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

to adduce something that besides being obvious is chíldish. To say that change must be taken into account in orderto decide on ceasing application ofthe measures applied tothe Government of Cuba, is to avoid the main issue... The main issue is to verify whether the changes -being invoked without determining the nature, importance, and influence the– reOf- have brought about such an extremely beneficial effect that the attitude of the Castro regime has become altogether different from that which moved the Government of Panama, in Apri11959; that of Nicaragua, in June ofthat year; those ofthe Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Ecuador, a rñónth later that of Peru, in October 1961 ; and that of Venezuela at the end of 1963, and in the Twelfth Meeting of Consultation held in 1967, to accuse it of having carried out acts of aggression and of interference in their internal affaírs and havíng acted agaínst the sovereignty and territorial integrity and of promoting subversion, terrorism, and civil war in the hemisphere. . The victims may not be the same ones, Mr. Chairman, but we are not here to ascertain whether there has been ferocity, but whether the aggressor has continued his depredations elsewhere, making his delinquent conduct ~orse. Inasmuch as reference has been made to the profound change in the circumstances that existed in 1964 and it has been sought to invoke that change in contraposition to "the measures taken in 1964 against the Government of Cuba" which are termed -by the very . government that then proposed them- "a result both of the conduct of the regime that was sanctioned and of the political conceptions of 'cold war' then prevailing", I shall stop a moment to briefly consider this matter. ' The so-called détente is not a policy nor an act implying immediate andgeneralized effects. It" is an essentially preventive long and laborious process, just recently begun, intended to loosen the tensions affecting the bilateral relations of theUnited States with the Soviet Union and with the People's Republic of China, One may add that that process does not give signs of being extended yet to reciprocal treatment between the two latter coun- tries. , In any event. any effect that this new kind of bilateral dialogue may have had on the specific problem that we are to consider in Quito goes unnoticed. . It is evident that significant events have occured since 1964 and these have left their imprint in the history of mankind and of our peoples, particuJarly in mine. Among them let us recall that on the night of August 20 and 21, 1968, a Soviet 650,000-man army invaded and occupied Czechoslovakia, kidnapped the main political leaders of that country, and showed the world that the Communist regimes could not disent .from the dictates ofthe Soviet presidium in certain political shades. The Brezhnev Doctrine on "the re~tricted sovereignty of the socialist nations" had been born. This fact, besides .others, such as the formation of LASO. which I shall analyze further on, would seem to indicate that not aJl the changes that have occurred since 1964 allows us a margin to joyfully celebrate their appearance and to iaentify them as promising land– marks in the road of mankind towards attaining peace. THE LATIN AMERICAN SOLIDARITY ORGANIZATION The establishment in August 1967 of the Latín American Sol idarity Organization, better known by its Spanish acronym OLAS (English LASO) has had serious and evident conse– quences. Ido not intend to enter ¡nto an exhaustive analysis of international politics inspired by Marxist-Leninisttheories, yet Imust recall the constant idiomatic perversion that constitutes the dialectical basis of Marxism. At the July and August 1967 Havana meeting, the flow of violence, destruction, and subversion unleashed throughout the hemisphere by the Castro promoters was peacefully called "solidarity." . Point 7ofthe founding proclamation of LASO stated: "To the majority ofthe countries of the hemisphere, the problem of organizing, initiating, developir;lg and culminating armed 87