Standing by a Pledge

For an austere and frugal man, who shuns Santiago's chandeliered La Moneda palace for a bachelor apartment and walks to work each morning, it was quite a whirl. In the U.S. last week for a seven-day official visit, Chile's Businessman-President Jorge Alessandri, 66, was whisked into a helicopter after ceremonies at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, plunked down an hour later on the White House lawn. An honor guard snapped to attention, 21 guns roared a salute in the freezing air, and President Kennedy stepped forward with words of friendship and welcome. Then came a round of diplomatic luncheons, press conferences, a white-tie dinner and a speech before the Organization of American States. But Chile's Alessandri was interested in more than pomp, pleasantries and platitudes.

He wanted money. Uppermost in Alessandri's mind are his country's Andean-sized needs. Lying along South America's mountainous Pacific flank, Chile has one of the world's richest copper deposits, but, apart from minerals, few other natural resources. Copper production is at a record, but prices have dropped and the ore does not bring in as much as it used to. There is drought in the southern farm lands, and Chileans are still repairing the $400 million damage from catastrophic earthquakes 2 1/2 years ago. Chile also shares some of the woes common to most of her neighboring republics--inflation, government deficit spending, and a serious trade imbalance that recently forced the devaluation of Chile's escudo currency.

Nevertheless, Alessandri had some real progress to report in Washington. Over the past two years, he told the OAS, "we achieved a 30% increase over our long-term average of investment, a 300% increase in the rate of construction of low-cost housing, a 100% increase in public spending on health, and a 55% increase in expenditures for education." In two sessions with Kennedy, the Chilean President said that his country needed outside aid to bolster its economy and to continue developing, but he made it clear that Chile intends to help itself as well. Paraphrasing an old Kennedy cadence, Alessandri said at a White House luncheon: "We must not ask what each country can do for another, but what we must all do together to make the aspirations of our people come true."

In their private talks, Kennedy put Alessandri's mind at ease about one of his worries: whether the U.S. still stands squarely behind Chile's ambitious $10 billion development plan to build new industry and roads, irrigation projects and modern housing in the next ten years. Alessandri feared that the U.S. Government might be sufficiently disturbed by Chile's recent fiscal troubles to have second thoughts about its earlier plans to provide at least a billion dollars in Alliance for Progress aid during the next decade. Kennedy assured him that the U.S. will stand by its pledge.

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