Chile: the balanced view : a recopilation of articles about the Allende years and after

under Allende replaced Cuba as the natural refuge for thousands of political exiles from other Latin American states, and some of the 13,000 to 14,000 refugees joined extremist movements and committed acts of violence. The evidence of these activities is irrefutable, and it is hardly surprising that innocent as well as guilty should suffer when the military intervened. Finally, in seeking to understand that intervention in the líght of the accepted view of Chilean political evolution, it is necessary to emphasize the conten!, no less than the form, of Chile's democratic systeni. Its key characteristic was compromise, despite the verbal violence of inter-party conflict, and it is easy to see why. In the first place, it has been the exception, no the rule, for the president to command a legislative majority in Congress, given a multi-party system which was partly the cause and partly the result of proportional representation in voting. Secondly, white the need to bargain often frustrated presidents with sweeping programmes, at least the system made for a degree of political consensus and moderated extremism, emphasizing national as opposed to se,ctional interests. These ' "rules ofthe game" were ignored in the early 1970s, the system broke down, parties refused to compromise, and virtually complete deadlock obtained. The .growth of lawlessness and violence, the appearance of paramilitary groups, the clandestine importing of arms, the transfer of politics to the streets, the fomenting of hatred and the sharp polarization of attitudes-all these features go a long way to explaining why intervention took the form that it did, and why the new authoritles have p'ursued those they held responsible, namely those who wished to destroy the system as it was and also those who permítted them to do so. By the summer of 1973, against a background of economic breakdown, ultimate responsibilityfor preventing a slide into anarchy rested with the armed forces and the police, Indeed, it was to put a biake on that development that they had agreed earlier to let senior officers take government portfolios, but that in itself eroded the tradition of non-intervention in politics. Association with a regime lacking majority support severely strained the loyalty of most of the high command; to break it only needed the attempts of the extreme Left actually to politicize the armed forces. Politics, the military felí, had failed the nation with which, more than any other institution, they were identified. When, on 11th September 1973, one of Allende's former ministers asked a general of what they were accused, he was answered:' "of having ruined the country". And it was hardly insignificant that one of the first acts of the new Government was to rename its headquarters after Diego Portales: more than any other it was he, in the 1830s, who gave Chile order and stability after a decade of heady politicat experiment and much unrest THE INTERNAL POLlTICAL SITUATION Internal stability and national regeneration were the two immediate aims of the coup d' état, and the unity of the armed forces in seeking them was reflected in the composition of the new Government. A strict curfew -gradually relaxed- was imposed, Congress was dissolved, the parties of Allende's coalition of Popular Unity were banned completely, and the opposition parties -the Christian Democrats, the National Party and the non-marxist Radicals- had their activities suspended .sine die. Leading lig_hts, as well as lesser functionaries, of the previous regime were arrested, sought asylum in foreign embassies or fled abroad. It cannot be denied that in the process the norms of civilized conduct were sometimes transgressed, but, as Cicero observed, "the laws are silent amid arms", and the new authorities had no illusions about either the quantity of armsat loose in the country or the wíllingness of those who had preached violence for three years to use them, The discovery of substantial caches of arms since lends credence to this víew. A good deal of foreign opinion, however, based on superficial knowledge of Chile and heav'ily influenced both by Chilean refugees and by evidence of undoubted excesses, has assumed that the new regime is simply concerned to turn back the clock and will brook no opposition in doing so. A simple glance atthe map of Chile, however, and the knowledge that the military 17