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

co-management model of West Germany or France. He believed in highly centralized control of the trade union movement. In my day -and that's when I first had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Buckley- as a un ion organizer for the CIO AFL, in organizing newspapermen at the Uníted Press, we fought against communíst control of the uníon at that time, and I am familiar with how their operation works. And il was no different in Chile in my time than il was in Ihe Forlies in New York. Now he was using the trade unions to Iry to provoke strikes artificially, ·because under the law in Chile, once Ihere was a slrike the government could intervene and take over.. BUCKlEY: He also closed down an entire publishing complex. KORRY: He tried lo get -he tried- he did get effective -he tried to get effective control over the one source 01 newsprint in Chile. He denied spare parts to radio. He threw out the elections by the students of a Catholic university; he removed the directors 01 their televi– sion and newsroom, and their lelevision programming. And when Ihey tried to sel up an alternative station lo bring abouttheir decissions, bring it inlo being, he sen! the police in to break it up. THOMPSON: I don't see where your answer goes. I mean, if you're sayingit's not as good as it was, I think most people here agree. But if you're saying it's better than it was under the military". KORRY: Good lord, no. THOMPSON: Well then, are you saying il was a justification for the worst kind of covert aclivity? KORRY: What I am saying is -I'm just answering the specifics- he was seeking lo our knowledge to eliminate a free press, Ihat's one. Two, he politicized the military; he created seven hundred percenl ayear inflation. If you were lo have seven hundred percent ayear inflation in this country, you would have a government like they have in Chile. BUCKlEY: Mr. David lamble is a reporter with the newsroom KERA. AII right, Mr. lamble. .DAVID LAMBLE: One of the few articles I could find in a magazine on Chile Ihat dealt with Ihe issues to a great degree was written by Gabriel García Márquez. It was publ ished in March of 1974, called "The Dealh of Salvador Allende". One of the paragraphs I think is pertinent lo what you've said aboul Ihe Chilean milítary having a history of being nonpoliti– cal. or apolitical. "The Chilean armed forees, " he says, "contrary to what we've been led to belíeve, have inlervened in polities every time. their class interest have seemed threatened, and have done so with an inordinately repressive philosophy. The two constitutions whieh the country has had in the past one hundred years were ímposed by the force of arms; and the recently military coup has been the sixth uprising in a period·of fifty years". He goes on to talk about specific instances where the mi Iitary intervened in the country, including one under President Freí, where a military patrol opened fire on a demonstration to break it up, and killed six people, among them children and a pregnant woman. Then he goes on to say, "The myth 01 legalism and the gentleness 01 tha! brutal army was invented by the Chilean bourgeoisie in their own interes!. Popular Unity, Allende's party, kept it al ive with the hope of changing the class make up of the higher cad res. " He goes on also to say that just before the coup, that officers sympathetic to Allende were systematically purged and killed; and that Ihe milítary had to go through a number of changes to bring about the people thal they wanted in power. Now how does this sit with what you said before about the army being essentially non-poi ilieal? . KOAAY: I think it's all nonsense. He's a Marxist, he's spreading the Marxist mythology. Almost every word in that artiele is unlrue. Now, one, Ihe only Chilean military man thal I know of in the last decade who was killed was General Schneider, who was a Christian Democrat, one of President Frei's closest friends, a member ofthe bourgeoisie he's talking about. Number two, the Chileanarmy was lower middle class in most of its origins, and with 297