Chile Restored

It came as a surprise to me, when I visited Chile earlier this year, to hear friends there speaking of Allende’s three years in power as merely an interlude—although an annoying and grotesque one—not a catastrophe. In their view, it is the previous six years of Eduardo Frei’s Christian Democratic government that are to blame for the demagogic promises, the atmosphere of class struggle, and the open Marxization of the universities, the labor unions, and the media.

I was in Chile in 1966, two years into Frei’s government. Half of his ministers were Marxists, as were most Chilean union leaders. And the prestigious Jesuit magazine Mensaje, under the influence of the Belgian priest Father Roger Vekemans, was still further left. The kiosks displayed Marxist material, and the work of writers and artists was not published or exhibited unless they followed a leftist line. Raul Silva Henriquez, then cardinal-archbishop of Santiago, who received me, was angered by my criticisms of Teilhard de Chardin and gave me only a half-hearted benediction when 1 left. But he was all smiles when Allende became president, and he presented the visiting Fidel with a valuable Bible. He would later refuse to celebrate a Te Deum in the cathedral when requested todosoby the new Pinochet government.

TM

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Thomas Molnar

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It came as a surprise to me, when I visited Chile earlier this year, to hear friends there speaking of Allende’s three years in power as merely an interlude—although an annoying and grotesque one—not a catastrophe. In their view, it is the previous six years of Eduardo Frei’s Christian Democratic government that are to blame for the demagogic promises, the atmosphere of class struggle, and the open Marxization of the universities, the labor unions, and the media.

I was in Chile in 1966, two years into Frei’s government. Half of his ministers were Marxists, as were most Chilean union leaders. And the prestigious Jesuit magazine Mensaje, under the influence of the Belgian priest Father Roger Vekemans, was still further left. The kiosks displayed Marxist material, and the work of writers and artists was not published or exhibited unless they followed a leftist line. Raul Silva Henriquez, then cardinal-archbishop of Santiago, who received me, was angered by my criticisms of Teilhard de Chardin and gave me only a half-hearted benediction when 1 left. But he was all smiles when Allende became president, and he presented the visiting Fidel with a valuable Bible. He would later refuse to celebrate a Te Deum in the cathedral when requested todosoby the new Pinochet government.