"Suck on that, you reactionaries!" crowed Santiago's pro-government newspaper, Puro Chile. It certainly had something to crow about: Socialist President Salvador Allende Gossens' Popular Unity Coalition had just managed a surprisingly strong showing in the national parliamentary elections against a special coalition of Christian Democrat and National parties.
Billed as the first head-to-head confrontation between Allende's Marxist coalition and Chile's anti-Socialist forces, the election—for all 150 Chamber of Deputies seats and 25 of the 50 Senate seats—turned out to be a sort of stalemate. That benefited Allende. While his coalition picked up only 43.4% of the vote (v. 54.7% for...
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