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

Secretary, Senator Carlos Altamirano- and several othergroups further to the left such as the MIR( Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria -Movement of the Revolutionary 'Left) and the VOP (Vanguardia Organizada del Pueblo -Organized Vanguard of the People), were ope.nly doubtful about the wisdom of relying on elections and "bourgeois legality" to achleve power and advised preparation for ao armed confrontation with the torces of rea~ti?n, which they ~oresaw 'as inevitable. Allende's effort to portray the transition to soclallsm as peacefut mcharacterwas not assisted bythe publication of his conversations wlth ~rench revolutionary theorist Rég is Debray in early 1971. In these, Debray declared that "m 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 Ché 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 Personales), and -we now know- as early as December 1971 received reports on ilegal importation and distribution of arms to the MIR and to his . bodyguards.(5) . While there were thus. intermiUent hints of revolutionary alternatives, Allende's basic economic strategy.was "soclalist consumerism",(6) combined with a rapid expansion of state control in ihdustry, 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 ando the class consciousness of the lower classes. It was the interaction of the various elements of this political and economic strategy that finally produced the break– down of Chilean constitutionalism and the intervention ofthe armed torces 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 artificially low exchange rate kept prices down. As a consequence, a mini-boom ensued. By March 1971 the Sociedad de Fomento Fabril (Association 'for the Development ot Manutacturing), representing Chilean business and industry, admitted that produotion 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 o, Economics of the University of Chile later reported that unemployment in the Santiago area dropped trom 8.3 percent in Decem– ber 1970to 5.2 pereent in June 1971 and declined furtherto an unusually low 3.8 percent by the end ofthe year. The Consumer Price Indexstopped climbing entirely in December 1970 and had only increased by 6 percent by the time of the municipal elections of April1971-its lowest rise in many years. At the sametime, salaries and wages increased by 27 percent in real terms. This wave of economic prosperity --combined with the absence of the political repres– sionthatsome rightists had predicted would resultfrom a victory bythe Marxists-Ied many, particu larly in low income groups, to vote for the cand idates ofthe Popul ar Unity coal ilion in the April municipal elections. Allende's own Socialist Party beUered its electoral showing in the 1969 congressional elections by nearly 100percent (a jump from 12 percent to 22 percent of the total), and the candidates of all the.parties supporting Allende received about 50 percent ofthe vote, as compared with the 36 percent which the President himself had received only sevenmonths before. Yet, gratifying as the results were, the coalition was still a few votes short ot the absolute maioritv that Allende required to win a plebiscite on a (5)8ee Régis Debray, The Chilean R~volu/íon: Conversa/ions wilh Allende, New York, Random, 1971, pp. 52, 77, 91, and 97. El Mercurio (International Edition) Feb. 18-24, 1974, p. 3, reproduces the reporto lound in the presidential palace. (6)On "soclalist consumérism" see Paul E. Sigmund. "Two Years 01 Popular Unity," Problems ofCommunism (Washington, OC). NOllember-December 1972, pp. 38-51. 24