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

Suppose that a leader ofthe Labour left became prime ministerof Britain and started off by releasing members ofthe Angry Brigade and the IRA who are currently in jail and formed a private bodyguard out of them to defend N.o 10 Downing Stree!. Suppose that he then embarked on a programme of confiscation of private property that affected not just a handful of property speculators, but every small farmer and industrialist in the cóuntry and was sped along by the activities Of armed squatters seizing houses and farms at gunpoint. Suppose that inflation al an ahÍlual rate ofthree hundred and fifty (350) % wasthen used as a means of wiping out the savings and the salaries of the middle class, and that (finally) the government's supporters, having turned Manchester and Birmingham ¡nto armed camps with the aid of Palestinian terrorists and KGB instructors, incited mutiny within the armed forces. Few people, on either the right or the left, would argue that Britain had remained a viable democracy. The obvious ríposte is thatthe scenario is inconceivable in Britain (which, one prays, it is) and that the substitulion is therefore untenable. The point is that if a government in Britain acted in the same way as Allende's did, few people would describe it as democratic, and even fewer if -as would be impossible under the British parlíamentary system- it ignored parliament even in the face of a majority rulíng that it had "systematically violated the constitution".(2) Those in favour of such a government would have to define their terms rather more carefu Ily than those who persist in calling the Allende régime a "democratic" or even a "people's" government. Many of the liberals who mourn Allende as a progressive reformer would probably man the barricades against a leader who did tha same things in Britain. But then Chile, like Czechoslovakia, is a far-away country about which we know precious litlle and one can always appeal to the mistaken belief that :t is just another tin-pot Latin American area where the rich trample on the poor and where an honest man must take the ~ide of the revolutionaries. My purpose here is not lo justify what has happened since the coup -which must raise serious doubts about the future of democracy in Chile, even if the wilder rumour-mongering is discounted- but to show why in some sense the coup became inevitable. The Chilean coup bore some resemblancetothe military !akeover in Indonesia in 1965. In both cases, the armed forces had been ready to take orders from a radical left-wing governmel'l unlil it rounded upon them. The Indonesian Communists, who had found a pliant tool in President Sukarno, narrowly failed lo eliminate their potential opponents in the high command on the night of 30 Seplember 1965, when six key !;)enerals were mur~ered. There is now evidence lo sugges! tha! Ihe leaders of the far left In Chile were planmng to deal wilh suspect generals in a similar way, and that the September cO:.Jp may have pre-empted an autogo/pe -a self-made coup. Three things should be made clear atonce. First, the coupwas made in Chile.1f anyone was "meddling" in Santiago polilics, il was the c;ommunisl side .. The 1,400-odd Russians in Chile were no! exclusively concerned with importing Iractors. The Cubans did nol confine Ihemselves to supplying guns and instructors to Ihe Guerrilla Left. They may have played a more critical role Ihan was previously suspecled in Ihe counsels ofthe Allende government. Allende's Cuban scn-in-Iaw, Luis Fernández de Oña, who had formerly been the desk– officer behind Che Guevara's Solivian expedition, look over h.ls wife's office inside the presidential palace, where he was presumably well-placed to éxamine importanl cables and correspondence Iravelling in and out. Second, Ihe coup did nol happen in a political vacuum. In a country as polilically– minded as Chile, il would nol have been possible without the backing of the major opposilion partíes, whose leaders now, ironically, find themselves in a state of unemploy– ment. The Christian Democrats, who faced the 1970 elselion wilh a programme very similar lo Allende,s, moved over lo qualified support for lhe mililary lakeover- whieh may have (2)EI Mercllrio, 23 August 1973. 48