Samba-Dancing Salesman

Gabriel Gonzalez Videla, President of Chile, is the leader of a country whose 5 1/2 million people are known as the yanquis of South America--a mildly left-handed compliment to their drive and thoroughness. The U.S. has returned the compliment by giving Chile more financial aid than any other South American government. This week, accompanied by his handsome wife Rosa (nicknamed "Mitty") and daughter Sylvia, 51-year-old President Gonzalez was scheduled to arrive in Washington for a state visit.

Up to the last minute, the wiry little President worked frenziedly to get ready for his trip. He settled three strikes, negotiated a political truce in a land-tax fight, and otherwise battened down the hatches for his absence. A pianist with a fine sense) of harmony, he sent an aide scurrying through Santiago shops to track down a copy of The Missouri Waltz.

Adeste Videla. During his three weeks in the U.S., Gonzalez will stay with the Trumans at Blair House, visit New York, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Houston and the TVA. In the course of his tour, Chileans hope that their President, who already enjoys the esteem of U.S. Ambassador Claude Bowers and the State Department, will make strong new friends for their democratic country among the U.S. public and Government.

Smooth-talking, never at a loss for words, natty, beak-nosed Don Gabriel is his country's ablest salesman. His ready politician's smile and his man-to-man manner are so convincing that political opponents have been known to avoid his company lest they be hypnotized into agreement.

A classically flamboyant latino, Gonzalez is vivacious, gay and hot-tempered (he once threw an inkpot at a congressional opponent). He functions in perpetual excitement, moving from desk to desk, room to room, city to city. As President, he has sailed south to lay claim in person to a big piece of the Antarctic, crash-dived in a U.S. submarine off Valparaiso, and tipped over and nearly lost his life canoeing on a south Chilean river. He loves flying, is known all over Chile as "Don Gavion." On a typical weekend at his summer palace at oceanside Vina del Mar, Gonzalez gets in a three-hour canter, a couple of swims, an hour or two at the piano (his current favorite: Brahms), and all the tennis there is time for.

The round of entertainments scheduled for his U.S. visit should not weary him. He is not only an indefatigable party-thrower but a devoted partygoer. At a state ball during his visit to Rio two years ago, he made the gesture of leaving with President Dutra at midnight, then returned, removed his presidential sash, and sambaed till dawn.

Passionate Politics. In the first half of his six-year presidential term, Gonazlez has also set a rushing, fast-shifting political pace. A convinced Popular Frontist from his days as a Radical Party lawyer, he took office in 1946 with the help of Communist votes, and took three Communists into his cabinet. Nine months later, when the Communists were sabotaging his anti-inflation program, Gonz࣋ez broke with the party. Today Chile's once-powerful Communist Party is outlawed. But in a country with more political parties than France, Gonzalez has pulled other spectacular switches. So sudden have some of these been that he has occasionally found himself embracing politicians whom he had shortly before denounced.

He is no man to stand on dignity or hold grudges. Last fortnight, when a delegation called on the President to discuss bank credits, Gonz࣋ez insisted that one visitor, a lawyer, had insulted him, and popped the man square in the left eye. Then he ordered bacon fat from the presidential kitchens to help reduce the swelling. "Forgive me these outbursts," the President cried, while addressing a group of ex-enemies recently, "I am only a passionate politico who loves his country best of all."

Build, Build, Build. The country Gonz࣋ez loves has a violent beauty: flaming nitrate deserts, poplar-laced valleys green with rice and pink with poppies, fir-fringed fiords black with antarctic clouds. The 3 1/2-mile-high Andes march its entire length and mark out its amazing shape: 2,600 miles long (the distance from New York to Los Angeles), an average 100 miles wide.

The people who live between the mountains and the sea make good workers, hard fighters. They are descendants of the Spaniards, mixed with successive waves of Irish, English, French, Dutch, German. They have no Negro blood, some Araucanian Indian. Rebelling with Yankee spirit against their historic dependence on copper and nitrate exports, the practical, profit-minded Chileans have set out to diversify and industrialize their economy.

Since launching the Corporation de Fomento (Development Corp.) ten years ago, they have allotted $200 million of their own money and $130 million borrowed from the U.S. Export-Import Bank and the World Bank to further Fomento's program to diminish their dependence on the outside world. "Build, build, build," was their slogan. The one thing all Chileans now seem to agree on is that the program has been an immense success.

Though the job is still incomplete, Chile has become the most industrialized country in Latin America. A $75 million Fomento power program has increased central Chile's electricity supply by 50%. A new $88 million steel plant, second largest in Latin America, goes into large-scale production next month at Conception, where 40 new industries have already mushroomed around it. Fomento has just shipped to Uruguay the first crude oil from its new Strait of Magellan fields.

All this has been done at a price. While Chile has denied herself consumer imports in favor of dynamos and blast furnaces, prices and wages have spiraled higher than a condor. Now, with living costs ten times as high as in 1930 and climbing higher it seems necessary to slow down a bit on industrialization and face up to the problems of credit, taxes, wages and prices so that Chile's economy can hold steady until the fruits of Fomento come onto the market. Gonzalez, who knows this, may not even discuss industrial loans on this visit. But if he asks counsel and help for his anti-inflationary fight, he will get plenty from men in Washington who strongly feel that a democracy like Chile's deserves all the help and reinforcement its friends can give.

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