TIME: Almanac 1995

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<text id=93HT0387> <link 93HT0837> <link 93HT0718> <link 89TT1917> <link 89TT1278> <title> 1970s: Latin America </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1970s Highlights </history> <article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Latin America </hdr> <body> [In the 1970s, Latin America was dominated by military dictatorships. Brazil's generals had overthrown the civilian rulers six years before, and the country was increasingly beset by repression and torture. Peru and Ecuador had revolving military regimes, as did Bolivia. Then Chile, a traditional bastion of democracy, elected a Marxist President.] (September 21, 1970) Despite the dire prophecies of violence, Chile remained calm last week in the wake of precedent-shattering elections. In a three-way race for the presidency, the Marxist candidate, Dr. Salvador Allende, had received the highest vote, polling 36% v. 35% for his rightist opponent, former President Jorge Alessandri, and 28% for the candidate of President Eduardo Frei's Christian Democratic Party, Radomiro Tomic. Since no candidate won a popular majority, the Chilean Congress must decide between Allende and Alessandri on Oct. 24. In the meantime, just about everyone in Chile was acting as if Allende had already become the first Marxist head of state ever to be elected freely in the Western Hemisphere. (Many) Chileans panicked at the news. Fearful of a stampede of scared investors, the Santiago stock market closed for a day for the first time since 1938, and depositors withdrew massive funds from Chilean banks. The U.S. consulate was swamped with calls for information about visas. Cuban Premier Fidel Castro, who had reportedly contributed several suitcases-full of hard currency to the Allende campaign, sent his congratulations. In a journalistic pre-emptive strike, the Soviet party paper Pravda accused the U.S. of having "an intention to interfere in the internal affairs of Chile." In point of fact, Washington was reluctant to take any position at all on Allende's emergence, although it knew full well that his nationalization program would eventually affect virtually all of the $700 million U.S. investment in Chile. (July 26, 1971) When the Chilean Congress unanimously passed a constitutional amendment last week nationalizing the copper mines, the whole country went on an emotional tear. Newspapers, billboards and walls blossomed with the slogan. "Chile has put on its long pants! Finally the copper is ours." President Salvador Allende proclaimed a Day of National Dignity and declared: "Now we will be the owners of our own future, truly the masters of our destiny." Chileans confidently predicted that under state management copper production will jump to 840,000 tons this year, compared with 640,000 tons in 1970, and the projection is not considered unrealistic. [Inflation rampaged and the economy stagnated. Finally, Chile's military did as its neighbors had done.] (September 24, 1973) For two terrible days last week, the capital of Chile turned into a bloody battleground. Planes roared in almost at rooftop level, firing rockets and sowing bombs. Tanks rumbled through the streets, tearing holes in walls with shells from their cannon. Infantrymen popped up in doorways, and the sound of their fire reverberated through the city. The principal target, the Presidential Palace, disappeared behind a veil of smoke and flames. Inside, Chile's Marxist President Salvador Allende Gossens, 65, died in his office as a military junta took over his country. Chileans who thought that their country was somehow immune from military takeovers were wrong. Moreover, the coup that ended Allende's experiment in socialism proved to be extraordinarily violent even by Latin American standards. In the flurry of fighting that accompanied the glope (coup) and in the two days of chaos that followed, several thousand people were killed or injured. The military claimed that Allende had killed himself rather than surrender. Allende's supporters insisted that he had been murdered. In a sense, the manner of his death was irrelevant. Almost overnight, he became an instant martyr for leftist the world over. (October 1, 1973) There is a strong and plausible case showing that the U.S. was not involved in the military's coup. Administration officials issued unqualified denials of U.S. complicity. Charges have been made, however, that Washington played a large and possibly crucial role in Chile's economic difficulties. Pressure from Washington on such institutions as the World Bank seriously aggravated Chile's fiscal crises. As Latin American Experts James F. Petras and Robert LaPorte Jr. noted in Foreign Policy magazine, "Dominican style `gunboat diplomacy' has been replaced by `credit diplomacy.'" In light of Allende's nationalization of U.S.-owned properties, it was hardly to be expected that the Administration would help him. Yet the military coup was unfortunate not only for Chile but for the U.S. For as Former U.S. Ambassador (Ralph) Dungan observes: "Nothing would have served our interest better than if (Allende) had completed his term in office and then been repudiated by the Chilean people in constitutional elections." (September 23, 1974) A letter by Democratic Congressman Michael Harrington of Massachusetts, leaked to the press last week, contained some devastating excerpts from testimony earlier this year by CIA Director William Colby before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence. Colby apparently admitted that the CIA, with White House approval, had funneled some $8 million into Chile between 1970 and 1973, first to keep Allende from being elected and later to weaken his government. Colby's testimony was also embarrassing to the military rulers of Chile. The disclosures cast doubt on the junta's claim that it was misrule by Allende and the politicians that brought ruin to Chile. Indeed, some experts believe that the CIA disruptions, combined with the curtailment of U.S. foreign aid credits and bank loans, contributed greatly to Allende's economic woes. [The excesses of Argentina's ventures into electoral democracy have been exceeded only by those of its period of dictatorship, especially that of Juan Peron, the flamboyant fascist who ruled from 1945-54 and wreaked havoc with the Argentine economy. After his eventual ouster, he influenced politics (mostly for the worse) from exile in Spain. Now conditions in the country were so bad that, in his old age, he was being encouraged to try again.] (July 2, 1973) The stage was set for the biggest welcoming party in South American history. Ex-Dictator Juan Domingo Peron, now 77, was coming home, and for the better part of a week the faithful "descamisados" (shirtless ones) streamed toward the huge meadow near Buenos Aires' Ezeiza International Airport. They numbered in the millions, perhaps one, perhaps three--nobody could count how many. Some 18,000 pigeons (1,000 for each year of Peron's exile) were to be released. But by the time they were set loose, the 50-acre meadow below had turned into a bloody battlefield. Volleys of shots rang out, and thousands of people fell to the ground or scrambled for shelter, screaming. When the shooting stopped, 34 Argentines lay dead and 342 were wounded. They were victims not of police or army violence but of bitter hatred within the movement that calls itself Peronism--a polymorphous organization that encompasses old-line union chiefs, Trotskyite students and brown-shirted thugs. Hearing radio reports of the carnage, Peron instructed his pilot to fly to the heavily guarded Moron Air Force Base ten miles away. Only that night did he appear on nationwide television to "beg of you a thousand pardons for not having the opportunity (to talk) to you personally." The slaughter at the airport, cabled TIME Correspondent Charles Eisendrath, rose from the fact that "in important respects Argentina today resembles Germany just before Hitler. It has been ravaged by an inflation that has impoverished the workers and terrified the middle class. Fascists and Marxists have begun fighting in the streets. Millions of Argentines looked to the return of Peron for both change and national unity, but the battle near Ezeiza Airport shows that the Peronist movement is as deeply divided as Argentina itself." [Peron died in July 1974; as his Vice President, his widow Isabel, known as "Isabelita" so as to identify her with Peron's hallowed first wife, Evita, took over. Amazingly, she hung on for nearly two years, as terrorism and the economy, wracked by raging inflation, worsened steadily until, in 1976, the generals inevitably took over. The Argentine coup ushered in one of the worst periods of repression and human rights abuses ever on that continent. Functioning civil democracy was not restored in Argentina until after the disastrous 1982 war with Britain over the Falkland Islands.] (September 24, 1979) No one knows how many Argentines mysteriously disappeared during the reigns of Isabel Peron and the military regime that toppled her three years ago. Human rights organizations including the London-based Amnesty International, charge that since 1975 15,000 desaparecidos (the disappeared) have been abducted, tortured and possibly killed by agents of the government--without authorization by any court of law. Argentine activists guess that the total might be as high as 122,000, while the government insists that fewer than 5,000 people were arrested under executive powers invoked during a state of siege that was imposed in 1974. Since last year the regime has been much more selective in using its sweeping powers to arrest people suspected of subversion and hold them indefinitely. The mysterious squads of thugs, who usually ride in Ford Falcons and kidnap suspected opponents of the regime, have been relatively inactive. This year only 36 Argentines, compared with more than 600 in 1978, have joined the ranks of the desaparecidos. Instead of focusing on individuals thought to have terrorist connections, activists claim, the government is now harassing the human rights organizations that have dramatized the plight of the missing victims worldwide. Says a leader of one such group: "We face a total system of repression." The new trend became evident in December when 42 of the so-called Mad Mothers, who every Thursday had conducted a silent vigil on behalf of their missing children in the Plaza de Mayo, were briefly incarcerated. [The successful negotiations to restore the sovereignty of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama were one of the high points of the Carter Administration in foreign policy.] (August 22, 1977) In the sun-swept presidential suite of Panama City's Holiday Inn, overlooking a bay speckled with shrimp boats, the mood was clearly jubilant. Chief Panamanian Negotiator Romulo Escobar Bethancourt jumped to his feet and reached across the table to grasp the outstretched hands of U.S. Negotiators Ellsworth Bunker and Sol Linowitz. With a smile that seemed as broad as the canal over which they had been arguing for many months, Escobar proclaimed: "This is good. Here are the people who did it." That it was done was something of a miracle. After 13 years of often bitter negotiations, "principles of an agreement" on a Panama Canal Treaty were finally signed last week. If the treaty is formally approved--and that could prove a very big "if"--the fabled "Big Ditch," supreme symbol of American ingenuity and determination for generations, will gradually come under Panama's control. The treaty is very much a compromise--neither a triumph nor a defeat for either side. Not only does it settle a nagging quarrel with Panama, it also removes a major irritant in U.S. relations with Latin America, which regards American control of the canal as a humiliating relic of the colonial era. The treaty gives Panama full sovereignty over the canal--but slowly. Not until the year 2000 will the U.S. relinquish complete control of the 51-mile-long waterway. In the meantime, the U.S. will continue to operate the canal, as well as the 14 military bases in the zone. The bases will be phased out at U.S. discretion over the life of the treaty. Under the terms of a separate treaty to be signed later by all of the hemisphere's nations, the U.S. will guarantee the neutrality of the canal and its accessibility to all the world's shipping even after the year 2000. If the safety of canal is threatened, the U.S. is free to intervene with military force. (March 27, 1978) With the Senate galleries packed with spectators and all 100 Senators in their seats, the clerk began calling out the names. In just ten minutes of voting, the first of the two treaties was narrowly approved, 68 to 32--one more vote than the required two-thirds. The White House victory was all the sweeter because of the effort involved. Few times in recent history has a President mounted such a strenuous campaign to influence public opinion. Before the lobbying began last fall, polls showed that some 46% of the American public opposed the treaties, while 39% favored the treaties, which Carter had signed last September after 13 years of negotiations under four Administrations. A February Gallup poll indicated that 45% of Americans favored the pact and 42% were opposed--a turn-about for which the Administration can claim substantial credit. (October 15, 1979) In the port of Balboa, workmen nailed up a sign reading BIENVENIDO AL PUERTO DE BALBOA--BRIDGE OF THE WORLD. As evening fell, a solemn, subdued crowd of Americans watched as the Stars and Stripes was lowered--for the last time--at the U.S.- operated headquarters of the Panama Canal Co. Next morning an animated group of Panamanians cheered as their country's white, red and blue banner was run up a new flagpole atop bush-covered Ancon Hill. The Panama Canal Zone, the 648-sq.-mi. enclave that had been under U.S. sovereignty since 1903, had ceased to exist. Its absorption by Panama was the first step in a process that will give that country control of the Big Ditch by the year 2000. [In Nicaragua, at decade's end, a dynastic dictatorship installed in the 1930s with U.S. assistance was finally overthrown. Unfortunately, instead of democracy, an increasingly repressive Marxist regime succeeded it, leaving a difficult foreign policy legacy to the U.S. in the 1980s.] (July 30, 1979) The sun had not yet risen when the blue-and-white presidential helicopter took off from the hills above Managua. It hovered over a heavily fortified complex in the heart of the war-torn capital and flicked on its landing lights. For the last time, President Anastasio ("Tacho") Somoza Debayle gazed down upon the bunker that had been his combination home and command post for the past 20 months. Then the chopper alighted at Las Mercedes Airport, where Somoza's private jet was standing by. Moments later, the wan and pasty-faced dictator, drooping with fatigue, was on his way into exile in the U.S. Thus ended, ingloriously, the 46-year reign of the Somoza dynasty. It was as if a giant weight had been lifted off Nicaragua's back. Late in the week, after the new provisional Government of National Reconstruction had taken command of Managua, the capital awoke to an orchestra of gunfire. It was not a resumption of the civil war that ended in Somoza's humiliating defeat. Instead, guerrillas of the victorious Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) were firing their weapons in jubilation. Men and women cheered and cried tears of joy as a huge equestrian statue of the dictator's father, the founder of the Somoza dynasty, was dislodged from its pedestal in front of Managua's sports arena. </body> </article> </text>