Lewis Diuguid
- 1966
Fellowship Title:
- Chile and the Government of President Eduardo Frei
Fellowship Year:
- 1966
Land of a Thousand Strikes
LHD-2 Santiago, Chile April 7, 1966 Mr. Diuguid is a 1965 Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship award winner on leave from The Washington Post. Permission to publish this article may be sought from the Foreign Editor, The Washington Post. Chile’s great political forces clashed violently over copper last month, leaving eight dead laborers 7500 arid feet up in the Andes. The violence was unusual in this country given to peaceful debate and now attempting peaceful change. But U.S.-exploited copper is the traditional catalyst of confrontation, and the dead miners were an apt symbol of what seems to be labor’s fate here — the organized worker is more a politician’s tool than a protagonist in debate over issues crucial to his welfare. Along with the blood in the dust at El Salvador mine the month brought other changes, including a shift in the style of President Eduardo Frei. He has applied a “firm hand” to the far left that opposes his “Revolution in Liberty.” A rise in copper prices also looked imminent. But potentially the more important
Ah Youth
Santiago, Chile March 7, 1966 Mr. Diuguid is a 1965 Alicia Patterson Fund fellowship award winner on leave from The Washington Post. Permission to publish this article may be sought from the Foreign Editor, The Washington Post. On a Spartan field of dust, the Communist Youth of Chile encamped here last month to make a fervent appeal for allegiance in this old land of young men. Attendance at the Congress was low and accomplishments apparently few, but there was no mistaking the challenge to the ruling Christian Democratic Party; youth will be served, but by whom? By President Eduardo Frei’s count, 58 per cent of Chile’s nearly 8.5 million people are under 25 years old. The nation’s intensely political parties have all acted on the vote getting imperative implicit in the statistic, with the Christian Democrats easily the most successful so far. Much of the motive power behind the present party and government comes from men now barely 30. Whether the Christian Democrats can also capture the imagination of coming waves of youth is a