Allende's Chile: An inside View

W ere the UP tactics in the preinauguration period correct? What did this period foreshadow? What does it mean for a socialist movement to have won the executive arm of the government through election? What were the strategies of the UP and its opponents?

Sergio Ramos, in Chile:¿una economía de transición? says that the UP leadership "played a decisive role" in the preinauguration period, that "judging by the results...its direction was, without any doubt, fully successful." Ramos praises the "flexible application of general policies through discussions and compromises with other forces, an example being the discussion of the Statute of Constitutional Guarantees with the CD, which obtained its support for Allende without the UP having to separate itself one tittle from its own program."¹ Others criticize the UP for entering into discussions and compromises with the Christian Democrats, asking why it agreed to the constitutional guarantees which could only hamstring it in any attempt to carry out a true revolution. Alain Labrousse writes in L'Expérience Chilienne: Réformisme ou Révolution?: "If there was a moment when the choice between two roads was still possible, it was without doubt that one. But the other road implied the organization of militias across the whole country...."²

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