Neruda’s next stop on the trip back home was Lima, where Jorge Edwards was serving as the concierge of the Chilean embassy. Neruda gave a benefit reading for the victims of a recent earthquake in northern Peru, and the event was attended by an overflow crowd.
The Nerudas stayed at Edwards’s house, and he described the complex process of making things just right for the poet, including ensuring that expensive whiskeys and fine wines were always on hand: little luxuries, among others, that Neruda had come to expect wherever he went.
The exorbitant tastes and possessions of these literary Champagne Communists, especially at this point in the century, in their careers, and in their lives, led to much criticism. There was, however, theoretical justification that both Jill Levine, then and now, and Edwards could appreciate. As the latter put it: “No one was seeking absolute egalitarianism—which had been discredited in the early years of the revolution—but rather equality of possibilities. Among other things, socialism had been formulated precisely in order for poets and creators to consume a magnum bottle of Dom Pérignon once in a while. It wasn’t just for the empty-headed children of multimillionaires!” Neruda certainly held himself to this standard rather than a more modest lifestyle. Even his Nobel winnings would go toward acquiring another large home.*
Many of Neruda’s friends and peers, however, took issue with what they saw as a gulf between his words and actions. Stephen Spender, for instance, who worked with him supporting the Spanish Republic and championed his poetry in the English-speaking world, said, “I cannot really consider Pablo Neruda a communist at all. His kind of communism was almost entirely rhetorical; he was a sort of highly privileged propagandist.”
Even Matilde, who was so far from being a communist, played both sides. During the Allende years, Neruda helped in every way he could, giving readings, fund-raising, and making appearances. Matilde complained: “Listen, dammit, you know the Communists are screwing you over.” “Sure,” he answered, “but don’t you like it when you go to the Soviet Union and they treat you like a queen?”
* * *
The UP’s electoral agenda called for revolutionary changes in Chile’s political, economic, and social structures in order to overcome the misery imposed upon the working class by capitalism, exploitation, and class privilege. Allende promised a peaceful transition to socialism. The centrist Christian Democrats’ Radomiro Tomic was considered to be an uncompromising leftist by the Chilean Right, and the two groups were unable to form an alliance. The Right thus supported the Nationalist Party’s Jorge Alessandri (son of previous progressive president Arturo Alessandri). The Chilean vote was divided once again into thirds.
President Richard Nixon felt that “if Allende should win the election in Chile, and then you have Castro in Cuba, what you’ll in effect have in Latin America is a red sandwich, and eventually, it will all be red.”* The CIA had intervened in past elections, but not to the extent that it was doing so now. In fact, in the run-up to the 1964 presidential campaign, the CIA had spent an astounding $3 million on anti-Allende propaganda. It comprised the extensive use of the press, radio, even direct mailings, relying heavily on images of Soviet tanks and Cuban firing squads and targeting especially women.
With the centrist Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei’s victory in that election, President Johnson’s administration moved to support the government, trying to appease the Chilean people enough to prevent them from turning to the Left and Allende’s UP coalition. Suddenly, Chile was receiving more aid per capita than any other country in the hemisphere. Though Chile faced few, if any, security threats, the United States also upped its military aid, totaling $91 million from 1962 to 1970, trying to establish good relations with the highest generals. Meanwhile, the CIA continued to infiltrate Chile, spending over $2 million on propping up the Christian Democrats and diminishing support for the UP. It also now appears that the KGB spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in Chile leading up to the election, supporting Allende’s campaign.
Leading up to the 1970 election, with Allende appearing so strong, the CIA stepped up its game. But still its efforts failed, despite nearly a decade of experience in covert action against Allende.
Salvador Allende received the most votes on September 4, with 36.3 percent, just 1.4 percent more than the Right’s Jorge Alessandri. With almost three million votes cast, the margin between the two was just under forty thousand. Tomic came in a close third, with a strong 27.8 percent, reflecting just how divided the country was. According to the Chilean constitution at the time, if no candidate was elected with a 50 percent majority, the National Congress chose who would be president between the top two in the popular vote. In the three times this had occurred since 1932, Congress had always confirmed the candidate who earned the most votes in the popular election. The confirmation vote would take place on October 24.
Following Allende’s victory, in a meeting with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, CIA director Richard Helms, and Attorney General John Mitchell, Nixon issued explicit orders to foment a coup to prevent Allende’s inauguration or, failing that, to destroy his subsequent administration. The CIA took down Nixon’s directives in handwritten notes. They constitute the first record of a U.S. president ordering the overthrow of a democratically elected government.
Nixon ordered the CIA to “make the [Chilean]
