Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War (39 page)

In an effort to ease Chile’s financial pressures, it seems that Allende was resigned to the process of trying to reach some sort of agreement with Washington. Among those who encouraged him was the Chilean army’s constitutionally minded commander in chief, General Carlos Prats, who told the president not only that Chile was “not within the Soviet sphere of influence geopolitically” but that “further damage to U.S.-Chilean relations” would “seriously affect its national security.” Stepping down from his temporary post in Allende’s cabinet in March, he had pointedly also urged Allende to “decide on the government’s future course so that the armed forces can determine their position.”
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Yet, from other quarters, Allende continued to receive criticism for continuing negotiations with the United States. Indeed, the far Left had begun to insist on a posture of “demand,” not “compromise,” and an end to what MAPU called “negotiated dependency.”
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As seen from Washington, Allende’s so-called compromise also rang hollow. U.S. officials regarded the offer of unbinding arbitration along the lines of the 1914 bilateral treaty that the Chileans had proposed in December 1972 unenthusiastically. As Davis argued, Chileans’ purported “flexibility” was “an oasis shimmering in the distance.”
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In March, U.S. delegates also voiced their concerns that the Chileans’ vague framework was “cosmetic,” with no guarantees of compensation for the copper companies.
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But the United States’ position was by no means more conciliatory. As the Nixon administration had prepared for a second round of bilateral talks at the end of March, it had dodged either accepting or rejecting the Chileans’ proposal. And when delegates finally met, U.S. representatives also disingenuously dangled Washington’s rapprochement with China and the socialist bloc as an example of what could be achieved through direct bilateral negotiations as opposed to multilateral arbitration frameworks.
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Arguments over the process for resolving differences nevertheless hid the central issues at the heart of the U.S.-Chilean dispute. Letelier demanded to know why détente was not a viable option for Chile. Pointing to the UP’s good relations with countries of different ideological persuasions (he mentioned Colombia), he called attention to a “positive” international climate for accommodation. As he noted, a “thaw in the Cold War and the elimination of ideological frontiers,” a “ceasefire in Vietnam, the opening of links between the United States and socialist bloc countries, [and] the establishment of offices in China” all suggested that an understanding was possible if the United States would only reduce its intervention and economic pressure against Allende. After all, days before the talks got under way the U.S. Senate had begun hearings on ITT’s role in Chile, unearthing what the Chilean Foreign Ministry labeled “irrefutable evidence” of Washington’s meddling in Chile.
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But, for their part, U.S. representatives continued to underline compensation as the only real sticking point between them. And, in the end, after two days of going round in circles and U.S. delegates refusing to accept the 1914 framework, the negotiations collapsed.
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Back in Chile, Allende found it hard to manage the fallout from this failure. When Chilean delegates (minus Letelier) returned from Washington, their public denunciations of the United States’ responsibility for the gridlock surprised and angered the Nixon administration.
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In April Secretary Rogers described Chilean comments as “major distortions” and a “semi-final” “calculated … decision to provoke a ‘confrontation.’” In his view, the UP believed it was in a stronger position after the election and U.S. Senate hearings on ITT and was thus likely to use the forthcoming OAS General Assembly to denounce Washington. Given that the Chileans probably regarded their situation as being as good as it was ever going to be, he surmised that they had opted for open conflict.
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However, this assessment was only an approximation of one part of the UP coalition’s position. Clearly, Allende and the Chilean Foreign Ministry remained keen to avoid further confrontation. Acknowledging that the impasse had “substantially limited” its strategy of playing for time and managing conflict without tying Santiago down to any type of decisions, the Foreign Ministry called for yet another “imperative” and “immediate” reexamination of policy toward Washington.
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Allende also recalled Letelier urgently back to Santiago to hear his estimation of what might be done to salvage the situation. The ambassador’s subsequent conversation with Davis revealed the importance the president placed on rescuing the talks. When he met Davis, Letelier argued that Washington’s apparent “180
degree turn” toward a hard-line position had been a “bombshell” for the Chilean government. He pleaded with the United States to offer “understanding and flexibility.” “Allende genuinely needs time to work it out,” Davis reported. “Letelier understood that the president’s deep internal difficulty was not the fault of the U.S., but it was nevertheless a reality.”
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As a result of this conversation, Rogers and the White House agreed to pull away from the brink. In early April, Davis received authorization to approach UP government officials and emphasize that the United States had not categorically rejected arbitration but was merely studying options.
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Later that month when Almeyda visited the OAS in Washington, U.S. representatives held informal talks with him that paved the way toward reopening negotiations. As Rogers noted, Letelier and Almeyda had become “more flexible” and were willing to hear U.S. counterproposals.
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Indeed, back in Santiago, although Allende publicly accused the United States of “direct intervention in Chile,” he also declared that, “in spite of everything, Chile is prepared for [more] dialogue.” If new talks resulted in nothing, he added, it would not be Chile’s responsibility. “It is obvious that we are right,” he proclaimed, but he also underscored the need to show the world that Chileans were “prepared to talk.”
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In private, the Chileans also began to give way. Between April and June, when delegates met for a third round of negotiations in Lima, the UP tentatively began to explore the possibility of accepting some of the United States’ demands, set forth in a counterproposal to the 1914 framework.
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In what turned out to be the last few months of Allende’s presidency, these negotiations nevertheless remained slow and inadequate solutions to Chile’s needs. Essentially, Santiago was locked in a process that its opponent controlled and which it regarded as a convenient vehicle for hiding ulterior motives rather than a priority in itself. As Letelier had candidly admitted during the tense bilateral negotiations between Chile and the United States in March, it was simply “vague and unrealistic to try and obtain solutions for which the objective conditions [did] not exist.”
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Washington’s and Santiago’s leaders certainly “objectively” failed to understand each other when it came to inter-American affairs. With some justification, the Chilean Foreign Ministry regarded U.S. citizens as being indifferent toward Latin America and lacking general “comprehension” of Third World nationalism, which they perceived as “anarchy” and “ingratitude.”
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Yet, in Latin America, Chile was now also failing to gain understanding as the notion of constructing “one” regional voice to challenge Washington slipped away from its grasp. Indeed, in the first half of 1973, the Nixon administration enthusiastically observed that despite continued Chilean efforts to encourage systemic change, Santiago would not be able to significantly undermine U.S. influence throughout the hemisphere.

In April 1973 Almeyda had tried to initiate a radical review of the inter-American system when he addressed the OAS General Assembly. In what onlookers regarded as an “emotional speech,” he vigorously denounced the inequality within the organization and the fictitious identity between Latin America and the United States. And he emphasized Latin American “frustrations” that Washington “lined up with the rich countries, not with [the] hemisphere.”
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He also urged the OAS to dismantle such “fossils of the Cold War” as the inter-American Defense College and continued sanctions against Cuba.
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Yet, in doing so, Almeyda ignored the ongoing ideological struggle in the Americas. Chilean proposals within the OAS also antagonized conservative members of the organization and were modified substantially. To Washington’s delight, Santiago subsequently got only a relatively weak resolution on the principles governing relations between American states and the initiation of a review process to study the issue further. In one U.S. diplomat’s opinion, this was “quite acceptable” and a much better outcome than anticipated.
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Indeed, by mid-1973 the Nixon administration calculated that regional counterrevolutionary victories, combined with the UP’s mounting difficulties in Chile, made it unlikely Allende would open the floodgates of communism and revolution on the continent. The State Department was also largely in control of the administration’s policy toward Latin America by this stage, indicating that it was not the urgent priority it had intermittently been since late 1970. The White House had designed Washington’s overall thrust toward the region, which included embracing Brazil, fighting communism, and supporting military leaders as pillars of control and stability. But under this general rubric, and with Watergate consuming Nixon’s time, State Department officials’ earlier arguments for flexibility in the Americas increasingly held sway.

In the aftermath of Almeyda’s OAS appearance, U.S. officials also made at least some effort to persuade critics that it had rejected paternalism. Before a follow-up meeting in Lima in July to discuss the inter-American system, Secretary Rogers toured eight Latin American countries to deliver this message. As far as he could see, he wrote to Nixon, Washington’s
regional problems were now “either soluble or manageable, posing no dangerous threat.”
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The president was “very pleased” with this news and advised the secretary to shake off any angry demonstrations he might encounter—“as one who went through this in 1958 in Lima and Caracas,” he said, “Welcome to the Club!”
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As it turned out, however, Rogers did not face many hostile demonstrations because U.S. initiatives in South America since 1970 had smoothed his passage. Specifically, the secretary acknowledged that the recent adjustments Washington had made to its policy toward Peru—including a decision to waive previous suspensions of arms sales—had made the visit a “success.”
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And in Brazil, Rogers described U.S. relations with that country as “probably the best they [had] ever been.”
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Rogers achieved far less pleasing—though by no means particularly worrying—results when he met Allende on 25 May in Argentina. The shifting balance of power in the hemisphere meant that the meeting was an aside—a bilateral matter with Chile and an appendage to a hemispheric policy no longer as concerned about the regional implications of Chilean developments. The meeting was solicited by Rogers and took advantage of their both being in Buenos Aires for the inauguration of Argentina’s new democratically elected president, Hector Campora. But it was also unauthorized by the White House and accomplished little to ease the strained relationship between both countries. Moreover, Allende and Rogers pressed upon each other the merits of their own government’s actions and the error of the other’s ideals. While conveying platitudes about wanting good relations, both men talked past each other, detailing core disagreements on notions of independence, imperialism, and economic or political systems of government. True, both praised democracy and freedom, but it was clear that each of them had profoundly different concepts of the validity of the other’s commitment to those principles.
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In seeking to bolster their respective claims, Allende and Rogers stressed their interpretations of the political, economic, and social upheaval in Latin America. In making his case against “economic imperialism” in Latin America, Allende insisted he was not alone in the region; a great many other countries throughout Latin America shared Chilean frustrations about the pace of economic development and U.S. interventionism and were seeking alternatives. Conversely, Rogers threw the blame for regional underdevelopment back on hemispheric nationalists. Despite eschewing notions of U.S. “paternalism” and directly challenging Latin Americans to “do things for themselves,” he then laid down rules for
this independence. “The U.S. welcomed nationalism,” he said, but only “as long as it was constructive.” Nixon’s new assistant secretary of state for Latin American affairs, Jack Kubisch, was also present at this meeting and recorded Rogers as questioning the “purpose” of “negative” or “anti-U.S.” nationalism—“The Secretary pointed out that in his travels to different parts of the world, particularly to countries such as Yugoslavia and Romania, the authorities consistently said that they wanted closer ties with the U.S.: they urged the U.S. to have closer relations and for the USA to encourage Americans to go to their countries. They seemed to trust us. They didn’t make speeches against the U.S.—in fact, usually the opposite. But this was where problems came up in our desire to be friends with Latin America. We felt there had to be a change in climate … it was a mistake for developing countries to act as if profits were evil.”
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Faced with incomprehension, the Chileans viewed Rogers’s Latin American trip with impatience. The Chilean Foreign Ministry predicted that beyond a “thaw” in United States–Peruvian relations, Washington was likely to continue its “benign neglect, courting the continent with official visits and studies that allow it to gain time and not do anything positive.”
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And although some in Chile had considered Rogers’s meeting with Allende to have been a useful opportunity to make progress on outstanding issues relating to U.S.–Chilean negotiations, Allende’s advisers regarded it as generally pointless.
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Rogers had certainly refused to concede any ground to the notion that Washington’s position might be wrong; compared to Allende, “the U.S. had a system that worked” he argued.
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And Chile’s leaders had disagreed. In a June analysis of the United States’ Latin American policy, Chilean Foreign Ministry officials lamented that by continuing to regard foreign investment as a generous way of “helping” regional states and safeguarding their profits, Washington missed a “central problem” at the heart of inter-American relations. Reflecting on Nixon’s recent speech to the U.S. Congress, Chilean diplomats commented that the president sounded more and more like a “public relations” spokesman for private U.S. companies who disregarded hemispheric needs.
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