Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (15 page)

Although the incoming Chilean government was not prepared for the degree of enmity it would have to deal with, it nevertheless recognized that La Vía Chilena would probably face some kind of hostility in the Americas. Yet, as regional players jostled to reassert their positions in a changed inter-American setting after Allende’s election, Santiago’s new leaders were somewhat belatedly debating how to approach the outside world. The Unidad Popular’s election manifesto had pledged to assert Chile’s economic and political independence and to show “effective” solidarity with both those fighting for their liberation and those constructing socialism.
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But when Allende entered La Moneda, and his ministers, diplomats, and advisers moved into their new offices, what this would mean in practice was unclear.

The Unidad Popular coalition’s leaders faced a myriad of opportunities and challenges as they began formulating Chile’s international policy. On the one hand, as we saw in the introduction, the evolution of superpower détente, the United States’ ongoing difficulties in Vietnam, frustrated development in Latin America, and Washington’s failure to address this, all suggested that the early 1970s would be an opportune moment to pursue radical transformation at a domestic, regional, and international level. On the other hand, Allende had limited room for maneuver on account of receiving only 36.4 percent of the popular vote, which left his position at home relatively weak and potentially unstable, especially in the shadow of Schneider’s murder. In this context, Allende and the UP’s leaders therefore feared that external intervention in Chilean affairs could magnify domestic difficulties. Consequently, they needed time, space, and continuing
credit flows to continue on their peaceful democratic road to socialism. As Allende warned his supporters, winning the presidency had been hard, but consolidating his victory and building socialism were going to be far harder.
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Indeed, overall, Chile’s political and economic weakness, its distance from alternative sources of support from the Soviet bloc, and historic tensions with its neighbors (all of whom had military governments in 1970) made its international position particularly delicate.

During the UP’s first nine months in power, the government therefore grappled first and foremost with how it should deal with its most obvious potential enemies, the United States and its neighbors in the Southern Cone. In this respect, Allende’s policies did not always evolve in a straight line but rather responded to mixed signals Santiago received about the likelihood of confrontation and opportunities for pushing through its core agenda. One of the key issues concerning the new government was how to nationalize its copper mines without facing reprisals. Another was how to read between the lines of the Nixon administration’s diplomacy to determine precisely what U.S. aims and objectives were vis-à-vis Chile. Last, but by no means least, Chile’s Foreign Ministry paid particular attention to reaching a degree of mutual understanding with military governments in Argentina and Peru to counteract what was considered to be the very real possibility that the United States would rekindle Chile’s border disputes with them. With reports reaching Santiago in early 1971 of deep Brazilian hostility to the new Chilean government, along with the news that the United States was keen to work with Brasilia in regional affairs, establishing a good relationship with Buenos Aires and Lima appeared all the more important.

Indeed, Allende’s foreign minister later recalled that a proactive foreign policy had been “obligatory” for the UP.
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The key to avoiding isolation and foreign intervention, as Allende’s foreign policy team increasingly saw it, was to tear down the notion that Chile had realigned itself behind the Iron Curtain or that it had to be contained behind ideological frontiers. Instead, the UP emphasized a foreign policy of “ideological pluralism,” while pursuing active diplomacy aimed at forging the best relations with as many countries as possible. The UP also sought an ever greater role for Chile within international organizations and Third World forums while it established new state-level relations across the globe and quietly began seeking assistance and support from the socialist bloc.

As it turned out, these policies were only partly successful. They did not stop Washington courting the Chilean armed forces or prevent the extensive
U.S. Covert Action Program in Chile, which focused on boosting the UP’s political opponents. They also failed to curtail Washington’s efforts to improve its relations with military leaders in the Southern Cone or prevent the Brazilians from appealing to Washington about the seriousness of the threat that Allende posed. To be sure, the United States neither controlled the complexity of the multisided Cold War conflict in the region nor fully understood the depth of ideological hostilities it embodied in late 1970 and early 1971. But this did not mean that the Nixon administration was intent to let the situation drift now that Allende was in power.

Like many new presidents, Allende had not fully decided on a precise or coherent foreign policy strategy when he was inaugurated. True, he had a two-month transition period in which to plan an overall framework and appoint key foreign policy advisers. He also had clear, long-standing ideals about what was wrong with the world and what position he wanted Chile to assume within it. Yet the fraught period between his election and his inauguration had not helped smooth his transition to power. The international situation that his new government confronted was also highly complex, as were the varying—and often contradictory—ideas that the UP parties brought to government on international affairs. As a friend of Allende’s, the senior Chilean diplomat Hernán Santa Cruz, privately warned him a week after his election, the world was scrutinizing everything the president-elect said, so he had to think carefully about what he wanted his message to the outside world to be. Santa Cruz also privately wrote to Allende about the heterodox nature of the Unidad Popular coalition and his concerns regarding its organizational and foreign policy planning capabilities. Improvisation was not an option, he insisted, because governments that improvised “paid a hard price.”
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In seeking to give his foreign policy clearer definition and focus, Allende faced a basic choice: to confront potential enemies or to seek accommodation with them. Both choices had drawbacks. Confrontation with the United States and conservative regional powers—à la Cuba—ran the risk of isolation and external intervention, which was particularly problematic given that the new Chilean government had no assurances about obtaining economic support from elsewhere and certainly no detailed plans for closer ties with the Soviet bloc at this stage. The other choice, that of seeking
a meaningful modus vivendi with Washington, entailed the prospect of sacrificing election promises.

So, which was it to be? By reestablishing diplomatic relations with Havana just over a week after taking power, Allende signaled that he was not prepared to bow to Washington on certain issues. Yet, how far he would go when it came to showing solidarity with revolutionary movements, leaving the Organization of American States (OAS), or nationalizing Chile’s large copper mines was more ambiguous. The reason for this was that such actions carried the risk of U.S. intervention. As an internal Chilean Foreign Ministry memorandum would note, both U.S. governmental and nongovernmental sectors were bound to react to the new Chilean government’s “struggle against imperialism.”
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Allende also considered Peru’s nationalization dispute with Washington beginning in 1969 as clear evidence of the United States’ continuing “imperial” design on Latin America.
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Yet the nationalization of Chile’s copper mines, in particular, had been a nonnegotiable cornerstone of Allende’s presidential campaigns between 1952 and 1970.
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As Allende told Debray shortly after taking office, “economic independence” was a necessary precursor to political independence and “unquestionable power” for the majority of Chile’s population.
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The big question was therefore how to square the circle—how to acquire this “unquestionable power” without provoking reprisals. Decisively choosing confrontation or accommodation not only risked pitfalls but also required an accurate reading of international affairs and U.S. intentions, neither of which the new Unidad Popular government had. In a few cases, paranoia clouded analysts’ judgment when it came to identifying U.S. malice toward Chile. For example, some warned that the Cienfuegos crisis that had erupted in September 1970 regarding Soviet submarine bases in Cuba had been a mere “
fantasmagórico
” designed by the Pentagon to coincide with Allende’s election, reemphasize the dangers of communism in the hemisphere, and warn Moscow not to intervene.
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In reality, however, the events were unrelated, despite Henry Kissinger’s later attempt to link them in his memoirs. Not only did Kissinger confuse the chronology of events (the crisis occurred
after
Allende was elected, not before), but the Cienfuegos crisis was also instantly perceived in Washington as a U.S.-Soviet issue that was resolved bilaterally without any reference to Latin America. Unbeknownst to the Chileans, it was also never discussed when Washington’s policy makers were formulating their policies toward Chile.
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Even so, there were other signs of U.S. hostility that are still difficult
to disprove. Santa Cruz’s allegation that the CIA broke into the Foreign Ministry and stole a personal letter he had written to Allende is a case in point.
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These episodes notwithstanding, other confidants were advising the president-elect to act cautiously. As we saw in chapter 2, Allende’s most intimate international ally, Fidel Castro, was one of those who urged the new president to avoid conflict with Washington. (Among other things, he specifically advised remaining in the dollar area, maintaining traditional copper markets, and staying in the OAS.)
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Another of those who suggested that Allende should try and avoid a clash was Orlando Letelier, a Chilean Socialist Party member working at the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). A month before Allende’s inauguration, he had written to his party to urge it, Allende, and the UP as a whole to devote time and resources to formulating a coherent international strategy. In a long letter to the Socialist Party’s general secretary, Aniceto Rodríguez, he stressed that confrontation with the United States was not inevitable. As he put it, the Nixon administration had various “internal problems” as well as difficulties in the Middle East and Vietnam. Moreover, because of “the tremendous criticism that Nixon’s international policy is receiving daily in the North American congress, its attitude toward the Chilean situation will not be able to be of an openly aggressive character…. I think that faced with what is occurring in Peru and what is occurring in Bolivia, the [United States’] position in respect to Chile will be to find a level of understanding and to avoid a situation of crisis. All this favors us.”
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Letelier nevertheless recognized that U.S. policy could make or break Allende’s presidency, particularly when it came to financial considerations. Chile’s international economic policy and its relationship with the United States would be the pivotal determinant of the UP’s political success, he argued. And in this context, he urged Allende to pay close attention to who might take on the pivotal role of being Chile’s ambassador in Washington (he then offered to take up the position himself).
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Allende appears to have taken this advice seriously. He demurred when far Left members of the UP coalition adopted what Allende’s foreign minister, Clodomiro Almeyda, later recalled as having been a “primitive battle instinct” toward the United States. As Almeyda remembered, the individuals concerned saw confrontation as a source of internal strength and a decisive means of challenging imperialism. Instead, the president sided with those who favored a more pragmatic, tactical, approach. In December 1970 the new Chilean government subsequently announced that it had
decided to follow a policy of “healthy realism” in foreign affairs—an optimistic and ambitious option between confrontation and accommodation that would allow Allende to survive
and
succeed.
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As his confidants remembered years later, Allende quite simply recognized that Chile could not yet “fight the giant.”
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The foreign policy team that the incoming president assembled reflected this understanding. Although Allende retained close ties to more radical individuals, such as his daughter, Beatriz, members of his own party, the PS, and the MIR, in the veritable scramble for positions in the new UP government, who got what job mattered. And, pivotally, Allende tended to surround himself officially with a group that favored careful negotiation over hasty confrontation. After some in the UP rejected Allende’s first choice of ambassador to Washington, the IDB’s first president, Felipe Herrera, on the grounds that he was too centrist, for example, Allende offered the position to Letelier.
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The latter would then become an increasingly important and trusted figure within Allende’s foreign policy team over the next three years. He had risen in the ranks of international organizations and was also part of the so-called elegant Left, one of the many groups that made up the Chilean Left with which the new president worked particularly well.
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Allende also had strong and long-standing links with established Chilean diplomats. He respected their advice, and largely kept the Foreign Ministry’s traditional structure intact.
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He even offered to let ex-president Eduardo Frei’s foreign minister, Gabriel Valdés (who was a friend of his), remain in his post.
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Although Valdés refused on account of his allegiance to Chile’s Christian Democrat Party (PDC), his assistance and that of confidants such as the career diplomat Ramon Huidobro helped smooth the transition of governments. Before Allende’s inauguration, for example, Valdés took his successor to the United Nations to meet key personalities in international politics.
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In this context, Almeyda, a Socialist on the left wing of his party and an old political rival of Allende’s, had been rather a surprising second choice for foreign minister. Yet, in the years that followed, Almeyda steadfastly joined Letelier, Huidobro, Santa Cruz, and others in arguing for a nonconfrontational line. “The only way to restrain our adversaries,” Almeyda later explained, “was to try and neutralize them, divide them, negotiate with them; to compromise and even retreat tactically in order to avoid collision or confrontation, which could only have a negative outcome for Chile.”
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