Why allende fell

But, as H. Thus if Chile was a South American country with a well-established tradition of democracy—as Chilean publicists were wont to boast—it was a democracy which had long displayed pathological symptoms.

Nor can it be repeated often enough that Jorge Alessandri Rodriguez, the candidate of the establishment Right, obtained only one and four-tenths of a percentage point fewer votes than the victorious Allende! This is particularly unfortunate, for few factors tell us more about the causes of his historic failure.

Allende was elected with the votes of Socialists, Communists, and left-wing schismatics from Christian Democracy—all united by a common program but sharply divided by divergent philosophies of power. The Communist party had long participated in the banalities of the Chilean parliamentary process, and as a fraternal affiliate of the Communist party of the Soviet Union it strongly adhered to the notion of peaceful coexistence in international relations and legalistic approaches to reform at home.

Precisely because of its long experience in Chilean politics, it understood perhaps better than any other party—Left or Right—the difficulties and obstacles confronting rapid transformation of that society.

In his relations with these two parties Allende sometimes resembled Dr. Both men were Socialists who felt more comfortable with disciplined, realistic Communist allies than with the avanzados of their own party. Carrying the analogy of Republican Spain a bit further, we might suggest that the Chilean Communists were far more sensitive than either Allende or the Socialists to the disastrous consequences which might follow in the wake of social polarization at home and confrontation with great powers abroad.

In part, of course, the Socialists were victims of their own world view and their own propaganda, which ascribed to their party and their nation far greater room for maneuver than, as it turned out, either possessed. But in part, also, they were bound by promises made by Allende not only in but in three preceding presidential campaigns stretching back a full generation.

The miristas , middle-class university students who took their Marxism with their morning coffee, encouraged factory workers and landless peasants to occupy their estates and plants in order to embarrass the government into carrying out its program more expeditiously.

At some point, perhaps as early as late , perhaps as late as mid, the regime lost control of the process it had unleashed, and found itself compelled to return to the precedent of so many conservative Latin American governments of times past—inviting military men to form a ministry. From there to the tragic events of September , the path was short and unswerving.

True, not many thought Allende would be elected, or that if elected, he would be allowed to take power, or that if allowed to take power, he would carry out his program.

But once he proved them wrong on all three counts they flocked into Chile, a new class of South American tourist, determined to find strengths in a government whose weaknesses they had so eloquently forecast. The most exalted of these tourists, of course, was Cuban Premier Fidel Castro. Now that the original Marxist-Leninist assumptions have been validated by experience, some are succumbing to the temptation to write off the Allende regime as a phantasm from the very beginning.

This volume consists largely of articles published in that magazine between and They looked instead at the military, at the foreign-trade situation, at divisions within the government, at the relatively greater resources of its enemies, and they were deeply troubled.

Above all they reserved a strong dose of skepticism for the loyalty of the Chilean army, even in those days when Allende himself was pleased to regard it as a pillar of the socialist state. To be completed, indeed to survive at all, it would have to make a decisive break with that system and impose an authoritarian regime, a dictatorship of the proletariat.

To do anything else was to postpone inevitable disaster. This is the kind of advice that Allende must have been getting from foreign Marxists and perhaps not a few Chileans from the moment of his election. Allende, they believe, should have broken with the Chilean democratic system such as it was at the peak of his strength, which they identify as April In that month the government coalition received But Allende might well have been answering Sweezy when he assured a reverent Debray that he knew far better than anyone else exactly how far and how fast to push the Chilean political system—and when to stop.

His government, he continued, could only survive by not provoking counterrevolution; hence judicious compromises were essential. Those who urged a more radical course of action were inviting him not to permanent revolution, but to suicide. Surveying the ruins of his government, one can easily and comfortably suggest now that Allende should have broken with a system which subsequently proved that it had no intention of keeping its promises.

At best he might have plunged his country into a civil war in which the victory of his supporters would be extremely problematic. Or perhaps the military coup of September would have taken place two years earlier. This brings us to the subject of the Chilean military. Superficially at least, the most impressive aspect of the Sweezy-Magdoff book is its critical evaluation of the armed forces.

Now that General Pinochet and his colleagues have created a fascist regime of astounding barbarity, how prophetic all the warning passages sound! One is compelled to ask: how could Salvador Allende—surely the most experienced Marxist politician in the Western hemisphere—have ignored the obvious danger signals?

I would answer that the Monthly Review was right—but in the wrong way and for the wrong reasons. Whatever else one can say about President Allende, he was no fool. If he thought and acted as if the army were loyal to his regime, it was because, for most of the time, it was.

The Chilean military operated on a long-standing tradition of respect for civilian authority, and nearly to the final hours of his Presidency Allende was the beneficiary of that tradition.

Let not the realities of the present distort the nature of the past: the Chilean military served Allende long, faithfully, and well. If an army has done all of this and more for a socialist regime, it does not suddenly turn around and overthrow it for a fistful of Yanqui gold. The fact is that Latin American armies, and the Chilean is no exception, do not like to spend their time and their prestige propping up an embattled civilian government, any civilian government.

When called upon continually to do so, they almost invariably end up deposing that regime altogether. After all, if they must discipline their fellow-citizens and bear the brunt of the unpopularity which follows they ought at least to have the decisive voice in the conduct of government itself. Of course Allende had broad popular support, but he was also intensely opposed by perhaps as much as a third of the Chilean population, a third willing and able to resort to violent attacks on his government.

There is little evidence, Admiral Huerta to the contrary, 8 that Allende was planning a coup against the constitutional regime before his ouster. It was precisely at that point, of course, that the Socialists, the MIR, and other supporters began in earnest to stockpile arms in preparation for what was believed to be an imminent civil war.

The contributors to the Sweezy-Magdoff volume express considerable wonderment at the alacrity with which Allende permitted the Chilean armed forces to make humiliating searches of factories and trade-union offices for arms, but Allende himself seems to have regarded this as the necessary currency with which to buy continued military acquiescence. What the Chilean President failed to see was that there was no price at which the military could be compelled permanently to assure public order—save at the cost of ceding total power itself.

The second time around, in mid, Prats had lost the support of his colleagues. He was forced to resign, and with him went hundreds, perhaps as many as two thousand, officers known to be sympathetic to the regime. To discuss opposition to the regime, and the relationship of the military to it, invariably raises the issue of United States involvement in the overthrow of Allende.

To deal adequately with this theme would require an article several times the length of this one, but at the outside several points are worth making. Secondly, Washington ill disguised its joy at the savage overthrow of President Allende, and it and its embassy in Santiago displayed remarkable insensitivity to the wave of assassinations, tortures, and inhumanity visited thereafter on supporters of the fallen government.

Much of this can be inferred, at any rate, from the documents assembled by Lawrence Birns in The End of Chilean Democracy. Did Washington order General Pinochet to overthrow Allende?

There are many who think so. There is some circumstantial evidence to support this line of interpretation, but it is by no means overwhelming. And there is also some evidence to the contrary—namely, that American policy was far more complex, and far less successful, than events would have it. Of the depth of official American hostility to the Allende government there can be no doubt. Allende as a candidate. And everything he stood for. I would have welcomed.

He concedes that U. It would have been better had Allende served his entire term, taking the nation and the Chilean people into complete and total ruin. Only then would the full discrediting of socialism have taken place. In that year Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei would be eligible to run for another presidential term, and his restoration to power through free elections would constitute a blow far more devastating to the cause of socialism in Latin America than the martyrdom of Allende and some thousands of his followers.

Does this attribute an unwonted degree of cynical brilliance to Washington officialdom? One might think so on the face of it, but Professor Paul Sigmund has assembled some recent materials suggesting that it does not.

It is certainly true that later on, in and , Chile found U. But to refuse a defaulted debtor additional credit is not prima facie an act of internal subversion—it is a rather ordinary, humdrum business practice. By this I am not attempting to argue—it would be disingenuous to do so—that the refusal of additional credit to Chile by the United States government in and was a decision inspired purely by business considerations.

It was nothing of the sort. By withholding funds from the Allende regime Washington hoped to add significantly to its bag of troubles, and to make life more unpleasant for the Chilean people under a socialist government. We now know as well that concurrently American sources were covertly channeling funds to opposition newspapers 16 and political groups in Chile. Moreover, unless one accepts the alibi of the current ruling junta—namely, that Allende was planning a coup of his own shortly before his overthrow—one must wonder why Washington would have thought a military revolution was necessary in Chile.

For by mid copper prices and copper production now in nationalized mines had declined. Chile had ceased to pay on virtually all of her international obligations.

The annual rate of inflation had risen from 33 per cent to or per cent—perhaps even more. There was an incipient crisis in agriculture, the rationing of articles of prime necessity, and a steady breakdown of public order. By no means all of this could have been achieved by American policymakers, no matter how deft. But if their purpose was to prepare the way for a thumping defeat of Chilean socialism at the polls in , the situation in September was remarkably consonant with that policy.

Kubisch intended to teach them. It is readily conceded that the above analysis may not be correct, for governments, like individual men and women, do not always act rationally.

But for those many who believe that governments operate in strict accordance with ineluctable economic laws, there can be only one satisfactory explanation for the fall of Allende—the machinations of U.

Specifically, a government which nationalized American holdings in so strategic a raw material as copper could not be allowed to survive, for to permit Chile to recover control of this basic national resource boded ill for the future of the U. This, or something very like it, is the perspective which nowadays informs much of the literature on Chile. It would be much preferable to have this transpire prior to 24 October but efforts in this regard will continue vigorously beyond this date.

In spite of U. A few days later, a bungled coup by a group of Chilean military officers helped to rally the country around Allende, who was inaugurated on November 3. In his nearly three years as Chilean president, Allende worked to restructure Chilean society along socialist lines while retaining democratic government and respecting civil liberties and the due process of law.

Opposition groups received funding from the CIA, anti-Allende propaganda efforts continued, strikes were instigated in key sectors of the Chilean economy, and CIA agents maintained close contact with the Chilean military.

However, the real cause of the coup against President Allende was not the insidious activities of American spies but rather the U. In , President Allende began nationalizing foreign businesses in Chile, including U. Nixon was outraged, and he created an interagency task force to organize economic reprisals against Chile.

The task force plotted steps to sink the world price of copper and ordered a complete ban on U. Meanwhile, other foreign investment in Chile dried up out of fears of nationalization. By , the Chilean economy was in shambles. Inflation, labor strikes, and food shortages were rampant, and violence between the right and the left became a daily occurrence.

President Allende still had the support of many workers and peasants, but the middle class was united in opposition to him. There was open talk of an impending military coup, and conspirators needed little help from the CIA to put it in motion. The CIA, however, was informed of the planned coup in advance, and on September 10 this information was passed on to President Nixon. Allende gathered with his loyal presidential guard at La Moneda, the presidential palace.

Tanks and troops surrounded La Moneda, and Allende and his supporters were ordered to surrender by 11 a. Allende refused. At 11 a. I have faith in Chile and its destiny. Other men will overcome this gray and bitter moment where betrayal threatens to impose itself. Continue knowing, all of you, that much sooner than later, the great avenues will open through which will pass free men in order to construct a better society.

These are my last words having the certainty that this sacrifice has not been in vain. Just before noon, two fighter jets flew over Santiago and descended on La Moneda, firing rockets with pinpoint accuracy through the doors and windows of the north side of the palace. Six more attack waves came during the next 20 minutes. The palace was in flames, but Allende survived in a wing of the building. Sometime around 2 p. A few weeks later, Fidel Castro would tell the Cuban people that Allende died while advancing on army troops and firing his gun.

The fascist soldiers, Castro said, cut him down in a hail of bullets. This account was taken up by many supporters of Allende and persists in various forms to this day. In the aftermath of the coup, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, commander in chief of the armed forces, became dictator of Chile.

In , Pinochet agreed to a national referendum on the future of Chile, and a majority of Chileans rejected the continuation of his dictatorship. Under pressure from prosecutors in Europe, U. The CIA refused to release many of the documents, however, citing fears that they would reveal operational methods still in use around the world by the CIA.

Back in Chile he resigned his senatorial seat in after a Supreme Court ruling that he could not stand trial based on his failing health. In December he was charged with several crimes. He died in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!

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