"You're Going Great, Chicho"

The crowd that thronged Santiago's 100,000-seat National Stadium was Chile's new elite. There were rural campesinos carrying scythes, cement workers in blue hardhats, electricians in yellow ones, copper miners whose helmet lights glowed eerily in the dusk. For nearly two hours they listened as their tieless. coatless President, Salvador Allende Gossens, reeled off numbers--of farms expropriated, factories nationalized, peasants resettled on their own new lands. "The Chilean road toward socialism," he boomed, "has been realized with the least social cost of any other revolution in the world."

The revolution that Chile's President has been pressing since his inauguration a year ago last week has no parallel in Latin America or anywhere else. As Latin America's first and only freely elected Marxist President, he plans to steer his country of nearly 10 million into "total, scientific Marxist socialism" without shooting, without shoving, and even without very much shouting. If he succeeds, it will be largely because of Chile's strong democratic traditions. As long as Allende governs under the law, Chile's armed forces are not likely to move against him.

Nonetheless, one year after Allende began to lead the way down his cherished "road to socialism," the parade behind him has grown a little ragged. Allende still stirs enthusiasm, to be sure. One Santiago newspaper last week applauded in red banner headlines: YOU'RE GOING GREAT, CHICHO, YOU'RE GOING GREAT. Those who are happiest about where "Chicho" (an affectionate nickname) is headed are the hundreds of thousands of Chilean peasants and wage earners who were left out of the modest prosperity that the copper-rich country enjoyed after World War II. But Chile's broad middle--its businessmen, managers and professional men--have begun to balk. Their worry is that Allende, under pressure from his own far-left backers, has begun to move too far, too fast.

Outside Chile, Allende is rapidly winning acceptance. On a recent ten-day swing through Peru, Ecuador and Colombia, he won pledges of moral support for his sweeping nationalization of American-owned firms. Even Argentina's jittery military regime has begun to regard its Marxist neighbor as just another striving nationalist. The Communist countries have been careful not to embrace Allende too eagerly, for fear that they might do him more harm than good. For that reason, Fidel Castro refused an invitation to Allende's inauguration last year; he is due to arrive in Santiago for his first visit some time this month.

Showdown. By the time Castro arrives, Allende will be deep in a crucial domestic battle. In his Santiago speech, he promised to press for his long-delayed and bitterly controversial plan to replace Chile's two-house legislature with a unicameral "Popular Assembly." In doing so, he set the stage for a showdown with his increasingly restive opposition, which holds a majority in both the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies over Allende's coalition of Communists, Socialists and smaller left-wing parties. One reason why Allende wants a showdown now is that the opposition, led by the middle-reading Christian Democrats, is threatening to impose legislative reins on the President's headlong nationalization program. The President will probably carry his legislative reform to the people in a referendum which could be held as early as next spring.

If the Christian Democrats complain that Allende is moving too fast, the radical left has long been damning him for moving too slowly. Egged on by extremist groups like MIR (for Movement of the Revolutionary Left), bands of Mapuche Indians have seized scores of farms in the name of "land reform." Something of the same defiant spirit has come to Chile's copper mines, which are troubled by high absenteeism, low discipline and disappointing production since they were nationalized last July.

Double the Money. Allende's freeze on prices has helped to hold inflation down to around 14% this year (v. 35% in 1970), and across-the-board wage increases ranging from 25% to 50% have sent happy Chilean wage earners off on a giddy spending spree. But the printing presses have doubled the money supply, and unless Allende imposes tough austerity measures soon. Chile's surface prosperity may fade quickly. In any case. Allende may soon have to ask for rescheduling of payments on the $2.75 billion that Chile owes its foreign creditors--half of whom are in the U.S.

Allende has not exactly cultivated a charitable mood in the U.S. Last month he announced that the Kennecott and Anaconda copper companies had earned "excess profits" totaling $774 million over the past 15 years; since their expropriated mines have a book value of almost $600 million, that meant not only that the companies would receive no compensation, but that they actually owed the government a hefty sum.

In a harsh statement. Secretary of State William Rogers last month warned that Allende's action had "serious implications for the rule of law." Rogers left the strong impression that the U.S. might invoke the Hickenlooper Amendment, which requires an immediate cutoff of aid, loans and credit to countries that expropriate American-owned property without just compensation. Actually, invocation of the amendment for the first time in Latin America would probably hurt the U.S. more than Chile, which is no longer receiving any significant American aid.

That could be precisely what Allende is counting on. All over Santiago, posters proclaim that CHILE HAS PUT ON ITS LONG PANTS. NOW THE COPPER is OURS. Allende watchers wager that when the coming economic crunch does hit, the regime will do its best to put the blame on the U.S., deserved or not. Thus, though U.S. retaliation for the copper seizures would do little for the victimized companies, Allende conceivably could use it to spur anti-Yanqui rage.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.