Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (18 page)

Back in late February, the SRG had therefore decided to grant $5 million
in Foreign Military Sales credits to Chile for the year ahead. Although not the maximum amount requested, this had been the best the administration felt it could offer without causing undue suspicion. As Kissinger commented to Secretary of State Rogers, the United States was going “out of [its] way to be nice to the Chilean military.”
⁷⁴
Interestingly, the Chilean Foreign Ministry recognized this, but what is rather surprising is that it noted that this was positive. According to analysts in Santiago, the continued flow of military credits had helped “project an image of normality” in U.S.-Chilean relations, a factor that was considered especially important when it came to Chile’s standing vis-à-vis its neighbors in Latin America.
⁷⁵

More than thirty years later, details of Washington’s covert policies and diplomatic maneuvers make something of a mockery of the Allende government’s optimistic hopes of being able to redefine U.S.-Chilean relations along healthier but realistic lines. An internal Chilean Foreign Ministry review of policy toward the United States in mid-1971 repeated the supposition that Vietnam, the antiwar movement, and opposition to the Nixon administration at home all favored Allende’s Chile.
⁷⁶
And to a certain extent, these issues did circumscribe Washington’s ability to maneuver. However, with the UP acting cautiously, rather than changing U.S. aims, they merely persuaded the Nixon administration to act covertly, while offering assurances of neutrality. As things stood in early 1971, because its warnings about nationalization procedures were frustratingly vague, Washington continued to hold all the cards. In fact, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs John Crimmins was later surprised to hear how effective and unified the Nixon administration’s message had been, especially considering the animosity between the State Department and the NSC that plagued Nixon’s administration.
⁷⁷
Even when the Chileans expressed suspicions that U.S. actions in Latin America seemed to be aimed at isolating Chile, Washington officials held their own and maintained the United States was doing nothing unusual.

Santiago and Washington had good reason to be mutually suspicious about each other’s policies in Latin America after Allende assumed the presidency. Both wanted to readjust the inter-American system to suit their own aims and were worried that, if they made the wrong moves or alienated potential allies, the other side might gain. As the Chilean Foreign Ministry acknowledged in June 1971, Allende’s policy toward Latin
America was likely to determine the United States’ approach to Chile.
⁷⁸
For other states in the region, the months after Allende’s election were also a moment of change. Although Washington and Santiago wanted to get these countries on their side, Southern American leaders had their own sovereign agendas and regional strategies to pursue. In early 1971, for example, Brazil launched a highly ambitious diplomatic regional offensive designed to boost its own position in Latin America, while upholding ideological frontiers against the likes of Chile and Cuba. Although U.S. policy makers appear to have been largely oblivious to the extent of Brasilia’s new regional diplomacy, Latin American responses to it revealed a wary sense of upheaval in the Southern Cone. This was especially so amid rumors that the United States was using Brazil in inter-American affairs, and ironically these fears did a great deal to ensure Chile’s ability to break down some of the ideological barriers it might otherwise have confronted. Be that as it may, in reality outsiders knew very little about the nature and scope of growing U.S.-Brazilian communication on regional affairs or the lead that Brazil was taking in this dialogue.

From November 1970 onward, the United States had combined its efforts to undermine Allende’s presidency with the bigger goal of containing the Left and salvaging U.S. influence in the inter-American system. The news that Peru and Bolivia had been interested in emulating Chile’s re-establishment of relations with Cuba and that Castro’s “new maturity” in the hemisphere was beginning to bear fruit magnified Washington’s sense of vulnerability.
⁷⁹
At the end of November, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) had noted that Chile’s reestablishment of relations with Castro would become contagious unless Havana and Santiago increased their efforts to export revolution, a prospect that it judged to be “unlikely.” As the INR observed, OAS members appeared “impressed” by Cuba’s reduced support for revolutionaries in the region since Che Guevara’s death.
⁸⁰

Although the Nixon administration had concluded it could do nothing to reverse Chile’s decision, it moved quickly to contain it.
⁸¹
When Latin American leaders took advantage of Mexican president Luis Echeverría’s inauguration in December to discuss the possibility of reviewing their position toward Cuba in the light of Allende’s move, for example, U.S. and Brazilian representatives had effectively resisted any serious debate.
⁸²
But in January 1971, Washington had remained uneasy. The State Department had thus instructed all U.S. ambassadors in Latin America to contact host governments and reaffirm Washington’s opposition to any change. Ambassadors
were also told to underline the dangers of not upholding collective security by “gratuitously” offering Castro “a badly needed and prestigious political and psychological victory over the OAS,” or giving Cuba economic relief that would allow it to revive its continental subversion.
⁸³

Meanwhile, the Nixon administration had also begun collecting information to use against Chile in Latin America.
⁸⁴
In the months after Allende came to power, CIA station chiefs were instructed to pass on information to U.S. ambassadors that could be disseminated to journalists and politicians. In particular, Washington wanted to undermine Allende’s independence and democratic credentials and therefore sought to “play up” the notion that Chile was awash with subversive Cuban and Soviet agents.
⁸⁵
U.S. policy makers had little concrete information about Cuban involvement in Chile at this stage, relying instead on what NSC staffer Pete Vaky recalled as supposition rather than fact.
⁸⁶
Yet, by calling attention to Cuban involvement in Allende’s Chile, U.S. officials were squarely able to attack two birds with one stone. And certainly, when Brazil’s ambassador in Santiago sent an alarmist telegram back home detailing stories of ominous Cuban intervention in Chile, he relied purely on spurious press reports.
⁸⁷

All the while, the Allende government was clearly aware of the United States’ hostile reaction to the new Chilean-Cuban relationship. Chilean diplomats heard from the OAS secretary-general that the State Department had “paralyzed” a Colombian initiative to review Cuba’s position within the inter-American system. Another source provided information about a private conversation Nixon had had with a Bolivian diplomat in which the president presented himself as being highly interested in working with regional countries in the context of Latin America’s “new political configuration.”
⁸⁸
As the Chilean Embassy in Washington had concluded in February 1971, there was a strong feeling that the Nixon administration was trying to isolate Chile “as the black sheep of the [inter-American] family.”
⁸⁹

Henceforth, rumors about Washington’s diplomacy within inter-American forums exacerbated Santiago’s fears of being isolated.
⁹⁰
In early 1971 the Chilean Embassy in Lima warned that the Nixon administration was paying new attention to Chile’s traditional rival, Peru.
⁹¹
Numerous conjectures followed: Was the United States trying to drive a wedge between neighbors? Was Washington behind what was reported as being a resurgence of anti-Chilean feeling in Peru? Did rumors that the United States was supplying weapons to Peruvians hidden in earthquake aid have any substance? In reality, these fears actually exaggerated the United States
attention to Peru in early 1971. But Allende’s ambassador in Lima, Luís Jerez Ramirez, was worried enough to keep asking. As he surmised, Peru would be a crucial part of any attempt by Washington to win back its “past hegemony” in South America.
⁹²

What the Chileans had to work out was whether this U.S. attempt to win back influence in Latin America was squarely aimed against Chile or not. When Chilean press articles falsely alleged that Allende possessed a U.S. document outlining Washington’s plans to isolate it, the Chilean Foreign Ministry immediately issued denials and downplayed the “cloudy” possibility that Chile could be isolated in the first place.
⁹³
Privately, however, diplomats continued to speculate about “consultations to blockade Chile,” especially after news of a meeting of U.S. diplomats working in Latin America in Panama in March.
⁹⁴

The Chilean Foreign Ministry also paid “special attention” to evidence of growing ties between Washington and Brasilia and the prospect that Brazil itself could be a serious and immediate threat to Chilean sovereignty in early 1971.
⁹⁵
As the Chilean ambassador in Brasilia, Raul Rettig, noted, “It is not a mystery to anyone that the current Brazilian regime constitutes a potential enemy for progressive and revolutionary governments in the continent. Chile is, in these moments, the object of attack that the military government and the dominant classes that control nearly all mediums of mass communication use most frequently. This is perhaps the most important and combative front of reactionary forces that act at the international level. Behind the press, there exists a real sustained war [against Chile] that is expressed in repeated editorials and distorting information aimed at damaging the prestige of President Allende’s government.”
⁹⁶

Among the editorials Ambassador Rettig referred to were repeated references to the “tragedy” that had befallen Chile, a traditionally friendly nation where, according to the Brazilian press, nothing very important ever happened.
⁹⁷
Like the Nixon administration, Brazil’s military leaders had clearly not been prepared for Allende’s victory, but in its aftermath news coverage of Chilean affairs had tripled. In one instance, a press report cited a Brazilian official warning that Russian flotillas were on their way to the Chilean port of Valparaiso.
⁹⁸
In another, the anticommunist Brazilian daily
O Estado do São Paulo
claimed that “socialist loyalty and submission to Fidel Castro’s continental revolutionary leadership were absolute priorities for Allende’s Government.”
⁹⁹
Of course, it is quite possible that the CIA planted these alarmist reports. But it would also be a historical error to attribute all ideologically driven hostility toward Allende’s Chile to
Washington. Certainly, the Chileans noticed a new and ominous attitude toward their country growing within Brazil itself.

In early 1971, for example, the Chilean Embassy in Brasilia had begun receiving information that this hostility was being translated into action. When Chile’s Consular Division moved from Rio de Janeiro to Brasilia at the beginning of the year, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry had launched an investigation into its activities. More ominously, the Chileans learned that a Brazilian general had offered to help establish a resistance movement in Chile. Although this news appears to have been relayed to the embassy only once, it did not seem to be an isolated show of support for anti-Allende groups; in São Paulo, senior military officials were said to be recruiting Chileans living in Brazil for belligerent action against the Unidad Popular. At the beginning of March, a trusted embassy informant also passed on news that Brazilian military leaders had gone so far as to establish situation rooms at the army’s headquarters in Rio to study Chile’s threat. According to this informant, these rooms were filled with scaled models of the Andes stretching along Chile’s borders with Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. During meetings between senior military officials, they were then used to determine which zones might become locations for future guerrilla struggles (anti-Allende Chileans and other Latin American civilians were mentioned as being the ones who would fight antiguerrilla battles). Furthermore, news that Brazilian secret agents had been sent to Chile to find out more about such zones coincided with other information reaching the Chileans that the Brazilian government had dispatched intelligence operatives along with seventy prisoners Santiago had reluctantly taken as part of a hostage exchange.
¹⁰⁰
Last but not least, the Chilean Embassy in Brasilia reported that the Brazilian army had staged military exercises specifically designed around the premise of fighting guerrilla forces residing in Chile.
¹⁰¹

Unsurprisingly, this information sparked alarm in Chile, especially when coupled with indications that U.S.-Brazilian relations had suddenly improved and that Brasilia was launching a major new diplomatic offensive in Latin America. After U.S. assistant secretary Charles Meyer’s visit to Brazil in March, Brazilian newspapers reported that he and Foreign Minister Mario Gibson Barbosa had discussed “Cuban infiltration in Chilean internal affairs” and the future “transformation of that country into a base of support for the export of terrorism and subversion.”
¹⁰²
Only a year before, Brasilia’s relations with Washington had suffered serious tensions on account of U.S. congressional investigations into allegations of torture
in Brazil.
¹⁰³
Now, the two Latin American countries’ situations seemed to have been reversed. Moreover, the Chileans feared that Brazil’s new diplomatic offensive was aimed at isolating Chile and assuming a dominant position in South America. As Almeyda would later explain to Polish leaders, not only was Brazil the United States’ “most loyal collaborator,” but there was evidence to suggest Brazil’s foreign minister had gathered together all his friends from Latin America to organize an anti-Chilean campaign in early 1971.
¹⁰⁴
In view of these apparent maneuvers, Santiago had ordered its diplomats throughout Latin America to report on Brazilian activity in their host countries.
¹⁰⁵
Was the United States “distributing different geographic regions of the world?” Chile’s ambassador in Buenos Aires asked.
¹⁰⁶
Ambassador Rettig echoed this possibility, concluding that because the United States wanted to rescue its faltering position in Latin America and was reluctant to be the one to intervene directly in regional affairs, it was taking advantage of Brazil’s diplomatic offensive to prevent “another Cuba.” He urged Santiago to build the best possible relations with Latin American countries as an “antidote.”
¹⁰⁷