Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (2 page)

ALLENDE’S CHILE
and the Inter-American Cold War

Chile

On 5 November 1970, thousands of people crammed into Chile’s national stadium to mark the beginning of Salvador Allende’s presidency and what was being heralded as the birth of a new revolutionary road to socialism. For some, Allende’s inauguration two days earlier had been a cause for mass celebration. Along the length of Santiago’s principal avenue, musicians, poets, dancers, and actors had performed on twelve open-air stages specially erected for the occasion, and crowds had partied into the evening. Now, on a sunny spring afternoon, along with foreign journalists and invited dignitaries from around the world, they flocked to hear the president’s first major speech. As Allende rose to the podium to deliver a message of national emancipation and rebirth, he looked out on a sea of flags in optimistic anticipation of what was to come. He then proclaimed that Chile was ready to shape its own destiny.
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The way foreigners in the audience interpreted his speech depended largely on where they came from and what they believed in. Delegates from Havana, Brasilia, and Washington respectively watched in jubilation, horror, and disdain—uncertain what the future held but conscious that Allende’s inauguration had significantly changed the way it would unfold. Indeed, right there, the seeds of what would develop into a new phase of a multisided inter-American Cold War battle were already firmly in place. And although the roots of this struggle lay in previous decades, its outcome would now be decided in a bitter contest over the course of the next three years.

What follows is the story of those years, the people who lived through them, and the international environment they encountered. On one level, this is a history of Chilean foreign relations during the country’s short-lived revolutionary process that ended with a brutal right-wing military coup d’état and Allende’s death on 11 September 1973. Yet, it is also an examination of Chile’s place within what I call the inter-American Cold War. Rather than a bipolar superpower struggle projected onto a Latin
American theater from outside, this inter-American Cold War was a unique and multisided contest between regional proponents of communism and capitalism, albeit in various forms. With the Soviet Union reluctant to get more involved, it was primarily people across the Americas that fought it and, although global developments often interacted with regional concerns and vice versa, its causes were also predominantly inter-American. However, much remains to be understood about it, especially in the period after the Cuban revolution triumphed in 1959. From this year forward, the Cold War in the Americas changed, being definitively shaped thereafter by the clash between Havana and Washington as the polar opposites of revolution and reaction on the continent. An array of other Latin Americans were also involved, some of whom shared Washington’s or Havana’s views and were inspired by them, others who surpassed even their ardent zeal for combating each other, and far too many others who were caught up in the middle. In the early 1970s, for example, Brasilia’s role as a staunch anticommunist actor in the inter-American system was a particularly decisive dimension to this conflict, as were the tens of thousands who lost their lives in the dirty wars that engulfed the Southern Cone toward the end of that decade. But until now the story of how all these different groups interacted with each other has not been fully told.

Although it is beyond the scope of this book to examine the inter-American Cold War in its entirety, what follows is one vital chapter of it: the Chilean chapter in the early 1970s. Sandwiched between the better-known histories of Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s death in Bolivia and Cuba’s intervention in Angola, or between the Alliance for Progress and Operation Condor, the Allende years certainly deserve more attention as a moment of profound transition in inter-American affairs. For one, Allende’s decision to shatter the Organization of American States’ isolation of Cuba by reestablishing diplomatic relations with the island in November 1970, together with the Cubans’ own shifting approach to regional affairs in the early 1970s, makes this an interesting episode in the history of Cuba’s relationship with the Americas—and, by extension, an important period for those of us trying to incorporate Havana’s side of the story into an international history of inter-American affairs. As it turned out, this period was the beginning of Cuba’s formal reintegration into the inter-American system after collective OAS sanctions had been imposed on the island in 1964. Moreover, if Allende’s election was the most important revolutionary triumph in Latin America since the Cuban revolution in 1959, his overthrow three years later was the most important victory for counterrevolutionary forces in the
region since the right-wing Brazilian coup of 1964. On a broader scale, the rise and fall of Allende’s Chile was also tangled up in several momentous global narratives including the burgeoning North-South debate on modernization and development, Cuba’s intervention in Africa, and the rising importance of human rights in international affairs.

Intriguingly, all these upheavals occurred during a period of purported détente in international affairs. From today’s vantage point, détente’s characteristic trademarks—triangular diplomacy, Ostpolitik, the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, and the Helsinki Accords—seem starkly removed from Cold War battles being played out simultaneously in Latin America and the wider Third World. Yet this was not necessarily understood by those in the Americas, Africa, or Asia when the process of détente began. To the contrary, for many in the global South, détente initially at least appeared to offer breathing space in which to advance toward modernization and development without the risk of incurring U.S. and/or Soviet intervention. And, to begin with, Allende’s peaceful democratic election in September 1970 seemed emblematic of a more mature, tranquil mood in international politics that offered hope of a peaceful alternative to violent revolution and reaction. Together with the heterogeneous left-wing coalition he represented, Unidad Popular (Popular Unity, or UP), Allende not only challenged the rules of socialist revolution but also attempted to redefine Chile’s place in the world on the basis of “ideological pluralism” in international affairs. But in doing so at the same time as striving to help reshape the world’s economic and political system in line with the global South’s needs, he and his government put the concept of détente—or at least the idea that détente might benefit and incorporate the global South—to the test.

On the surface, Allende’s chances of succeeding appeared promising—East-West tensions were diminishing when he assumed power, the world’s postwar economic system was showing signs of collapse, radical transformation in Latin America looked imminent, and the Third World was increasingly demanding a more equitable share of the globe’s wealth and power. To many, restrictive Cold War ideological divides also seemed to be a thing of the past, especially when Nixon traveled to Beijing and Moscow in 1972. However, by the time he did, it was already clear to the Chileans that the game of détente was both temporary and conditional on where countries were located in the world. While statesmen in the global North pretended to ignore ideological disagreements with each other, the Cold War continued in the South, and as it did, the struggle between different
modes of social, political, and economic development often grew fiercer, more radical, and more violent. And alongside the wars that raged in southern Africa and Southeast Asia in the 1970s, there was no meaningful inter-American détente. Despite brief moments of attempted rapprochement between Washington and Havana in 1974–75, and at the tail end of détente in the late 1970s, relations between the United States and Cuba remained deeply antagonistic while the U.S. economic blockade of Cuba continued. For their part, Soviet leaders do not appear to have pushed for a U.S.-Cuban détente. Cuba rarely came up in U.S.-Soviet negotiations between 1969 and 1972, and when, on one occasion in early 1972, Kissinger briefly raised the hypothetical possibility of an improvement in U.S.-Cuban relations in one of his back-channel talks with the USSR’s ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, the latter was unimpressed. As the ambassador noted in his journal after talking to Kissinger and consulting with Latin American foreign ministers attending an OAS summit in Washington, there were actually “no changes in U.S. policy towards Cuba.”
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Détente was also not the opportunity for Allende that his government ardently hoped it would be. Not only did it fail to prevent U.S. intervention in Chile, but it also diminished the Soviet Union’s already slim ability and desire to assist the UP at a time when it faced decisive opposition. Moreover, at the height of détente in the mid-1970s, right-wing military dictators either held on to power or seized control and engaged in brutal wars against “communism” in the majority of states in South America. As one senior U.S. official argued in 1970, Latin America was a “key area” in “a mortal struggle to determine the shape of the future of the world.”
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Within this inter-American context, Chile’s revolutionary process—the so-called Chilean Road to Socialism or La Vía Chilena—determined how this “mortal struggle” evolved. Immediately after Allende’s election, Fidel Castro committed Cuba to protecting the new president’s life and supporting his revolutionary goals, while Richard Nixon issued instructions to ensure they failed. Having initially regarded Latin American affairs as a low foreign policy priority, Nixon now also told his National Security Council that, although Chile, like Cuba, had been “lost,” Latin America had not, and he wanted Washington do everything possible to “keep it.”
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The United States then employed various tactics throughout the continent to do just that, ranging from newly focused containment of Chilean and Cuban influence to “rolling back” left-wing advances, often with Brasilia’s help and encouragement. Primarily, U.S. officials concentrated on the Southern Cone, where they assisted local right-wing dictators and enabled counter-revolutionary
military elites to take power in the few countries where they were not already in control. Henceforth, rather than merely a geographical collection of states at the southern end of Latin America, the Southern Cone became a historically significant grouping as a result of what happened in the 1970s. Defined here in its broadest sense to incorporate Brazil and Bolivia as well as Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay, this was later to be the home of “Operation Condor,” the now-infamous state-sponsored anticommunist network that unleashed repression and terror throughout the Americas and Europe from the mid-1970s until the 1980s.

Of course, knowing what came after Allende’s presidency makes it very difficult not to regard his efforts to usher in a peaceful road to socialism and a new international order as idealistic and naive. Yes, the Chileans who entered government in November 1970 understood that Allende’s revolutionary agenda would face major obstacles at home and abroad when it came to pursuing a revolutionary agenda, but they did not fully anticipate or understand the vehemence of their enemies’ hostility toward them. On the one hand, they mistakenly believed economic factors were at the heart of such hostility and, on the other hand, they were very much caught up in the possibility that the United States’ influence in Latin America was in trouble, that its difficulties in Vietnam limited its foreign policy agenda at home and abroad, that U.S. officials’ reassurances were genuine, and that their own apparently persuasive reasoning would allow them to neutralize the threats La Vía Chilena faced. Ultimately, as a committed socialist, Allende also firmly believed that Chileans, Latin Americans, and the world beyond would eventually—even after his own death, if need be—be persuaded of the merits of his ideological cause and march hand in hand toward a historically determined future. And he was not alone in this regard. As the former
Washington Post
journalist John Dinges has argued, all those who study Latin America during this period need to appreciate “one improbable fact”—that “radical social revolution was a real possibility for millions of people, coloring everyday life with hope or dread depending on the circumstances and political views of each individual.”
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With this “improbable fact” in mind, this book deals with the impact external actors had on Chilean domestic politics; how Chile affected regional developments; and, beyond this, the degree to which inter-American affairs and global trends such as the growing North-South divide in global politics and superpower détente interacted with each other. Because of their centrality to the events that unfolded, I have focused first and foremost on Chilean, Cuban, and U.S. perspectives when addressing
these questions. Among these three, the Chileans were the key determiners of their country’s foreign relations and its future rather than being passive bystanders viewing—and being affected by—the actions of outsiders. Beyond them, Cuba and the United States were the external powers that had the greatest impact on Chilean affairs, and the relationships that Santiago’s new leader had with Havana and Washington would be his most decisive. As indicated already, others also stood alongside them, not least the Southern Cone’s revolutionary movements, who sought refuge in Chile during the Allende years, and Brazil’s military regime, whose regional role is examined in detail for the first time in this book. Indeed, as the United States’ representative at Allende’s inauguration, Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs Charles Meyer privately told Chile’s new president the day after his inauguration, bilateral relationships were “not only played in a direct and immediate way but also in multilateral arenas.”
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And these intersections—between the domestic and the international, the bilateral and the multilateral—are the main themes of the story that follows.