Copper Nationalization in Chile

In 1970 Chile became the first country to elect a Marxist president through open, multi-party elections in Salvador Allende. In his first year as president, Allende nationalized the copper industry, Chile’s largest export industry that was developed and owned by US multinationals. The nationalization was politically popular, and Allende ultimately refused to provide compensation. The US administration of President Richard Nixon saw Allende’s government as a political and ideological threat both in the context of the Cold War, and to the economic interests of the “First World” at a time of rising resource nationalism and political activism in the so-called “Third World.”