[104-10225-10027.pdf — page 68]
> [Figure: Workers occupying a plant outside of Santiago proclaim their intention to hold it to the death. The initials of the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) are painted on the wall by the gate. Photo by Maggi Costelloe.]Immediately evident from the figures for 1971, industrial growth had reached 8.3 percent, agrarian production (based on plantings before Allende's accession to power) had increased by 5.3 percent, and unemployment had dropped to record lows. The Communist Party in a report to a Popular Unity "conclave" in early 1972 warned that "very strong inflationary pressures could make our situation acute," but the government took no action to deal with the problem. The continuing optimism ci government policymakers at this time was expressed at a Round Table in Santiago sponsored by the University of Sussex and the Chilean Planning Office in March 1972. In the course of discussion Racemiro Tomic, the defeated Christian Democratic presidential candidate, asserted that the Allende government had committed a "fatal political error" in failing to establish an "institutional majority" in the Congress through a "far-reaching agreement between socialists inspired by Christianity and those inspired by Marxism—that is, between the Christian Democrats and Popular Unity—in the period following the 1970 presidential election." Altencie's representatives confidently replied that "with a gradual heightening of the political consciousness of the proletariat, there seemed to be no obstacles in the internat logic of the Chilean bourgucis state to prevent the workers' winning sufficient strength to gain control of the legislature as well as the executive.""On the political front, there were individuals and groups on both sides who attempted to stem the movement toward polarization, which they correctly foresaw would lead to the breakdown of Chilean institutions. Two important efforts to arrive at a compromise on the issue of the constitutional amendment on the "Three Areas of Property" were made in the first part of 1972. In April the Left Radicals, who had entered the Allende government in January, carried on lengthy negotiations with the Christian Democrats to harmmer out a satisfactory agreement on this issue, only to have it rejected by the top command of the Popular Unity coalition parties. The Left Radicals responded by leaving the government and joining the opposition, a move Allende described as "a stab in the back." " A second set of negotiations in June between the head of the Christian Democratic Party and Allende's Minister of Justice broke down when the time limit set by the Christian Democrats expired and the PDC leadership refused to extend it.The two sets of negotiations seem to have collapsed for related reasons. In April the left wing of the Popular Unity coalition was unwilling to accept a compromise which would slow down or stop the forward movement of the government nationalization program, while in June the right wing of the Christian De.nocrats could point to an impending by-election ir. mid-July as a reason for discontinuing discussions. Both cases illustrated a general problem posed by the Chilean multiparty system. Once political conflict became polarized, the extremes held the rest of the opposing coalitions hostage and prevented what could have been a convergence of views in the center.The negotiations were interspersed with a series of demonstrations and counterdemonstrations by the government and the opposition which always stopped just short of open violence. Several observers, including the American Ambassador to[^1] J. Ann Zammit and Gaarial Palma is The Cav.ean Road to Socialism, Austin, University of Texas Press, 19.3 20. 38, 247.The Communist Party report appears in Ei Mercurio (International 20:00 30. 31-Feb. 6, 1972, p. 4.[^1] Partica izquierda Radical, Trayectoria Porsica del PIR (Political Path of the PIR), Santiago, 1972, p.51