Belated Triumph

Few Latin American Presidents ever took office amid such high hopes. Chile's Eduardo Frei rolled up the biggest plurality in his country's history (56%), his Christian Democrats became the first government party since 1851 to win a majority in the House of Deputies, and the party went on to triple its membership in the Senate. But a mandate is one thing, politics another. Last week--after two years of long, hard talking--Frei's two key reform bills were finally approaching reality.

Frei's main bill, "Chileanizing" the copper industry, has passed the last legislative hurdle, and awaits only the signatures of some of the participating companies. Under the program, the government will acquire a 51% interest in the U.S.'s Braden Copper Co. and a 25% interest in two other new mining ventures, including one that will expand operations at Chuquicamata, which is already the world's largest open-pit copper mine. Ultimately, Chile hopes to double production by 1970 to 1,200,000 tons a year and bring in an additional $300 million in foreign exchange.

The second bill, covering land reform, has just about cleared Congress, and needs only one last Senate vote, which is expected in the next few weeks. Once enacted, the program will provide land for 100,000 peasants by imposing new acreage limits on large estates and permitting the government to pay off the owners of the expropriated land in 30 years instead of the present 15. While awaiting his new program, Frei has already expropriated or reached agreement with owners of 240 large estates, 85 of which are now in government hands for redistribution.

2-to-l Edge. What held up Frei's program was his nettlesome opposition in the Senate, where Chile's Socialist-Communist Frente de Action Popular

(FRAP) and the middle-reading Radical Party teamed up to outnumber the Christian Democrats 2 to 1. Smarting from Frei's landslide popularity, the opposition fought at every turn.

Frei managed to get almost everything he wanted, and he hopes for quicker passage of the rest of his reforms, which include tighter regulations on commerce and industry, a reorganization of the central bank and a public-administration overhaul.

View from Abroad. Frei wants his reforms for Chile, but he also wants them for the benefit of Latin America, which increasingly looks to the tall, scholarly visionary as a new leader of the Democratic left and a new force that could help pull the Southern Hemisphere tighter together. Frei is already moving in that direction. He is a staunch booster of economic integration. He was among the first to propose a hemispheric summit conference, now tentatively scheduled for next spring. "We have a commitment in Latin America," Frei says. "This makes us proud and binds us."

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