killed, possibly accidentally, when a third attempt
was made to abduct him. This brutal intervention
outraged the Chilean generals and the planned
military coup did not materialise; another constitu-
tionally minded commander-in-chief replaced the
murdered man. When the election results were
announced, Allende had won the largest number
of votes, 36.3 per cent, but his rightist rival came a
close second with 34.9 per cent and the Christian
Democrat had secured 27.8 per cent. Allende
could rightfully claim the presidency and was duly
inaugurated by Congress, but he could not assert
that he had won a national mandate to undertake
a socialist revolution. For that, in any case, he
would need majorities in Congress, which would
be able to veto any Marxist transformation.
The three years of Allende’s presidency in Chile
are one of the most bitterly disputed periods in
Latin American history. To some Allende became
a martyr; his supporters accused the US of repress-
ing the righteous struggle of a Marxist for the bet-
terment of the people. In fact, he achieved more
by his death at the hands of the military than he
had accomplished during his presidency; the bar-
barity of what followed brought out the contrast
between the humane president and his successor,
General Augusto Pinochet. ‘Allende’ became the
rallying cry of the left and of the many demanding
justice and change in Chile.
The economic fundamentals were not favour-
able to Allende, and the price of copper was turn-
ing down from a peak in the late 1960s. Although
Frei had made progress, it was not enough; and
high inflation, which Frei had attempted to check
with austerity measures, had returned. Allende
restored and improved the living standards of the
workers by a large increase in wages while control-
ling prices. The benefit was short-lived: a boom
was followed by higher inflation. Allende’s left
coalition was committed to a transition to social-
ism, which meant state control of the economy to
a much greater extent than his predecessor had
thought possible or desirable. On the issue of for-
eign companies operating in Chile, nationalism
and resentment of their economic role united all
parties when in 1971 Congress approved the
nationalisation of the US copper companies.
Compensation was denied on the ground that
their excess profits over the years had exceeded any
compensation due. Other US companies, powerful
in the US, such as Ford and ITT, were taken over
too; but when it came to nationalising the big
banks and the largest concerns in Chile, there was
an outcry from the industrial elites. Vigorous land
reform enacted by Frei but until then hardly imple-
mented added the landowners to the implacable
opposition. The middle classes were alarmed by
the expansion of state control, from which only the
smallest enterprises appeared to be exempt; it was
easy to frighten those small shopkeepers by sug-
gesting that their private ownership would not last
long either. Meanwhile, the expectations of many
workers ran high. Through occupation of factories
they tried to force the hand of the government,
and sometimes they succeeded in doing so, though
Allende tried to retain control of policy.
A number of key questions now arise. Was
Allende leading Chile to a fully Soviet-style state,
as his opponents maintained? Allende was an
experienced politician who had participated in
Chile’s constitutional politics for many years. He
now headed a coalition of the left, which extended
from moderate socialists to the communists, who
were themselves more moderate than their East
European counterparts; but the coalition also
embraced extreme radical groups who wanted to
hasten the creation of a socialist state. Would
Allende be able to control the coalition, or would
the extreme elements take over? By 1973 Allende
had boxed himself in; he could rid himself of the
extremists only if he could secure the support of
the reformist Christian Democrats. That he tried
to make an opening to the centre shows that his
intention was not only to maintain himself in
power but to moderate the course of change. He
was not a mouthpiece of Moscow but a socialist
seeking a Latin American solution to Chile’s eco-
nomic and social problems.
Nor was Allende following in Castro’s path,
though the Cuban leader was enthusiastically
received when he visited Chile in 1971. Allende
did not forcibly dissolve Congress, abolish the
opposition parties or rule by making use of repres-
sion, terror, censorship or the suspension of civil
liberties. There may have been supporters for such
a course among his coalition partners, but the
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