Popular discontent helped revive the Marxist-inspired Socialist and Communist parties and produced an electoral loss of the parties of the right that corresponded with the rise of those of the left. The Christian Democratic Party, a centrist reform party founded in 1957, enjoyed the biggest increase—from 9 percent in 1957 to 15 percent in 1961. The Christian Democratic Party grew out of the Conservative Party. In 1938 a group of young conservatives had left their party to form the National Falange (Falange Nacional). In 1957 the National Falange fused with the Social Christian Party (which had also seceded from the Conservatives) to form the Christian Democratic Party, whose program tended toward serious reforms in the archaic economic and social structures. The Communist Party regained strength peacefully through an alliance with the Socialist Party, which believed that election was not the only way to power and which rejected alliances with the non-Marxist left.

At the end of Alessandri Rodríguez’s rule the right-wing parties were so weakened that their electoral strength was practically cut in half in the 1965 elections; in order to remain on the political scene, they joined together to form the National Party. The centrist Radical Party also lost support. A common point existed between the Christian Democratic Party and the Marxist parties—the wish to weaken the old economic and political oligarchy and to try to rescue the country from its chronic underdevelopment by more decisive action in the agrarian sectors.

The presidency of Frei Montalva

Frei’s program, synthesized in the slogan “Revolution in Liberty,” promised a series of reforms for developing the country by raising the incomes of the lower classes. To attain this aim, Frei and the Christian Democrats instituted a program of “Chileanization,” by which the state took control of copper, Chile’s principal resource, acquiring 51 percent of the shares of the large U.S. copper companies in Chile. They thus intended to increase incomes, with which they planned to permit industries to develop; they also planned a vast agrarian reform by which to reduce the imports of agricultural products. Frei also promised decisive state intervention and reform in banking. The Frei administration, at least during its first years, counted on strong support from the middle class. But the government alienated some of the middle class by trying also to obtain the support of the peasants and of the urban underemployed, until then on the margin of the political scene.

In 1967, with the support of the Socialist and Communist parties, an agrarian reform law was approved that enabled the government to expropriate uncultivated land and to limit the land that could be conserved by each owner. Peasant cooperatives were to be established on these lands, and the state was empowered to teach the peasants better farming techniques. Agrarian reform, however, proceeded slowly because of its costly emphasis on better housing and agricultural equipment and on an irrigation system. By 1970 about 5,000,000 acres had been expropriated.

The socialist experiment

The reformist program of the Frei government gave poorer people the incentive to take an active role in political life. This increase in political participation brought about further radicalization not only of the Communist and Socialist parties but also of some of the Radicals and Christian Democrats. In 1969 this cluster of parties and left-wing groups formed the Popular Unity (Unidad Popular) coalition, proposing as its presidential candidate Salvador Allende Gossens, a Socialist and an avowed Marxist; he was elected president in 1970.

The Popular Unity program envisaged the eventual transition to socialism, which was to be accomplished through the end of domination of mining and finance by foreign capital, expanded agrarian reform, and more equal distribution of income favouring the poorer classes. The accomplishments of this program were responsible for the advance of Popular Unity in the municipal elections of 1971 and in the congressional elections of 1973.

Between 1970 and 1972, however, toleration of the Popular Unity government by the middle class declined as a consequence of difficulties in the economy, which featured a complex and not always consistent reorganization resulting from the nationalization of U.S.-owned copper mines—the main resource of economic production—and of a number of heavy industries. Difficulties in maintaining production levels were further augmented by boycotts on the side of foreign capital, mainly American, and the reduction of agricultural production as a consequence of agrarian reform. Inflation and stagnation of production were propitious to the growth and regrouping of the forces that opposed the socialist experiment. The oligarchy, the right-wing National Party, and the centre Christian Democrats finally joined their efforts and supported the antigovernment trends in the armed forces.