Word: chiles
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Echoes of Chile's presidential election will be sounding around Latin America for years-and not merely because the Communists were thrashed in their attempt to take power by democratic means. Marxism has never succeeded at the ballot box. The bigger news is the man and the party that won: Eduardo Frei and the Christian Democrats, who are rapidly emerging as a vital new force, not only in Chile but in all of Latin America...
...always ardently antiCommunist. Their ideology is not based so much on the tenets of Roman Catholicism; indeed, the church in Colombia openly opposes the Christian Democrats. Rather, the party rallying cry is the Christian ethic, and it calls for social revolution without the shackles of Communism. "Christian Democracy," says Chile's Frei, "believes that the modern world is in crisis, and that only a complete readjustment of society can save man from materialism and collectivism...
Such talk has a strong appeal for the underprivileged-and also for Latin America's deeply religious women, rich or poor. In Chile, it was the women who gave Frei his large majority. He broke about even with Marxist Salvador Allende for the men's vote; the women (who use separate ballot boxes in Chile) gave him almost 63% of their vote. Frei's own sister Irene, 46, was one of the country's most popular political figures until her death in an auto accident five weeks ago. In Santiago municipal elections last year, she herself...
Foxes & Friendship. Using commerce as a toe hold, Peking has established trade missions in Mexico and Chile. Last year Mexico sold an estimated 500,000 tons of wheat to China, plus 22,000 bales of cotton; a 500,000-bale deal is pending for this year. Chile is selling nitrates and a small amount of copper. Roving teams of Chinese businessmen have bought wheat in Argentina, arranged to sell some textiles in Haiti. But so far Latin Americans have generally bought little. U.S. estimates put Chinese sales to Latin America at only $25 million last year...
...major effort, of course, is propaganda and contacts with Latin American leftists. Sino-Latin American "Friendship Societies" have sprung up in Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Venezuela and, of course, Cuba; Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador and Uruguay harbor "cultural" and "youth" groups linked with Red China; the New China News Agency (Hsinhua) had "foreign correspondents" in eleven hemisphere countries at last count. From Peking itself comes 38½ hours of powerful short-wave radio broadcasts each week -in impeccable Spanish and Portuguese-railing at U.S. imperialism, urging violent revolution, sniping at the Russians and crooning about Red China's Great...