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

ago the commercial mission of Chi le to the Socialist countries, headed by the then Minister Julio Philippi, was.unable to reach any agreements because the terms of the transactions left much to be desired from the Chilean point of view. During the Administration of Frei this situation did not improve substantially. This made it dífficult to explain how all of a sudden the national interest was protected by these transactions with the inconvenience that the national economy was in ruines. Who ever believes that because Chile was being ruled by Marxists, the Socialist countries were going to offer better conditions is naive. The Cuban experience and that of the member countries of COMECON show precisely the opposite. The problem does not limit itself only lO examining the relations with the Socialist countries. Similarly the course of relations wilh other developed countries should be examined, particularly with the United States and Western Europe. The sum of both prospects is the one that will allow to form an exact idea of the real effect that international politics had under the Popular Unity Administration. RELATIONS WITH THE UNITED STATES: THE CONTINUOUS DETERIORA. TION The relations with the United States suffered a continuous deterioration in great part motivated by the problems which stemmed from the nationalization of copper. Neverthe– less, it would be wrong to attribute the responsibility of this deterioration to this sole factor, An important part of the responsibility fell back on the economic and financial policy followed by the Administration, changing the country in an entity that lacked solvency from the international financial point ofview, and at the same time jt did not have the capacity or will to fullill the commitments undertaken. In these Gonditions the availability of credits, the investment programs or simply commercial trends could only be restricted very.dramatica– Ily, An example of the aboye mentioned is evidently clear in the renegotiation process of the external debt at the headquarters of the "Club de París" and on other occasions, The commitments towards the ordering ofthe economy which the Administration accepted with the help ofthe International Monetary Fund, so scorned by the program of the Popular Unity, constituted the essential preliminary step towards recuperating the trust of the creditors; this simply all remained on paper, and even worse, the economical conditions continued their process of vertiginous deterioration, This permits serious doubts to be held as to whether the previous Administration wanted to arrive to a successful renegotiation of the external debt, or.it was a dilatory measure that inevitably would lead to the definitive stop 01 the payment, a measure which determined the final isolation of Chile in relation to the Western world, The very bilateral negotiations with the United States were conducted on a level that lacked the authority to adopt political decisions. RELATIONS WITH EUROPE This same reality adversely influenced Chile's relations with Western Europe, even though these relations were kept at a much more solid level of understanding than with the United States. On the one hand, the lack of solvency was also a lact to be dealt with in the European economical circles; furthermore, the results of the negotiations with the Club of Paris had necessarily a general and collective effect, in which it was impossible to separate the results nation by nation, the total being the índicator; this determined that although with some nations individually the renegotiations came to good terms, it was not sufficient to abate the general adverse effect which produced a negative result on the process as a whole, On the other hand, political groups that accompanied the Administra– tion of the Popular Unity and inseparable from them, made every possible effort to aflect the interests of the European countries in Ch ile, tor instance, through the take over 01 industries, a lact that determined the opening 01 a si¡nultaneous second tront in terms of expropriation 76