Lion & Loot

Whether or not they can operate at a profit, U. S. firms which have $714,000,000 invested in Chile must continue to operate their Chilean plants during 1933 or face confiscatory measures. Such was the situation at Santiago last week when Congress formally proclaimed that "The Lion of Tarapaca" is again president of Chile.

Compact, dynamic, blue-eyed "Lion" Arturo Alessandri, president in 1920-25, owes his nickname to his rich, deep voice, his leonine platform personality. Not a buccaneering South American dictator, he has just been constitutionally elected (TIME, Nov. 7). Also he wrote most of the Constitution, adopted in 1925 and since then trampled on by Chilean dictators galore. The inauguration of President Alessandri last week meant a return from Chilean chaos (which produced ten Chilean regimes in the past 18 months) to normal, civilian rule. But after such upheavals even a "normal" president must make concessions to the mob, especially since Chile is facing simultaneously an acute unemployment crisis, a food shortage and a currency crisis.

Putting the concession which he deems indispensable into one crisp sentence, President Alessandri said soon after his election: "Foreign companies in Chile which worked full time when returns were good must understand that they cannot consider discharging their Chilean employees now that times are bad!" Last week Chile's "Lion" made clear that this ultimatum stands. From a practical standpoint it has dominated for the past few months relations between such super-corporations as the Guggenheim nitrate colossus Cosach and the Chilean Government. Speaking off the record, Cosach President Whelpley is understood to have said recently: "If it were not for public considerations we should close down all our plants and wait for nitrate prices to rise." Instead Cosach is operating its least efficient plants, thus giving employment to the most Chileans possible per ton of nitrate produced.

Thus far relations between "Lion" Alessandri and such grumbling but resigned U. S. corporations as Cosach have been notably smoothed by U. S. Ambassador William Smith Culbertson who lately flew from Santiago to Washington to give the State Department pointers on the incoming Chilean regime. In Santiago, to which Mr. Culbertson will soon fly back, U. S. residents give him credit for establishing in three parts of the Capital strategic bases stocked with food and other useful things to which members of the U. S. colony could have fled and taken refuge had the series of Chilean revolutions grown too warm.

Gossip of the week in Santiago concerned shrewd, rich Gustavo Ross, picked by President Alessandri to be Finance Minister in the new regime. Reputed to have been a "bear" speculator when the Chilean peso was falling. Don Gustavo is in bad odor. He owes his Finance Ministry, say scandal mongering Santiagans, to a strategic investment made eight years ago when enemies of the "Lion of Tarapaca" chased Senor Alessandri out of Chile and left him with exactly $18.

In this emergency Don Gustavo Ross furnished the stranded Lion with enough cash to go to Venice, eat spaghetti and ride in gondolas until the Chilean situation cleared up. Grateful, the Lion has not forgotten his debt to Don Gustavo, despite enemies who cry that now Don Gustavo will be able to "loot the country."

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