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How fast will Allende move? Most observers think that he will lose no time nationalizing the banks and the American copper interests. A prime target is the $200 million investment of the Anaconda Co. In the beginning, the firm resisted Frei's "Chileanization" program (51% government ownership) and has been slower than other copper companies to train Chileans for top jobs. Not far behind will be the Kennecott Copper Corp., with an $80 million interest in El Teniente, the world's largest underground copper mine; Cerro Corp., with $15 million in copper investments; and ITT, with $200 million or more in the Chilean telephone system, a cable company and two Santiago hotels. Others are the Dow Chemical Co., Ford Motor Co., General Motors Corp., the General Tire and Rubber Co. and North American Rockwell Corp. The pace of Allende's actions will also depend on the state of the economy. "The more his back is to the wall," says one American economist, "the more likely he will be to move harshly and quickly." Few American managers expect to remain very long. Allende neatly summed up his attitude toward the U.S. during a recent interview; when he was asked whether he would allow Americans to continue running a space-tracking station on Chile's Easter Island in the Pacific, he said with a grin: "Goodbye and good luck."
Some foreigners argue that the Chileans will never be able to run the mines on their own, but copper men disagree. Says a U.S. executive: "We've spent 15 years and millions of dollars training them to run the copper mines. They can do it.'' The number of American personnel is small, in any case. Kennecott, for example, has only seven Americans in its management. The mining supervisor of the giant El Teniente is a 36-year-old Chilean named Pedro Campino. The Chileans are afraid, however, of losing their native managers and technicians to other countries, and hence Allende will pay careful heed to Castro's advice. Chilean technicians have the reputation of being the best in Latin America. Many who now receive U.S.-scale salaries may try to go elsewhere if, as is likely, an Allende austerity program should reduce salaries of the middle class by as much as 50%. And as Allende addresses himself to the cares of the laborers and campesinos, who are his chief supporters, middle-class privileges will inevitably be trimmed away.
During the campaign, Allende vowed that he would expropriate the country's leading newspaper, the conservative El Mercurio. Now it seems that he will not even have to bother. He can achieve the same result by withholding government advertising from Mercurio and other offending publications; as the nationalization program gathers momentum, such punishment will become ever more deadly. Says a Chilean associated with the paper: "El Mercurio is like a candle in a bottle. It will give light for a while, and then will be smothered, leaving only a little black smoke. How long it lasts depends on how big a bottle the Communists permit."