Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (16 page)

If he wanted to survive, Allende did not have any real alternative. When
it came to formulating foreign policy, he certainly did not have the means or the desire to realign Chile decisively with the East as Cuba had done a decade before. Not only were pro-Soviet Chilean Communist Party (PCCh) officials kept from key foreign policy posts, but the evidence available also suggests that very little preplanning to improve governmental trade relations with Moscow took place either immediately before or after the election.
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Instead, Allende appears to have believed that Chile’s relations with the USSR could be conducted through the PCCh’s existing party-to-party ties with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. The PCCh certainly had intimate party links with Moscow, receiving $400,000 from it in 1970 (as opposed to $50,000 ten years earlier).
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It also remained the Soviet bloc countries’ primary source of inside information throughout the three years of Allende’s government. However, beyond this, Almeyda later recalled that Chileans generally believed that Moscow had tacitly recognized Latin America as a U.S. sphere of influence after the Cuban Missile Crisis and that socialist countries would have limited logistical capacities to assist Chile even if they wanted to.
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Interestingly, the message from Soviet-sponsored Cuba echoed concerns about the limitations of Soviet bloc support. Not long after Allende assumed the presidency, Cuban foreign minister Raúl Roa advised the Chileans not to rush into reestablishing relations with East Germany at the cost of beneficial trade and technical assistance from West Germany.
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As it turned out, the UP held out on recognizing East Germany for far longer than it had originally planned, while simultaneously making successful overtures to Bonn in the hope of avoiding a break.
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Indeed, Almeyda would privately explain during a high-level visit to Poland in May 1971 that the Chileans had acted in a “balanced way” when it came to Berlin precisely because continued trade with West Germany was considered so important.
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Clearly, Allende wanted to maintain ties with the West, and he hoped that the evolution of détente would allow him to do so, while also gradually improving relations with the Soviet Union, East Europe, and China.

This caution was evident in Allende’s contacts with foreign leaders in November and December 1970. When the Organization of American States’ secretary-general, Galo Plaza, met Allende just before his inauguration, the president-elect had taken pains to differentiate himself from ideological Cold War foes. Asked how he would describe his government to the outside world, Plaza recorded Allende as explaining that “his ideological principles were firmly grounded in Marxism, but not as untouchable
dogma.” Allende denied his government would be “Marxist or Communist” on the grounds that not even the USSR had established communism and not all the parties in the UP were Marxist. Instead, in Plaza’s words, Allende portrayed his government as “a Chilean-style reformist regime, not patterned after Cuba, Russia or Czechoslovakia. He cited, as the best proof of the direction that his government would take, his impeccable democratic credentials … he was not a khaki-clad guerrilla coming down from the mountains with rifle in hand. Fidel Castro was a close personal friend of his and he admired him in many respects, but he did not intend to be a Fidel Castro, and Chile was not Cuba … he pointed out that Chile had a solid political structure that was lacking in Cuba, and that he was democratically elected as a constitutional president, while Castro was a dictator who took power by force.” The new president also explained that while he wanted to expand Chile’s foreign relations worldwide, he wanted it to remain firmly within the Western Hemisphere and maintain good relations with the United States.
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But, of course, placating the giant in this way was quite clearly a tactical acceptance of reality rather than an abandonment of long-held principles. Just before Allende had begun explaining to Plaza how he wanted the world to picture his government, he had issued a private “tirade against the OAS.” And although Allende now announced that he would not leave the organization as he had promised during his election campaign, he proclaimed that Chile would work from inside it in a “constructive, but uncompromising” manner. This was also essentially the message that Almeyda later conveyed to leaders of the socialist bloc. To be sure, he acknowledged that the OAS was a “reactionary” organization. But he also privately reasoned that Cuba’s experience had shown Chile had to conduct “a very careful policy” in Latin America so as not to “give a pretext to the accusation of ‘exporting the Chilean Road.’”
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Allende therefore sacrificed his pledge to leave the OAS but committed Chile to influencing other countries within it.
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He also publicly maintained that the “ideological” differences separating Latin America from the United States had to be addressed. Whereas the United States was “interested in maintaining the current world situation, which [had] allowed it to attain and strengthen its hegemony,” he proclaimed shortly after becoming president, Latin Americans had to shed themselves of dependency and underdevelopment by adopting “progressive, reformist or revolutionary” ideologies of change.
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Allende may well have decided to opt for “healthy realism,” but as was becoming clear in early 1971, his emphasis was on
rejecting the unhealthy status quo that had gone before it. Realism, in this sense, was conditional and did not mean relinquishing sovereignty or submitting to U.S. threats on key issues.

Indeed, when it came to Cuba, relations evolved rapidly after November 1970 at a political party level and along state-to-state lines. In late January 1971, a delegation led by Cuba’s vice-minister for external trade, Raul León, arrived in Chile to expand commercial relations that had been in place for a year before Allende came to power. Then, two weeks later, he signed a three-year trade agreement, which was followed by a “Basic Agreement on Scientific and Technological Cooperation.” At a governmental level, Santiago’s new leaders viewed their growing economic relationship with Havana as part of something new and conceptually significant, even if it hardly transformed either country’s trading patterns. Those at the Foreign Ministry involved in negotiations emphasized the symbolic value of these ties as an example of a different type of economic relations rather than radically significant commercial ventures. Traditionally, international scientific and technological cooperation had been “vertical”—between more developed and less developed nations. Now, they noted that Santiago wanted to establish more “horizontal” ties with other developing countries, such as Cuba, which would not be clouded by ulterior motives of profit and control.
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At the same time, Chile also eagerly expanded its involvement in the Third World and international forums, joining the Non-Aligned Movement as a full member in 1971. Although Frei’s government had set the wheels in motion to join the grouping, the acceleration of this process during Allende’s first months in office significantly underscored Chile’s new international role. Apart from Cuba, no other Latin American country had formally joined the Non-Aligned Movement despite many having sent observers to the group’s conference in Lusaka in 1970. At the beginning of 1971, the Chilean Foreign Ministry also opportunely put Santiago forward to hold the third United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) when African and Asian countries suddenly rejected Geneva in the final stages of preparations. The decision to do so was not without cost. As Hernán Santa Cruz warned from Geneva, changing UNCTAD III’s location at such short notice would involve not only extensive diplomacy to win support for Santiago’s candidacy but also logistical planning and massive building works to host delegates from 136 countries.
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Yet, the benefits seemingly outweighed these warnings, and Chilean diplomats went ahead
with successfully getting the necessary support from other countries to host the conference.

Positive as all this seemed, and despite having taken the decision to avoid confrontation with Washington within the parameters of a realistic but redefined relationship, Santiago nevertheless began accumulating persuasive evidence of U.S. hostility during the first few months of Allende’s presidency.
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As well as Nixon failing to send a customary written message of congratulations to Allende and conveying it orally through Meyer instead, the United States unilaterally dismantled meteorological observation installations on Easter Island weeks before Allende’s inauguration, the Export-Import Bank dropped Chile to its lowest credit rating, and at the end of February 1971 Washington abruptly canceled the U.S. nuclear aircraft carrier
Enterprise
’s visit to Chile a day after Allende publicly announced it.
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Chileans also received warnings from the United States that Washington’s “correct” approach to Santiago’s government was contingent on Allende’s foreign policy. In early January, during a televised press conference, Nixon stated that although Chilean events were not something the United States was happy about, it would respect the principle of nonintervention and continue U.S. aid programs “as long as Chile’s foreign policy is not antagonistic to our interests.”
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A month later, when Nixon said he was only “prepared to have the kind of relationship” with Allende that the latter was “prepared to have” with the United States, Santiago’s embassy in Washington took note. Although diplomats concluded that these warnings were less “severe” than they could have been, analysts nevertheless acknowledged that they were not a hopeful sign for accommodation either.
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Meanwhile, Allende’s public response to Nixon’s comment was defiant: good U.S.-Chilean relations depended on the United States recognizing Chile’s sovereignty and its right “to differ, dissent and negotiate from different points of view,” he insisted.
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But behind the scenes, Chile’s new policy makers began adjusting their hope for a realistic dialogue to the potential for a deteriorating relationship with Washington in early 1971. Specifically, the UP now adopted seven specific measures to ensure that if U.S.-Chilean relations broke down—as the Chileans expected they eventually would when Allende nationalized copper later that year—this occurred in favorable circumstances. First, Santiago would try to “minimize” areas of potential conflict so as not to offer the United States a “pretext” for hardening its position (the Chileans regarded their relatively calm reaction
to the cancellation of the
Enterprise
visit as a calculated example of this approach). Next, the ministry vowed to try and improve the image that diverse sectors of the U.S. public had of Allende and the UP. Third and fourth, the UP would coordinate its actions with relevant Chilean institutions and financial sectors to ensure that the United States did not suspend military credits to Chile’s armed forces. Fifth, the Chileans focused on improving their country’s relations with other Latin American nations as a means of forming a “front” vis-à-vis the United States. Sixth, the Chilean Foreign Ministry began seriously exploring the possibility of funding from the socialist bloc. And, seventh, the UP set up a high-level working group to examine the implications of its plan to nationalize Chile’s biggest copper mines.
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The creation of this working group in February 1971 reflected the Chilean government’s growing preoccupation with the issue of copper. Not “fighting the giant” had never meant renouncing nationalization promises, just as it did not mean abandoning Third Worldist, Latin Americanist, and anti-imperialist principles. But it did mean finding ways to achieve them without causing conflict. At the start of his presidency, Allende had publicly proclaimed that Chileans had “always preferred solving social conflicts by means of persuasion and political action”; the nation’s coat of arms “By Reason or Force” put “Reason first,” he underlined.
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For someone who had witnessed, and so vehemently denounced, Washington’s “imperialist” policies toward Latin America in the past, relying on “reason” to redefine relations with the United States in this instance took a monumental leap of faith. And, in essence, this was based on the lessening of Cold War tensions, the Nixon administration’s difficulties at home and abroad, the power of Chile’s unique democratic experiment to win U.S. policy makers over, and Allende’s sincere belief that he had the
right
to “dissent.” The question ahead was obviously whether Nixon was ready to let him do so.

Early Chilean efforts to alleviate the danger the United States posed met with mixed success. Primarily this was because the Allende government found it difficult to accurately gauge the subtleties of Washington’s policies and the precise danger the United States posed. On the one hand, this is testimony to the way in which the Nixon administration pulled itself together when it came to its policy toward Chile at the beginning of 1971.
Yet, on the other, it was also the result of Chileans’ misreading of U.S. priorities. Ultimately, Almeyda’s strategy of “healthy realism” would work only if the United States reciprocated, and although Allende, Almeyda, and Chilean diplomats in Washington urged U.S. officials to avoid a global Cold War framework when dealing with Chile—very consciously framing disagreements in legalistic as opposed to ideological terms—this failed to alter the guiding principles behind the Nixon administration’s policies. Ignoring the Cold War framework that still determined U.S. policy, the Chileans continued to focus on Allende’s nationalization plans as the key determinant of future U.S.-Chilean relations, not knowing that this issue was only just coming to the forefront of U.S. policy makers’ agenda.

At the end of 1970, the UP had sent a constitutional amendment to the Chilean Congress to establish state control of the country’s largest copper mines and enable expropriation of foreign companies working them. Henceforth, at the beginning of February 1971, the Nixon administration began sending Santiago soft but direct threats regarding the future of the UP’s nationalization program. In a démarche that the U.S. ambassador in Santiago, Edward Korry, delivered to Almeyda, Washington urged the Chilean government to have early conversations with North American businessmen and emphasized the U.S. government’s responsibility to safeguard U.S. investments.
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Meanwhile, the ambassador was also privately lobbying “influential Chilean politicians” and, in his words, “spelling out possible international consequences of confiscatory nationalization and what consequent radicalization of Chilean politics would mean.”
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