Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (31 page)

Gradually, Kissinger opted
for
pragmatically pursuing rapprochement with certain nationalists but only as long as they were not Marxist inspired. Although this excluded clear-cut ideological foes, this matched the State Department’s much earlier inclinations to deal with regional leaders in a more flexible, “mature” fashion and was an idea that had been around since before Allende’s election. Moreover, when the administration more meaningfully embraced this flexible stance in mid-1972, the character of its “maturity” had changed. Now, as a result of Chilean developments, Cuba’s expanding influence in the inter-American system, and signs of Soviet interest in courting nationalists, this more flexible approach was not a rearguard action to prevent further decline in the United States’ regional standing but an offensive effort to isolate Allende and Castro and to actually win back regional influence.

This new approach to Latin American affairs centered on U.S. analyses of the balance of forces within the region. By mid-1972 the State Department understood Latin America as being divided between three different models of development: Chile’s, Brazil’s, or an “indecisive mix” of the two. When the State Department asked U.S. ambassadors to define which model their host country most resembled, it underlined the drawbacks of Santiago’s example. “We doubt that the Chilean economic model can be followed for very long without authoritarianism, if only because of the need under it for forced restriction of consumption to achieve capital formation in combination with rapid and forced redistribution of wealth. The Brazilian model is also probably more likely to entail authoritarianism than is the indecisive mixture of the two … dissatisfaction with the results of any one of the three models could lead to a move to one of the others. But movement from the Chilean model back to one of the others is more difficult than movement the other way.”
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As the State Department rather simplistically saw it, the key was therefore to court countries in the middle, to prevent them from veering toward Allende’s example, and to
hold Brazil up as the model to choose if need be. In mid-1972, even the White House and the Treasury Department appear to have become convinced of the merits of conjoining efforts to win over nationalists with more straightforward anticommunist offensives.

When, in June 1972, Connally was sent to Latin America after Nixon’s visits to Beijing and Moscow for “post-summit consultations,” he stopped in Brazil, where he once again underlined the Nixon administration’s admiration for the country. “Brazil’s political stability and economic growth provided a superb example for other developing nations,” Connally marveled. Following Nixon’s instructions, he also sought his host’s views on a number of international issues ranging from Vietnam to the Middle East and, crucially, U.S.–Latin American relations. Should the United States pursue a regional “Latin American” policy, Connally asked, or focus on bilateral relationships with individual countries? Pandering to his host’s sense of importance and recognizing a mutual antipathy toward left-wing trends in the hemisphere, he acknowledged that Brazil was obviously different from Uruguay and Chile but noted there were general issues that were of importance to the whole region which might warrant a broader approach. Unsurprisingly, Médici rejected the idea of a blanket policy, preferring the strengthening of bilateral ties, and responding emphatically that it would be an “injustice to equate … small countries with Brazil, which was far larger in area and population and was making heroic efforts to transform itself into a developed country.”
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This did not prevent Connally and his Brazilian hosts from discussing broader regional problems. To the contrary, representing a country they saw as being above and distinct from other Latin American states, the Brazilians interpreted their role as engaging the United States more in regional affairs, all the while advising and informing Washington’s representatives about what was needed to combat the Left in the Southern Cone. When it came to Chile, for example, Connally encountered affirmation of the United States’ new nuanced approach to Chile. As Brazil’s foreign minister, Gibson Barbosa, counseled, more direct intervention in Chile at this point would only “strengthen Allende’s position.” President Médici also repeated the general thrust of his comments to Nixon—the United States had to act, albeit “very discreetly and very carefully.”
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However, when it came to Bolivia the Brazilians continued to urge greater U.S. action. Following his meetings in Washington, President Médici had written to Nixon in March 1972 warning: “Political chaos, or the establishment of a Marxist-Leninist regime in Bolivia, would entail—I
would not hesitate to say—for South America as a whole, consequences far more serious, dangerous and explosive than the Cuban problem, due to the geo-strategic position of Bolivia.” He had also urged Nixon to help support General Hugo Banzer’s regime against Bolivian exiles stationed in Chile.
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The U.S. Embassy had echoed this message. “The rapid and efficient Brazilian assistance to [the] Banzer government in its early days reflected not only concern over [an] active security threat GOB felt Torres government posed, but also genuine enthusiasm for and sense of affinity with Banzer government,” it reported. Even so, the Brazilians now expected the United States to step up to the mark and carry the “bulk of the load” when it came to economic and budgetary assistance.
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And by the time Connally met Médici in Brasilia, the latter was able to tell his guest that he had heard back from Nixon and was pleased to learn that the United States was now helping Bolivia in a “very substantial manner.” Although Connally reaffirmed Washington’s commitment, Médici nevertheless took the opportunity to have Nixon’s envoy in Brasilia underscore once more that “Bolivia was a permanent worry to Brazil, that Brazil was assisting Bolivia as best she could but that the U.S. must play a major role in supporting Bolivia or else that nation would fall to the ‘other’ side.” He also expressed his certainty that Cuba and Chile were aiding subversion in Bolivia.
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When Connally landed in La Paz, he then received direct and repetitive pleas from President Banzer himself for more assistance. As a memorandum of the long conversation between them records, the Bolivian president stressed emphatically that his government was “anticommunist” but had to

make economic and social progress in order to immunize Bolivians from the appeal of Communists and extremists … the needs, ambitions and aspirations of Bolivians are really modest and it does not take much to satisfy them. At the present time, however, these modest ambitions are unsatisfied and it is necessary to keep many political prisoners as a means of preventing these people from taking advantage of the situation of Bolivia in general. But if his administration is able to make progress, then the Bolivians will be naturally immunized from the appeal of the extremists. To make this progress … Bolivia desperately needs help from the United States. Bolivia also felt entitled to this because the revolution of last August represented an important defeat for communists, and as
such, an important victory for the United States and its objectives in Latin America. He noted in this exposition the strategic location of Bolivia in the heartland of South America.
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Even before Banzer’s pleas, the United States had already committed itself to loaning Bolivia’s new government $20 million and Connally now emphasized this point, making clear that Washington would prefer La Paz to first use this loan wisely—and follow advice on devaluing the Bolivian peso—before the Nixon administration handed out yet more assistance. Assuring Banzer that the United States was committed to helping him, he also promised to see what he could do to limit conditions on U.S. loans to Bolivia so as to make the Bolivian government’s task of consolidating its hold over the country easier. And despite not giving Banzer all that he desired, U.S. aid to Bolivia did increase by 600 percent in the new government’s first year in power. Kissinger had also intervened to do what he could to ensure economic aid would not be conditional on La Paz’s fiscal performance.
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As William Jorden argued, Banzer’s “heart [was] in the right place” and his regime had “progressed nicely” by expelling Soviet personnel and cracking down “hard” on “leftists.”
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To Santiago’s horror, U.S. defense secretary Melvin Laird also publicly used the prospect of Chilean support of anti-Banzer forces to justify increased U.S. military assistance to Bolivia.
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Although this was a convenient justification for increased spending, Washington actually had no precise or compelling intelligence on this issue. Instead, the State Department noted that “some extra-legal support, principally from the Socialist Party, has already been given, and aid to subversives from Castro or other sources will almost certainly transit through Chile” but acknowledged there was “no known direct GOC support for subversives against other neighboring countries,” a view that is supported by available evidence from Chile and Cuba when it comes to Bolivia after the coup in 1971.
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Even Brazilians privately acknowledged that Cuba’s support for revolutionary movements in the hemisphere had diminished.
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In this context, it seemed increasingly clear to Santiago that the United States’ approach to Latin America was ideologically driven and that Chile was singled out as a special target of hostility. And while the Chileans had no information about Connally’s private conversations or the details of increased U.S. spending in Bolivia, they were clearly wary about the purposes of his trip and the implications it had for inter-American affairs. Seen from their perspective, the treasury secretary appeared to be laying
down what Letelier referred to as the “rules of the game” by visiting Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, and Argentina but skipping Chile. Why was Chile the exception? Lima had nationalization disputes with Washington, had improved relations with the Soviet bloc and Cuba, and had vociferously called for international economic reform in Third World forums. Yet it clearly faced less hostility.
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Furthermore, the Chileans were curious about what lay at the heart of Nixon’s relationship with the Mexican president, especially in the light of the latter’s visit to Washington in June 1972.
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Mexico’s president, Luis Echeverría, was ostensibly one of Allende’s principal allies in the North-South debates of the early 1970s. As Mexico’s ambassador to Chile recalled, Echeverría also faced considerable domestic pressure to support the UP in whatever way he could.
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During the president’s visit to Santiago for UNCTAD III, Echeverría had also been invited to a private convivial family dinner at Allende’s residency, Tomás Moro, where his wife, Maria Esther, had established what would later be highly significant personal ties with Allende’s wife, Hortensia.
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Yet, although Echeverría publicly defended Allende’s sovereign right to determine compensation, he also disagreed with the Chilean president’s socialist goals, an opinion he had shared privately with Allende in Santiago.
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In fact, the Chileans had been wary of Mexico’s position for some time before the two presidents met. In Almeyda’s opinion, expressed privately a year earlier, the Mexicans were acting under the “guise of progress and an attachment to a revolutionary tradition” but were in reality closely tied to U.S. interests. Or, to put it another way, Echeverría wanted to appear “progressive” among his own people, which is why he was reaching out to Allende, but as far as Chile’s foreign minister was concerned, this was merely a “facade.”
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Declassified records of the Mexican president’s summit with Nixon in Washington demonstrate that U.S. officials certainly had nothing to worry about when it came to the prospect of Mexico’s government being infected by Chilean ideas. On the contrary, when Nixon told Echeverría that “it would be very detrimental … to have the Chilean experiment spread through the rest of the continent”—that the hemisphere would be “very unhealthy” as a result—his guest agreed. During the Mexican president’s visit to Washington, the two of them had then discussed their mutual fears of the Soviet Union and China. While congratulating Nixon on his trips to Beijing and Moscow, Echeverría perceived a continuing Chinese and Soviet menace in Latin America. He had “observed it in Mexico and … directly in Chile, and in every Latin American country in one form or another,”
he told his counterpart. Echeverría also underlined the dangers of Cuba and of Castro’s alternative model for economic and social development in Latin America. By contrast, the Mexican president seemed receptive to Nixon’s emphasis on the advantages of private U.S. investment and the need for Latin Americans to responsibly protect that investment, so much so that the U.S. president urged his guest to “let the voice of Echeverría rather than the voice of Castro be the voice of Latin America.” In Nixon’s words, “If the poison of communist dictatorship spreads through Latin America, or the poison of unrest and … revolution spreads through Latin America, it inevitably will infect the United States.”
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While Mexico was essentially on board, or at least willing to play the game of being on board, the United States government was still worried about Lima’s leaders. Despite traditional frontier animosity between Chile and Peru, President Velasco Alvarado had worked surprisingly closely with the Chileans within the OAS, in the G77, and at UNCTAD III to push for a review of Cuba’s status in the inter-American system and to regulate foreign investment in the region. Partly as a result of its nonideological character, Peru was also now attracting considerable attention as a new focus of the inter-American Cold War.

Indeed, even before Allende was elected, Peru had become a key pillar of Cuba’s shifting approach to the inter-American system. Now, compared to Allende’s increasingly beleaguered and ideologically driven revolution, Velasco Alvarado’s position looked more secure and more promising to the Cubans. In mid-1971 Cuban foreign minister Raúl Roa had told his Polish counterpart that Peru’s government was a decidedly “revolutionary government.” To be sure, it did not have a clear political doctrine, and Peru’s military leaders were divided. But as Roa insisted, what was important was the “progressive character” of Velasco Alvarado’s reforms and the course of development he had initiated, which the Cubans believed would eventually lead to “socialist transformation.”
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The Soviets seemed to agree with this. According to one Cuban Embassy employee in Santiago, Soviet Ambassador Aleksandr Alekseyev privately confided to her that he believed Peru would be socialist before Chile.
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Given these views, Cuba’s DGLN had been pursuing what one of its members described as an “ad hoc” program since mid-1970. Specifically, this brought together the Cuban Ministry of Public Health and Cuba’s Ministry of Construction to deliver assistance after an earthquake struck the Peruvian fishing port of Chimbote, north of Lima, on 31 May 1970 and, simultaneously, to develop closer relationships with Lima’s leaders.
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Then, on 8 July 1972, Peru had followed Chile’s
example by unilaterally reestablishing diplomatic relations with Cuba regardless of OAS sanctions. From the very beginning, the Cuban leadership clearly nurtured this relationship, looking after visiting Peruvian delegations and working with what Chilean diplomats jealously called “surprising speed” to help Lima set up a new embassy in Havana. Indeed, within a few months Santiago’s ambassador in Cuba was speculating that if the Chilean and Peruvian embassies competed for attention, the Cubans would help the latter over the former.
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