MUCH NONSENSE has been written in the American press about Salvador Allende and the Chilean revolution. The picture the press has presented--and continues to present with renewed fervor despite the bloody golpe de estado against the Allende government--runs something like this: Chile, a prosperous nation with a long tradition of stable democracy, moved into the vanguard of Latin American progress in the late 1960s under the enlightened leadership of President Eduardo Frei. The popular Frei, who led the Christian Democratic Party, guided Chile well along the road to reform when the Chilean Constitution unfortunately intervened.

Frei was prohibited from running for re-election in 1970, and his lackluster successor was edged out narrowly by Allende, the "Marxist" candidate. Chile's woes began as soon as Allende took office. He ruined the economy and needlessly turned the great majority of the country against him as inflation skyrocketed and food and medical shortages grew. Allende's overthrow was tragic, certainly, but he had it coming because he tried to do too much too fast.

This caricature of Chile's recent past shows what happens when reporters get their news from American Embassy press officers. As David J. Morris's We Must Make Haste--Slowly convincingly demonstrates, the predominate view bears about as much resemblance to reality as a televised speech on anything by Richard Nixon. Morris, a young American journalist and community organizer, was in Chile for part of the Allende years: his book is a readable, sensible account of what actually happened.

To begin, the Frei years were hardly halcyon times of peace and social justice. Frei snuck past Allende in the 1964 election with strong conservative and CIA support, and he was always beholden to the right. As a consequence, his rhetoric outstripped reality: his touted agrarian reforms did little to change the shape of the Chilean landscape and he never got around to nationalizing the copper interests and other North American businesses as he promised.

The Chilean Left, which had been growing in strength in the previous years--Allende also came close in a 1958 election--attempted to pressure Frei into actually enacting his reforms. A group of younger radicals, tired of the plodding style of the Socialist and Communist Parties, broke away and formed the Movement of the Revolutionary Left--las miristas.

The Miristas, originally university students, left the campuses and began organizing workers in the industrial belts and peasants in the countryside. The old Left also stepped up its efforts as inflation increased, unemployment worsened, and more of the country's industry came under foreign domination.

Frei was caught in one of the contradictions of imperialism. The North American plunderers--the copper companies, ITT--were exploiting Chile so intensively that the entire nation objected: the poor, because funds needed for development were flowing out of the country; the rich, because they wanted a bigger share of the action. (In fact, when Allende finally sent his nationalization bill to Congress in 1971, all parties, including the right-wing Nationals, voted for it.)

Frei needed nationalization to restore Chile's economic sovereignty. But the feeble infant Chilean industries produced only luxury goods for the tiny upper class. Only nationalization accompanied by a marked income redistribution to create a market for Chilean production could have started Chile on the path to industrialization--and income redistribution was precisely the step Frei, crippled by his ties to the right, never tried to take.

AS THE SITUATION worsened in the later sixties and strikes began to rock Chilean cities, Frei turned to his only feasible alternative--repression--but only after he fought off the left within his own party. He broke the strikes with police, outlawed the miristas, forcing them underground, and formed the hatred grupo movil, his secret political police force.

Frei, described in the American press as a liberal, actually by the end of his term was moving toward an authoritarian state. Reports that he has endorsed the present junta should therefore come as no surprise. A week before the military takeover, The New York Times ran an editorial entitled "Frei Has The Way." The Times neglected to inform its readers that Frei's way includes secret police, teeming jails and strikebreaking.

Salvador Allende took office in November 1970 in a country that had already experienced several years of a political and economic crisis that showed little signs of improvement. Just before he was sworn in, one of a number of proliferating fascist groups assassinated the commander-in-chief of the armed forces, hoping to ignite a civil war.

Allende had squeaked to victory with 36 per cent of the vote. In order to assume office, he had to conclude an agreement with the Christian Democrats and the Nationals that later certainly contributed to his downfall. In Chile the Congress--much like the Electoral College in this country--must ratify the popular mandate. The vote is normally pro forma, but the opposition parties in 1970 were making noises about voting against Allende and then combining forces in a new election. To forestall that possibility, Allende was forced to conclude an agreement with the opposition that pledged, among other things, to leave the armed forces alone.

The United States had recognized that Frei was in trouble in the late sixties, so it stepped up military aid until arms funding amounted to the second highest per capita in the world, trailing only South Vietnam. And after Allende took office, the military aid, which he left alone because of the 1970 pledge, continued after other U.S. aid and loans were cut off. By strengthening a conservative and powerful sector of Chilean society, the U.S. is ultimately responsible for the present military dictatorship whether CIA agents shot at Allende or not.

AT ANY RATE, Allende took office in an already chaotic situation. Popular Unity's goals, as Morris is careful to explain, were not to create socialism, but to lay the foundations for an eventual transition--nationalization, income and land redistribution, expansion of social services, and, least tangible but most important, awakening in downtrodden Chileans a sense of their own importance, the need for them to participate in decisions that affect their lives.

Popular Unity traveled smoothly at first. Although the opposition vetoed all important legislation except for the nationalization, Allende found enough loopholes and unenforced old laws to make great advances in all areas. Workers' councils were set up in factories, landless peasants met to divide up expropriated estates, poor children drank milk for the first time and their older brothers and sisters began to attend universities.