lition dominated by the Communist and Socialist parties. He had campaigned on a platform of peaceful revolution, which most Americans do not associate with Marxism. Washington expressed great concern, since nothing like this had ever happened before in the Western Hemisphere. Many Chileans were also worried about the prospect of a Marxist president, though they were not as surprised as outsiders because Allende's triumph represented the culmination of decades of Socialist and Communist participation in the pluralistic political system of the nation:
It was a victory made possible by the evolution of mass politics, economic structures, and social expectations. At bottom, Allende was elected on a platform of democratic socialism because of the failure of the less radical alternatives to solve the chronic problems of postwar Chile: dependence and stagflation, economic inequality and social inequity, the concentration of wealth and the persistence of poverty, the hegemony of the rich and the powerlessness of the poor (Winn, 1986, 54).
Allende took the oath of office on November 3, 1970, and over the next several months his government used existing legislation to nationalize numerous industries and placed before Congress legislative proposals to sanction the extensive socialization of the economy, just as he had promised in his four presidential campaigns--three unsuccessful and one successful. By January of the next year the government had nationalized 60 percent of the private
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