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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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<text>
<title>
(1970s) Latin America
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1970s Highlights
</history>
<link 07447>
<link 07302>
<link 06121>
<link 05560>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Latin America
</hdr>
<body>
<p> [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.
</p>
<p> Then Chile, a traditional bastion of democracy, elected a
Marxist President.]
</p>
<p>(September 21, 1970)
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> (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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p>(July 26, 1971)
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> [Inflation rampaged and the economy stagnated. Finally,
Chile's military did as its neighbors had done.]
</p>
<p>(September 24, 1973)
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p>(October 1, 1973)
</p>
<p> 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.'"
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p>(September 23, 1974)
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> [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.]
</p>
<p>(July 2, 1973)
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> [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.
</p>
<p> 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.]
</p>
<p>(September 24, 1979)
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> [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.]
</p>
<p>(August 22, 1977)
</p>
<p> 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."
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p>(March 27, 1978)
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p>(October 15, 1979)
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> [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.]
</p>
<p>(July 30, 1979)
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.
</p>
<p> 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.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>