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There have been disturbing notes, however, in the past two weeks. Under new contracts with the Ministry of Public Health, medical interns are required to devote at least an hour a day to "lectures not related to their professional interests," which apparently means political indoctrination. The chief of a Communist-dominated printers' union has refused to help turn out some needed textbooks. "Why bother?" he asked. "There will be new ones after Nov. 4." Reports that Communist journalists were intimidating their non-Marxist colleagues have been denied, but there is no question that an astonishing amount of censorship is already being practiced by union members. At the opening session of a conference of Pacific powers in Viña del Mar, President Frei is said to have delivered a stinging rebuttal to a Marxist economist's interpretation of power in the Pacific. Despite the drama of the confrontation, the Frei speech was not reported in a single Chilean newspaper or radio-TV broadcast. Also unreported by the Chilean press these days are the arrivals of Soviet-bloc officials and technicians.
Fearful that a Marxist takeover is at hand, middle-class Chileans have begun withdrawing funds from banks at an alarming rate; in one week, the banks lost 920 million escudos and the savings and loan associations another 340 million—a total of $87 million. The escudo dropped as low as 55 to the dollar on the Santiago black market (v. 14.5 at the legal rate). Almost 14,000 Chileans left the country during the first 24 days of September, causing long lines at passport offices and ticket counters; hundreds of others bought open one-way air tickets for themselves and their families to Buenos Aires, Miami or New York and tucked them away in bureau drawers, just in case.
Farmers delayed their spring planting. Consumers stopped buying. Sales of clothing dropped 30% in September, major appliances and furniture as much as 80%, automobiles 75%. Private construction trailed off to almost nothing. "The longer this goes on," said a foreign economist in Santiago, "the harder it is going to be to put the Chilean economy back on its feet." To reduce the money outflow, the government limited Chileans to one exit from the country per month except in special cases.
Pathetic Appeal
In the September presidential elections, Allende polled 36% of the vote, compared with 35% for former President Jorge Alessandri, 74, of the rightist National Party, and 28% for Radomiro Tomic, the nominee of President Frei's Christian Democratic Party. Since no candidate received a popular majority, the Congress is required to choose the new President from the two top votegetters. Although it is not obliged to do so, the Congress has always selected the man who received the highest popular vote. Moreover, since Allende's Popular Unity coalition controls 88 seats in the 200-member Congress, he needs the support of only 13 Christian Democrats to win a majority.