Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (32 page)

Seen from a Cuban perspective, this growing attention to Peru had not
replaced
Havana’s focus on Chile, but it does appear to have been a welcome distraction from mounting difficulties in supporting La Vía Chilena (one need only compare the number of articles on Chile and Peru that appeared in
Granma
). By mid-1972, the Cubans were feeling increasingly constrained in their ability to defend Allende not only owing to the Chilean president’s curtailment of their role in arming the MIR but also because Cuban involvement in Santiago was being so scrutinized that it was more and more difficult to move around the city freely. Chile’s inability to fulfill previous trade agreements was also undermining trust between both countries in a way for which there did not seem to be any easy solution. And in this context, Cuba’s relationship with Peru offered Havana a new, and potentially less complex, opening in Latin America that underlined the shift that had taken place in Castro’s regional policy since 1968. Indeed, as a reflection of imminent diplomatic openings, Cuba’s Foreign Ministry (MINREX) reopened its Latin America Department in mid-1972 for the first time in eight years. Manuel Piñeiro’s department, the DGLN, still retained overall control of policy toward the region, and Cuba’s armed forces were actually central to a burgeoning relationship with Peru’s military leaders, but by reopening this department at MINREX, Cuba’s leaders signaled they were adapting their foreign policy to match changing opportunities in the region.
⁹⁸
As Cuban foreign minister Raúl Roa publicly proclaimed, Cuba was no longer isolated in the hemisphere—there were now three types of revolution in Latin America: Cuba’s, Chile’s, and Peru’s.
⁹⁹

Although the combination of these three revolutionary processes was positive for Cuba, Havana’s leaders were nevertheless increasingly aware that one plus two did not a Latin American revolution make, especially given recent counterrevolutionary gains in the Southern Cone. To the contrary, behind the scenes, Piñeiro told DGLN officers in August 1972 that regardless of “new dynamics” in the hemisphere,

The prospects for Latin American liberation now appear to be medium- or long-term. We must prepare ourselves to wait—to wait as long as necessary: 10, 15, 20 or even 30 years. We must prepare to repulse the enemy in all fields…. And, of course, we must prepare to help to speed this process of revolutionary transformation as much as possible … keeping in mind that the struggle will be a particularly long one in the ideological field and that imperialism is giving ever-greater importance to the subtle weapons of penetration and domination. This means that we must continue delving into the principles of Marxism-Leninism, revolutionary ideas, the study of great problems of history and political problems of the present day.
¹⁰⁰

As Havana settled for dealing with countries on a case-by-case basis and prepared itself for a longer-haul struggle than its leaders had predicted only a couple of years before, Castro increasingly focused on the Third World beyond Latin America and on the Soviet bloc. In mid-1972, Roa led a large delegation to UNCTAD III despite Havana’s cynicism regarding the global South’s chances for negotiated transformation, and Castro traveled to Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Algeria on his way to visit Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
¹⁰¹

Although Castro clearly wanted to strengthen ties with the socialist bloc, his visit to Eastern Europe was not without its difficulties. Primarily, his sharp critique of détente, the notion of peaceful coexistence, and the Soviet Union’s role in the Third World brought him into direct conflict with the international direction of Communist Party policies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. As a Polish report of his stay in Warsaw lamented, Castro’s views on the Vietnam War and his arrival so soon after Nixon’s visit largely spoiled what could have been a celebratory visit to consolidate the vastly improved relations between Cuba and Poland over the past year and a half. Not only did Castro privately exhibit profound suspicion of peaceful coexistence and superpower agreements, but he also placed excessive emphasis on the “correctness” of fighting imperialism while cloaking his “dogmatic” opinions in “revolutionary phraseology.” On the Third World, for example, he lambasted the Soviet bloc’s role in encouraging an Arab-Israeli armistice after the June 1967 war and argued that it would have been better for the aggressor to occupy Cairo, Damascus, and Beirut so as to give birth to a people’s uprising in the future (he mentioned that he had since sent Cuban instructors to train Fatah). As Polish ministers reflected
after his visit, when Castro spoke of Vietnam, he was clearly thinking of Cuba and its ongoing battle against the United States. Moreover, Warsaw’s leaders concluded that their guest may have wanted to get these views off his chest in a socialist bloc country where he felt able to do so before journeying on to Moscow, where it would be more difficult to speak candidly. Clearly, the Cuban leader hoped that the Poles would relay his views to the Soviet Union so that he did not have to make them known directly when he met Brezhnev in the USSR. As it turned out, however, the Poles decided to be “balanced” and cautious about how they conveyed their opinions of the trip to their comrades in Berlin and Moscow. The burgeoning dialogue between Poland and Cuba should continue, they reasoned, but the socialist bloc countries would have to exercise influence over Fidel Castro on the important matters of détente and peaceful coexistence in the future.
¹⁰²

It seems that Castro managed to hold back when he continued his journey in the USSR, or at the very least hold back enough not to anger his hosts, who subsequently helped Castro consolidate his four-year rapprochement with the Soviet Union. Despite the frustrations he had aired to Altamirano about how “slow moving” the Soviets were, Castro’s June visit produced concrete results, in the shape of membership in the Soviet bloc’s Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and five new major treaties deferring debt repayments, increasing trade, and establishing a new flow of economic assistance to the island.
¹⁰³
As Castro insisted, this did not mean Cuba was turning its back on economic development through Latin American integration, but rather that the inadequacies of regional integration gave him no choice. As he put it, Latin America’s “hour of the revolution” had not yet arrived.
¹⁰⁴

Cuba’s archrivals in the hemisphere, Brazil and the United States, happily tended to agree with this appraisal and were now looking for ways to ensure Latin America’s “hour”
never
arrived. And toward the end of the year they began detecting positive signs. By September, for example, Brazil’s foreign minister remarked to U.S. secretary of state William Rogers that the Southern Cone’s revolutionary “snowball had been reversed.” Chile’s road to socialism looked increasingly as if it was nearing its end and, as Médici had earlier, he commented that Chile in 1972 resembled João Goulart’s final days in 1964. By this stage, the Brazilians were also far calmer about the situation in Bolivia, where increasing U.S. assistance had been effective in helping to consolidate Banzer’s position. In addition, Gibson Barbosa reflected on the “much improved” situation in Uruguay. At their meeting in June, the Brazilian president had already indicated to Connally
that Juan María Bordaberry’s government “had taken hold very well and was manifesting a strong hand with respect to the terrorist problem.”
¹⁰⁵
Now, three months later, Barbosa celebrated the fact that the Tupamaros’ leadership had “virtually disappeared” following a government crackdown with Brazilian and Argentine help (in just three months, Uruguay’s civilian-military regime took 2,600 prisoners, while a considerable number of Tupamaros sought exile in Chile).
¹⁰⁶

With more obvious Cold War battles in the Southern Cone going well, the Nixon administration finally began reappraising its policy toward Peru in September 1972. In June, Connally had told Peruvian foreign minister Miguel Angel de la Flor that there was a “tremendous reservoir of good will” toward Peru in the United States. However, given Connally’s intransigent position on expropriation and the Peruvians’ continued insistence that as far as they were concerned the International Petroleum Company case was settled, there had been no significant improvement of relations during this visit. As Foreign Minister de la Flor had told Connally, Peru also had the “best of good will” when it came to resolving issues with the United States, as long as this was in keeping with the “concept of [the] revolutionary government’s standards of sovereignty, independence and the humanist goals of its programs.” In expressing his hope that the United States would see fit to help Peruvians achieve their “new goal of social justice for all,” he had also underlined socialist countries were “interested and cooperating through new and generous credits.”
¹⁰⁷
Indeed, on the surface, the prognosis for winning back U.S. influence in the country had not been good. Moreover, analysts in the United States observed that Moscow was trying to expand its role and undermine Washington’s ties to the region through the “creation of an atmosphere of hostility” vis-à-vis the United States and Peru.
¹⁰⁸

And yet when U.S. policy makers studied how they might be able to reduce the Soviets’ chances of success in late 1972, they found that Lima’s leaders were actually very interested in repairing relations with the United States. And in the United States, the Interdepartmental Group for Latin America noted a number of very good reasons for reciprocating. Specifically, National Security Study Memorandum 158, completed at the end of September 1972, listed the Nixon administration’s goals as including the “enhancement of the U.S. image as a power prepared to support responsible reform and to accept diverse approaches to achieving such reform,” “limitation of Chile’s influence as a model for other countries,” and “stemming the growth of Soviet, Cuban and PRC influence in the Hemisphere.”
In pursuit of these objectives, its authors advocated reducing economic sanctions that Washington had applied against Peru since IPC’s expropriation three years earlier on the grounds that this had made Peru more independent and anti-American rather than less so.
¹⁰⁹
Intelligence analysts also suggested that it was a good time to act because the Peruvians had gained only limited assistance from socialist countries and were therefore looking more favorably on private investment. Lima “needs and wants more from the U.S.,” they concluded.
¹¹⁰

In considering the prospect of trying to improve relations with Lima, Washington officials homed in on the negative impact this would have on Allende’s Chile. As the Interdepartmental Group noted, there were clear benefits to approaching Peru and Chile differently. “The threat to all our interests, including the investment interest,” NSSM 158’s authors argued, “is manifestly greater in Marxist Chile than it is in non-Marxist Peru…. Differentiation would deprive the Allende Government of the politically useful ‘protective cover’ that being lumped with Peru would provide, thus making a hard line on Chile more readily accepted elsewhere.” Moreover, U.S. analysts concluded that the “prospects for limiting Chile’s influence on Peru” were “good,” on account of a historic rivalry between both countries and the Peruvian military’s inherent suspicion of Chile’s Marxist policies.
¹¹¹
Thus, when the SRG met at the end of 1972, Nixon deferred ending all sanctions on Lima but agreed to new initiatives to resolve the IPC case with a view to being able to ease pressure against Peru. Military assistance to Peru consequently jumped from $0.7 million in fiscal year 1973 to $15.9 million the following year. Furthermore, in 1973 Nixon would send to Lima a special representative, Jim Greene, who successfully negotiated a full settlement of the IPC crisis the following year worth $150 million, thereby paving the way for Washington to end all economic sanctions on Peru.
¹¹²

Overall, U.S. policy toward Latin America had therefore shifted in late 1972 as a result of Washington’s efforts to isolate Chilean, Cuban, and Soviet influence in the hemisphere. When U.S.-Chilean relations had begun attracting worldwide attention and got entangled in a North-South struggle, the Nixon administration had tactically retreated and had altered its approach to Latin American Third Worldists. This reorientation dovetailed with changes in the region that took place around the same time. Following UNCTAD III’s disappointments and in the context of the USSR’s failure to meet their development needs, regional leaders became increasingly accommodating. Washington did not actually have to deliver any significant assistance in this context—as Letelier argued, Nixon’s record
of helping developing nations revealed “serious transgressions” from his promises of “action for progress.”
¹¹³
Yet with no satisfactory alternatives, countries such as Mexico and Peru ultimately opted for a special relationship with the United States instead of relying on collective confrontation through slow-moving international forums. Indeed, having wobbled for the past few years, the inter-American balance of power seemed to be moving decidedly back in the United States’ favor.

What is more, although the prospect of revolutionary change within Chile was still alive, it was faltering and increasingly isolated in the Southern Cone. While the inter-American Cold War that had expanded beyond Chile appeared to have been largely won, it was now closing in and gathering force within the country itself. Compared to Peru, Santiago faced far greater obstacles when it came to straddling Cold War divides in an effort to get outside help. Indeed, despite Chilean initiatives, there would be no presidential summit between Nixon and Allende, as there had been with Echeverría and Médici; no high-level visit along the lines of Connally’s trips to Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Brazil; and no policy review like the one conducted with regard to Peru. As one U.S. banker quite plainly told one of Allende’s representatives in New York, Chile could not possibly hope to receive help from the capitalist world to attain what he referred to as its “ideological aspirations.”
¹¹⁴
Astute as this advice may have been, it had not necessarily filtered through to Allende’s inner foreign policy circle as the UP faced painful choices about how to assert Chile’s independence toward the end of the year.