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PASTOR GENERAL'S REPORT, August 1, 1980
Page 14
ON THE WORLD SCENE
REPORT FROM SOUTH AMERICA--PART 1:
CHILE--THIRD WORLD WONDER
Presently, I am mid-way through a three-week, five-nation fact-finding
trip through South America.
Accompanying me is Mr. Keith Speaks, publi
city director for La PURE VERDAD, the Spanish-language version of The
PLAIN TRUTH.
The trip so far has been eye-opening, and hopefully will produce good
copy for all versions of the PT.
We haven't covered much of the Latin
American scene in the magazine for some time.
But now things are popping,
and if there's one thing I've learned so far, it's the crying need for
righteous, just, sound government here and everywhere in the world.
The Latin American world is still reverberating from yet another coup
d'etat in Bolivia.
Poor Bolivia--last year alone it had four presidents.
Just two weeks ago, still another military junta assumed control, forcing
interim leader Lidia Gueiler Tejada--the nation's first woman President
--to resign.
This latest takeover brings the tally for coup-prone Bolivia
to 189 governments in 155 years!
In neighboring Peru, the president who was deposed by the military 12
years ago--Fernando Belaunde Terry-....:was returned to office in a civilian
government yesterday--on the 159th anniversary of Peru's independence from
Spain.
How long he'll last this time around, nobody knows.
Radical
leftists are already promising a terror campaign.
Everywhere the con
tinent is polarized between left and right, with no support for the
middle, because there is no center.
With this as a background, it was a wonderful surprise
developing in Chile, the first major stop on our trip.
Colombia, our first stop, will perhaps be reserved for
tion with a report on neighboring Venezuela.)
seeing what is
{Comments about
later, in conjunc-
Chile
is
certainly a beautiful country.
Ringed by the awesome Andes
mountains, the capital, Santiago, presents a beautiful sight.
Chile is
making great strides these days.
A developing country,
is neverthe
less hardly Third World--more like 2.5.
Its people are educated, with
about 90% literacy.
Oceans of venom have been undeservedly heaped upon this supposed "fascist"
state ever since its popularly elected (though minority) Marxist President
Salvador Allende was overthrown on September 11, 1973.
However, few
people realize just how close to a totalitarian state Chile was becoming.
Communists, many from the outside, were planning a complete takeover only
days hence.
Chile came within inches of becoming another Cuba.
At the time, Chile was in desperate economic straits.
The country, said
one banker, "was on the brink of total collapse.
The economy was grinding
to a complete halt."
Inflation was running wild.
However, a group of
economists, known popularly as '"rhe Chicago Boys"--because of their having
been educated in the principle of free economics under economist Milton
Friedman at the University of Chicago--were already planning for the post
Allende period.
However, their designs didn't take root right away.
For