------------------
Foreign Snapshot: Copper, Crosses and Sickles
Unlike many of its neighbors in Latin America, Chile had a relatively easy consolidating its democracy in face of the usual adversities a country with its profile inevitably had to deal with (an overly politicized military, institutions which didn't possess the respect they deserved, an oligarchic upper class who saw the state as a mere extension of their interests, among others), at least after the 1930s. Following a brief but brutal civil war in 1891 that caused the death of at least 5.000 people, Chile entered the 20th century as a parliamentary republic, one where the combination of an atrophied executive and a bickering legislature led to constant political instability (in the 34 years that stretched from 1891 to 1925, the country went through 102 cabinets), electoral fraud and severe concentration of wealth. This state of affairs began to fall apart in 1920, with the election of the reform-minded Arturo Alessandri to the presidency by a margin of just 4 votes in the electoral college. His turbulent administration was wracked by constant clashes with Congress, dominated by conservative politicians, and ended with two military coups, one in September 1924 and another in January 1925.
A military dictatorship ensued, one led Carlos Ibáñez del Campo. Though his tenure as president officially began in July 1927, in truth he was running the country from behind the scenes since 1925, when he was appointed Minister of War. Ibáñez's term had a dictatorial and populist character, combining old school persecution of political dissidents (through arrests and exiles) and cooptation of the masses and labour organizations which were receptive to his agenda (and thus powerless). The latter was accomplished through an enormous program of public works, funded by loans taken from American banks, and the application of new laws regulating various aspects of the relationship between bosses and employees, from insurance to compensation in case of accidents at work. However, everything came crashing down with the onset of the Great Depression, and Alessandri returned to power in 1932. Despite fears that the military would intervene again (and a failed coup attempt made by local Nazis), he served his six year term and was succeeded by Pedro Aguirre Cerda, whose victorious coalition, the Popular Front, had members whose views ranged from centrist to centre-left (such as his Radical Party), to the Chilean Communist Party.
The three Radical presidents: Pedro Aguirre Cerda, Juan Antonio Ríos and Gabriel González Videla.
This unusual but productive alliance lasted until 1948, presiding over several important social changes, especially in regards to public education and healthcare (an approach shown most clearly by Cerda's main slogan, "gobernar es educar" - to govern is to educate), but it was, in the end, powerless in the face of the trends set by the outbreak of the Cold War. With Chile solidly under the American sphere of influence, and following several clashes over important posts in the cabinet, the last Radical president, Gabriel González Videla, outlawed the Communist Party and veered to the right, provoking a split in his own party in the process. With the expiration of his term in 1952, Videla was succeeded by none other than Carlos Ibáñez del Campo, who, after two failed attempts in 1938 and 1944, finally returned to the presidency with vague promises and massive support from the left, a testament to his political idiosyncracy. But by then he was old and ailing (not unlike Getúlio Vargas, his Brazilian counterpart), and so he the task of actually governing the country to his cabinet. Inflation rose (though it did fall in the later years of his administration) and strikes became common as a result, his only notable achievement in this time being the legalization of the communists and their activities in 1958 - which just so happened to be an election year.
Four major candidates took part in the presidential race, each with a sizable faction backing them. The right's representative was Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, a businessman and senator who served as Videla's Minister of Finance and, during this period, enacted an austerity program that earned him great unpopularity among the working class and led to his resignation. The left, comprised of the Socialist, Communist and a patchwork of smaller parties, rallied around Salvador Allende, who was Aguirre Cerda's Minister of Health and also became a senator in the following years. The Christian Democrats, a centrist party which nominated Eduardo Frei Montalva, tried to pose as an alternative to the "extremes" posed by the two main candidates, as did Luis Bossay, the declining Radical Party's standard bearer. Neither succeeded: as the final results showed, the election was a showdown between Allende and Alessandri.
Allende prevailed, but he did so by the smaller margin ever achieved by a victorious candidate since 1938 (1). The congressional negotiations that confirmed his victory (the legislature functioned as an electoral college whenever nobody got more than 50% of the popular vote) were extremely fractious, and some elements considered launching a military coup to prevent him from taking office. Neither of these possibilities materialized, with Congress unwilling to do away with a precedent that existed for decades and the commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army categorically stating the armed forces' role was to defend the country from foreign threats, not meddle in politics (2). But even if he was sworn in on schedule, in November 3 1958, Allende's position was far from secure - his original coalition had nowhere near a majority in either house of Congress, the economy was still shaky and, perhaps worst of all, Washington's paranoia in regards to Latin American governments not completely subordinate to its will had only grown since the CIA's failure in Guatemala.
The newly inaugurated president had to broaden his base of support and fast, lest he go down in history as a failure at best or a dead man at worst. So he toned down on his most radical proposals (an immediate nationalization of copper, for example, rather than a negotiated one) and tried to build an alliance with the Christian Democrats and Radicals, in an attempt to rebuild the Popular Front (3). Both parties accepted, thankfully, in so small part due to Allende's own experience in working with the original front so many years before. But although the Allende Administration couldn't lead its country down a "Chilean Path to Socialism", it could definitely still implement substantial reforms, reforms everyone in the governing coalition agreed were necessary to free Chile from the social and economic shackles binding it to the past. Several large estates were broken up, the farmers being allowed to establish syndicates to defend their interests, free meals introduced in public schools, volunteers recruited and sent to assist people who lived in places ignored by previous governments, among other measures.
But all these policies were drowned out by a catastrophe, one caused by the Earth itself, whose consequences affected not only Chile but many other countries in the Pacific Ocean. On May 22 1960, a massive earthquake, the most powerful in recorded history, obliterated much of Valdivia and the Chilean coast, the tsunami it generated causing even more damage and hitting places as distant as Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines. Estimates on the number of dead, still unclear to this day, range from one to six thousand, and 2 million people were left homeless. Relief and reconstruction became Santiago's main priorities once the ground stopped shaking, its prominent figures willing to drop their (often well-earned) skepticisms of this or that country in order to get as much aid as possible. Naturally, as was so common during the Cold War, it didn't take long for the superpowers to muscle themselves in, some of the money they sent as aid sneakily finding itself in the pocket of groups who, to put it simply, had nothing to do with the relief efforts (4).
A street in Valdivia after the earthquake.
Nevertheless, the president Allende's handling of the earthquake's aftermath, along with hts previous policies, earned him the electorate's approval, something that was made clear in the 1961 legislative elections, in which the ruling coalition increased its majority (5). This year also brought about the end of the Eisenhower Administration, and with it the flow of money and arms sent to the underground right-wing groups whose purpose was to sow instability and eventually launch a coup. Even if Chile wouldn't be included in the Alliance for Progress until 1964 (the year Allende left office), relations between Washington and Santiago improved considerably as the former shifted its methods from sponsoring coups to a less scandalous approach (6). A new theater was opened in the Cold War, one whose battles were fought with votes instead of guns. Sadly, it was very much an exception.
------------------
Notes:
(1) IOTL the leftist electorate was divided by the presence of an independent candidate named Antonio Zamorano, who siphoned votes from Allende and allowed Alessandri to win by a narrow margin. He doesn't run ITTL for whatever reason, which means Allende gets the votes he received and, thus, victory.
(2) The Chilean Army had a longstanding tradition of not involving itself in politics before 1973, with the exception of a few failed attempts and conspiracies here and there.
(3) Many of Allende's measures after his OTL election, especially regarding land reform and copper nationalization, were actually pumped-up versions of policies that were implemented by the Alessandri and Frei administrations. He's the one who first enacts these changes ITTL, so there's no need to radicalize.
(4) IOTL the Nixon Administration, which was pretty much a miscellanea of cartoon villains, spearheaded efforts to help Peru (then governed by Juan Velasco Alvarado) after its own catastrophic earthquake in 1970, so I don't see why Eisenhower would treat Chile any differently.
(5) The left and centre-left made substantial gains in the IOTL elections too, but that was out of opposition to Alessandri's policy of wage freezes to fight inflation.
(6) I swear the next chapter will explain what's happening in the US ITTL, hopefully in a plausible way.
