A contradictory commemoration ---- This year marks the 50th anniversary
of the coup perpetrated by the military, the business community and theChilean right, with the collaboration of the United States government.Since then, our people have been unarmed, receiving constant attacksfrom the ruling class and its particularly cruel form of Chilean-stylecapitalism. Our dead and disappeared have not received justice, our workloses its value, our ecosystem is destroyed, our organizations arepersecuted, and our freedom is on credit. ---- This year we commemorateanother year of the Coup in a contradictory scenario: never in 50 yearshave we had a confluence of revolt, crisis and conservative revenge. Weexperienced a massive popular revolt, we had the most democraticconstituent process in our history, and La Moneda is inhabited by themost left-wing government since the Unidad Popular. But at the sametime, never before in 50 years have we seen such strengthenedPinochetism and a right so willing to vindicate the dictatorship and itstransitional legacy. At 50 years, the battle for memory is sharpening again.Coup and dictatorship as reactionary responses to the crisisWhat are the reasons for this? It is not by chance, nor by theideological perversity of Pinochetism. In the same way that the Coup wasnot random or perverse. The dictatorship was the political form in whichthe ruling class in Chile responded to a deep crisis of the Chileancapitalist regime, which was in turn framed in a global crisis that hadbeen incubating since the late 1960s.Faced with a declining economy and rampant inflation, the Chileanbusiness community did not hesitate to shake off its democratic clothingto act violently in defense of its interests. Faced with an increasinglyorganized working class and peasantry, pushed by the revolutionary windsof the previous decade, Chile's political and economic elite turned tothe military arms to restore order, their order.A new layer of impunityToday we are far from the epic struggles of those years, but we areexperiencing a similar crisis. The political crisis that broke out inOctober 2019 is framed by an exhaustion of the political and economicregime in Chile, increasingly supported by the precariousness of ourlives and a political elite that curls up in its privileges.The response of the powers of the State to that crisis was repression,and with it a new layer of violence and impunity accumulated in nationalhistory. Chile has been built around massacres, dictatorships andrepressive raids. The impunity of the dead and mutilated of the Revoltis built on the impunity of the transitional repression and theterrorism of the dictatorship. More than three generations of our peoplestalked by endless injustice.The battle for the next 50 yearsHow is it possible that 50 years after the Coup it seems that injusticelives even stronger in the heart of Chile? What happens is that thecrisis is still open, and no attempt has been able to close it so far.And just as yesterday two possible solutions faced each other (therevolution or the coup), today alternatives to the crisis are beingarticulated, generating poles around which social and political sectorsare organized.The rise of the Republican Party and the silent submission of ChileVamos to its program represents a path of polarization towards theright, which has already been consolidated in Europe and the UnitedStates. Around these leaders of the old Pinochet elite, shock groups,religious fanaticism and a constellation of elements of conservativecivil society have gathered. Everything indicates that they arepreparing to govern with the heavy hand of an authoritarian,conservative and nationalist program.On the other hand, the aspirations for dignity of the Revolt and thelukewarmness of a progressive government without progress for the greatmajorities, keep the possibilities of a new transformative left indisarray. But the articulating potential of feminism, the persistence ofterritorial and environmental struggles, the minimum program of theConstitutional Convention and the push towards the construction oftransformative local powers for the next cycle, are all glimpses of apossible reconstruction of the left in Chile. .What is commemorated in September?The right has already decided on its Never Again: never again organizedpeople, never again threatening their privileges, never again emboldenedthe poor, never again women disputing power. For them, the event beingcommemorated is the great communist threat to their power. From our point of view, the event we commemorate is the rise of popularpower, the possibility of a revolution in Chile that was promoted andcarried out by the popular masses through their organizations, in acomplex alliance with a popular government.Today the crisis has once again put us on the path towards a historicoutcome that could reorder political and social life in Chile. This iswhat explains why 50 years after the Coup we are experiencing such acutepolarization: the battle for memory is the battle for a way out of thecurrent crisis. Memory is one of the weapons of the class struggle, oneof the weapons in the war for historical truth. Past and present cometogether in the accelerated time of the crisis, where every minute isloaded with risks and opportunities.Memory of the future, revolutionary memoryIn this context, we claim the strategic project of popular power as thepath to a dignified life. It is a revolutionary process to achievegeneral emancipation through the direct role of the masses in thetransformation of institutions and social relations. But we cannotsimply copy the political forms of the past. No revolution will bepossible today in Chile without a feminist orientation, whicharticulates the demands of women and dissidents with the comprehensiveovercoming of capitalist social relations, in the workplace, on thestreet and at home. Nor is a revolution possible without a destructionof the colonial relationship that the State of Chile maintains with thepeoples who inhabited this territory before the conquest and thecreation of the Republic. And without a doubt it will not be possiblewithout the internationalist struggle together with the people of LatinAmerica and the world, without which we would be condemning ourselves tothe arbitrary borders of the nation.Challenges and proposalsIn this context, it is not enough to denounce the regressive turn ofnational politics. Nor is it enough to state the feminist, communist andlibertarian horizon. To become part of the dispute for the historicaltruth of the 50 years and the battle for solutions to the crisis, wemust propose a clear orientation for our militancy.And that is the first thing we must claim: militancy as an active way oftransforming the world, something that the generations prior to the Coupand those who fought against the dictatorship experienced intensely.Neither individual salvation, nor the expectation that others will makethe changes. We can only contribute to a transformative solution to thecrisis if we prioritize the development of a collective force thatintervenes in social and political struggles. Our people militate inmany ways, and all of them must converge in a common front against theprecariousness of life and the defense of our right to a dignified life.The symbolic gestures of the State are not enough either. 50 years afterthe Coup, what is needed are concrete measures to achieve all the truthand all justice. In addition to the National Search Plan, we must demandthe end of the pacts of silence, including the opening of the secretfiles that keep the repressors in impunity. The only way to ensure NeverAgain is for there to be concrete disincentives to human rightsviolations. The impunity of the present is a guarantee that there willbe more state terrorism in the future.Along with the above, a process of demilitarization, definancing anddismantling of the Armed and Law Enforcement Forces is urgently needed,to reconstruct a public security policy based on care, community,justice and Human Rights. The solution to the security crisis will notcome from the same corrupt institutions that embezzle from the State,coordinate with drug trafficking, and extrajudicially execute Chile'spoor youth. The only solution is for us to establish a new paradigm andnew security institutions.Memory is revolution and future50 years after the Coup, we keep in the heart of our memory those whogave their lives for a revolution for their time, and we remember withpain those who were detained, executed, tortured, exiled and disappearedin dictatorship and democracy. We do not forget any hit. Memory isalways a present struggle, and we will not stop fighting for truth,justice and reparation.50 years after the coup, we vindicate the revolutionary project thatfought for a future of freedom and justice for our peoples. We make thiscombat our own, imagining a revolution for our time. We refuse tobelieve that there is no future after capitalism, that there is noalternative to this precarious system.We are memory, we want a revolution, we are building the future.https://solidaridadfcl.org/2023/09/11/1973-2023-memoria-es-revolucion-y-futuro/_________________________________________A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C EBy, For, and About AnarchistsSend news reports to A-infos-en mailing listA-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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