Fighting for Life

Chile's Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens is beginning to sound and act like a man who is fighting for his political life. In February, the Chilean Congress, which is dominated by the opposition Christian Democratic and National parties, passed a constitutional reform bill that would prohibit the President from nationalizing any more private firms without congressional approval. If it should become law, the ban would be retroactive to October 1971. Last week Allende angrily vetoed the bill. He further declared that if his veto were overridden, he would introduce a measure to dissolve the Congress, and if Congress refused to accept that, he would take the matter to the people in a plebiscite.

Immediately, Allende's congressional support began to crack. Two Cabinet members, both from the Independent Radical Party, resigned. The party withdrew from Allende's Popular Unity coalition, thereby leaving the President with the backing of little more than a third of the two houses of Congress. If he should lose any more support, Allende would have considerable difficulty governing effectively.

In recent weeks, Allende has been under increasing pressure from both the right and the far left. Though he has recently refused permission for opposition groups to hold demonstrations, he agreed to allow a massive protest march by Christian Democrats and Nationalists this week on the eve of a U.N. Conference on Trade and Development in Santiago. In southern Chile, illegal land seizures inspired by MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left) have continued at the rate of between 60 and 100 per month. Allende has spoken out against the seizures, but in order to avoid antagonizing his supporters on the extreme left, he has not called out the police to stop them.

Allende's political predicament has been accentuated by economic problems. Inflation is continuing at an alarming rate. Shortages of goods are getting worse. Meat is sold in markets only two days a week. Without much success, Allende has urged the beef-loving Chileans to eat more rabbit and fish.

Pinheads. At the same time, Allende has been trying to shore up his country's international credit rating. He has begun to make token payments on some of Chile's obligations to foreign firms, including the Anaconda Co., which last week dropped court-ordered liens against certain Chilean properties--including holdings of LAN-Chile, the state airline--with assets in the U.S. Allende has also paid at least half of the $2.2 million in interest due the Boise Cascade Corp., which owned an electric company that was sold to the Chilean government in 1970. In Paris, no agreement has been reached with the 16 nations to whom Chile owes $2.5 billion (including more than $1 billion to the U.S.). Although the 16 creditors turned down a Chilean request for a three-year moratorium on debt payments and a stretch-out over the succeeding ten years, they reported slight progress and agreed to meet again next week.

In the midst of so many problems, the ITT affair (TIME, April 3) strengthened Allende's position at home, and the Chilean Congress launched an investigation into foreign interference in the country's affairs. Presumably, the Congress would not stop Allende from nationalizing ITT's properties in Chile, which include two Sheraton hotels and a cable company. By the hundreds, Chileans were snapping up a little black paperback entitled Documentos Secretos de la ITT (Secret Documents of ITT). For the most part, the government-sponsored book is a straightforward collection of the Jack Anderson memos alleging that ITT officials worked to prevent Allende from taking office in 1970. The official translators, though, could not resist one pointed gibe. On page 12, the term Foggy Bottom, a traditional way of referring to the U.S. State Department, is defined as "the nickname applied to a group of incompetent pinheads."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.