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himself had not dragged Chem into the whirlpoolthey might have been content to rremain that way.But their position was made tolerable by thePresident's own decisions. On the one hand Uvywere encouraged to turn a blind eye to the steadygrowth of illegal, para-military fones under thecommand of the President's friends or others whowere more extreine in their revolutionary com-mitment. On the other hand they were requiredto serve in his cabinet to maintain "law andorder and reassure the country of the President'sconstitutional propriety. On top of that theywere threatened by attempts from within thePresident's own circle to subvert their authoritywithin their own forces, as in the naval con!spiracy uncovered in July 1973, and the publiccall for a navel insurrection by Allrade's friend iand fellow-leader of the Socialist Party, SenatorCarlos Altamirano, made only three day's beforethe coup.A surer way can hardly be imagined of pro-voking mutiny among responsibis etfisers, andIt is only surprising, in reuospect, that it did nothappen sooner-as in most Latin Anmericancountries it surely would have done to ascribeI the mutiny thereafter to the machinations of"the ruling clars" is to understand nothing.either of military men in general or of Chile's mili.tary in particular.SIMILARLY, THE SO-CALLED "bosses' strikes" whichpreceded the military coup were, in fact, nothingof the kind. The lorry men who paralysed half,or more, of Chile's transport by their month-longstrike in September-October 1972, and their evenlonger strike in July-September 1973, were mostlyowner-drivers who would have fitted fairly readilyinto the Teamsters' Union in the United States.They displayed the fierce economic and social pro-tectionism typical of what in Europe or NorthAmerica would be called the lower middle class,and they saw themselves threatened by gallopinginflation and by what they believed to be theGovernment's intention to destroy their way of'life through state control or ownership of theirservices. Along with the small shopkeepers whosupported thein-not forgetting the queue-wearyhousewives whose famous "Saucepan March" inSantiago was the most dramatic early sign ofrevolt-they might be classed as the Poujadistesof Chile. But by no stretch of the imaginationcould they be described as representatives of a"boss" or "ruling" class, or even as beingespecially "privileged" in a socid or economicsense. Moreover, they owed little, if any, allegianceto the traditional political groupings of Chileanpolitics, although they obviously welcomed anysupport they could get from them. On thecontrary, they tended to cut across the traditionalspectrum and look to new leaders, whether ofright or Icft. Thus, their principal spokesman,Senor Loon Vilarin, was actually a member ofAllende's Socialist Party while others of theleadership came from the Nationalist Party raaks"Although even that was not unthinkable towardsthe end, such was the chaos the economy had falieninto. The last time I left Chile, a week or so before thacoup, I drove over the Andes to Argentina and at theChilean customs post at the summa: of the pass Ifound als tahing a large Amencan car to pand laying upon the snow-covered ground around itone ton of copper ingots that had been hidden منvarious nooks and crannies of the chasis It wouldhave been worth around U.S. 1200 in cash inArgentina- fortune, by then, in Clean terms ofabout four milwe caudos on the bis marketor frowa no party at affThe members of the various professionalassociations, like doctors, dentists, lawyers andairline pilots, which joined the second transportstrike, were likewise not "bosses" although theywere certainly, in Chulean terms, rather more"privilegel" Their protest was probably moreideological than that of the lorry-men and theshopkeepers-it was usually their wives, forexample, who objected most forcibly to theGovernment's politically-inspired changes in theschool curriculum-but it was also provoked bysheer exasperation and fear at the growingthreat to their professional status posed by theGovempient's coinbination of acninistrativeinctliciency and dubious social priorities. Forexample, Chile's economic collapse and ir.Mationnot only threatened many doctors financiallybut seriously frustrated their work. Some earlyreports from Santiago after the roup made thepoint that hospitals were appealing urgentlyfor bandages and drugs to treat the wounded,as if that indicated that the number of casualtiesmust be overwhelmingly high. But bandages,drugs, and other niedical supplies had been onlysporadically obtainable in Chile for many monthsbeforehand. The daily round of the pharmaciesin search of the simplest medicines had become a .regular feature of Santiago life; and foreignerabassies had been driven to stock-pile their ownsupplies, imported through the diplomatic bag,for the treatment of the most normal ailmentsamong their staffs. It was partly in the hope ofending that situation that many otherwiseconscientious doctors finally joined the movementto get Allende out.NORSHOULD IT DE FORGOTTEN that some of themost damaging strikes of all were those ofChile's most influential blue-collar workers-thecopper-miners. The last lorry-men's strike wasimmediately preceded by a two months' strike forhigher wages by miners at El Tenicate, the coun-try's biggest mine. Because copper accounts forthree-quarters of Chile's foreign earnings, thatstrike probably cost the country far more in realtermis than the transport strike, whose costs to agreat extenf could be absorbed internally. Indeed,as one West European diplomat remarked to mein Santiago, the money lost in those two monthsat El. Teniente would have more than repaidChile's entire debt to his government-a debtwhich Allende at that moment was trying to roschedule for the second consecutive year.It is true that the copper-miners were the elite!of Chile's blue-collar class and, no doubt,wanted to keep it that way. To that extent,perhaps, they may be deemed "privileged"-like, say, coal miners or motor car workers inBritain; although I doubt if that is what membersof the British Labour Party, or the New Statesman,can have had in mind in embracing the "privi-leged" thesis. But a more important reason for theminers' restiveness, I believe, is that althoughthey were the most vital of all Chile's manualworkers they suffered far more than most oftheir erstwhile comrades from the country'sshattering economic decline under Allende. Un-like farm and factory workers, they could notsupplement their oficial wages by selling thefruits of their labour on the black market. Thefarm worker who could take home a cock