WORLD WORLDWIDE URUGUAY News Journal Update - (en) Uruguay, FAu: OPINION LETTER: June 2023 - 50 YEARS AFTER THE GENERAL STRIKE AGAINST THE COUP (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Since 1964 rumors of a coup d'état were circulating in the country at the hands

of soldiers like Aguerrondo and others, that is, the founders of the Tenientes de
Artigas Lodge. That same lodge that will lead the coup in 1973 and of which its
greatest exponent today is Guido Manini Ríos. There are "latorritos for a while"
as denounced by Amílcar Vasconcellos in February 1973, and that phrase,
unfortunately, remains fully valid. ---- The regional dictatorships also played
their game in this sense: Brazil since 1964 and Argentina since 1966. The US as
an imperial power too, although its strategy was to delay the coup until an
opportune moment.
The Pachecato generated an unprecedented situation: an authoritarian government
under Prompt Security Measures permanently, but with Parliament functioning.
Illegalization of political organizations, closure and censorship of the press,
mass arrests, torture, militarization of striking workers, freezing of wages,
repression of demonstrations with bullets, murder of students and workers in the
same... He pressed the accelerator to the full, leaving in Of course, they would
never return to the "Switzerland of America" and the path was open to a coup d'état.

But some details were missing. A little more democratic fiction was needed and
elections were called in 1971, as stipulated in the Constitution. Electoral
furor, the Broad Front arises and the channeling of a great militant effort
towards the electoral, largely abandoning the social and street struggle.
Necessary element for the system: place popular expectations in forces outside
the people, get them off the streets and make them trust the fictional mechanisms
of bourgeois democracy. All of this is analyzed by our Organization in the
brochure "Time of struggle, time of elections?" from 1971.

To demonstrate that all this was a fiction and that the candidate of the regime
and pro-coup had to win, the electoral fraud with which Bordaberry is "elected"
president is prosecuted. From then on, the declaration of the "State of Internal
War", the murder of 8 MLN militants in a local, like that of 8 Communist Party
militants in Sectional 20, mark a clear option for State Terrorism, attacking all
the forces of the left. The Joint Forces (FFAA and Police) are also responsible
for these crimes, in addition to the government of the time.

That is to say, that the violence established was a State policy, accompanied and
promoted by the US as part of its "Hemispheric Security Doctrine", in the
framework of the Cold War.

But there were a few more pieces missing. February 1973 was going to be key: the
Army and the Air Force were unaware of the authority of the new Minister of
Defense appointed by Bordaberry and they rose up, even taking over the facilities
of Channel 5 to issue their proclamations and communiqués such as 4 and 7, which
caused great confusion in certain sectors of the left (especially the PCU) and at
a social level (majority of the leadership of the CNT that responded to the
orientation of the PCU). These sectors maintained that there could be
"coincidences with honest military" and that the fight was between "oligarchy and
people", as if the military commanders were not part of that oligarchy.

 From there to June 27, 1973 there is a step. The military take charge of the
administration of the State at the hands of Bordaberry and sectors of the
Colorado Party and the National Party, in what today would be a "civic-military
dictatorship."

the strike

The working class responded to the coup immediately and forcefully: occupation of
all the factories and a general strike. By the morning of June 27, more than
1,000 factories across the country were already occupied and transport had
stopped circulating. The massiveness of the Strike, the bulletins and information
that circulated from factory to factory, the resistance to the evictions, the
prisoners in the Municipal Cylinder, the lists of required militants.... All the
repressive policy promoted by the Pachecato is developed in an even more massive way.

It resists the evictions that are powerful war operations. Several factories come
to occupy several times after being evicted. The Resistance is huge. There are
not the politicians with starched collars, there is the working class with
calloused hands, the class that conquered all the rights and freedoms in this
country. Those who gargle about democracy forget that, but they were behind the
curtain throughout the dictatorship to later appear in the guise of "democrats."

The strike was lifted on July 11 after the brutally repressed demonstration on
the 9th. In the Representative Table that resolves said uprising, only two unions
will vote against and one will abstain. The three unions prepare a document known
as the "3F" (FUNSA, FOEB and FUS) where they take stock of the Strike, of the
stage that ends and the one that opens from there. They point out that the
popular movement has not been defeated, but rather a method, the method of
reformism, of not organizing and strengthening the popular organizations, of not
promoting the struggle, of having accustomed the trade union movement to being
the tail van of the political parties -even from the "honest military" of
communiqués 4 and 7-, to await solutions from the desks and corridors of
ministries and Parliament. That method, which I do not trust in the popular
forces, was the one that led to this defeat against a well-organized enemy with
support from abroad.

50 years later

Old controversies are still valid in this half century and will continue. For us,
the Anarchists of the FAU, the General Strike of 1973 evidences a high degree of
popular organization, a capacity to respond to the height of the circumstances,
the tenacity of a fighting people, but also the lack of a group orientation that
would strengthen that combativeness throughout the run-up. There were several
opportunities to declare a General Strike before June 27, 1973. From the almost
permanent Prompt Security Measures of Pacheco Areco, the militarization of
workers in conflict, the State of Internal War, February 1973, to name the most
The relevant ones could have warranted forceful measures, as they were demanded
by the most combative sectors of the labor and student movement. Here is the
demonstration that agreeing with those above or following them leads to nothing.
That FAU slogan "Only the struggle defines" or "Only the people save the people"
marked a whole line of action in the popular camp.

There are unresolved issues: the disappeared, the murders under torture, the
external debt increased by the military, the impoverishment of the country and
the closure of factories, the deterioration of public services, education and
health, robbery perpetrated with full hands by the military and businessmen...
Today the earth continues to speak and sends the remains of our disappeared
comrades to the surface. This only marks the horror, the cruelty of the genocide
that the ruling classes perpetrated to stay in power. They used one of their
springs: the armed forces, the executing and hard arm of the politics of those
above. And that impunity that is still in force is clearly perceived in the
absence of the President of the Republic in the act of recognition of the crime
of the April girls as a State crime, as well as his obligation to investigate the
disappearance of Oscar Tassino and Luis Eduardo González.

Undoubtedly, much remains to be said, much to analyze. But what we must rescue is
the consequence of the Uruguayan people in those years, their organizational
capacity, their solidarity, the accumulation of a historical experience that had
been in the country for 100 years, the capacity for resistance and confidence in
their own forces, even in the darkest moments.

The dictatorship lasted 12 years, it was long, but it did not have the
endorsement of the popular sectors. Resistance was exercised in different ways
throughout those 12 years. Things were done throughout this period and they were
what made it possible to end the military period.

The rich today are richer, the poor poorer. Neoliberalism has advanced just like
the cantegriles and settlements, the factories have closed, but millions of
investments have landed to plunder our natural assets... The military now has its
own political party and a clear intention to shield State crimes. It is the
politics of a class.

What is the policy of our class to face today the consequences of the coup and
the Dictatorship? We raise the debate, knowing that the fight is in the streets
and with organized people.

LONG LIVE THE GENERAL STRIKE!!

FOR THE CONSTRUCTION OF PEOPLE'S POWER

UP THOSE WHO FIGHT!!

URUGUAYAN ANARCHIST FEDERATION

http://federacionanarquistauruguaya.uy/carta-opinion-junio-2023/
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