Word: chiles
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...Popular Unity Party's policy of nationalizing and expropriating U.S. businesses was widely acclaimed and a pulsing nationalism seemed to speak of more to come. The unknown foe was at last revealed. The hand behind the inflation and food shortages and political disruptions now had a face. Yes, Chile was under siege and times were correspondingly bad. But one could feel a special elation in the cafes that at last a culprit had been clearly identified and found guilty. Through all the chaos and personal trauma of political and economic deterioration there was finally some small cause for hope, symbolic...
March 1972 was the beginning of the end for Allende's Chile. The congressional electoral victory had set Allende's opponents firmly in motion to destroy him after they realized he would not be voted out of office by the Chilean people. Though no one knew it at the time, the ITT disclosures were not so much cause for future hope as they were indications of future tragedy...
...election plurality of 36 per cent in the presidential race of 1970, the world waited for a month to see if the Chilean Congress would vote for the first democratically elected Marxist in history. It did by a majority vote of 78 per cent. On October 24, 1970 Chile inaugurated a constitutionally elected Marxist pledged to forge a socialist state. One of Allende's first moves was to open discussions on the expropriation of the Chilean Telephone Company, owned by ITT. Allende wanted more telephones for the poor and claimed ITT had run the telephone system carelessly. ITT denied...
...pitch was strong. The corporation had a platform and a plan. ITT argued that it was illegal for Chile to expropriate U.S. owned property without just compensation. Besides being bad business and illegal, ITT investments were insured by the U.S. government's Overseas Private Investment Corporation, which offered ITT financial protection. However, if Chile expropriated without compensation the U.S. taxpayer would end up footing a $100 million bill on the insurance. This gave the U.S. government a financial stake in ITT's private investments...
Beyond all these legalistic cost/benefit analyses, ITT had another line to sell, one that spoke of ideology, not dollars and cents. ITT noted in its memos on Chile, which are cited in the Senate Multi-National Sub-Committee report, that "we must decide whether we, ourselves, are to return to fundamental principles on which this country [the U.S.] was founded, but also whether we are to stand firm for democracy for the sake of those friends of ours in Latin America who have based their hopes and aspirations on our strength. This is not a time to deny...