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Chapter 7 The Peaceful Way to Democracy It was something never seen before: the vanquished were asking unconditional surrender from the victors, from those who held power. The Armed Forces of Chile were not a defeated militia in rout, completely the contrary. - General Augusto Pinochet Pinochet, the United States, and the United Nations The simmering three-year crisis between 1983 and 1986 had economic causes, but it was paramountly political. The crisis became an opportunity to challenge the regime at its core and to initiate in Chile a process of democratization that was already culminating in the other countries of the Southern Cone. Consequently, the crisis became a test of the regime's institutional resilience, a test that centered on the timing and circumstances of the transition as set down in the 1980 constitution. Pinochet felt pressures from three sources, the United States, the United Nations, and his domestic opposition . Pinochet succeeded in resisting each of them. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger were determined to remove Allende from power once the Chilean congress had done the unimaginable by voting to confirm the Socialist president-elect. Indeed, successive administrations dating back to 1958 had been desperate to prevent his election; the possible election of an avowed Marxist had been a truly bipartisan preoccupation . The covert operations to funnel monies to the Christian Democrats in 1964 constituted intervention in Chile's domestic affairs as much as the CIA's quiet encouragement to militant officers to oust Allende. Congressional hearings after the September 1973 coup disclosed some embarrassing revelations about these matters, and the Church Committee hearings led to much consternation in Washington and some inconsequential legislation aimed at curbing future abuses. The ouster of Salvador Allende was an unambiguous foreign policy victory of the national security, foreign policy, and intelligence establishments, despite any embarrassment the revelations of covert action might have caused. The human rights record of the regime prevented the United States The Peaceful Way to Democracy 157 from having a completely amicable relationship with the Pinochet regime, however. Congressional Democrats, in particular, saw to it that the Chilean government was punished. As regards u.s.policy, there were several matters , each with a different degree of importance as time passed. In the immediate aftermath of the military intervention, the questions raised related to the degree of U.S. participation in the coup and the nonparticipation of the American embassy in the humanitarian effort to protect the lives of refugees. Later the issue became what the United States could do to bring pressure to bear on the dictatorship to improve its human rights record and to hasten the return of democracy. This question was relevant to both U.S. bilateral dealings and its multilateral diplomacy. The Nixon and Ford administrations took no action to punish the junta for human rights violations. Indeed, to the consternation of congressional liberals, they circumvented Congress's efforts to curtail economic and military assistance to Chile. And the Republican administrations generally supported multilateral development assistance to Pinochet's Chile. Funds from these sources probably off set reductions in bilateral aid. Within months of the coup, while the armed forces were still in the first phase of repression, the Nixon administration arranged for $52 million in commodity credits to be made available to the new military government.! As 1974 opened, Chile had already agreed to pay compensation for North American firms affected by Allende's economic measures, the United States and Chile had reached a bilateral agreement with respect to Chilean debts, the Paris Club was finalizing the details of a plan to reschedule debt payments, and Export-Import Bank credit had again been extended to Chile." Efforts by Congressional Democrats to block or reduce aid levels to Chile to punish the junta for its human rights practices met with resistance from the executive branch and its supporters in Congress. Senators Kennedy of Massachusetts and Harkin of Iowa, and Representative Fraser of Minnesota, were among the most vocal opponents of the new Chilean regime. They had two avenues, to reduce economic aid substantially, and to eliminate military aid altogether. For his part, in December 1973 Kennedy added language to section 35 of the Foreign Assistance Act that would have forced the president to request that the Chilean government respect human rights, as well as to support the humanitarian efforts of the United Nations and human rights investigations of the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights (the latter two efforts were already underway). 3 Kennedy did not prevail...

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