(6 of 9)
In foreign policy, Allende will maintain close relations with the Soviet Union, and may well ask Moscow for substantial economic and financial assistance. In return, he may allow the Soviets to use the port of Valparaiso if they should decide to move into the Pacific, as they have moved into the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean. On the other hand, such a gesture could prove so unsettling to either Argentina or Brazil that Allende might decide it was not worth the risk. Chile will not become a guerrilla base, but it will probably serve quietly as a haven for the Tupamaros of Uruguay and the guerrilleros of Bolivia.
Some foreigners in Santiago have made much of the fact that 63% of the Chilean electorate voted against Allende in the recent election. It is equally true, however, that a combined total of 64% voted for Allende and Tomic, who stood well to the left of Frei and whose platform was all but indistinguishable from the Marxists' by the end of the campaign.
Mushroom Cities
Frei, an eloquent 59-year-old, was deeply stung by the way Tomic, his party's candidate, turned against him. Frei had reason to be, for his record was an excellent one, even though his progress was hindered by a series of floods, a major earthquake and a long drought. Besides Chileanizing the copper industry, he expropriated 1,224 private estates and distributed the land to 30,000 families. He built 260,000 new housing units and tripled the number of schools in order to educate 600,000 more children. He gradually improved and even removed some of the callampas, the mushroom cities of cardboard and packing-crate shacks and huts that blight the edges of Santiago and other urban areas. In 1965, Frei's first full year in office, 25% of the national wealth was held by 5% of the population, and 2.5% by the poorest 20%. Today the slice controlled by the richest 5% has been reduced to 20%, and the amount owned by the poor 20% has been increased to 5%.
Swapping Watches
Such statistics show clearly the direction in which Chile was moving through taxation and land reform. But judging from the election, progress was not rapid enough for the demands of the age. A large percentage of Chile's people still live in rural and urban poverty. Hundreds of thousands remain in callampas and in conventillos, barracks-like structures or old mansions in which one or two families are cramped into a single room. Some 200,000 people live in and around the mushroom city of La Victoria, which has not a single telephone. More than half of Chile's children are undernourished, Allende notes, and half of the country's families live on less than $30 a month. Unemployment stands at about 7%, and underemployment is far higher. Despite all efforts to control it, Chile's inflation continues at the rate of 25% to 30% per year. Whether directly related to economic factors or not, alcoholism remains a tragic aspect of life in Chile, which has a thriving wine industry; 5% of all Chileans above the age of 15 are alcoholics, and 1 adult in every 10 dies of cirrhosis.