WORLD WORLDWIDE FRANCE CHILE News Journal Update - (en) France, OCL CA #334 - CHILE 50 years after Pinochet's coup... (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 

On September 11, 1973, General Augusto Pinochet, at the head of the
Chilean army, overthrew the government of "socialist Marxist" Salvador
Allende. The experience of "revolution through the ballot box" was
coming to an end. But while the Christian Democracy (DC) and the
reactionary right had thought of reclaiming power, it was a military
junta which took it and established seventeen years of dictatorship.
Left-wing parties and unions were immediately banned and persecuted, the
repression of the social movement was relentless and ferocious: more
than 38,000 tortured, 3,200 executions and numerous disappearances.

1960: the "cold war" pitted the bloc of Western countries, behind the
United States, against the bloc of Eastern countries, under the rule of
Moscow. In this political-military rivalry, in 1959 in Cuba, the regime
of Fidel Castro took over by force of arms. He becomes the bane of the
Pentagon and the CIA. A new "Marxist" regime is therefore unacceptable
in the US sphere of influence that is Latin America.
In Chile, during this decade, land was grabbed by the owners of large
estates (latifundios), leaving many peasants and Mapuche Indians
landless and in poverty. In the cities, the proletarians (pobledores)
live in the worst conditions. These situations give rise to numerous
conflicts, occupations for the reappropriation of land by farmers, or
land earmarked for speculation in the cities. American imperialism has
control over the Chilean economy, particularly the copper mines. Strikes
are numerous and worker combativeness intense: more than a thousand
strike movements or occupations in 1968. 75% of workers are unionized,
but only represent 30% of the active population. It was in this context
of intense social unrest and class struggle that Allende was brought to
power on September 4, 1970 by popular support - this politician finally
won, after his electoral failures in 1952, 1958 and 1964.
This Freemason president with a "socialist Marxist" history represents
the Socialist Party, but more broadly the democratic bourgeoisie. He
advocates "the march towards socialism by the legal means of the ballot
box". He is the candidate of Popular Unity (UP), an alliance between the
Socialist Party, very established in the working class, the Radical
Party and a left-wing split from Christian Democracy: the MAPU (United
Popular Action Movement) who became a Marxist-Leninist. As soon as it
came to power, under popular pressure, the government increased salaries
and pensions, improved access to healthcare, limited rents, etc. Chilean
capitalism or "constitutional socialism" of the UP is moving towards
"state capitalism" in order to make it more competitive on the world market.

The PC Moscowers
In 1912 the Socialist Workers' Party was founded, which in 1922 became
the Communist Party (CP). He joined the Third Communist International,
and was banned from 1948 to 1958. An ally of the PS, he would have his
place in Allende's government.

This Stalinist party remains aligned with Moscow, which, through its
dogmatic rigidities, sometimes places it further to the right than the
PS within the UP. Legalist like Allende, he still salutes the army as
the "guarantor" of the Constitution and order. While the DC and the
Pentagon plot, the far-right groups of Homeland and Liberty, trained by
the CIA, attack pickets and assassinate activists with the benevolence
of the police, the judiciary and the army , the leaders of the PC refuse
to mobilize and arm "the workers" for their self-defense. They say: "The
army would be on the side of the people if there was a right-wing coup.»
The love shown to this army, faithful to respect for democratic
institutions, will lead them to share power and rub shoulders with its
generals, including Pinochet, in Allende's government.

The PC's strategy is to develop "the battle for production". He chooses
national state capitalism. In short, it is a PC that asks the Chilean
people to be reasonable, not to create disorder in the economic sectors
so as not to play into the hands of the enemies of the current
revolution. This Stalinist bureaucracy, which fears being overwhelmed by
popular combativeness, is hostile to any autonomous initiative coming
from workers, peasants or neighborhood residents. And she is firm
against wage demands, which she describes as leftist escalation which
destabilizes the economic policy of the UP. She also denounces the
beginnings of self-organization at the grassroots - the "industrial
cordons" which are replacing the unions. Which does not prevent the
students enrolled in the PC from asserting: "The only two revolutionary
forces in Chile are the PC and the MIR.»

The Revolutionary Movement
This movement was founded in 1965 by revolutionary trade unionists and
dissidents from the PS and PC. The MIR is a small Lenin-Trotskyist group
interested in Cuba and its revolution. It is very present in
universities and in student and then high school movements. Through his
political-military radicalism, he broadened his activist base by acting
with peasant or Mapuche movements for the occupation and reappropriation
of land monopolized by large landowners. He works alongside the
populations of disadvantaged neighborhoods to recover land allocated to
speculation, as well as with the unemployed. The MIR represents a
radical far left among others. He calls for a boycott of the elections
and affirms the necessity of armed struggle which alone will lead to
socialism. However, its links with the institutional left of UP are
close, before and after Allende's election. Thus, in 1970, after an
agreement with the UP, the leaders of the MIR decided to stop armed
actions (expropriations of banks, arms theft, etc.) and any direct
action that could "serve the propaganda of the reactionary opposition
and harm the rise of candidate S. Allende." After the UP victory, the
MIR provided critical support to the government. It provides militants
for Allende's presidential guard, and its executives participate in
ministerial cabinets. During the following municipal elections, which
the UP won in 1971, MIR activists helped it and supported its candidates.

Social unrest...
Outside the UP government, however, there remains an extra-parliamentary
opposition. And a pre-revolutionary situation, through the
radicalization and multiplicity of worker and peasant struggles, is
emerging in the country. The base begins to self-organize in factories,
neighborhoods and campaigns against the right and fascist groups. At the
same time, it poses economic demands and accompanies them with political
demands oriented towards worker control. The occupations of nationalized
and then private factories and the reoccupation of land are gaining
momentum and worrying the bourgeoisie: they go beyond the reformist and
institutional framework of the UP parties and the unions of the CUT - a
trade union confederation that has become a "partner" of UP and State.
The CUT calls on the people to be realistic and calm, so as not to "play
into the hands" of the right; the PC denounces its actions and its
self-organizations. The reality of the crisis and the contradictions
that the UP encounters, without being able to resolve them, encourage
workers and peasants to go beyond the simple seizure of power through
the ballot box and to want to go further in order to better fight the
reactionary forces. and imperialism. The bourgeois national reformism of
the left in power is not enough. Under the effect of its Trotskyist
dialectic for some of its members or out of opportunism for others, the
MIR oscillates between support for the popular movement (in which its
activists and sympathizers are invested) and support for Allende and the
UP. Its leaders opt for "critical support". Behind "insurrectionalist"
slogans, they remain in the camp of the ruling bourgeoisie. The
government gives pledges to those who remained in the opposition, and it
is active in channeling the protest that has become political against
the bourgeois state. Faced with this popular combativeness, the
government will respond with repression by sending the army and
declaring a state of emergency.

1972
To resist, on the one hand, the economic sabotage (truckers' strike,
blockage and shortage of food supplies, etc.) orchestrated by a
reactionary right supported by American imperialism, and, on the other
hand, the attacks and attacks perpetrated by fascist groups armed by the
CIA, workers occupy already nationalized factories. Then the movement
spread to the outlying neighborhoods, where committees for production,
self-defense, supplies, etc. were set up, in conjunction with peasants,
the unemployed and the homeless. These committees coordinate by branch,
by city and then by zone. An embryonic power is forming, with the
"industrial cordons". But if some of these still informal "cordons" (and
for some clandestine) are created by radicalized workers, others are
only a "recovered" representation, driven by parties or unions aware of
being overwhelmed by their base. Against this danger, bureaucrats even
reactivate old neighborhood electoral support committees, which then
become committees or councils integrating the structures of the
"cordons". Despite everything, horizontal coordination remains worrying
for the bourgeoisie and the bureaucracy. The economic and tactical
debates over worker and peasant control are lively; and likewise the
question of self-defense of factories and lands occupied, or even
requisitioned, as well as the defense of neighborhoods which have
suffered multiple attacks and assassinations. While the imminence of a
coup d'état, after the failure of a first attempt in June 1973, is no
longer in doubt, the UP parties support a law which authorizes searches
of factories occupied by the workers, to recover any hidden weapons.
Thus, Stalinists and reformists preferred to support the army present in
the government, and negotiate with the Christian Democracy in
Parliament. As for the MIR, it explained in November 1972 in an article
entitled "Let's bring down bourgeois power now" that the participation
of the military "in the government of the People's Union gives officers
and soldiers the opportunity to join the historic mission workers (...).
The Armed Forces have a truly patriotic and democratic role to play
alongside the people by supporting workers in their struggle against the
exploitation of the bourgeoisie...".

If the situation was pre-revolutionary in certain places, class
awareness was undoubtedly not sufficiently generalized and "rupturist"
against the government that it had brought to power. Disoriented, the
people were still waiting for the President and the UP (read the box).
Confronted with the traps set for them by the bourgeoisie, the employers
and American imperialism, caught within the limits and contradictions of
state and national management of Chilean capital in crisis, and finally
blinded by their legalistic conception of the army, the bourgeoisie
leftists and the Stalinists opened the way to the military and the
bloody repression which followed the putsch of September 11, 1973.
This coup d'état in Chile followed that of Brazil in 1964, of Bolivia in
1971, of Uruguay in 1973, and preceded that of Argentina in 1976 -
operations accompanied by Uncle Sam, the godfather who watches over
American interests.
Then, order reigned in Santiago, which allowed the neoliberal experiment
of the "Chicago Boys" and, more broadly, the rise of neoliberalism in
other countries (see the following article).

Decaen, 1/10/2023

On September 5, 1973, six days before the decisive coup d'état, the
"industrial cordons" wrote to "His Excellency the President of the
Republic, comrade Salvador Allende": "We warn you, comrade, that,
despite all the respect
and the confidence that we have for you, if you do not apply the program
of popular unity, if you do not rely on the masses, you will lose the
only effective support that you have had as a person and as a as leader,
and you will be responsible for leading the country not into civil war,
since that is already underway, but into the cold, planned massacre of
America's most conscious and organized working class. Latin. This
government, which was led and maintained in power with so many
sacrifices by workers, precarious workers, peasants, students,
intellectuals, will have the historical responsibility for the
destruction and decapitation - who knows in what time frame and how far
into the blood? - not only of the Chilean revolutionary process, but
also of all Latin American peoples who fight for socialism. We make this
urgent appeal to you, Comrade President, because we believe that this is
the last chance to together avoid the loss of thousands of lives, of the
best elements of the Chilean and Latin American working class..."
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article3986
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