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

shown that their death-wish was not as highly developed as Allende had hoped. Allende's most lasting aehievement, elearly, was to destroy publie eonfidenee in a eonstitutional system that had served Chile better and longer than similar versions have served most West European eountries. Third, the generals might never have moved if they had not had the gage flung at them, first by the Guerrilla Left, and then. by Allende himself. The story of howthe different faetions in the high eommand finally eoaleseed to destroy Allende is not generally known, and is therefore worth looking into in some detail. THE MAKING QF "QPERATlQN SEAWEED" Now thatthe military have been sueked into Chilean polities, it may not be all that easy to get them out. But that is also part of Allende's legacy. He took the ealculated deeision to co-opt the generals into his government. It was a way of keeping them out of trouble and of damping down the opposition-since senators would be slower to speak out (and un ion leaders more reluctant to strike) against the men in the peaked eaps. In the end, of course, Allende on Iy sueceeded in giving the generals a sense of their own power -and an appetite for more-without securing their loyalty. He was fortunate, after the murder of General Schneider in Oetober 1970, to find a powerful ally in the new eommander-in-chief, General Carlos Prats González. Prats was hardlya man of the Left, though he shared with many of his fellow army-offieers a profound distrust of the traditional Right. But he developed a elose personal friendship both with Allende and with two of the key men in the Chilean Communist Party, Senator Volodia Teitelboim and Luis Figueroa, the trade union leader. His commitment to the régime deepened as his personal ambition grew; there may well be substanee in the rumours that the Communists promised to back him in the presidential elections in 1976. With Prats' support, Allende managed to persuade the armed forees to help him out of his first major crisis, brought on by the wave of opposition strikes in October 1972. Thus Allende was able to form the first of a series of three joint cabinets that presented the world wíth the novel spectaele of professiona! soldiers taking their seats beside Communist and Socíalist left-wingers. The first time round, the formula worked exaetly as the Communists had said it would. Astonished, and partly reassured, by the new coalition government, the strikers returned to work, and Allende's most strident crities fell temporarily silent. But· Prats beeame an increasingly lonely mano Not all of his senior colleagues relished their role as the underwriters for a government responsible for the worst economie crisis in Chile's modern histor.y, and most of them were angered by Allende's refusal to take action against the paramilitary groups that were organising on the Far Left. Prats showed distur– bing signs of personal instabil ity: he quarrelled violently with opposition senators and then, on 27 June, there was his extraordinary skirmish with a middle-elass matron called Alejan– drina Cox. Mrs. Cox noticed him in a passing car, and stuek her tongue out at him. Prats, in fury, ordered his driverto give chase, pursued herfor a dozen bloeks, fired two bullets at her car to make her stop and then rushed to her window, put his revolver to her head, and addressed her in.the following terms: "Apologise, you shit, or 1'11 kili you (Pide perdón, mierda, o le mato)". The government afterwardstried to make out, clumsily, thatthis wasall part of some "assassination attempt". .> Prats offered his resignation, which was refused. Providentially for him (or perhaps not SO providentially, sinee it seems that government agent provocateurs may háve been involved(3) the eomic-opera explóit;:> of Colonel Roberto Souper, who attacked the presi– dential palace with a fewtanks two days later, gave him the ehance to present himself as the national saviour. But he had lost all eredibility with his colleagues. Prats realised that his career was over on 22 August, when Congress ruled that the government had been aeting uneonstitutionally that day. The women of Santiago, who appear to have played a crucial (3)See my accounl in Chile's Marxíst Experiment (David and Charles, 19 73) 49