Setback for a Native Son

Ever since he won last September's presidential election with just 36.3% of the vote in a three-way race, Salvador Allende Gossens has been anxious to widen his slim popular margin. Last April his Popular Unity coalition of Socialists, Communists and Radicals collected an impressive 50.8% of the vote in nationwide municipal elections, and he seemed well on the way. But last week, in a by-election in one of the largest of Chile's 29 congressional districts, Chile's Marxist President suffered an embarrassing setback.

The congressional by-election involved Allende's home province of Valparaiso in central Chile. In last fall's presidential balloting, Allende himself ran a close second in the normally conservative Christian Democratic area. This time, he had reason to hope that his coalition's candidate would win big. In a bid for local favor, Allende had transferred his official residence from Santiago to Valparaiso's city hall during the Chilean summer. When an earthquake hit the district last month, government aid arrived with unwonted haste --and so did Allende to inspect the damage.

Last Chance. To no avail. The voters turned down the young (30) Popular Unity candidate, and handed the Valparaiso seat to middle-reading Dr. Oscar Marin, 62, a physician. Marin campaigned on the line that "this may be the last chance for the people to say to Dr. Allende that we want social changes, but with personal freedom and without Marxist sectarianism." Marin's margin--4,637 votes in a total of 278,263 --showed the power of the Chilean women's vote, which tends to be conservative. As one of Allende's coalition partners, Radical Party Leader Carlos Morales, rather infelicitously put it: "We have to discuss how we can penetrate more into the feminine sector."

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