Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (27 page)

Whether or not Allende would proceed with “audacity, audacity and more audacity,” he had generally accepted Castro’s analysis of his difficulties. When he had delivered a farewell address to the Cuban leader at Chile’s national stadium, he warned Chileans that a “fascist germ” was infecting women and a younger generation of Chileans. He, too, compared his own experience with that of Brazil’s ex-president, João Goulart, a decade before. And he also spoke of Cuba and Chile facing “identical enemies, foreign and domestic,” the “hand of imperialism.”
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When it came to following Castro’s advice to “arm the spirit,” Allende had then prophetically staked his life on fulfilling La Vía Chilena: “Let those who want to turn back history,” he promised, “those who want to ignore the will of the people, know that I am not a martyr, but I will not retreat one step. Let them know that I will leave La Moneda only when I have fulfilled the task entrusted to me by the people … only by riddling me with bullets can they stop me from fulfilling the people’s programs.”
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However, beyond his own future, Allende left the question of revolutionary violence “hanging in the air,” as the United States’ new ambassador in Santiago, Nathaniel Davis, observed.
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The president was far more explicit about prescribing constitutional means of combating his opposition, and warned that preemptive violence would only provoke the enemy. He also spent much of his farewell speech to Castro actually emphasizing the
differences
between Cuba and Chile, arguing the UP’s opposition was a minority, underlining Chile’s democratic freedoms, and pledging his faith in the constitutionalism of Chile’s armed forces.
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Beyond Allende, the UP coalition was divided on how to respond to Castro’s advice. Castro’s arms fair at the embassy for the PCCh not- withstanding, the Communist Party called for keeping Chile’s revolutionary process within legal bounds, for consolidating the UP’s position rather than overextending its aims, and for dialogue with the Christian
Democratic Party. Meanwhile, Socialist Party militants regarded legality and dialogue as overly restrictive. According to them, the right-wing demonstrations against Castro’s presence had justified the need for armed preparation, and they now called for accelerated training in operational tactics and explosives.
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Indeed, the divergence between the Socialists and the Communists had been growing for some time and PCCh leaders had been bemoaning the PS’s “excessive radicalism” in their conversations with diplomats from the socialist bloc for some months already. As the Polish ambassador in Santiago had warned back in August 1971, there was “a multiplicity of conflict” within Chile’s political parties, and fissures were already weakening the UP coalition. Now, just over four months after he had made this observation, the fissures were becoming increasingly public.
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Which side would Allende take in this context? The president offered no explicit answers, even if he warned a rally of thousands of the threat of a growing “international conspiracy” against his presidency, something underlined by the government’s “December Declaration.”
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In December, when Nixon’s personal envoy to Latin America, Robert Finch, had publicly predicted that Allende’s government “wouldn’t last long,” Foreign Minister Almeyda had complained that it was not “international practice” to talk about the overthrow of a government one had “good” relations with.
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But, privately, doubts within government regarding the UP’s survivability were beginning to spread.

On the other side of Chile’s political divide, the PDC’s new leader, Renán Fuentealba, had spoken at an opposition rally, describing the president as subservient to Castro, denouncing Fidel’s “interference” in Chilean affairs, attacking the UP for stoking class hatred, and condemning the government for tolerating illegal armed groups such as the MIR and the GAP. With reference to the United States, Fuentealba also berated the UP’s “increasing sick attitude,” arguing that Allende sought “gradually to insert Chile within the orbit of those socialist countries commanded by [the] USSR.”
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In keeping with how Allende’s domestic aims transcended Chile’s borders, his international alliances and the way he dealt with his enemies abroad were having increasingly significant political implications within Chile.

Certainly, Fidel Castro had added an extra—and particularly powerful—voice to the growing debate regarding Chile’s revolutionary future during his stay. Although the Cuban leader emphasized his respect for Chile’s sovereignty, the sheer length of Fidel’s visit and the instructive tone of his
advice suggested otherwise. On a positive note, Castro’s support had given Allende heightened revolutionary credibility in Chile and throughout the socialist world, as well as a powerful ally in the quest for Latin America’s definitive second independence. Castro was also clearly focused on working
with
the president rather than
around
him. As his advice to the MIR, his public speeches, and his subsequent letter to Allende demonstrate, he seemed to believe that the president’s democratic mandate and his position at the head of the UP coalition were pivotal for the success of Chile’s revolution. But on the negative side, Castro worried that Allende was not decisive enough, while the contradictions between Cuba’s partnership with the president and the country’s simultaneous support for the far Left—whether as a result of a pro-MIR maverick like Rivero or not—were beginning to surface. Allende clearly valued his links with Havana, sought Cuba’s support, and hoped for Castro’s approval. But so did the MIR and increasingly radical sectors of the PS. And as their positions diverged, Castro would not be able to satisfy both.

In this regard, Castro’s trip did not cause either the growing strain within the UP or the opposition’s rising confidence. But his extended presence in Chile did boost antigovernment forces and leave the government arguing over his advice. Moreover, the intimate relationship between Santiago and Havana, and Allende’s suggestion that he and Castro stood together at the vanguard of a new revolutionary era in Latin America, did not guarantee that the two leaders shared the same vision for Chile’s future. On the contrary, many on the Chilean Left—not least the PCCh and Allende—did not regard Cuba as an appropriate model for Chile to follow, regardless of Castro’s numerous attempts to impart the wisdom of Cuba’s experience. Instead, they argued that Chile was different, that its constitutional traditions were robust, and that it could still reach socialism peacefully and democratically. Whether it was or could nevertheless remained to be seen.

Allende’s position at the end of 1971 was far more fragile than it had been six months earlier, but it was far from hopeless. Even U.S. observers had to agree that his foreign policy had been a “major achievement”: the UP had sensitively managed its external image, avoiding isolation and ensuring that it would receive “support and sympathy” if its relationship with the United States ended in confrontation. Crucially, as Ambassador Davis noted, Chile had “neutralized hemisphere qualms about its Marxist credentials”
with the “exception of Brazil’s conspicuous coolness, and the new government in Bolivia.”
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Similarly, an East German report on Chile at the end of 1971 proclaimed that “ideological pluralism” had “decidedly trumped the thesis put forward by the United States which assumed that there were ‘ideological frontiers’ in Latin America.”
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The UP had also made considerable progress during its first year in redistributing wealth within Chile. On the first anniversary of his inauguration, Allende announced 2.4 million hectares of land had been expropriated and 900,000 extra Chileans received benefits.
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The government had increased spending by 30 percent; Chile’s GNP had risen by just over 8 percent; industrial production was up by more than 12 percent; employment had grown by 45 percent; and wages had increased.
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The problem was sustaining such progress. The UP already faced significant financial difficulties. First, it had to deal with a drop in foreign exchange reserves (from $345 million in November 1970 to $200 million in August the following year) and, second, it had to cope with disappearing U.S. credits without any others secured to replace them. Its spending increases, the disruption to agricultural production caused by land reform, and an unpredictable drop in copper prices (from eighty-four cents during Frei’s administration to forty-nine cents in 1971) also limited Allende’s options.
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More important, class conflict was gathering pace, and in the opinion of those inside and outside the UP, the government was struggling to respond to growing opposition. As the East German Embassy reported back to Berlin, Corvalán had privately acknowledged that the situation was even more difficult because the left wing had not yet “fully grasped the complexity of the situation, the immensity and the importance of our fight,” which in turn diminished its chances of “properly reacting to oncoming problems.” The rising intensity of “reactionary forces” toward the end of the year, the embassy’s report continued, had “destroyed some of the illusions the UP may have had.”
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Moreover, the kind of socialism the UP was aiming for and exactly how its peaceful democratic road would achieve it were far more confused at the end of the year than they had been at its start. While the far Left—inside and outside the UP—encouraged land seizures, and miners went on strike for even higher wages, the president’s authority to control the pace of change was directly challenged. As such, La Vía Chilena became an increasingly fragile new model of development even as it began its second year. By December 1971 Washington’s embassy in Santiago was also reporting that sectors of Allende’s opposition were attempting “to prod [the]
military into taking sides,” something that the East German Embassy was particularly concerned about, noting that Chile’s armed forces remained a “source of insecurity” for Allende.
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What is more, now that rumors of prospective armed conflict were rife, the UP’s leaders increasingly disagreed about not only what they were hoping to achieve at home and abroad but
how
they would get there, and how they would react in the event of a coup. With such big questions about the future hanging heavily over Chile, the country’s rose-colored future was therefore looking decidedly more distant.

Of course, at the center of Chile’s foreign policy challenges lay the United States. Although the Chileans now had a clearer idea of the Nixon administration’s agenda, they were still receiving mixed signals in Washington and appreciated that there were also divisions within the U.S. government that affected how Chile would be treated. On the one hand, Kissinger said the White House was disposed to finding a modus operandi. On the other hand, Letelier observed that Nixon’s treasury secretary, John Connally, was likely to try to make Chile’s life more difficult in the future.
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More important, however, the UP did not have a clearly defined notion of what it actually
wanted
from the United States. To date, the Chileans’ emphasis had been on avoiding confrontation—and launching an international campaign to win support—rather than designing the way in which they wanted future relations to be conducted. Letelier was one of those who noted that this was now becoming a problem. At the end of 1971, he called on UP leaders to conduct a serious review of how Chile should deal with Kissinger’s openings, the mounting fallout from Chile’s nationalization program, and its application to reschedule its external debt.
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Yet his call for rethinking the art of conflict avoidance met with muted enthusiasm in Santiago. During his farewell speech to Castro, Allende merely insisted that “threats … pressures … restricting our credits or … thwarting our possibilities of refinancing our foreign debt” would not work. As he proclaimed, Chile was “not a no-man’s land. Chile belongs to the Chileans. Its people after years and years of suffering, duty and hope, have come to power.”
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But how could he consolidate that power? And to
which
Chileans did Chile belong? Clearly, different sectors of Chile’s population wanted different kinds of society and sought different external sponsors to help them. While the Cubans began delivering limited caches of arms to the Chilean Left, Washington’s funds and economic sanctions fueled political confrontation within Chile. And in the latter case, one of Washington’s
principal Chilean partners was happy with the way things were going. As Eduardo Frei put it when he spoke to the United States’ ambassador in Santiago, he was grateful to U.S. officials for the “sophistication” of their policy toward Chile.
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This sophistication rested on maintaining a “correct but cool” approach so as not to offer Allende an enemy against which to rally support. Although a U.S. priority since 1970, when the Chilean government had begun vocalizing its fears that all was not as it appeared, this had led to ever-greater U.S. efforts to prove that it was not intervening in Chile. In fact, instead of opting for tougher sanctions against Allende, Washington stepped shrewdly away from greater confrontation. And despite divisions between policy makers, the Nixon administration would largely follow this path through 11 September 1973. As far as Washington was concerned at the end of 1971, the time was not yet ripe for pushing for accelerated military plotting—at least until it could find partners and a situation which guaranteed success. Thus, for the time being, the United States would wait, all the while turning the screws on Chile’s economy and fueling political opposition to Allende’s government.

Where Latin America was concerned, the Nixon administration was also more content now that it had Brazil on its side as a firm ally and fellow conspirator. As a National Intelligence Estimate concluded at the beginning of 1972: “Brazil will be playing a bigger role in hemispheric affairs and seeking to fill whatever vacuum the U.S. leaves behind. It is unlikely that Brazil will intervene openly in its neighbors’ internal affairs, but the regime will not be above using the threat of intervention or tools of diplomacy and covert action to oppose leftist regimes, to keep friendly governments in office, or to help place them there in countries such as Bolivia and Uruguay.”
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