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Allende insists that he will work within the democratic system, as he has done all his life. He has no intention, he says, of trying to impose a monolithic Communist regime. "For you," he told the New York Times last week, "to be a Communist or a Socialist is to be totalitarian. For me, no. I believe man is freed when he has an economic position that guarantees him work, food, housing, health, rest and recreation. I am a founder of the Socialist Party, and I must tell you that I am not totalitarian, and I think Socialism frees man."
Fidel's Five Points
In a more poetic but even less revealing mood, Allende likes to say: "The Cuban revolution had the flavor of sugar and rum. The Chilean revolution will have the taste of meat pies and red wine." Not that Allende has anything against sugar and rum. Shortly after the election, he sent his daughter Beatriz to Havana to have a talk with his old friend Fidel Castro. Beatriz returned to Santiago with five bits of advice for her father from Fidel: 1) "Keep your copper exports within the dollar area." 2) "Don't let your Chilean copper-industry technicians get out of the country." (Otherwise they may escape to neighboring countries, where the pay or working conditions may be better.) 3) "Don't talk too much revolutionary rhetoric. You know you're a revolutionary and I know it, but don't shout it from the rooftops." (For this reason, said Fidel, he would not attend the Allende inauguration.) 4) "Don't break off relations with the U.S." 5) "Try to maintain good relations with the Chilean military."
Allende hardly needed the last piece of advice. He insists that he is on good terms with the highly professional, U.S.-equipped 60,000-man armed forces. Washington intelligence sources believe that he can gain effective control of the army within six months through appointment of sympathetic officers and forced retirement of potential opponents. In the meantime, however, he will be particularly vulnerable until he takes over the crack, 30,000-man carabineros, the national police force. Most observers are convinced that unless Allende moves too precipitously in his efforts to remake Chile, the armed forces will adhere to their historic role of non-intervention in politics.
Losing No Time