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

possible inflationary pressures which might result. (The Allende government also had a cushion of nearly $ 400 million in foreign reserves leftto jt by the Freí government as a result of hjgh international prices for copper, Chile's principalexport.) 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 (concien/ización) through government publications and the use ofthe 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 confe– rence just after his installation, "1 am nol president of all Chileans." And in His first "State of the Nation" message to the Congress he asserted: .../he People's Government (Gobierno Popular) is inspired in its policy by a premise that is ar/ificially denied by some-the existel1ce 01classes al1d social sectors !Vith antagol1istic and opposing interests.(3) Allende's economic advisers anticipated an addií10nal source of revenue for the goyernment from the "exploitative" profits of the industries thal were to be nationalized by the new government. The partially American-owned copper mines were lo 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.(4) Other companies were to be nationalized after a contro– lIing interest was gained through the purchase of shares on the open market by the government development agency. The latter coursf' seemed facilitated by the fact that the price of shares h~d 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 "Iegalloopholes" in existing Chilean law which could be used for "temporary" takeovers of companies, including "intervention" because of labor disputes and "requisition" 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 leg'islation -the 1967 agrarian reform law- but exploiting provislons 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 ta~eover meant that even if the effort to create a unicameral left-dominated legislature farled, the Allende government could destroy the economíc base ofthe "capitalist" opposi– tlOP ~hrough a series of "irreversible" laits accomplis (hechos consumados) which would give the government control of the economy and of the excess profits that the private sector hé,ld 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, if 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 (3)Salvador Allende, "The Chilean Way 10 Socialism, ,. in Paul E. Sigmund, Ed., The ideologies ofthe Developing Nations. 2nd rev. ed.• New York. Preager, 1972, p. 450. . (4)Frei's ChiJeanizalion program had involved the purchase b)! the Chilean state 01 a controlling interest in the large copper mines owned by the Kennecott and Anaconda companies. The agreemenls had also províded thal Chile's paymenls lo the American companies were to be invested in Ihe expansion 01 copper produclion and refining in Chile, earning Ihe counlry addilional. revenue in the 1970's lo pay back Ihe loans contracted lo finance Ihe purchases. . 23