Allende's Chile And The Inter-American Cold War Part 4

An hour before Allende retired to bed, Was.h.i.+ngton's defense attache in Santiago had reported back home that a coup would "apparently" be launched in the morning but he speculated that Allende might survive it.116 The question was how? The power potentially ranged against him was vast. Chile's combined armed forces numbered 87,000 in 1973.117 And while counting on at least some of the military to remain loyal to the government, the contingency plans the Left had drawn up depended on forewarning so that advancing troops could be cut off before they reached La Moneda. By dismissing news of troop movements, Allende therefore missed an opportunity to preempt the somewhat nervous plotters. The Cubans' logistical room for maneuver was also restricted given that their emba.s.sy was in a strategically vulnerable cul-de-sac and could easily be cut off. As the Cubans similarly had little forewarning of the coup, they also had no easy way of distributing the arms they had been stockpiling for the MIR. However, these setbacks did not alter Allende's plans to go to La Moneda in the event of an attack on his government. To the contrary, having been alerted to the coup at around 6:00 A.M., he went straight to the presidential palace to defend his presidential mandate and refused to leave the building alive. If what happened was not completely unexpected, the way it happened-the ferocity with which it took place-nevertheless shocked Allende's government and the world beyond.

Just before 6:00 A.M., Ulises Estrada received a telephone call informing him that the Chilean navy had begun seizing the port of Valparaiso. He immediately left for the emba.s.sy, where he set off a chain of phone calls around Santiago conveying the code word, lapis [lazuli], after the precious blue Chilean stone. This meant that a military coup was under way and Cubans were to leave their houses immediately. There was not even enough time for Cuba's commercial attache to collect sensitive doc.u.ments or money from his office.118 Estrada also alerted Carlos Altamirano and the Communist deputy chief of police investigations, Samuel Riquelme. And according to Estrada's recollection, both had some trouble grasping the magnitude of what was happening. In addition, Estrada spoke briefly to Miguel Enriquez, to inform him that the Cuban Emba.s.sy would not immediately be able to distribute the weapons it had been stockpiling for the MIR since mid-1972.119 By 7:30 A.M., just over one hundred Cubans had therefore arrived at their emba.s.sy. The building was sealed off, arms were distributed, and most emba.s.sy personnel a.s.sumed a.s.signed defensive positions. In fact, by this date the emba.s.sy was a fortress awaiting siege. It was treated as Cuban territory, and hence, as its amba.s.sador later recalled, it was to be defended "until the last man."120 Although from the outside it looked like an una.s.suming adobe house dwarfed by taller buildings, inside staff had ama.s.sed food supplies, the building's swimming pool had been concreted over to conceal a tank of water, and in a recently dug cellar the Cubans had stored basic medical supplies to treat the wounded and quicklime to hide the smell of any decomposing dead. In all, they calculated they had provisions to last a month.121 As the emba.s.sy's staff prepared to withstand a foreseeable attack, a group of Cubans (as yet, its size is unknown) also organized arms and transport to leave for Chile's presidential palace, where they planned to fight beside Allende.122 Meanwhile, across town, the president had arrived unscathed at La Moneda at 7:30 A.M., carrying the gun that Fidel Castro had given him. Twenty-three members of the GAP accompanied him, and between them, they carried a collection of arms, including AK-47 a.s.sault rifles, an indeterminable number of submachine guns, and two or three bazookas.123 Having gradually gathered that all three branches of the armed forces were acting together and that he could not count on the Carabineros to defend him, Allende issued a radio broadcast at 8:45 A.M. explaining that the situation was "critical." To those who were listening, he proclaimed he had "no alternative" but to defend the Chilean revolutionary process and fulfill his mandate; that he would take no "step backward."124 Inside the presidential palace, doc.u.ments were simultaneously burned as a matter of almost obsessive priority, arms were distributed, and defensive positions were a.s.sumed.125 Over the next hour and a half, a strange mix of the GAP, the president's closest advisers, government ministers, doctors, and journalists a.s.sembled, and just before 9:00 A.M., his daughter Beatriz arrived after driving her car determinedly through one of the first army blockades erected around La Moneda.126 Having entered the building, she was asked by her father to call the Cuban Emba.s.sy and instruct the Cubans not to go to La Moneda. In Allende's mind, this was to be a Chilean conflict, and aware that the world was watching, he did not want a battle between the Cubans and Chile's armed forces at the presidential palace.127 Around this time, Miguel Enriquez also called Allende and offered to join him, but the president responded that the MIR should fight in the streets as it had been pledging to do.128 And even if the MIR or a group of Cubans had set out at this point, it is uncertain whether they would have reached La Moneda without suffering substantial losses. One truck containing members of the GAP and a.r.s.enal never arrived.129 Then, when the MIR offered to go to the palace and take Allende to lead a resistance from the outskirts of the city later that morning, Beatriz explained that Allende would never leave the palace.130 Indeed, after the junta broadcast an ultimatum to Allende at 9:30 A.M. saying that if he did not leave by 11:00 A.M., the palace would be bombed, the president stood firm.131 Reflecting on the tension that had built up in Chile before this day, Beatriz recalled that her father "felt a certain sense of relief that this moment had arrived." He felt "freed from the uncomfortable situation" of being "president of a popular government" while "the armed forces used the so-called Arms Control Law to oppress workers."132 Although Allende was clear about his own position, what he expected the workers to do was less obvious. In his last radio message, broadcast at 9:10 A.M., Allende had seemingly improvised an elegant farewell to the Chilean people conveying a vague message of restraint and resistance. "The people must be alert and vigilant," he instructed. "You must not let yourselves be provoked, not let yourselves be ma.s.sacred, but you must also defend your conquests. You must defend the right to construct through your own effort a dignified and better life.... These are my last words and I am certain that my sacrifice will not be in vain, I am certain that, at the least, it will be a moral lesson that will punish felony, cowardice and treason."133 Inside La Moneda, Allende then donned a metal helmet and took personal charge of distributing weapons and ammunition. Those who accompanied him knew that they faced a battle that they were unlikely to win, but only as the morning progressed did they fully understand the extent of the situation they faced. At 9:15 A.M., there was an exchange of gunfire between soldiers stationed outside the palace and those inside, which grew fiercer when tanks arrived and began firing on La Moneda at 10:00 A.M.134 Around the same time, back at the Cuban Emba.s.sy-which kept abreast of developments via telephone contact with the palace and Prensa Latina offices opposite La Moneda-two unarmed members of the MIR, one of whom was the president's nephew, Andres Pascal Allende, managed to reach the emba.s.sy. Upon arriving, they demanded to be given at least some of the MIR's arms. However, Estrada refused, believing this would have been "irresponsible." Between 10:00 and 11:00 A.M., approximately fifty members of Patria y Libertad had closed off the emba.s.sy's cul-de-sac with burning oil drums.135 And, as such, Estrada's decision was based on his fear that the enemy would immediately seize arms given to these two Miristas. Only because others did not hold this view did the two members of the MIR leave the emba.s.sy with two donated pistols to defend themselves and somehow (it is not clear how) manage to survive.136 Before midday, two hundred soldiers from Chile's armed forces surrounded the emba.s.sy, occupying neighboring buildings and cutting it off completely.137 In these circ.u.mstances, Estrada ordered the emba.s.sy's radio plant and its codes to be destroyed in case the building was overrun. Similarly, doc.u.ments were burned (with candles) so that if and when the Cubans needed to leave Chile, they could use the thirty large crates these had been stored in to smuggle their weapons out of the country.138 And, later, in the emba.s.sy's backyard, Ona also set fire to Allende's private papers as promised.139 Meanwhile, Chile's population listened to the junta's radio declarations to learn what was happening. U.S. Emba.s.sy personnel were also sitting by the radio, waiting for either Allende to resign or La Moneda to be bombed. Having arrived at the emba.s.sy diagonally opposite the palace, Davis sent regular reports to Was.h.i.+ngton detailing news he received from the junta's broadcasts but little more.140 Meanwhile, at his residence, his wife and daughters were glued to the radio. Suddenly, just before midday, the Hawker Hunter jets everyone had been waiting for pa.s.sed overhead. As Davis's wife later described, "It was an eerily beautiful sight as they came in from nowhere. The sun glinted on their wings. There were only two. Still in formation, they swung gracefully through the sky in a great circle, and then they tipped and dove ... one bomb each ... then, a gentle curve upwards."141 Of course, those inside the palace faced the grim reality of those "eerily beautiful" jets. Moments before the planes began bombing La Moneda, Allende had forced women to leave the building. The group that remained had then taken whatever cover it could, with a limited number of faulty gas masks. For the next twenty minutes, the palace was. .h.i.t by at least eight bombs.142 Over the next hour and a half, the resistance within the palace exchanged fire with the military, using two bazookas against the tanks. Pro-government snipers in the public works building next to the presidential palace also fired on the military.143 Yet, together, these efforts were in vain. Just before two o'clock, the military stormed the building and found Allende dead.

Despite preparations over the course of three years to defend the government in the event of a coup, the Chilean Left also crumbled. The PCCh's newspaper, El Siglo, heard of the military's intervention just in time to order readers to their "combat position!" but many simply did not know where they should go.144 Still uncertain of the nature of the situation they faced, leaders from the PCCh, the PS, and the MIR had finally met at 11:00 A.M. to decide on a course of action. But they could not agree, and the arms in their possession were limited. Enriquez, unable to access Cuban arms, for example, believed he could a.s.semble four hundred militants by 4:00 p.m. but calculated that only fifty would be ready for combat, which was clearly not enough to withstand the military's onslaught.145 A key problem for the UP's parties was that communication broke down.146 The Cubans explain this breakdown as the responsibility of party leaders and a consequence of the compartmentalization of trained militants. One key PS leader immediately sought asylum in a foreign emba.s.sy, for example, and another PCCh leader failed to alert militants to the location of stored armaments.147 At 5:00 P.M., Estrada also fiercely rebuked Carlos Altamirano when he called the emba.s.sy to enquire where the MIR was fighting so that he could join them. Not only had Altamirano called on an open telephone line, but Estrada believed it was very late to be organizing the armed resistance that he had been recklessly boasting about.148 The Cubans were also too tied up with their own difficulties to be able to offer more a.s.sistance. At least two gun battles occurred between the Cuban Emba.s.sy and Chilean armed forces on 11 September.149 The fiercest took place at midnight when Ona attempted to leave the emba.s.sy to escort Allende's wife and daughters to the ex-president's innocuous burial in Vina del Mar. Despite prior arrangements with the military and explicit instructions for him to leave the building specifically for this purpose, troops fired on Ona when he opened the door.150 The Cubans returned fire so fiercely that a Vietnamese diplomat who witnessed the battle later told Timossi that he had never seen professional armed soldiers running backward as fast.151 While bullets flew back and forth above them, Ona and the amba.s.sador lay flat on the ground behind the emba.s.sy's wall. "It was probably a few minutes, but it felt like an eternity," Ona later remembered. Eventually, the military called a ceasefire, but not before it had suffered a number of (as yet unknown) losses. On the Cuban side, the amba.s.sador and another person were wounded.152 The intensive targeting of Cubans by Chilean military and paramilitary forces is revealing in terms of their priorities and fears. Throughout 11 September, coup leaders threatened to send tanks and jets to bomb the emba.s.sy.153 A Cuban merchant vessel, Playa Larga, was also heavily attacked by sea and air near the port of Valparaiso, and when the military forces raided factories and neighborhoods, they hunted down all foreigners as a matter of priority.154 But no other emba.s.sy faced the same pressure as the Cuban Emba.s.sy. The Soviet Emba.s.sy, for example, was surrounded briefly a day after the coup but escaped the military's wrath.155 Moreover, transcripts of Pinochet's conversations with the coup's other leaders on 11 September reveal that Allende's ties with Cuba were influential in determining the general's mind-set. He personally insisted on inserting a clause into the military's radio declaration pointing the finger at "foreigners who have a.s.sa.s.sinated our people," and at "foreigners who have intervened here on our territory."156 And amid organizations for Allende's burial, he had commented that the body should be "put in a box and loaded onto an airplane, that the burial take place elsewhere, in Cuba."157 The junta also immediately broke off diplomatic relations with Havana and, seeming afraid of engaging in confrontation, urgently wanted all Cubans in Chile to leave the country.158 Although the Cubans themselves now quite clearly also wanted to leave, they did not trust the military to guarantee their safety, and they wanted to safeguard their interests in Chile. Thus, while Cuban diplomats bombarded foreign emba.s.sies worldwide to demand "safe conduct" for their colleagues, frantic negotiations went on in Havana and Santiago to organize their departure.159 What concerned the Cubans was how to safeguard the arms they had stored for the MIR, how to take their own arms with them without them being discovered, and how they could protect Max Marambio, a Mirista and former leader of the GAP with close links to the Cubans who was at the emba.s.sy on the day of the coup and whom the military refused to let leave.

Eventually, Havana entrusted Sweden's amba.s.sador, Harald Edelstam, with Cuban interests. When this left-wing Swedish aristocrat, with experience of covert operations during World War II, arrived at the emba.s.sy, Estrada led him down to the cellar where the Cubans had stored the arms they wanted to distribute to the MIR. And although Edelstam was reportedly shocked at their quant.i.ty, Estrada remembers that his att.i.tude was "magnificent." He immediately agreed to protect Marambio, safeguard the arms, and help distribute them as soon as possible. For the time being, though, he covered the cellar's trap door with a sofa and vowed to sleep on it.160 Meanwhile, on 12 September, the Cubans collected doc.u.ments and money from Cuba's commercial office, rescued those that had not been able to get to the emba.s.sy from their safe houses, and packed their empty diplomatic crates with Cuban arms.161 Cubans later recalled it was pure luck that a Soviet plane was at Pudahuel airport to fly them out of Chile.162 It was also only because Soviet personnel were neither vulnerable nor being asked to leave that they agreed to donate their plane when asked by the Cubans to do so. The only other country the junta immediately broke relations with was North Korea, on the grounds that it, like Cuba, had "actively intervened in internal national politics."163 However, despite the discovery of North Korean arms at Tomas Moro, which served as the pretext, Pyongyang's leaders knew nothing about the weapons (the Cubans had brought North Korean weapons into the country because the USSR and Eastern Europeans had put restrictions on Cubans transferring their weapons to Chile).164 Cuba's three-year mission in Chile thus came to a disastrous end far more abruptly than the Cubans themselves had antic.i.p.ated. Their improvised escape and the extensive emba.s.sy preparations for withstanding a prolonged struggle reveal that the Cubans had never expected to abandon the country like this. Although Marambio and Edelstam, together with Argentine Montoneros clandestinely in Chile, delivered approximately three hundred arms to the MIR in the weeks after the coup, these did not offer any significant relief for the desperate situation Chile's left wing faced.165 As the CIA noted, the junta planned "severe repression" to "stamp out all vestiges of communism in Chile for good."166 Of course, the junta's fear that the Cubans could lead ma.s.s resistance, nurtured over the course of three years of psychological campaigns to play up Cuban involvement in Chile, was exaggerated. Even with prior knowledge and unity, it is far from certain whether a few hundred (or even a few thousand) partially trained Chilean militants could have resisted Chile's armed forces. The Chilean Left was hopelessly divided and was unprepared to face the military onslaught that followed, having been severely weakened by the arms raids in the weeks leading up to the coup. There also does not appear to have been a joint Cuban-Chilean plan to defend the government. Rather, there was a general expectation that the Cubans would a.s.sist if the time came.167 And although their emba.s.sy remained a central point of reference to the various sectors of the Chilean Left, in the context of fragmented left-wing planning the Cubans had become dislocated and unable to direct any decisive countermeasures for a coup. Ultimately, Havana's role depended on Allende to take decisive action to unite these forces and request the Cubans' help. But this request never came. "The only option was to try to arm the popular forces," Castro later told Honecker; "Naturally it would have been dangerous, but it was more dangerous to do nothing.... For the enemy was mobilized, the fascists were mobilized, and the ma.s.ses were nowhere to be seen because the government had not mobilized them."168

New Friends.h.i.+ps.

One week after the Chilean coup, Cuba's representative at the United Nations, Ricardo Alarcon, labeled Nixon the "intellectual author" of the military's intervention.169 From Berlin to Tanzania, Paris to Rome, and Montreal to Honduras, other fingers also pointed at the United States as the architect of Allende's downfall.170 Chile's new regime certainly looked like Nixon's most-favored ally in Latin America, Brazil's dictators.h.i.+p. But as one external observer noted two years later, "the level of oppression" was a "major difference": "Chile's military junta has not only utilized the experience of Brazil but leapfrogged the early experimental stages of the Brazilian process."171 Was.h.i.+ngton played a role in encouraging the new Chilean dictators.h.i.+p to speedily learn the lessons from Brazil. Indeed, U.S. contingency planners had been examining ways of persuading a hypothetical military regime to seek close relations with Brasilia even before the Chilean coup took place. And now that it had, policy makers in Was.h.i.+ngton-among them the previously reticent Davis and members of the State Department-paid considerable attention to ensuring that a potential military regime succeeded.

The day after the coup, the State Department instructed Davis to discreetly convey Was.h.i.+ngton's "desire to cooperate" and to "a.s.sist" the junta.172 As Kissinger privately argued, "however unpleasant," the new government was "better for us than Allende."173 Over a month before the coup took place, intelligence a.n.a.lysts had also unsurprisingly predicted that Allende's "demise" would be a "psychological setback to the cause of doctrinaire socialism in the hemisphere" and that his successors would "be favorably disposed toward the U.S." and to foreign investment.174 Pinochet also quite clearly wanted to "strengthen ... friendly ties" and contacted the U.S. Emba.s.sy in Santiago on 12 September as a means of doing so.175 Although he had apparently not communicated his plans to Was.h.i.+ngton before, he now notably played up Allende's alleged pressure on the army to purchase Soviet equipment as a lever to extract adequate a.s.sistance.176 Indeed, looking back on the days before the coup when he was minister of defense, Letelier recalled that he had asked Pinochet to look into the prospect of purchasing arms from the USSR and that the latter had expressed opposition to the idea of Soviet arms and training programs in Chile.177 This att.i.tude appears to have impressed U.S. officials in the immediate aftermath of the coup. On 14 September, intelligence sources noted somewhat belatedly that he was "decisive" and "prudent ... the priority concerns are to restore order and economic normalcy. Political reform apparently will wait."178 The DIA also later described him as "very businesslike. Very honest, hard working, dedicated." And Davis went as far as to call him "gracious and eloquent."179 The embrace U.S. officials gave Pinochet was nevertheless predetermined even before Was.h.i.+ngton became acquainted with him personally. Predicting a violent confrontation between coup leaders and UP supporters, the United States had wanted to ensure that any military leaders who seized power succeeded in defeating their opponents. On 1 August, CIA a.n.a.lysts had therefore noted, "repressive measures would be necessary" to quell "strikes, demonstrations, and other forms of protest." A "favorable" scenario they listed was one in which, "after some, perhaps considerable, bloodletting, Chile could eventually achieve a greater measure of political and social stability."180 On 8 September, the U.S. Ad Hoc Interagency Working Group on Chile had subsequently concluded that "a united military could control violent resistance" but warned that this would not be a.s.sured if thousands of armed workers seized factories and marched downtown. It had therefore suggested that the United States be willing (even if at this late stage it was still not completely ready) to step in by providing riot control equipment, supplying Chile by means of military airlifts from Panama, and providing food and other "minimum essential" a.s.sistance. This working group had also urged that items already requested by the Chilean military under Foreign Military Sales credits be delivered rapidly. To lessen charges of supporting coup leaders, varied and complex scenarios had also simultaneously been explored to see how the United States could respond positively to expected requests for foodstuffs and financial a.s.sistance. Overall, the working group had calculated that the new government could not "possibly succeed without very substantial external help" and recommended that Was.h.i.+ngton be "prepared ... through special congressional action if necessary, to provide substantial additional resources."181 As predicted, after 11 September, Chile's new regime asked for help. Davis concluded that the Chilean military ascribed to a National Security Doctrine that prioritized economic stability and a "healthy social structure" as essential pillars of defense. The amba.s.sador observed that "under the broader interpretation, most recently enunciated by former army CINC general Carlos Prats, officers [had] looked on in anger as they saw the Allende government plunge Chile into economic disaster and increased foreign dependency, and watched the UP parties and extreme left elements actively seek to undermine traditional military precepts of discipline and chain of command."182 After Allende's overthrow, military leaders were explicit about what they needed to create this "healthy" society: at the top of their list was equipment-one thousand flares, a thousand steel helmets, portable housing-to put down resistance to the coup, equip draftees, and deal with the large numbers of prisoners they detained. The Chilean air force also asked the United States to send medical supplies and, in sharp contrast to his worries about precipitating a coup before it took place, Davis now advised Was.h.i.+ngton to accommodate requests, albeit as "discreetly as possible."183 Meanwhile, Orlando Saenz, a Chilean businessman who had led strikes against Allende and had considerable influence in the new regime, approached a U.S. official in Nairobi. He spelled out that Chile needed $500 million before the end of 1973 ($200 million for imports, $300 million for debt payments) and indicated that the new government was also seeking credits from U.S. banks and, through "very" confidential talks, from U.S. copper companies.184 Henceforth, Was.h.i.+ngton delivered as much a.s.sistance as it deemed possible without attracting undue attention and condemnation. On 21 September, Foreign Minister Admiral Ismael Huerta expressed his "deep appreciation" when Was.h.i.+ngton agreed to send an airlift of supplies worth $100,000.185 Kissinger then privately conveyed his support for the junta and expressed his "best wishes ... for the success of the Chilean government" to Huerta when the latter visited the UN in October 1973. In separate meetings, U.S. policy makers also underlined their intention to be as "helpful as possible" in arranging meetings with New York banks.186 Indeed, when Kubisch met Huerta on 12 October, he promised the Chilean government the "widest collaboration."187 Huerta also recorded Kissinger as stating "emphatically that U.S. policy would not be modified by mistaken information in the press," which condemned the military regime's brutality.188 And when Pinochet approached Davis in Santiago on the same day, emphasizing that Chile was "broke" and needed "help getting on its feet," the amba.s.sador "reiterated a.s.surances."189 By the end of October 1973, Was.h.i.+ngton had given Pinochet a loan of $24 million for wheat purchases (eight times the total commodity credit offered to Allende's government). In 1974 Chile-which accounted for 3 percent of Latin America's population-also received 48 percent of U.S. "Food for Peace" (PL480) grants to the region.190 In the three years that followed, Chile a.s.sumed a preferential status in Latin America, as the recipient of 88 percent of U.S. AID's housing guarantees and $237.8 million from the Inter-American Development Bank. Pinochet's government also became the fifth-largest purchaser of U.S. military equipment until U.S. congressional leaders put a stop to this in subsequent years on account of Chilean human rights abuses.191 Simultaneously, the CIA established close ties with the military regime's new security and intelligence services. In early 1974 General Walters, by then deputy director of the CIA, invited Manuel Contreras, the head of Chile's new secret policy agency (the DINA) to Was.h.i.+ngton, where Contreras, in his own words, learned about "how to do national intelligence."192 As the former Was.h.i.+ngton Post correspondent John Dinges concludes in his book, The Condor Years, the United States also had "amazingly complete and intimate details" about the regional counterrevolutionary network that Pinochet formally established in late 1975 under the name "Operation Condor."193 After all, immediately after the coup, U.S. policy makers had reemphasized their preference for encouraging coordination between the new Chilean government and its regional neighbors, noting that "for financial and technical as well as political reasons," the United States should lead "part of a larger effort of various international and other sources of a.s.sistance."194 Surveying other Latin American countries that might be "disposed" to help, a.n.a.lysts predictably noted that Brazil would be "particularly important because of its likely ideological identification with the new GOC and its substantial and growing economic strength." It is therefore unsurprising that when Davis conveyed Was.h.i.+ngton's desires to a.s.sist the new Chilean regime with countering "urban terrorism," he also insisted "Chile's Latin American friends" had "considerable experience ... in this area" that the junta could draw on.195 Similarly, Huerta recorded Kissinger as insinuating to him that Chileans should acquire military equipment in Brazil if it was needed "urgently."196 Fortunately for the Nixon administration, the United States' efforts to organize such a multilateral support effort appear to have been well received. As Davis observed in late October, "in regard to third country channeling of aid," Pinochet was "showing considerable understadint [sic]."197 The Brazilians were also obviously inclined to help. Not only had they been given prior information about coup plotting, but Pinochet later recalled that the Brazilian amba.s.sador in Santiago personally extended recognition to the junta early on 11 September. "We won!" he reportedly exclaimed.198 Brasilia then offered the Chilean junta immediate help with suppression, working as advisers to the new regime, as well as directly interrogating and torturing prisoners in Chile's National Stadium.199 As Contreras would recall three decades later, Chilean intelligence services quickly established exchange and training programs with Brasilia.200 Meanwhile, the Brazilian regime conducted an immediate review of how to extend lines of credit, reportedly offering the junta "significant economic a.s.sistance in the near future ... $50 million or more" days after the coup.201 Other right-wing regimes in the Southern Cone also supported the Chilean junta on account of the implications that it had for their own internal Cold War battles against the Left. On the one hand, Bolivian newspapers cheerfully reported the expulsion of 315 Bolivian "leftists" from Chile.202 And on the other hand, U.S. diplomats reported that with more than 300 Uruguayans in Chile, a group of hard-line military leaders in Montevideo were hoping the Chileans would "take care" of the Tupamaros.203 Indeed, without any apparent U.S. coordination, planes from Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Uruguay, and Ecuador had arrived with provisions for the new regime days after the coup.204 Chile's neighbors, alongside Was.h.i.+ngton, did their best to bolster the incoming regime's international standing. When Huerta appeared at the United Nations in October 1973, Brazil's permanent representative at the organization helped draft his speech.205 Acknowledging the role of public relations, the State Department had also sent instructions to Santiago days after the coup, emphasizing that Chile would need to defend itself eloquently in international forums.206 Subsequently, a Chilean Foreign Ministry spokesman told Davis that the new regime was "deeply appreciative" for advice on this matter, and in the months that followed, the United States helped launch a propaganda offensive justifying the junta's actions.207 According to Davis, Pinochet also showed "sensitivity to the need for both U.S. and GOC caution in development of overly close public identifications." The dictator informed the U.S. amba.s.sador that he would send Chilean civilian leaders to the United States to alleviate "Chile's public image problem."208 As Chile's new amba.s.sador in Was.h.i.+ngton surmised, the American public's hostility toward the new regime was not just about the junta but rather the result of ongoing battles between Congress and the Executive in the context of Watergate and Vietnam.209 Nixon and Kissinger were equally frustrated by the reaction to the coup in the United States. The president dismissed press speculation that the United States was involved as "c.r.a.p," and Kissinger commented on the "filthy hypocrisy" of those that condemned the new military regime: "In Eisenhower's day it would have been celebrated!"210 It was an "absurd situation where we have to apologize for the overthrow of ... a government hostile to us," he privately complained.211 Even so, Kissinger acknowledged he had to be cautious about what he said. "To get in to this [Chile], even in executive session," his a.s.sistant, William Jorden, counseled, "will open a Pandora's box ... once a precedent of discussing CIA activities before the Foreign Relations Committee is established, no programs in other countries will be immune."212 What followed in 1974 and 1975-the publication of two congressional reports, Covert Operation in Chile, 196373 and Alleged a.s.sa.s.sination Plots Involving Foreign Leaders-confirmed his fears. Indeed, one scholar has since argued that U.S. foreign policy subsequently suffered from a "'Chile syndrome'-supplementing the Vietnam syndrome of national reticence to U.S. military intervention in distant lands" when it came to covert operations abroad.213 The coup also dramatically altered Chile's place in the world as well as Cuban and U.S. positions in Latin America. In the Southern Cone, Allende's hopes of redesigning the inter-American system had backfired even before he was overthrown. And now that he had been, growing ranks of counterrevolutionary forces emerged from the ruins of the left-wing tide of the 1960s and the early 1970s to create a new antirevolutionary order. Without a doubt, this s.h.i.+fting regional balance of power was directly related-though by no means exclusively-to Allende's election, presidency, and demise. And it was also helped by U.S. policymakers, who got what they had wanted from the start of Allende's presidency, even if they had not masterminded precisely how this occurred. Certainly, the mortal struggle to determine Chile's future had been won, and Latin America was back within the United States' sphere of influence. As Davis noted a month after the coup had taken place, "grosso modo Chile has been shunted out of the column of left-leaning Third World admirers of the Soviet Union.214

Conclusion.

The international history of Allende's overthrow is a far more complex story than a simple case of "who did it?" To appreciate its significance, we need to ask why foreigners got involved in the battle for Chile between 1970 and 1973 and with what consequences for that country, the hemisphere, and beyond. A confluence of different local and international actors driven apart in a battle between socialism and capitalism determined what happened on 11 September 1973. And although neither the victors nor the vanquished in Chile were manipulated from abroad, the decisions they made were in part the result of their belief that an international battle was taking place within their country and region. Indeed, both the Left and the Right conceptualized themselves as nationalists who were fighting against foreign enemies. Thus, while Allende pictured himself as freeing Chile from U.S. capitalist exploitation, Pinochet justified outlawing left-wing parties by blaming the "foreign doctrine of Marxism" for having driven Chile to chaos.215 In this context, the opposition media's skillful manipulation of Cuba's role in Chile, helped by funds and intelligence feeds from the CIA (both true and false), was highly effective in drumming up fear among an already highly charged and divided population. There is another international dimension to the coup that also needs underlining and which has received little attention to date: instead of being the decisive turning point in the defeat of revolution in the Southern Cone, which it is often depicted as being, the Chilean coup of 1973 was one pivotal moment in a much larger counterrevolutionary wave that had begun in the mid-1960s and had gathered pace in the three years following Allende's election, isolating Chile in the process.

So what of the United States and its responsibility for toppling Allende's Chile? As it turned out, U.S. intervention in the final months of Allende's presidency was a messy reaction to events on the ground rather than a simplistic tale of the White House masterminding the Chilean coup. In a conversation at the end of 1973, Kissinger remarked to President Houari Boumedienne of Algeria that the world had given the United States "too much credit" for the coup that overthrew Allende.216 And contrary to the accusations that circulated after the coup, and much of the literature available since 11 September 1973, this a.s.sessment now seems to be reasonably accurate. The Nixon administration had certainly willed a coup to take place and had been frustrated by the slow progress of coordinating military action. However, question marks as to where the United States would fit into the equation of any successful military intervention had overshadowed policy formulation right up until the last minute. It is therefore not surprising that historians and commentators have agonized over the United States' direct responsibility for the coup, considering the fragmented direction of U.S. policy at this crucial moment in Chilean politics.

However, as it turns out, what we know now about the United States' involvement in Chile is even less palatable than a story of Nixon and Kissinger working alone to overthrow Allende. As we have seen, once a military coup or the fall of Allende's government seemed a decided possibility, the whole Nixon administration took calculated decisions to help a future repressive military dictators.h.i.+p survive and consolidate its hold over its citizens. Was.h.i.+ngton's leaders also enthusiastically propounded a hemispheric support system between similar dictators.h.i.+ps, something that was eagerly taken up and encouraged by like-minded strongmen in the Southern Cone. And more than any smoking gun that proves U.S. responsibility for the coup itself, contingency planning before it took place and the actions that followed tell a far more uncomfortable story of willing complicity throughout Was.h.i.+ngton's foreign policy-making establishment in securing the junta's subsequent dictators.h.i.+p and encouraging the formation of a regional right-wing network.

The story of Cuba's growing frustration, despair, and impotency in Chile before the coup took place is also complicated. As the Cubans who partic.i.p.ated in the events suggested years later, had Havana been in charge in 1973 (or even earlier for that matter), it would have made different-implicitly, better-strategic decisions. In what Castro perceived to be a zero-sum game between revolution and reaction, Havana advocated a life-and-death struggle that, however costly, would have eventually led Chile and Latin America closer to socialism. While Allende preferred to symbolically sacrifice himself at La Moneda instead of mobilizing his supporters to regroup and then launch a resistance that would almost certainly have led to a b.l.o.o.d.y civil war, the Cubans were thus willing to risk the consequences of fighting back. It is impossible to tell what would have happened had Cubans been able to change the course of Chilean events. More effective resistance to the coup may well have delayed the counterrevolutionary onslaught as Havana hoped, and Allende alive may well have been more important to the resistance than dead, but the result of civil war would also have been scores of casualties and destruction-probably even more than the junta subsequently unleashed. As Merino's message made clear on 9 September, those who prepared to crush Chile's democracy believed the coup they launched would be a matter of life and death, and they were not prepared to take any chances.

Indeed, rather than dissuading the coup leaders from acting, the growing possibility of a left-wing combative force, the specter of Cuban involvement in preparing it, and the prospect of an impending showdown radicalized Chilean society and propelled the armed forces to act. To be sure, there were only 120 Cubans in Santiago on 11 September, not the thousands that the right-wing media had warned of. But the military's targeting of the Cuban Emba.s.sy and all foreigners, factories, and poor neighborhoods, together with the ruthlessness with which it did so, clearly ill.u.s.trates the power of wildly exaggerated fears regarding what the Cubans and left-wing revolutionaries from the Southern Cone could achieve.

CONCLUSION.

A concerned scholar once asked me whether my researching the details of Cuba's role in Chile meant that I thought the United States was justified in destabilizing Chilean democracy. Having spent decades uncovering the many wrongs of U.S. interventionism in the Third World, he wanted to know whether by writing about Cuban arms transfers and military training of the Left I was condoning U.S. covert operations, those who celebrated the bombing of La Moneda, and the violent repression in the years that followed. This question, together with fears expressed by some who shared their memories with me for the purpose of this book, has troubled me over the past few years. My immediate answer was (and is) a resounding no. However, beyond this, I answered him by saying that history should never be regarded as a zero-sum game-that understanding the role that one side played in the complex inter-American Cold War should not preclude investigation of another. Or to put it another way, to catalog one lot of wrongdoing should not automatically lead to us into the trap of thinking that the other side was pa.s.sive and blameless or vice versa. Not only is this not what history is about-the past is mostly far more nuanced than a simple battle between good and evil-but to omit the role of the Cubans and the Chileans they worked with is actually to do an injustice to what they believed in and what both groups fought for. Just as many argue that the story of U.S. intervention in Chile should be "exposed," therefore, the Cubans' and the Chileans' story-their "agency," as academics like to call it-deserves rescuing, inconvenient as some of the details of Havana's role in particular might be for those on the Left who would prefer now to pretend it had never taken place. Not making an effort to tell all sides of the story and how they related to each other makes it difficult to fully understand what happened. And inexcusable as the crimes committed by those who seized power on 11 September 1973 might be, examining all possible dimensions of the past is part and parcel of what history is all about.

As it turns out, there is enough responsibility for what happened in Chile to be spread around-about which more in a moment. First and foremost, however, my interest in writing the international history of Allende's Chile was not to add one more voice to the historiography of blame. Since the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the New Cold War History has thankfully moved away from traditional narratives that focused on cyclical debates about whose fault the conflict was and has moved on to examining questions of why and how it took place.1 While scholars.h.i.+p on the Cold War in Latin America has so far tended to lag behind historiography of the ideological struggles that dominated other parts of the world in the latter part of the twentieth century, it has also begun to move beyond the blame game to explore other dimensions of the struggle.2 This has a lot to do with growing generational distance from the events that took place, which means that historians approaching this topic now do not feel compelled to refight battles of the past. But it is also thanks to new sources that are available for scholars to consult, which allow for a multidimensional and comprehensive examination of the past.

For my part, I wanted to use these new sources to get to the heart of what shaped the intense struggles that consumed Chile, the Southern Cone, and the inter-American system in the early 1970s. Primarily, I was interested in understanding who the main protagonists of that conflict were, what they believed in and fought over, how the ideological struggles they engaged in evolved, and with what consequences. Yet, equally, I was keen to explore them with a view to examining broader questions, such as what detente meant to parts of the global South, how Third World revolutionary states dealt with the outside world during the Cold War years, and the extent to which this coincided with North-South divides in international politics.

Like so many other views from the Third World, the international history of Allende's Chile that emerged is a rather depressing story. The Cold War in Latin America, as the historian Gilbert Joseph has argued, "was rarely cold."3 And Chile's story ended up being no exception, despite what many Chileans-Allende among them-believed before 11 September 1973. Yet the internationalization of Chilean politics during the early 1970s provides a fascinating snapshot of the inter-American Cold War, those who shaped it, and the way in which allies and antagonists within it interacted with each other. As well as shedding light on diplomatic negotiations and covert arms deliveries, on the disputes between revolutionaries as much as the battles they fought with their adversaries, it also shows how actors in the South experienced Cold War ideological struggles at regional and global levels. In this respect, as I suggested in the introduction, focusing on the intersection between bilateral relations and the multilateral arenas in which they were played out helps us to get to the bottom of the dynamic historical processes that unfolded.

In exploring these dimensions, this book examined two main issues: the impact that international actors had on Chile, and that country's significance for what occurred beyond its borders. Beginning with the latter of these two issues, it is quite clear that the rise and fall of La Via Chilena had a profound impact both in Latin America and much further afield as well. Alone, the sizable interest that Allende's presidency and his overthrow sparked worldwide, not to mention the dynamic nature of Chile's foreign relations during this period, makes it an interesting story to tell. But the apparent disconnect between it and the history of the relaxation of superpower tensions, the United States' opening to China, and European detente during the same period make it all the more intriguing. When Chileans talk of the early 1970s, they speak of their county's most "ideological years." Yet this was precisely when ideological conflict was supposed to have been abandoned-or at least recalibrated and postponed-in favor of pragmatism and realpolitik.

So how do we make sense of this apparent contradiction? By the 1970s, there were different ideas around the globe about what the Cold War was and how it should be fought. As a result of the varied experiences of living-and for a whole new generation, growing up-with the Cold War for over two decades, the ideological conflict at its core between different varieties of communism and capitalism was far more diffuse, fragmented, and global. For one, developments had splintered the Cold War parameters of earlier decades, adding new ingredients along the way. These included-but were not confined to-decolonization and the emerging North-South divide, the Cuban revolution, the Sino-Soviet split, and divisions over Vietnam. Beyond these issues, the Cold conflict was also being fought by a far greater array of ideologically driven warriors than it had been in the immediate aftermath of World War II. When General Medici traveled to Was.h.i.+ngton in 1971, it was the Brazilian president more than Nixon who drove the conversation about the anticommunist agenda in the Southern Cone. And when Castro went to Poland shortly after Nixon's visit in June 1972, he denounced detente and the very concept of peaceful coexistence with U.S. imperialism in no uncertain terms. So much so, in fact, that his hosts privately derided him as being "aggressive," "demagogic," and "primitive." Castro simply did not understand the "significance" of East-West negotiations or grasp what was at stake, they lamented-he believed "that everything is good and important if it directly contributes to the revolutionary struggle" and therefore failed to take "consequences and other perspectives" into account.4 In a sense, Castro and his hosts were both right. For the Soviet bloc, there was a lot to be gained from detente in the shape of arms negotiations, security, trade, and a sense of legitimacy. And Castro's commitment to revolutionary upheaval, his rejection of armistices, and his insistence on a fight to the death with imperialism was extreme. But Castro was also right to be worried about his island's position within the game of detente and what this meant for his efforts to survive as a revolutionary leader only ninety miles away from the opposing camp's superpower that his princ.i.p.al backers halfway across the globe now seemed so eager to placate.5 Would the Cuban revolution's future be negotiated over his head as it had been during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Would the Soviet bloc withdraw its support from its allies? What did this mean for the cause of revolutionary struggle in the Third World to which Castro's regime was so inextricably tied? As Castro's bewildered East European allies observed, "Cuba's full strength is its attachment to principles: that it will not compromise ... sometimes irritates even friends and allies." If Cuba gave up this position it would have to give up what to its leaders and its population was most important, its role in Latin America and its global ambitions going beyond its size or the opportunities normally available to a small island. Havana could therefore not bargain for concessions from the United States in the same way that the Soviets and the PRC believed they could. As the U.S. representative to the OAS simply put it, "Cuba is not China."6 Neither was Chile. Allende's hope of benefiting from detente by engaging in the policies and language of ideological pluralism fell on deaf ears in Was.h.i.+ngton. When Allende's Chile then ended up trying to play the Cold War at a superpower level, the Soviets were not interested either. Indeed, Allende's Chile seemed to be excluded at every turn-"East-West rapprochement had restricted peace to the prosperous countries of the world," noted a commentator from India, another southern nation that was seemingly neglected within the context of detente.7 Meanwhile, Chile was consumed by the bitter regional-inter-American-manifestation of the global Cold War that abided by its own internal logic, chronology, dimensions, and cast of characters. Indeed, the United States' reasons for opposing Allende become clearer if we look at them in the context of the Nixon administration's broader approach to Latin America. The separate concerted efforts it made to boost right-wing forces and curtail left-wing advances in the region during the early 1970s were part of a bigger strategy that was renewed as a result of Allende's election, but which governed Was.h.i.+ngton's policy toward Latin America throughout the Cold War era-and detente. At the core of this strategy was a belief that the United States had a "vital interest" in regaining political influence in its traditional sphere, recovering lost prestige among potential anticommunist allies, and ensuring that the "battle of ideas" between different modes of social and economic development was won by those essentially rooted in capitalism. By virtue of the instincts instilled by the Monroe Doctrine, which sought to exclude other world powers from the region, officials in Was.h.i.+ngton feared Latin American countries' voluntary separation from the United States as threatening its own political, economic, and security interests by undermining its position as a superpower. As George Kennan had written in 1950, "If the countries of Latin America should come to be generally dominated by an outlook which views our country as the root of all evil and sees salvation only in the destruction of our national power, I doubt very much whether our general political program in other parts of the non-communist world could be successful."8 For a superpower with global aspirations, Latin America's position was therefore pivotal. And in spite of superpower detente, U.S. policy makers' frames of reference vis-a-vis Latin America consequently remained wedded to the concept of a "mortal struggle" against communism and regional examples set by the likes of Castro and Allende.

Nixon in particular seems to have seen history running along two parallel tracks for structuring society, economics, and politics. On one side lay capitalism, which could appear in the guise of liberal democracy or authoritarian dictators.h.i.+p. On the other side lay communism of whatever stripe, be it a dictators.h.i.+p of the proletariat or, as in the case of Allende, a pluralistic liberal democracy. As far as Nixon was concerned, there was little possibility of altering the pattern of logical progression along either track, which would ultimately lead Latin America (once "mature" enough) either toward the United States or toward Cuba and then the Soviet Union. Vernon Walters, whom Nixon admired, trusted, and listened to, later explained that "authoritarian rightist regimes always disappear eventually. They have never been able to perpetrate themselves. Communist regimes, once they seize power, never let it go."9 While the Nixon administration resigned itself to the fact that it could not turn back the clock when it came to the USSR and the PRC on the global stage and thus engaged in negotiations with both powers, it was determined to try to help roll it back in Latin America, where it had more influence and could prevent the consolidation or the spread of communist control-"save Chile!" as Nixon put it.

Of course, the mistake the Nixon administration made in Chile was to disregard Allende's unbending commitment to const.i.tutional government and the anomaly of La Via Chilena. However, it would be an error to suggest, as others have done, that the Nixon administration's obsessive anticommunism led it to misinterpret Allende's Chile completely. Unlike other right-wing coups in Latin America before 1973, the Chilean coup actually overturned a socialist revolutionary process in train rather than a reformist government. Chilean foreign policy was explicitly anti-imperialist (in the sense of being anti-American) to the extent that a Chilean Foreign Ministry report in April 1973 concluded that "the very existence and actions of the Chilean government are damaging to U.S. national interests in Chile, and ... its example can have great influence on power relations in Latin America and on the Third World in general.... Chile succeeds Vietnam ... in reinforcing and extending anti-imperialist action around the world."10 Moreover, those who led Chile in the years between 1970 and 1973 were part of a radicalized generation of Third World leaders who believed in not only the struggle for full political and economic independence but also the overhaul of world capitalism and world revolution. Allende was not hoodwinked by Castro or subverted by Cuban revolutionary and far left forces operating in Chile. Although he was a committed democrat stubbornly wedded to Chile's proud const.i.tutional history, he was deeply impressed by Che Guevara, invited Tupamaros and Cuban revolutionaries to his weekend home, and carried the rifle Fidel gave him to La Moneda on the day of the coup. The relations between Castro and Allende were a logical expression of both leaders' ideals and the manifestation of more than a decade of intimate ties. Both shared a commitment to socialism and were also bound by the belief that the United States had exploited the region's resources, thereby undermining development and independence.

Indeed, the real challenge to the United States' regional-and, by extension, its global-influence came from the likes of Allende and Castro in the early 1970s, not the USSR. With the exception of Soviet-Cuban relations, the ideological component of Moscow's lukewarm support for Chile during the Allende years stood in stark contrast to the USSR's burgeoning economic ties with right-wing dictators.h.i.+ps and non-Marxist nationalists in the Americas. (By the late 1970s, for example, Argentina and Brazil were the first and second recipients of all Council of Mutual Economic a.s.sistance aid to the Third World.)11 More than a struggle against the Soviet Union-temporarily on hold in the age of superpower detente-the Nixon administration's intervention in Chile was a result of an inter-American struggle against Latin Americans who themselves challenged that agenda. Like other revolutionary leaders, Allende went to Havana far more frequently and enthusiastically than he did to Moscow to seek support, recognition, and inspiration, joining a collection of democrats and dictators, civilians and military leaders, nationalists, revolutionaries, Soviet-style communists, and extremist guerrillas. Although the lessons these leaders took away from Cuba were as diverse as the nature of their goals to begin with, they all went to marvel at the only Latin American country to have wrestled with the United States and survived.

Meanwhile, three years after Allende's election had awoken left-wing leaders to the hope of a different type of revolution-a benign version of the Soviet Union or indeed the Cuban reality, itself romanticized for its radical aspirations-Chile became an emblematic example of the failure of that possibility. As it did, its experience was bitterly debated and fought over. "Distant and small though it is," one of Kissinger's advisers told him in 1974, "Chile has long been viewed universally as a demonstration area for economic and social experimentation. Now it is in a sense in the front line of world ideological conflict."12 Given Chile's size and the short period Allende was in office, the widespread impact that La Via Chilena's failure had around the world is surprising. I would argue that any explanation of why should include reference to the ambitious scope of Chilean foreign policy in the 1970s. Chile's international relations during the Allende years were not merely imposed from outside but rather reflected Chilean government officials' own world-views, their own efforts to reorient Santiago's international standing, and the country's extensive diplomatic outreach over the course of only three years in power. To a lesser extent, the same could also be said of the Chilean opposition's simultaneous search for support in the United States and the Southern Cone and the way in which this galvanized those who were already predisposed to fear Allende and help overthrow him.

Quite simply, the three years of Allende's presidency increased Chile's visibility around the globe. While his government embraced the concept of "ideological pluralism," it enthusiastically invited outsiders to look at Chile both as an example of socialism being attained by peaceful democratic means and as a model for what the global South could achieve by way of shaking off the shackles of dependency. Consequently, the UP put Santiago forward to host UNCTAD III, Chile's emba.s.sy in Was.h.i.+ngton ran press campaigns to raise awareness of the UP's aims, and Allende called for Latin Americans to speak with "one voice" as a means of spurring others on to challenge the logic of regional political and economic relations. Later, the Chilean government asked for concrete a.s.sistance from Latin America, the Third World, and the Soviet bloc so as to survive what Chilean spokesmen conceptualized as a frontline battle in a worldwide struggle for social justice, equality, and liberty in the global South. In these instances, Chilean foreign policy was profoundly linked to La Via Chilena's progress at home, but rather than being a purely defensive strategy, it also contained essential offensive characteristics that drew attention to what was happening in Chile during the UP years. Indeed, like Castro before him, albeit through international forums rather than guerrilla struggles, Allende sought to safeguard his own revolution by changing the world as opposed to sacrificing his cause.

Although Allende was wildly optimistic about what he could achieve, his failure resonated loudly in the global South, where his government had previously attracted interest and sympathy. Indeed, one African editorial-itself testimony to Chilean foreign policy's reach by 1973-described Allende's overthrow as "a slap in the face of the third world."13 True, the Third World as a whole faced a large collection of different challenges-a few months earlier, in June 1973, for example, Chilean Foreign Ministry a.n.a.lysts had cataloged serious divisions over the Provisional Government of South Vietnam's entry into the Non-Aligned Movement and a growing "crisis" within the G77 as a result of its heterogeneity and its members' inability to overcome their own interests as just two difficult issues undermining harmonious relations between Third World countries.14 However, Allende's overthrow only a few days after the Non-Aligned Movement's conference in Algeria appeared to spell out these wider Third World problems with clarity. Not only had the Chilean coup demonstrated the ongoing nature of the Cold War conflict in the global South, but Allende's struggle to a.s.sert Chile's economic independence through nationalization of Chile's raw materials and the failure of the UP's broader international agenda also underscored the obstacles involved in promoting systemic change at a national and international level.

With the majority of the former colonial areas of the world nominally independent by the 1970s and with Cold War tensions apparently diminis.h.i.+ng, the Third World-to which Allende very much saw himself as belonging-had focused increasingly on guaranteeing economic security and independence for its member states as a means to definitive political power. Within this context, Chile had contributed to the radicalization of the Non-Aligned Movement and the divisions within the G77 during the UP years. It had also played a key role in laying the groundwork for what would, after the Algiers conference in 1973, be the global South's demand for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) in 1974. And yet, by the 1980s, the NIEO had collapsed amid divisions in the Third World, the intransigence of developed industrial nations, and a staggering debt crisis-echoing many of the difficulties that Chile had faced a decade before. Indeed, Allende's own efforts to a.s.sert independence and bring about revolutionary change-in Chile and abroad-reflected some of the Third World's essential dilemmas. Aside from the resistance to serious renegotiation of the basic principles and structure of international economic and political relations in the global North, it had to cope with differences within the global South itself.

Moreover, Santiago's perspective during the 1970s exemplifies a central contradiction that underlay much of the Third Worldist project with which Allende identified, namely the simultaneous demand for independence and the request for developmental a.s.sistance. In The Wretched of the Earth, Frantz Fanon heralded the moment when colonial states a.s.serted independence and demanded that past exploitation be compensated: "Colonialism and imperialism have not paid their score when they withdrew their flags and their police forces from our territories," he wrote; "when we hear the head of a European state declare with his hand on his heart that he must come to the help of the poor underdeveloped peoples, we do not tremble with grat.i.tude. Quite the contrary; we say to ourselves: 'It's a just reparation which will be paid to us.' ... The Third World does not mean to organize a great crusade of hunger against the whole of Europe. What it expects from those who for centuries have kept it in slavery is that they will help it to rehabilitate mankind, and make man victorious everywhere, once and for all."15 A decade after Fanon wrote from the vantage point of Algeria's struggle for independence, Allende demanded that Chile be accorded the right to claim back excessive profits, but in the absence of ready alternatives, he needed Was.h.i.+ngton to secure an easy pa.s.sage toward revolution by granting credits and approval. As he put it, his rebellion was reasonable and just, and Chile was owed compensation for past exploitation, but he continually appealed for understanding t