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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
President Patricio Aylwin Azócar with President George Bush
at the White House, May 13, 1992
Courtesy, The White House
Enrique Silva Cimma, Aylwin's miniser of foreign
relations
Courtesy Embassy of Chile, Washington
Chile has never been particularly close to the United
States.
The distance between Washington and Santiago is greater
than the
distance between Washington and Moscow. In the twentieth
century,
Chile's giant copper mines were developed by United States
economic
interests, although Europe remained a larger market for
Chilean
products. Chile's democratic governments distanced
themselves from
European fascism during the world wars and embraced the
cause of
the Allies, despite internal pressures to support the Axis
powers.
Chile later joined with the United States in supporting
collective
measures for safeguarding hemispheric security from a
Soviet threat
and welcomed United States support in developing the Air
Force of
Chile. But the advent of the cold war and the official
Chilean
policy of support for the inter-American system
exacerbated
internal conflicts in Chile. The growing presence of the
Marxist
left meant a sharp increase in anti-American sentiment in
Chilean
public opinion, a sentiment that was fueled by opposition
to the
United States presence in Vietnam, the United States
conflict with
Cuba, and increased United States intervention in domestic
Chilean
politics.
During the 1960s, the United States identified Chile as
a model
country, one that would provide a different, democratic
path to
development, countering the popularity of Cuba in the
developing
world. To that end, the United States strongly supported
the
candidacy of Eduardo Frei Montalva in 1964 with overt and
covert
funds and subsequently supported his government in the
implementation of urban and rural reforms. This support
spawned
considerable resentment against the United States in
Chile's
conservative upper class, as well as among the Marxist
left.
The election of Allende was viewed in Washington as a
significant setback to United States interests worldwide.
National
Security Adviser Henry Kissinger was particularly
concerned about
the implications for European politics of the free
election of a
Marxist in Chile. Responding to these fears and a concern
for
growing Soviet influence in the Western Hemisphere, the
United
States embarked on a covert campaign to prevent Allende
from
gaining office and to destabilize his government after his
election
was ratified. Although the United States did not have a
direct hand
in the overthrow of Allende, it welcomed the coup and
provided
assistance to the military regime.
The widespread violations of human rights in Chile,
combined
with a strong rejection of covert activities engaged in
abroad by
the administration of President Richard M. Nixon,
galvanized United
States congressional opposition to United States ties with
Chile's
military government. With the election of Jimmy Carter in
1976, the
United States took an openly hostile attitude toward the
Chilean
military government, publicly condemning human rights
violations
and pressing for the restoration of democracy.
Particularly
disturbing to the United States government was the
complicity of
the Chilean intelligence services in the assassination in
Washington of Chilean ambassador Orlando Letelier and one
of his
associates, a United States citizen. That incident
contributed to
the isolation of the Pinochet government internationally
and led to
a sharp rift in relations between both countries. The
Chilean
military turned elsewhere for its procurement needs and
encouraged
the development of a domestic arms industry to replace
United
States equipment
(see The
Defense Industry
, ch. 5).
With the defeat of Jimmy Carter and the election of
Ronald
Reagan, the pendulum in the relations between both
countries swung
the other way. Reagan argued that anticommunist
authoritarian
regimes should not be antagonized for fear that they might
be
undermined, leading to the triumph of a Marxist left, as
in
Nicaragua. Chile would be pushed to respect human rights
through
"quiet diplomacy," while the United States government
reestablished
normal ties with the dictatorship.
The new policy did not last long. After the riots in
Santiago
in 1983, the United States began to worry that the
Pinochet
government was no longer a solution to a potential threat
from the
far left, but part of the problem. United States officials
increasingly began to reflect the concerns of prominent
conservatives in Chile, who believed that Pinochet's own
personal
ambitions could stand in the way of a successful
transition back to
civilian rule.
The shift in policy became far more apparent in
Reagan's second
term, when the Reagan administration, struggling to oppose
the
leftist government of Nicaragua, sought to show its
consistency by
criticizing the right-wing government of Chile. The United
States
made it clear that it did not see the Pinochet
government's
plebiscite as a satisfactory step toward democracy
supported the
option of open and competitive elections. Whereas in the
early
1980s the United States government had embraced the
military regime
while refusing to take the democratic opposition
seriously, by the
end of the decade the United States was actively backing
the
opposition in its effort to obtain a fair electoral
process so that
it could attempt to defeat Pinochet at his own game.
Pinochet's
defeat was considered by Washington to be a vindication of
its
policies.
With the election of Patricio Aylwin in Chile,
relations
between the two countries improved greatly. The
administration of
George Bush welcomed Chile's commitment to free-market
policies,
while praising the new government's commitment to
democracy. The
United States also supported the Aylwin government's human
rights
policies and came to a resolution of the Letelier
assassination by
agreeing to a bilateral mediation mechanism and
compensation of the
victims' families.
A few issues have complicated United States-Chile
relations,
including the removal of Chilean fruit from United States
supermarkets in 1991 by the Food and Drug Administration,
after
tainted grapes were allegedly discovered. The United
States also
objected to Chile's intellectual property legislation,
particularly
the copying of drug patents. However, these issues pale by
comparison with the strong ties between the two countries
and the
admiration that United States officials have expressed for
Chile's
remarkable economic performance. As evidence of this
"special"
relationship, both the Bush and the Bill Clinton
administrations
have indicated United States willingness to sign a
free-trade
agreement with Chile in the aftermath of the successful
negotiations with Mexico on the North American Free Trade
Agreement (
NAFTA--see Glossary).
Although Chile has pressed strongly
for the
agreement as a way to ensure access to United States
markets, the
United States in 1991 was replaced by Japan as Chile's
largest
trading partner, with the United States accounting for
less than 20
percent of Chile's world trade. Ironically, in the
post-cold war
era, anti-Americanism in Chile is more prevalent in
military
circles and among the traditional right, still bitter
about United
States support for democratic parties prior to the
plebiscite and
concerned that the United States has hegemonic
presumptions over
the region.
Data as of March 1994
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