Word: chiles
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MUCH NONSENSE has been written in the American press about Salvador Allende and the Chilean revolution. The picture the press has presented--and continues to present with renewed fervor despite the bloody golpe de estado against the Allende government--runs something like this: Chile, a prosperous nation with a long tradition of stable democracy, moved into the vanguard of Latin American progress in the late 1960s under the enlightened leadership of President Eduardo Frei. The popular Frei, who led the Christian Democratic Party, guided Chile well along the road to reform when the Chilean Constitution unfortunately intervened...
Frei needed nationalization to restore Chile's economic sovereignty. But the feeble infant Chilean industries produced only luxury goods for the tiny upper class. Only nationalization accompanied by a marked income redistribution to create a market for Chilean production could have started Chile on the path to industrialization--and income redistribution was precisely the step Frei, crippled by his ties to the right, never tried to take...
Frei was prohibited from running for re-election in 1970, and his lackluster successor was edged out narrowly by Allende, the "Marxist" candidate. Chile's woes began as soon as Allende took office. He ruined the economy and needlessly turned the great majority of the country against him as inflation skyrocketed and food and medical shortages grew. Allende's overthrow was tragic, certainly, but he had it coming because he tried to do too much too fast...
This caricature of Chile's recent past shows what happens when reporters get their news from American Embassy press officers. As David J. Morris's We Must Make Haste--Slowly convincingly demonstrates, the predominate view bears about as much resemblance to reality as a televised speech on anything by Richard Nixon. Morris, a young American journalist and community organizer, was in Chile for part of the Allende years: his book is a readable, sensible account of what actually happened...
Frei was caught in one of the contradictions of imperialism. The North American plunderers--the copper companies, ITT--were exploiting Chile so intensively that the entire nation objected: the poor, because funds needed for development were flowing out of the country; the rich, because they wanted a bigger share of the action. (In fact, when Allende finally sent his nationalization bill to Congress in 1971, all parties, including the right-wing Nationals, voted...