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Opponents criticize Frei for pledging that he would build 360,000 new housing units and then falling short by 100,000. Similarly, although he succeeded in relocating 30,000 families on plots of land, he had promised to move 100,000 of the country's 350,000 landless rural families. Frei was also attacked for using army troops to break a 1966 copper strike that left eight dead, and for adopting a mano dura (hard hand) in his dealings with organized labor. Though Fidel Castro would seem to be in no position to talk, he said of Frei after the 1966 strike: "He promised revolution without blood and has given blood without revolution."
Allende, who is promising revolution and really seems to mean it, was born 62 years ago in Valparaiso, the earthy, exotic port city that Chilean Poet Pablo Neruda describes as a "filthy rose." Allende's father was a lawyer and his grandfather, a high-ranking Freemason, was a founder of the Radical Party and was known as "the Red Allende." As a student activist who helped to organize the Socialist Party in 1933, Salvador Allende was imprisoned twice but managed to graduate from medical school. Although many potential employers regarded him as a troublemaker, he finally found a job as a coroner's assistant. After two years of medical practice, he was elected a federal Deputy at the age of 29. He supported Aguirre Cerda for the presidency and was later rewarded by being appointed Minister of Public Health.
During the 1939 earthquake, he ran into an old friend in a Santiago street and was introduced to the friend's date, a University of Chile history and geography student named Hortensia Bussi. Allende later married her. (Radomiro Tomic, the defeated Christian Democratic candidate, met his future wife during the same earthquake.)
As a Senator and Socialist Party leader, Allende became a friend of Fidel Castro, and still proudly wears a wristwatch that used to belong to the Cuban. As Allende tells the story, Fidel kept eying the Chilean's gold alarm watch, and finally suggested that they swap watches. "No deal," said Allende. "Yours is silver and mine is gold." But Castro insisted and Allende relented. Later, Fidel's brother Raúl asked Allende: "Why did you give Fidel that watch? He spent the entire Cabinet meeting playing with the alarm. Nobody could get any work done with the buzzer going off every few minutes."
In the early days, Allende's enemies labeled him El Pije (the Dandy), a reference to his stylish dress; his friends call him Chicho, an affectionate nickname. Today Allende dresses nattily but comfortably; he shocked his more elegant colleagues by showing up in a dark suit at a formal reception for Queen Elizabeth in 1968. He works long hours, tries to keep in shape by lifting weights, but rarely sleeps more than five hours a night. "I really don't work," he claims. "Working for the people is a pleasure."
Sheer Confusion