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

CHILE(*) By W/LL/AM E. RATL/FF The Chilean Popular Unity experiment under President Salvador Allende between 1970 and 1973 attracted attention, commitment, and condemnation all over the world. Many people in European, Soviet-bloc, and Third World countries, as well as in the United States, felt the Allende undertaking would transform Chile, and possibly serve as a model of development for other societies in the developed and undeveloped world. Other observers, on the other hand, saw the Popular Unity movement as a backdoor opened to totalitaria– nism. No-one can accurately judge the coup and the problems the Chilean people nowface without an understanding of the complex series of events which prompted the military to take over. Let us discuss several important issues which I think have been most distorted in many discussíons of the Allende period, issues which must be demythologized before any true understanding and constructive analysis of the ropular Unity years can even begin. Chile is one ofthe most politically sophísticated and complex countries inthe world. It has a constitution, courts, congress and a long tradition of democratic government. During the Allende years, each of tour major parties representing radically different ideologíes and constituencies could be counted upon to get between 15 and 35 percent of the vote in the national elections. These tour were the generally status-quo oriented National Party, the leftist-reform Christian Democratic Party, since 1963 the largest in the country, and the Communistand Socialist Parties onthe Marxist-Leninist left. The two major Marxist-Leninist parties, building on a tradition of coalition politics reaching back into the thirties, have long contested elections through united fronts, the most recent being the Popular Unity Alliance, 'which was formed in late 1969. Political, social and economic tensions, which had been building up in Chile foryears, increased during the so-cailed "Revolution in liberty" conducted between 1964 and 1970 by Christian Democratic president Eduardo Freí. The so-called class struggle increased much more rapidly after Allende's inauguration,however, since international conditions had changed and the leftist coalition which sought immediate revolutionary change on a large scale found itself in control of the powerful Executive branch of the government and able to implement many of the programs it had previously only discussed. Operating outside the electoral system were the ultra-right and ultra-Ieft groups which were a major factor in throwing the long-established Chilean system out.of kilter. The rightist organizations were involved in a variety of illegal activities as well as some legal ones. As disruptive as some of their activities were, however, they seem less important during this period than the ultra-Ieftist groups.lheywere clearly in opposition to the elected government and most Chileans have great respect tor the electoral process. Indeed, their first important action -the assassination of the Army commander-in-chief in October 1970- greatly increased support for Allende during his early term of offic!,!. Their activíties did not discredit the so-called legal revolution ofthe Popular Unity as the ultra-Ieftis! activities did. The. ultra-Ieft -this designation was used by the Communist Party as well as the (')Excerpts from a statement before the Commonwealth Club 01 California. San Francisco. November 21. 1973. Reprinted with permission from the author. 57