Word: junta
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...junta leaders are determined never to permit a return to the rule of old-style politics and politicians who, they feel, brought the country to the brink of ruin. "Elections divide, political parties divide," explained one veteran diplomat in Santiago. "There isn't any room for either in this government's thought." Instead, the junta seems bent on building up family units, communities and unions, all carefully controlled from the top, as the best way of expressing Chilean interests...
Another unsettling, and from the junta's point of view unwelcome, disclosure came from Washington. A letter by Democratic Congressman Michael Harrington of Massachusetts, leaked to the press last week, contained some devastating excerpts from testimony earlier this year by CIA Director William Colby before the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence. Colby apparently admitted that the CIA, with White House approval, had funneled some $8 million into Chile between 1970 and 1973, first to keep Allende from being elected and later to weaken his government. The revelations were potentially damaging to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who chaired...
Colby's testimony was also embarrassing to the military rulers of Chile. The disclosures cast doubt on the junta's claim that it was misrule by Allende and the politicians that brought ruin to Chile. Indeed, some experts believe that the CIA disruptions, combined with the curtailment of U.S. foreign aid credits and bank loans, contributed greatly to Allende's economic woes...
Real Hunger. The junta has had its problems in correcting those troubles. The Allende government, by exhausting reserves of foreign exchange, boosting wages and subsidizing food prices to an unreasonable degree, bequeathed an inflation that totaled 842%. The junta's team of fiscal technocrats, many of them disciples of University of Chicago Economist Milton Friedman, have applied a tough austerity program that has let prices rise while holding down wages to keep demand in check. So far, Chile's inflation has come down to a projected 250%-300% for 1974. Still, the average laborer needs to work four...
Despite these problems, and some muted criticism of the regime's regressive policies by Catholic churchmen and leaders of the divided Christian Democratic Party, there is little serious opposition to the junta. Reports TIME'S Rauch: "The majority of Chileans I have talked to inside the country strongly favor what has happened here. Perhaps most people are too relieved at the restoration of order to be angry at the loss of their parliamentary liberties. Despite inflation, the middle class, which deserted Allende, can still manage to make ends meet. Many Chileans, even avid supporters of the coup, will...