Years of Upheaval

by Henry Kissinger

  The Congressional elections on March 4, 1973, ended in a stalemate. Allende’s coalition, with its predominant influence on the media, gained six seats in the Chamber of Deputies and two in the Senate. But its vote was still only 43.4 percent of the total. The democratic opposition’s margin in both houses remained substantial (87 to 63 in the Chamber of Deputies and 30 to 20 in the Senate), though in the Senate it fell short of the two-thirds majority necessary to override presidential vetoes or to annul executive orders. In other words, Allende would be unable to implement his constitutional changes, but his opposition could not block his method of government. The practical result was to harden the battle lines.

  From this stalemate Allende drew the astonishing conclusion that he was entitled to bypass the Congress and implement by executive order the more radical planks of his original electoral program. Two days after the elections he published an executive decree providing for a thorough reorganization and reorientation of primary and secondary education, of the private as well as the public school systems. The aim was, in the words of the Ministry of Education, “the construction of a new socialist society” and the “harmonious development of the personality of the young people in the values of socialist humanism.” This crude attempt to politicize the educational system, with its clear totalitarian implications, had the practical consequence of uniting all of Allende’s political opponents: the democratic political parties, the military, and for the first time the Catholic Church. And as so often before, Allende, in mid-April 1973, yielded. The Minister of Education accepted the Church’s request that the program be postponed pending full and open debate. To end an attempted usurpation by surrender inevitably weakened Allende’s authority further.

  In late April, demonstrations and strikes had spread to the provincial cities and to the copper mines. Violence broke out in the streets of Santiago. An incident outside the Christian Democratic headquarters gave Allende a pretext for the extraordinary step of closing down that opposition party’s central office. On May 6 Allende declared a state of emergency in the province of Santiago, which remained in effect for twelve days. Workers, the supposed beneficiaries of Marxist policies, were in open confrontation with a socialist government, now the mine owner in consequence of nationalization.

  On May 15, the National Assembly of the Christian Democratic Party accused the government of “seeking the totality of power, which means Communist tyranny disguised as the dictatorship of the proletariat.” The statement promised to use “all [the Party’s] power” to stop the government’s “totalitarian escalation.” Former President Frei, whose democratic credentials were beyond challenge, was elected President of the Senate. A Christian Democrat was chosen to preside over the Chamber of Deputies. The polarization of Chilean political life was symbolized by the refusal of Frei to attend when Allende presented his annual message at the opening session of the Congress.

  No sooner had it resumed its session than the Congress began once again to impeach Allende’s ministers for alleged violations of the Constitution. This extraordinary device of introducing the methods of a parliamentary democracy into a presidential system caused unending cabinet crises. On May 25 the Christian Democrats impeached Allende’s Ministers of Labor and of Mines, charging them with precipitating the copper strikes. Congress also had suspended a number of regional administrators for leniency toward left-wing terrorism. While Allende sought to revolutionize Chilean society, the Congress attempted to dismantle his government.

  All this occurred against the background of growing economic chaos. In the twelve months ending in May 1973, the cost of living in Chile rose by an almost unbelievable 238 percent; inflation was encouraged by the government as a means of expropriating the middle class; it triggered a new epidemic of strikes. On May 22 private bus owners stopped operations, demanding higher fares and relief from the severe shortage of spare parts. The government responded by requisitioning all buses.

  On May 24, my staff aide Bill Jorden forwarded intelligence warnings that the Chilean military were plotting. Jorden thought that these reports should be treated with some skepticism, however: “This bears watching carefully, and we will be doing that. But in the meantime, I do not think we should get too excited. Above all, there should be no effort to involve the U.S. in these developments in any way.” Jorden’s recommendation easily carried the day. No one proposed any action and no action was taken; we had no dealings at any point with military plotters; there were no NSC meetings to consider the subject.

  The only overture to the Chilean military during this period was as part of a military assistance package to key countries in Latin America. The purpose was to forestall the sale of Soviet arms. In a memorandum to Nixon dated May 15, I endorsed Secretary of State Rogers’s recommendation to sell F-5E aircraft to major Latin American countries, including Chile:

  Up to now they [the Chilean military] have resisted Allende’s pressures on them to accept Soviet offers of credits for arms purchases. If we foreclose the possibility of Chile obtaining U.S. aircraft we could not only alienate the Chilean military but also give them no alternative but to yield to Allende’s pressure to purchase Soviet equipment with a concomitant increase in Soviet influence.

  Events in Chile developed a momentum of their own. On June 5, the forty-eighth day of the strike in the copper mines, the government was obliged to suspend foreign copper shipments — thus depriving itself of its principal source of foreign exchange. Street fighting broke out in Santiago again, and on June 15, Allende met with six strike leaders to dampen the violence. (That meeting was denounced by the leadership of the Communist and Socialist parties as appeasement.) There was more street violence in Santiago on June 15; sixty-three were injured as striking miners marched on the city. On June 20, thousands of students, teachers, and physicians struck in solidarity with the miners and in protest against the government’s economic policies. The following day the Communist-led Central Labor Confederation organized a counterstrike in support of the government. Between the strike and the counterstrike, transportation and business ground to a halt, not only in Santiago but in Valparaíso, Concepción, and Arica as well. The armed forces had to be called out to quell violence.

  On June 21 the government closed the prestigious newspaper El Mercurio for six days allegedly for “inciting subversion” by printing a National Party statement criticizing the President. Once again the measure proved more provocative than effective and underlined both Allende’s growing weakness as well as his antidemocratic proclivities. The paper stopped publication for one day only because an appeals court overturned the lower court order. The government also tried to strip Senator Onafre Jarpa, president of the National Party, of his Congressional immunity. On June 25 the New York Times editorially warned against civil war, laying the major blame at the feet of Allende:

  “Civil war must be avoided” declares President Salvador Allende, but his Marxist-dominated coalition perseveres with policies and tactics certain to accelerate the polarization that has pushed Chile close to the brink. The government’s attempt, only temporarily successful, to close down the conservative but widely respected Santiago newspaper, El Mercurio, for carrying a National Party advertisement accusing Dr. Allende of violating the Constitution, is a case in point.

  It will be a confession of bankruptcy in leadership if Dr. Allende, in order to head off a major explosion, brings high-ranking military officers into his Cabinet as he did briefly after paralyzing strikes last November.

  Leaders and backers of Dr. Allende’s Popular Unity Government rail incessantly against “fascists and traitors” but they cannot obscure the cardinal fact about the present crisis: it was precipitated by a bitter strike against the state-owned Copper corporation by workers at El Teniente mine, many of whom voted for Dr. Allende in 1970 and hailed his nationalization of copper. . . .

  Sinister elements on the extreme right, including the fascist type youth organization Patria y Libertad, have exploited the El Teniente strike
in an effort to paralyze government and provoke military intervention. But Dr. Allende could still isolate and disarm these forces if he would stand up to the radicals in his own ranks and invite genuine dialogue with his opponents in Congress, especially the Christian Democrats, on how to pull the country out of crisis and confrontation.

  This approach would inevitably mean that Dr. Allende would have to forgo much of the pervasive socialist program for which he has no mandate in any case, but it might save Chile from either a military takeover or the civil war that the President rightly fears.

  But Allende was not interested in a democratic dialogue. He was marching inexorably toward a fate that he both dreaded and invited.

  The Military Begin to Move

  ON June 29, 1973, forty-two years after the last previous military effort to oust a Chilean government, about 100 troops from the Second Armored Regiment attacked the Presidential Palace and the Defense Ministry in Santiago. Allende declared a state of emergency and loyal forces suppressed the rebellion in a matter of hours. Twenty-two people, mostly civilian bystanders, were killed and another thirty-four wounded in the fighting, which left the area a shambles.

  So strong was the constitutional tradition in Chile that this violent shock brought disparate forces to the defense of the Allende government. The navy and air force commanders-in-chief gave Allende their immediate backing. The Christian Democratic Party also called for defense of the constitutional order. 1 summed up the aborted coup for Nixon at the end of the day: “All indications are that the coup attempt was an isolated and poorly coordinated effort. Most of the military leaders, including the commanders-in-chief of all three branches of the Armed Forces, remained loyal to the government.”

  Once again Allende reacted not by conciliation but by deliberately stepping up the pace of his radical policies. His government acquiesced in, if it did not encourage, the occupation of hundreds of enterprises by militants. The number of companies taken over by the government almost doubled in a single day from 282 to 526.13

  On July 10, Bill Jorden transmitted the latest intelligence assessment: that another military coup was unlikely. Jorden’s own judgment remained that we should continue our hands-off policy:

  The US lacks powerful or reliable levers for influencing the final outcome. Continued encouragement of constraining forces within Chile and continuing economic pressures could have some limited impact. But a policy of open, all-out economic pressure would help Allende more politically than it could hurt him economically.

  We followed Jorden’s recommendations.

  Still, Allende continued his collision course with disaster. He rejected the austerity program advocated by the International Monetary Fund that might have restored Chile’s financial position. He would not declare a moratorium on expropriations, which might have patched up relations with the democratic opposition parties. And he disdained improved relations with the United States, which, while it had not caused his difficulties, was in a position to help ameliorate them.

  A new wave of strikes broke out. The vicious circle of strike followed by government requisition started up again. On July 26, truck owners throughout the country struck. Allende ordered their trucks confiscated. On the same day, the Christian Democrats agreed to negotiate with Allende in order to ease tensions. Talks began on July 30. By August 1 the Party listed its demands in a letter to Allende: Paramilitary groups of both the extreme left and right should be disarmed; properties seized after the abortive coup should be returned to their owners; a constitutional reform bill should clearly delimit the private, mixed, and state sectors of the economy; and military officers should join the cabinet to provide “constitutional guarantees.”

  The same day a dozen private businesses and professional organizations joined ranks to form a “civic front” with the proclaimed objective of bringing down the Allende administration. By August 3 public transportation in Santiago was virtually at a standstill; the owners of buses and taxis had joined the strike of the private truckers. Employees of the Santiago waterworks also struck, and physicians and copper miners were threatening to do so. Allende denounced the wave of strikes as “seditious” and placed all public services under a state of emergency. He ruled out military participation in the cabinet. The Christian Democrats responded by declaring the talks with Allende ended.

  Nothing symbolized better the collapse of Chile’s constitutional order than the opposition demand that the military be included in the government as a guarantee of democratic practices. Even the leader of the Christian Democratic left wing — which in 1970 had supported most of Allende’s social and economic goals — called for military participation so that conditions would be “normalized.” On August 9, six days after having formally refused to do so, Allende finally yielded and brought the military into the cabinet. In this third cabinet reorganization of the year, General Prats, a former Interior Minister as well as army com-mander-in-chief, was appointed Defense Minister. Three other military leaders took over the portfolios of Finance, Transport, and Lands. Apart from the military members, the new cabinet had approximately the same political balance as the one it replaced — with three Socialists, three Communists, two Radicals, one independent, and other left-wing splinter party leaders.

  It was an odd combination of revolutionaries and conservatives — and inherently unworkable. Allende’s sole remaining card was to appeal to anti-American passions. The left-wing press began accusing the American Embassy in Santiago of backing the strikes and encouraging violence. An editorial in Ultima Hora on August 13 signed by former Interior Minister Hernán del Canto, recently removed by the Chilean Congress for failing to curb terrorism, charged that Ambassador Davis was helping finance the antigovernment agitation through the CIA. On August 15, bombs were discovered outside the homes of three American Embassy officials. Ambassador Davis received assurances that attacks on American diplomats would not be tolerated, but on August 21 the Communist newspaper El Siglo continued the charges of a foreign conspiracy against Chile’s independence and sovereignty.

  Allende was trapped. He could not defy his critics without the support of the military; yet he would not abandon his radical program that the military had joined the government to brake. Prats, his government’s most loyal military supporter, was obliged to resign as both Defense Minister and army commander-in-chief by restive military colleagues one day after the Chamber of Deputies passed by 81 to 47 a resolution accusing the government of “constant violations of the fundamental rights and guarantees established in the Constitution.” Once again the Chamber asked that the Defense Ministry “direct the government’s action” in order to guarantee democratic institutions. The President of the Christian Democratic Party, Patricio Aylwin, echoed the demand.

  The impending coup of September 11 was thus in a sense invited by the recently elected Chamber of Deputies and Chile’s leading democratic party.

  The Coup

  THROUGH all this turmoil Chile was a peripheral concern of Washington policymakers. It was eclipsed by the Year of Europe, the Soviet summit, the Middle East. Decisions were made only as they were forced by events, and were almost invariably related to economic issues, such as the periodic debt rescheduling meetings of creditor nations or the bilateral debt talks that stalled in March 1973. On those matters Treasury was the dominant agency, and its primary interest was to defend economic principles: compensation for the expropriations and the avoidance of a precedent-setting default. The 40 Committee continued to confine our covert assistance to financial support of democratic political parties and media threatened with extinction.

  That no senior official considered a coup likely is shown by the fact that as late as August 20, 1973, the 40 Committee approved — by telephone vote — another $1 million to support Chile’s democratic parties through mid-1974. Of the approved amount, $225,000 was allocated for private-sector organizations subject to Ambassador Davis’s approval. Once again, as was the case with the funds set aside by the October 26 deci
sion, the Ambassador withheld approval. On August 25, CIA Director Colby sought to bypass the Ambassador by requesting authority from the White House to channel some of the funds to the strikers. On August 29 Bill Jorden recommended disapproval:

  The Ambassador believes (correctly) that present U.S. policy is to keep the pressure on, but not to take action in overthrowing Allende. He believes the new proposal would move us toward the latter.

  I agreed with Jorden. No action was taken on Colby’s recommendation; it was never even forwarded to the President. Events soon made it irrelevant.

  Seventy-two hours before the explosion — on Saturday, September 8 — I met Nathaniel Davis for the first time. This encounter has entered the mythology of American culpability as a conspiratorial meeting to fine-tune the plot against Allende. The truth is that my appointment with Davis had nothing to do with Chile at all. After I was nominated as Secretary of State on August 22, I asked for a list of the ablest senior State Department officers for possible elevation to key positions. Davis’s name appeared on that list. Since I had never met him, I asked the State Department to invite him for an interview. I suggested the weekend of September 8–9 because it was the first free moment after my return to Washington from San Clemente. Davis was told to pick another date if that proved inconvenient or if his presence was required in Santiago.