Beginning in the 1960s, however, Chile’s culture of compromise was strained by Cold War polarization. Some on the left, inspired by the Cuban Revolution, began to dismiss the country’s tradition of political give and take as a bourgeois anachronism. Many on the right began to fear that if the leftist Popular Unity coalition gained power, it would turn Chile into another Cuba. By the 1970 presidential election, these tensions had reached extreme levels.
