribution became a critical issue as the
black market continued to expand, with much of
Chile's agricultural production going into illegal
channels because of the government's refusal to
increase the official prices paid for agricultural pro-
duce. The result was, in effect, two separate price
systems-a subsidized, state-owned distribution
system oriented primarily toward the low-income
groups and a flourishing black market aimed at
middle- and upper-income groups. The expansion
of the powers of government-appointed Supply and
Distribution Committees (JAPs) to deal with the
black-market problem led the opposition to charge
political manipulation of food distribution; nonethe-
less, the government seemed powerless to combat
black-market operations.
The March 1973 Elections
The congressional elections in March did not re-
solve anything. Chile's right-wing parties had hoped
that food shortages and economic difficulties would
produce a two-thirds majority against the govern-
ment, which might in turn permit the impeachment
most observers had preaicted. The oppo ition
pointed out that the vote of the pro-government
forces had declined from the 50 percent the had
registered in the 1971 municipal elections, while
the government compared its 44 percent with the
36 percent that Allende had received in 1970. In
fact, the only proper basis for comparison was the
1969 congressional elections. On that basis, the
leftist parties had suffered a slight loss in votes but
had achieved a slight gain in seats. Certain o posi-
tionists later argued that the Left would have suf-
fered much greater losses had it not been for a
government-assisted electoral fraud involving some
200,000-300,000 votes, but the statistics presented
in support of the argument are unconvincing. '
While the government's interpretation of the elec-
tions as proof that it was expanding its popular sup-
port was not accurate, the election results indicated
that at least it had not lost popularity as rapidly as
previous governments faced with similar economic
reverses. Despite a wage readjustment in 0
real wages had declined 7 percent in 1972, a
ing inflation continued to consume the wage in
in early 1973. However, the combination
criminatory distribution of government-pr
goods and appeals to class consciousness see
nave stemmed the erosion of support, at least
the masses of the poor.
Unfortunately for the government's iongei
interests, the deliberate accentuation of
consciousness had an opposite effect on the
class, driving middle-class areas to organize
selves into "Neighborhood Committees" to
d rag-
rease
f dis-
ed to
-range
class
middle
them-
defend
any to
which
themselves. It also, for the first time, led rrh
arm themselves for a possible confrontation
seemed more likely now that the safety valv
impending election was no longer present.
A goy
tment
nimu
ernment proposal to limit full wage readjul
to those making less than three times the m
wage did nothing to reassure the hostile
income groups.
Before the elections, it had been rumor
ed tha
at a
opposi
there might be another attempt in Marc!
accommodation between the regime and the
tiori forces, possibly under the auspices
of th
quicki
an anti-government majority of 56 percent, gave revented by the publication, two days a ter th
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elections, of a government decree calling for the
initiation in June of a single national unified school
system, which would follow a common curriculum
including compulsory courses in socialism and work
periods in factories. The ensuing uproar involved
,,;F Catholic Church for the first time in formal oppo
sition to the government and mobilized thousands
of secondary-school students in violent demonstra-
tions in downtown Santiago. Stories of fierce argu-
ments over the school proposals among the top
military officers (the military had left the cabinet
after the elections) filtered into the national press,
and a military delegation held a formal meeting
w.w1ith the Education Ministry to express their opposi-
tion. The controversy subsided only when the gov-
ernment announced that the proposal had been
postponed, pending further discussion.
Within the government, the debate continued on
whether to "consolidate in order to advance" (the
Communist position) or to "advance without com-
promise" (the Socialist stance). One indication of
how the debate was resolved was the decision by
the government to use a constitutionally-authorized
"decree of insistence" allowing the cabinet to over-
ride the rulings of the Controller General of Chile,
Hector Humeres, who had disallowed the requisi-
tioning of some of the factories taken over during
the October 1972 strike. Conflicts also continued
with the judiciary over the executive's refusal to
obey court orders to return seized properties. On
May 26, the Supreme Court sent a public letter to
the President denouncing
. . . the illegal attitude of the administration . . .
[its] open and continual rebellion against judicial
orders ... which signifies a crisis of the rule of law
[and] the imminent breakdown of the juridical struc-
ture of the country."
The stalemate between the executive and the
Congress over the constitutional amendment on the
"Three Areas of Property" was compounded when
the Constitutional Tribunal refused to take jurisdic-
tion over the disputed question of whether, in the
absence of a plebiscite, the Congress could override
the President's item vetoes by a majority or by a
In May the official price index jumped 20 percent,
indicating that the inflation. was moving into a new
hyperinflationary stage. The one effort that the gov-
ernment had made to hold the line-its refusal to
grant a full cost-of-living wage increase to the El
Teniente copper miners on the grounds that under
their contract they had already received partial cost-
of-living increases-led to a bruising two-and-a-half
month strike, which included a miners' march on
Santiago, mass rallies, and simultaneous one-day
general strikes for and against the government in
mid-June. By that time, Allende was once more
ready to resort to military involvement in the cabinet
to restore social peace.
Last Stage-Decline and Fall
On June 29, the last act of the Chilean tragedy
began with an abortive revolt by the Second Armored
Regiment. in Santiago. Apparently, several army
units had been in contact with Patria y Libertad, a
right-wing political organization, and had planned to
seize President Allende at his residence and to
occupy the presidential palace. The revolt was
canceled one day before it was to occur, but when
one of the officers of the Second Armored Regiment
was arrested and held in the Defense Ministry, the
Regiment decided to free him and in the process to
seize the presidential palace as originally planned.
General Prats, the Army Commander, used the other
military units in Santiago to put down the revolt in
a few hours-most of which were spent in negotia-
tion rather than shooting-but not before President
Allende had gone on the air to urge "the people" to
take over all industries and enterprises as a response
to the uprising of "a small group of rebellious mili-
tary men." The Central Labor Federation also urged
the workers to occupy the factories, and in one day
the number of companies taken over by the govern-
ment rose from 282 to 526. The "Industrial Belts"
that had sprung up at the time of the October strike
now achieved new importance. The spread of "peo-
ple's power (poder popular) had been seen by
Allende as a deterrent to a possible future coup,
but it created many additional problems for the
two-thirds vote." A second constitutional conflict , government. Production declined sharply after the
along the same lines developed when the opposition takeovers, the opposition got fresh fuel for its claim
majority in Congress voted in favor of an amendment that the expansion of state control of industry was
to give farms under 40 hectares (about 100 acres)
in size an absolute guarantee against expropriation
and to compel the distribution of land in the "re-
formed" sector to the peasantry after a transitional
period of two years. (The government had once again
used a loophole in the 1967 law to postpone in-
definitely the distribution of expropriated land by
individual title.)
being carried out through extralegal channels, and
"poder popular"-as expressed in the worker occu-
pations-appeared to some extent to pose a possible
threat of an alternative to the power of the central
government
After the June 29 revolt, Allende made new efforts
to secure military involvement in the government,
but his negotiations with the armed forces were
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unsuccessful.'? Instead, they embarked on a policy
of vigorous enforcement of the Arms Control Law, a
measure which had been adopted in October 1972
but only sporadically enforced thereafter. This law
authorized any military or police commanders to
carry out arms searches if there was "a presumption
of the clandestine existence of illegal firearms." _'
The right-wing Patria y Libertad organization had
now announced publicly that it was going under-
ground in an attempt to overthrow the government
by force, and military intelligence was also aware
of the initiation of arms training by all the govern-
ment parties, even the centrist Radicals." In the
course of their crackdown, the military found arms
caches in factories in Santiago and Concepcion, and
the killing of a worker in one such arms raid pro-
voked protests from the leftist parties.
At this point, the Chilean Communist Party and
the Catholic Church both concluded independently
that the only solution to the impasse in Chile was
one more attempt at an agreement between the
Allende government parties and the Christian Demo-
crats. The Communists initiated a campaign against
civil war almost simultaneously with a statement by
the Chilean hierarchy calling for a renewal of dia-
logue. Probably in response to these pressures on
both sides, two lengthy discussions took place on
July 31 between UP and PDC representatives. Both
Allende and the Christian Democrats agreed on the
necessity of enforcement of the Arms Control Law,
but disagreement continued on the constitutional
reforms. Allende offered to sign the amendment on
the "Three Areas of Property" in return for a con-
stitutional amendment specifying that the Congress
could only override presidential vetoes of constitu-
tional amendments by a two-thirds vote. He also
proposed the establishment of joint committees to
work out further agreements. However, the Christian
Democrats denounced these proposals as "dilatory"
and broke off the negotiations.
A few days before the dialogue was initiated, the
truckers began another strike, which was to last
from July 26 until the coup on September 11. As in
October, the truckers were joined by the other
grernios. Coming at. a time when the 12=month
inflation rate, fueled by massive government budget
deficits and subsidies to the nationalized industries
and agriculture, had reached 323 percent-and in
a situation where inventories had not yet been built
up from the October strike-the truckers' action
created much more serious problems for the govern-
ment than the earlier strike. This new crisis once
again raised the question of military participation
in the cabinet, and General Prats persuaded. his
fellow commanders that it was their patriotic duty
to re-enter the cabinet in order to settle the strike.
On August 9 Allende swore in what he called a
"national security cabinet," with General Pr is as
Defense Minister, Air Force Commander Cesar Ruiz
as Minister of Transport (the ministry which would
deal with the striking truckers), and the heads of
the Navy and of the National Police in other cabinet
posts.
Almost coincident with the entrance of the mil-
itary into the cabinet, the naval establishment be-
came involved in a serious conflict with the let wing
of the Allende coalition. On August 7, the naval
intelligence arm announced the discovery of plot
to carry out an enlisted men's revolt on August 11 in
Valparafso and Concepcion. The announcement
accused PS Secretary General Carlos Altam rano,
MAPU leader Oscar Garreton, and Miguel Enriques,
head of the MIR, of being the "intellectual authors"
of the revolt and demanded the lifting of the con-
gressional immunity of the first two, who sat respec-
tively in the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies.
Two days before the September coup, Alta irano
admitted that he had encouraged navymen to resist
their coup-minded (golpista) officers."
This attempt to subvert the hierarchy of a service
command from below was combined with maneuvers
by Allende to replace officers unsympathetic t him.
When General Ruiz resigned his cabinet pot on
August 17 in protest against his lack of sufficient
power to settle the strike, Allende compelled him
to add that his departure from the cabinet "im-
plicitly" carried with it his retirement as Air Force
Commander. This was correctly seen as an Allende
tactic to remove an officer opposed to him, and it
met serious resistance from within the Air orce,
provoking a series of actions which ultimately led
directly to the September 11 coup.
On August 20, top Air Force officers met to decide
whether to resist Allende's action. By evening, Ruiz
had persuaded them to accept it on the condition I
that Allende appoint the second-ranking officer,
General Gustavo Leigh, as Air Force Commander and
name another Air Force general to the cabinet (so
that Allende could not repeat the same man uver
with Leigh). The next night the wives of high-ra king
military officers, including those of six generals,
gathered in front of General Prats' house to present
a letter asking for his resignation. When the demon-
stration was broken up by police tear gas, i pro-
voked such dissension in the armed forces th t on
the following day General Prats decided to resign
both as Defense Minister and Army Commander. He
was joined by two other generals who, with rats,
had led the military forces that had quelled the
tank-regiment revolt in June.
The resignation of what appeared to be the last
defenders of Allende in the army now mean that
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all three services were opposed to the President. It
coincided with the adoption on the same day of a
"sense of the house" (acuerdo) resolution by the
Chamber of Deputies directed at the President and
the military ministers, drawing their attention to
"the serious breakdown of the constitutional and
legal order." " The resolution criticized the Allende
government for repeatedly bypassing the legislature
through the use of legal loopholes and for refusing
to promulgate the constitutional reforms voted by
the Congress. It accused Allende of ignoring judicial
orders, encouraging illegal seizure of property, perse-
cuting opposition labor groups, and supporting
illegal paramilitary organizations. In conclusion, it
stated that the listed actions constituted a "serious
breakdown of the constitutional and legal order of
the Republic" and urged the military ministers to
"put an end to the de facto situations listed above
which violate the Constitution and the law" or be
gufity of "compromising the national and profes-
sional character of the armed forces."
In its original form, the resolution had declared
the Allende government to be illegitimate, but the
acuerdo had later been softened in order to secure
the support of the Christian Democrats. Yet its effect
was still to give a congressional green light to the
military, and Allende immediately so interpreted it.
He replied to the motion by accusing the Congress
of "promoting a coup d'etat by asking the military
forces to make governmental judgments inde-
pendently of the authority and direction of the
President"; he also pointed out that according to
the Constitution the only way that the Congress
could decide on the legality of the President's con-
duct of his office was through impeachment by a
two-thirds vote.''
The congressional vote was echoed by several
professional associations. The Medical Association
called on their "colleague" Allende to resign-a
request that was echoed by the Federation of Pro-
fessionals (CUPROCH)-and resignation petitions
were circulated in Santiago. The Lawyers' Association
issued a declaration which-"without attributing a
malevolent intention" to the President-asserted an
"incompatibility between the institutional framework
within which he is supposed to exercise his office
and the actions which he feels obliged to carry out
in his program." Arguing that Allende "would appear
to be incapacitated (impedido) in the exercise of his
functions as he understands them," the statement
suggested that he could be removed from office
under Article 43 of the Constitution,- which author-
izes the Congress to declare presidential incapacity."
The Coup
ExaAt006VIOdf6tcKletetaso i!899t/o' io P
was made is not yet certain, but it evidently was
reached in the days following Prats' resignation.
The armed forces had contingency plans for the
control of vital points throughout the country in case
of any emergency, and it only required a signal to
put them into operation. Hence the actual seizure of
control required little preparation.
After the resignations of the third week of August,
Allende restructured his cabinet without the top
military commanders but still retained representa-
tives of the armed forces in ministerial posts. Over
the opposition of other PS leaders, he appointed as
Minister of the Interior his Socialist colleague Carlos
Briones, who was known to be interested in another
attempt at accommodation with the Christian Demo-
crats. The president also canceled a projected trip
to the Conference of Non-Aligned Nations in Algiers.
The government and the opposition again staged
rival demonstrations in connection with the third
anniversary of the 1970 presidential elections.
On the weekend before the coup, the Christian
Democrats called all provincial party leaders to a
meeting at which a proposal was adopted for the
simultaneous resignation of the Congress and the
President and for new elections to resolve the con-
flict between the executive and legislative branches.
During the same weekend, Allende met with the
leaders of his Popular Unity coalition and called for
the holding of a plebiscite on his conduct of office.
Although this step was reportedly opposed by the
Socialists, Briones subsequently asserted that
Allende planned to announce the plebiscite in a
radio address at noon on the day of the coup."
Meantime, after a stormy session with Allende on
September 7, the military commanders proceeded on
Sunday, September 9, to draft the text of the
pronunciamiento issued on September 11. They did
not secure the agreement of the National Police
until early on the morning of the coup itself, and
only after the fourth-ranking officer in seniority had
taken over the position of police commander."
oon September 10, Navy units set sail from
Valparaiso for previously scheduled maneuvers, but
that evening they returned to port and by early
morning of the 11th had seized control of that city.
Concepcion, the third-ranking city in Chile and a
known center of leftist activism, was taken over with-
out a hitch. Santiago required a few hours longer.
To justify their action, the military commanders
broadcast a communique to the nation. While ad-
mitting that the Allende government had initially
come to power by legal means, they announced that
it had "fallen into flagrant illegitimacy" by violating
fundamental rights, by "artificially fomenting the
class struggle," by refusing to implement the de-
cisions of the Congress, the judiciary and the
Controller-General, by causing a critical decline in
:IAtR 9-6dnl$4i000l O0 OQI -r tivity in
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QPYRGHT
the country, and by bringing about a state of in-
flation and anarchy which "threaten the internal and
external security of the country." The coup leaders
concluded:
These reasons are sufficient in the light of classical
doctrine .. , to justify our intervention to depose a
government which is illegitimate, immoral, and un-
representative of the overwhelming sentiment of the
nation."
At 9:30 a.m., when it was apparent that no one
but the GAP, his personal bodyguard, was ready to
defend= him, Allende broadcast his last message to
the Chilean people over the single pro-Allende radio
station that had not yet been shut down by the
,military. He began:
representing widely divergent political postures ave
cited the Chilean case as proof that the hope of
achieving Marxist socialism through democ atic
means its a vain one. Yet most people have fail d to
note two fundamental errors of the Allende policy,
neither of which was essentially related to the
attempt to establish democratic socialism:
(1) As noted at the outset, the very quotation rom
Engels that Allende cited at the beginning o his_
administration to justify his course states as a pre-
requisite "the support of the majority of the people."
Allende acted as if he had that support, but even
at the highest point of his popularity in the April
1971 elections, he never achieved it. Moreover, his
policy of deliberate class polarization, aimed at ex-
panding his electoral base, was more successful in
pitting professional and middle-class groups against
him than in widening his support among workers,
This is surely the last time that 1 will be able to speak
to you. . . . My words are not spoken in bitterness
but disappointment. In the face of these events /
can only say to the workers, "i am not going to
resign." At this historic juncture I will pay with my
life for the loyalty of the people.
Blaming "foreign capital, imperialism, and reaction"
for persuading the armed forces to break with their
tradition, he said:
History will judge them.... My voice will no longer
come to you, but it does not matter. You will con-
tinue to hear it; it will always be among you. At the
least, you will remember me as an honorable man
who was loyal to the revolution."
At 11:00 a.m., the coup leaders permitted those
who wished to do so to leave the building, and--
except for his personal secretary-all the women,
including Allende's pregnant daughter, left. The
military also offered the President and his family
safe conduct out of the country if he would sur-
render. Allende rejected the offer. The Air Force
then sent in Hawker Hunter bombers, which re-
peatedly hit the palace with rockets and set fire to
large portions of it. Finally, shortly after 1:30 p.m.,
Allende decided to discontinue the resistance, and
the members who had been with him left the build-
ing in single the, led by the secretary carrying a
white flag. Allende stayed behind and, sitting on
a sofa in a reception room on the second floor, put
two bullets into his head. The automatic rifle that he
used was a gift from Fidel Castro."
Conclusions
Since Abp? cf9 aefii I i 1 Js' cY R 2
peasants and low-income groups.
2) Marxist economists and policymakers have
always placed primary emphasis on investment and
the expansion of the productive capacity of the
economy. By contrast, the Allende policyma ers
emphasized increases in consumption and combined
this with a headlong rush to take over industry and
agriculture-a course far removed from the "two
steps forward, one step back" of Lenin. The conse-
quences of these policies after their deceptive in tial
success were massive government deficits, runaway
inflation, and a near-breakdown of the econo y.
(The argument that Allende's economic problems
were the result of a shortage of foreign credit does
not really hold water, since they were caused by
policies initiated before the foreign squeeze nd
since, in any event, Allende's regime manage to
secure enough foreign credits from Latin American,
European, Soviet and Chinese sources to increase
the Chilean foreign debt from $2.6 billion to 3.4
billion in less than three years. Much of the new
indebtedness was to Western Europe and other L tin
American countries. Surprisingly, Chile's debt to he
USSR, China and Eastern Europe increased only from
11.9 million to $40 million between 1970 and
1973.")
Specific aspects of the Chilean system also made
the Ailende experiment a particularly difficult one.
He was able to come to power in the first place
because of Chile's deeply-rooted commitment to he
democratic system and because the Marxist parties
were able to mobilize a part of the proletariat and
the peasantry, and he had at his disposal many
instruments for state control of the economy wh ch
had been developed by previous administrati ins
since the 1930's. However, he was required to
operate within an institutional system which inclu ed
frequent and staggered elections, proportional r
r fnAt ffP 9d0) ' j t~abbf6bnd 9h-5n
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majority rule very difficult and often gave veto pow-
ers to the extremes of Right and Left. The economy
had been characterized for nearly a century by a
chronic tendency to inflation, and successive govern-
ments had consistently ignored agriculture in the
interest of securing urban electoral support. The
most important systemic constraint of all, of course,
was the existence of a professionalized and insti-
tutionally-loyal military which was unresponsive to
the ideological blandishments of the Left."
The immediate causes of the military intervention
are apparent from the preceding account. In the last
part of 1972, the military were drawn into Chilean
politics by both sides and became as polarized as
the rest of Chilean society-with the overwhelming
majority joining the opposition to Allende. The con-
flict over education in March-April 1973 height-
ened that polarization just at the time the military
were attempting to extricate themselves from politi-
cal involvement. Then the expansion of arms
searches in mid-1973 revealed the extent to which
Chile was becoming an armed camp on the verge
of civil war. Finally, the efforts to subvert the existing
military hierarchy by a combination of leftist activ-
ity among enlisted men and presidential maneuver-
ing with promotions and retirements provided the
classis scenario for a coup d'etat.
One can also relate Allende's difficulties to the
inherent contradictions in the Marxist theory to which
he appealed. At the same time that he proclaimed
his faith in a democratic, pluralist and libertarian
transition to socialism, many of his Marxist sup-
porters spoke and acted on the basis of a belief In
the inevitability of armed confrontation. With his
knowledge, they armed themselves and-what was
worse-talked incessantly about revolution. The re-
peated statements of Regis Debray and others that
the observance of the rules of "bourgeois" legality
was only a tactic until the balance of forces had
improved was hardly likely to persuade doubters of
the sincerity of Allende's commitment to democracy.
When the importation and distribution of arms was
combined with efforts to reorganize education along
ideological lines, to subvert military discipline, and
to rearrange the hierarchy of command, It is not
altogether surprising that the military finally took
action.
A positive evaluation of the Allende years would
certainly credit him with a sincere effort to raise
the living standards of low-income groups and to
involve them actively in the determination of their
own future. It would likewise stress the continued
existence of freedom. of expression for all points of
view in Chile right up to the coup. A more negative
assessment would ask whether the low-income
groups in Chile genuinely benefited from an eco-
nomic policy which after the first half of 1972 pro-
duced hyperinflation, a continuous drop In agri-
cultural and industrial production, and a reduction
in the real value of wages and salaries. Even more
critically, one could inquire who has suffered the
most In economic and in human terms as a result of
the breakdown of the Chilean system-the Marxist
politicians, many of whom were able to escape or
go into exile, or the workers, peasants and slum-
dwellers they claimed to represent, who are now
paying the price of the Allende regime's mistakes
in the form of the hardships Imposed by sharply
reduced consumption and the strictures of dracon-
ian military rule.
1 Allende's supporters in the Popular unity coalition consisted of
his own socialist Party (Partido Socialists-PS), the communist
Party (Partido Comunista-PC), the main body of the Radical Party
(Partido Radical-PR), the leftist Catholic "Movement of Popular
United Action" (Movimiento de AcCidn Popular Unldo-MAPU), and
two other smaller groups. The largest opposition groups were the
centrist Christian Democratic Party (Part/do Democrats Cristiano-
PDC) and the rightist National Party (Partido National-PN).
In retrospect, It is ironic that the Chilean Senate never acted on a
constitutional amendment proposed early in 1970 to establish a
second-round popular election, which would have provided the
President thus elected (probably the right-wing candidate, Jorge
Alessandrl) with a clear popular mandate.
2 El Mercurio (Santiago), Nov. 6, 1970, p. 23.
D Salvador Allende, "The Chilean Way to Socialism," in Paul E.
Sigmund, Ed., The Ideologies of the Developing Nations, 2nd rev. ed.,
New York, Praeger, 1972, p. 450.
4 Frei's Chileanlzation program had involved the purchase by the
Chilean state of a controlling interest in the large copper mines
:caned by the Kennecott and Anaconda companies. The agreements
rad also provided that Chile's payments to the American companies
were to be invested in the expansion of copper production and
refining in Chile, earning the country additional revenue in the
1970's to pay back the loans contracted to finance the purchases.
% See R6gls Debray, The Chilean Revolution: Conversations With
Allende, New York, Random, 1971, pp. 52, 77, 91, and 97. El Mercurio
(International Edition) Feb. 18-24, 1974, p. 3, reproduces the report,
found In the presidential palace.
? On "socialist consumerism" see Paul E. Sigmund, "Two Years
of Popular Unity," Problems of Communism (Washington, DC),
November-December 1972, pp. 38-51.
?See, e.g., Paul M. Sweezy, "Chile: The Question of Power,"
Monthly Review (New York, London) December 1973, pp. 1-11.
' El Mercurio, Aug. 8, 1971, p. 37.
? On the inaccuracy of the term "invisible blockade" to describe
the Allende government's credit problems, see Paul E. Sigmund,
"The 'Invisible Blockade' and the Overthrow of Allende," Foreign
Affairs (New York), January 1974, pp. 322.40.
,a J. Ann Zammit and Gabriel Palma, Eds., The Chilean Road to
Socialism, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1973, pp. 38, 247,
The Communist Party report appears In El Mercurio (International
Edition) Jan. 31-Feb. 6, 1972, p. 4.
" Partido Izquierda Radical, Trayectoria Politica'del PIP (Political
Path of the PIR), Santiago, 1972, p. 79.
12 A secret cable from US Ambassador Nathaniel Davis to the
State Department, Published In Jack Anderson's column In The
Washington Post (Washington, DC) on March 28, 1972, commented
that the Chileans have a great ability to rush to the brink, embrace
each other, and back off." On the same point see Mauricio Solana
and Fernando Cepeda, Allende's Chile: On the Politics of
Brinkmanship, Bogota, Universidad de Los Andes, 1972.
u The. Allende government blamed the drop In production on the
October 1972 strike, but this ignored
began before October, the fact that production declines
.
'+Secretarla General del Gobrerno, Liibro Blanco (White Book),
Santiago, 1973, pp. 103-O8.
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CP1(rRGHT
15 The Cordones were more or less spontaneously organized
committees of workers from seized factories which coordinated
production and distribution in a given Industrial area. The Communal
Commands (Comandos Comunales) were organized by the Cordons
to mobilize the local population in the surrounding area. They
included representatives of neighborhood committees (juntas de
vecinos), mothers` groups (centros de madres), price control and
distribution committees (juntas de abastecimiento y, precios), and
other groups. On the persistence of worker "economism," see James,
Petras, "Chile: Nationalization, Socioeconomic Change and Popular
Participation," Studies in Comparative International Development
(Beverly Hills, Calif.), Spring 1973, pp. 24-51; also available in
James Petras, Ed., Latin America: From Dependence to Revolution,
New York, Wiley, 1973, Chap. 2.
1s The New York Times (New York), Sept. 27, 1973.
17 See report of the Investigating Committee of the Catholic
University Law School, reproduced in the Libro Bianco, pp. 220-30.
The statistics on rcw voters in 1973 omit the 21 to-24-year-old group
who ?.,,ould have teen too young to vote in 1970. They comprised
almost exactly the number of "fraudulent" voters estimated in the
report.
is Libro Blanco, p. 215.
19 The term "item veto" reflects the fact that the Chilean president,
unlike his US counterpart, can veto or even rewrite individual sections
of proposed laws.
20 Two conflicting accounts of those negotiations appear in Ercilla
t=antiago), July 11-17, 1973, pp. 7-10.
71 Law No. 17,798, Diario Oficial (Santiago), Oct. 21, 1972. By a
q- ;irk of fate the law had come to Allende's desk In the midst of the
October strike, and since it had the strong support of the armed
fries, he was compelled to sign it despite the opposition of the
Scoialist Party and the MIR,
22 Allende's personal bodyguard had organized courses In arms-
training at his vacation house outside of Santiago. The MAPU began
arms-training In December 1972, and the Radicals did so in July 1973.
The armed forces were aware of this at least by the end of July.
See documents in Libro Blanco, pp. 43.45, 192-93, 196-200.
23 It was an indication of the continuing press freedom in Chile that
r.e+vsstands in downtown Chile at this time contained a left-wing
publicat,on headlined, "Soldiers, Disobey Your Officers," and a
magazine of the extreme Right. with the headlines, "The Right of
F.ebe!f.or," "Rebellion and its Goals," and "Resistance to the Tyrant."
24 Libro Blanco, pp. 239-42.
25 El Mercurio (International Edition) Aug. 20-26, 1973, p. 5. The
chairman of the Christian Democratic Party told the New YorJ. Times.
that "neither we nor the armed forces favor anything but a
democratic solution to Chile's political crisis" but emphasize that
the only way to avoid a breakdown of the Constitution was the
appointment of military men in at least six cabinet posts, as well as
in key undersecretary positions and as heads of the chief govern-
mental agencies. The New York Times, Aug..27, 1973, p. 12.
26 El Mercurio (International Edition), Aug. 26-Sept. 1, 1973, p. 7.
37 Information from the author's personal Interviews with Pa ricio
Aylwin, Jan. 11, 1974, and Carlos Briones, Jan. 14, 1974.
28 Accounts of pre-coup military activities appear in The C ristian
Science Monitor (Boston), Sept. 17, 1973; The Wall Street Jou nal
(New York), Sept. 25, 1973; Le Monde (Paris), Dec. 19, 1973; and
Robert Moss, "Chile's Coup and After," Encounter (London), arch
1974, pp. 72-80,
>Libro Blanco, pp. 248.49.
30 Translated from the transcript of the tape recording of the speech
published In Ricardo Boizard, El Ultimo Dta de Allende (The Last
Day of Allende), Santiago, Editorial de Pacif)co, 1973, pp. 53-55.
31 On Allende's suicide, see the medical report in El Mercurio
(international Edition), Oct. 29-Nov. 4, 1973, pp. 1 and 7. The
eyewitness testimony of one of the President's personal ph icians,
who entered the room immediately thereafter, is published in Emilia,
Jan. 2-8, 1974 pp. 10-13. Allende's widow has asserted that
witnesses told her they had seen bullet wounds in his chest and
stomach, A supposed account by a personal bodyguard circ,L fated
In Mexico and elsewhere describing his murder contains numerous
factual errors and describes events which could not have to an
place because of the physical design of the building. On this end
many other myths of Left and Right concerning the overthrow of
Allende, see Paul E. Sigmund, "Allende through the Myths,"
Worldview (New York) April 1974 pp. 16-21.
32 Secretaria, ComitB Interamericano de la Alianza pare el rogreso
(CIAP), El Esfuerzo Interno y )as Necesidades de Financiamie to
Externo pare el Desarrollo de Chile (Domestic Efforts and th Needs
for External Financing for the Development of Chile), Washington, DC,
1974, p. V-9.
33 The Socialists always believed that they could convert th
military to their outlook. This Is strikingly revealed in Socialist Party
documents published In the Libro Blanco, pp. 124-30.
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