Word: videla
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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When Communists' votes helped President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla into office last November, he paid off with three Cabinet posts-the first for the comrades in South America. Of the three, Agriculture pleased the party most. The wretched lot of Chile's 500,000 landless campesinos invites Communism. For a day's work, the average field hand gets 35?, a large piece of hard bread, and, occasionally, a sack of beans. His home (on most farms) is a small, windowless, mud-&-thatch hut, with a dirt floor...
Agriculture Secretary Miguel Concha has led the Communist agitation for legalized farm unions. Last week Gonzalez Videla had on his desk a bill, passed by Congress' rightist majority, designed to block Concha's efforts and to maintain existing farm labor conditions. The bill restricted each union to the fundo (estate) where its members worked, forbade them to federate, and banned the troublemaking migrant workers from membership. Cream of the clauses was one stipulating that only literate workers could join. This barred 90% of the campesinos...
...Communist gains, important for Brazil, were even more important in the context of emerging Communist strength in Latin America. In Chile, the Communists, thanks to their balance of power in Congress, had helped to elect President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla. President Videla rewarded them with three Cabinet posts, two of which clinched their control of Chile's vital nitrate, copper and coal unions, and of agriculture...
Anybody could come and tell his troubles to the President. Every Wednesday morning Gabriel González Videla cleared his desk, shooed away Cabinet Ministers, and for three hours held "Audiencias Populares." The sessions became so popular with Chile's Juan Pueblo that the waiting list soon reached...
...Paraguay and Uruguay. The plan was temporarily shelved after Bolivians overthrew their pro-Perón Villarroel Government last July. But the Chileans, if they felt any fears of Argentine-domination, kept quiet about them. The press without exception praised the Argentine treaty, generally gave President González Videla high marks for starting the project. Said González himself: "There is absolutely no reason to fear Argentine economic penetration. . . ." Chileans obviously saw it all as a means to prosperity. Whatever the ultimate political significance, Argentines backed the treaty for the same reason...