The United States, Great Britain, and the Chilean Presidential Election of 1942

Abstract

Scheduled for February 1, 1942, the election of the successor of Chilean president Pedro Aguirre Cerda, who passed away on November 25, 1941, confronted the United States and Great Britain with an unexpected challenge and forced their governments to reassess their policies toward Latin America amidst a war that, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, had become a truly world affair. Until then, the United States and Great Britain had not openly taken sides in Chilean electoral contests. Economic interests had been a significant concern of U.S. and British diplomats stationed in Chile, but no strategic alliance with national political forces had come about as a result of those interests. In the case of the United States, moreover, the implementation of the Good Neighbor policy by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration had stood on the principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of Latin American countries. The policy was more germane to U.S. hegemony over Central America and the Caribbean than to relations with South American countries, but it still operated as a framework for U.S. foreign policy decisions regarding the latter, including Chile. The election of February 1942, in which U.S. and British diplomats and intelligence agents identified one of the candidates as an ally of the Axis countries, forced the U.S. foreign policy apparatus to ponder the possibility of intervention in the race in a way that had no direct precedent and, more importantly, required a significant reappraisal of the principles and pertinence of the Good Neighbor policy in the new reality imposed by a war in which the United States was directly involved.