CHILE: The People Will Not Forget Their Victories Nor Pardon The Their Assassins
NACLA
Introduction we are absolutely certain that [the Chilean peopleJ will know how to fight fascism. We are absolutely certain that September 11 marked the beginning of a struggle that will end...
...The coup which deposed the Unidad Popular government has ended, but the counter-revolution seeking to destroy the political power of the proletariat, continues to sweep the country...
...and the large firms producing consumer goods (textiles, food...
...And, it can do this while at the same time increasing its economic power and tilting the class struggle in its favor...
...It opens the doors of the country to the hunger of transnational conglomerates...
...Having large sums of ready capital at its disposal, due to its decision not to invest in production, it turned to hoarding and black market operations in goods from cars to cigarettes...
...8 (October 1973...
...The ideological confrontation with fascism, the popular economic demands to stave off the dramatic effects of super...
...The armed struggle will not be one of vanguards...
...In the merchandise produced by artisans or small businessmen, the buyer finds hidden pamphlets and slogans...
...Its climatic conditions, the regime of seclusion and forced labor and the lack of medical attention, all aggravated by the nearness of the Antarctic winter, mean that the junta has condemned, in fact, the highest Chilean popular leaders and personalities at this concentration camp to a slow but certain death...
...The texts of the stamps read as follows: SOLDIER: DON'T BE CONVERTED INTO AN ASSASSIN OF THE PEOPLE THE POPULAR RESISTANCE AGAINST THE DICTATORSHIP IS THE WAY LET US UNITE OUR FORCES LET US PREPARE THE RESISTANCE THE DICTATORSHIP OF THE BOSSES: HUNGER FOR THE PEOPLE DOWN WITH THE DICTATORSHIP MAY lst: BEGINNING OF THE POPULAR RESISTANCE16 WORKER: DON'T MEET THE 1st OF MAY ON YOUR KNEES JOIN THE RESISTANCE AGAINST THE DICTATORSHIP other information...
...The popular workers' movement suffered an enormous blow...
...WE MUST STRENGTHEN THE INTERNATIONAL STRUGGLE AGAINST THE DICTATORSHIP...
...And, because of errors in government policy, the bourgeoisie was also able to win over to its side large sectors of the petit bourgeoisie and even demoralized some of the popular sectors...
...Speculation and Fascism After an initial period, the bourgeoisie took political advantage of this shortage in its campaign against the government...
...diverse forms of resistance inside the factories...
...In a press conference given in La Habana by Edgardo Enriquez Espinosa (brother of Miguel Enriquez, Secretary General of the MIR), the MIR announced that it would continue to commit all its energies to the constitution of the Political Front of the Chilean Resistance...
...Thus, its plans for "national reconstruction" will necessitate the destruction of "weaker" (i.e...
...Thus, the Tupamaros themselves, after 1972, had to engage in a self-criticism of their position...
...and, "The Story Behind the Coup," NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report, Vol...
...The Popular Resistance Movement, based upon Clandestine Resistance Committees, has reached to the very core of worker, farmer, student, and poblador movements and even the Armed Forces and the Carabineros...
...It is obvious that, if the working class does not fulfill these conditions, it will risk again being held back by political gradualism...
...Furthermore, within the Armed Forces themselves there are soldiers, non-commissioned officers and even officers who are acquiring growing consciousness of the criminal and bestial role that fascism demands them to play...
...A part of these plans were the economic blockade and sabotage, the financial boycott and the concerted action of the transnational corporations, which constituted a new form of intervention by imperialism...
...Many members of the Armed Forces will join the patriotic and national work of combatting fascism...
...Brazil is thus a special case of imperialist dom- ination in Latin America...
...I am thinking particularly of revolutionary movements which suffered extremely serious defeats, such as those in Brazil and Venezuela...
...For many reasons the class struggle is developing in Chile today in a radically different framework from that of 1970...
...In regard to the terror unleashed by Pinochet's regime, Enriquez stated that torture, rape and arbitrary imprisonment continue to be the order of the day in Chile...
...All our effort at this time is aimed at assuring that this collaboration can be translated into concrete results...
...FOOTNOTES 1. Saenz has been replaced in SOFOFA by Raul Sahli...
...militarily controls the universities...
...For the working class, this represents a greater possibility of establishing alliances with new social groups, thereby broadening the bloc of classes which it leads, and of isolating more and more its principal enemy: the large national and foreign capitalists...
...and, in Portsmouth and Rosyth, laborers refused to work on Chilean warships...
...It is also due to the fact-and this is how one can understand why parliamentary tradition could be broken-that within the bourgeoisie a hegemonic faction, represented by the big bourgeoisie, has arisen, thus closing a stage of intra-bourgeois struggles which began, as we have seen, during the 1960s...
...On the basis of this organization, it will be possible to initiate the construction of the people's army and to move on, incorporating the masses into the field of struggle and armed resistance...
...See, for example, New Chile (Berkeley: NACLA), 1973...
...2) the creation of the Popular Resistance Movement, which is defined as the organization of the grass-roots level of the Political Front of the Resistance...
...Facing the Blockade...
...today only the uniformed assassins can speak...
...It assassinates the President of the Republic...
...this means that we cannot rely solely on the revolutionary centers, the strongholds of the Left...
...The third and most important reason is due to the huge development in consciousness and organization which occurred within the mass movement during the period of Popular Unity government...
...We have met and agreed to make this declaration public on the date of another anniversary of the founding of the CUTCH as an homage to our working class and to all Chilean workers...
...there are also political problems...
...With this, he added, the Left will be able to resume leadership of the working class and the people in these difficult moments imposed on us by the counter-revolution...
...During the decade of the Sixties, a silent battle raged within the Chilean ruling class...
...At one point, Pique Grande was under more than 6 meters of water and the pumping and ventilation chamber, vital to the functioning of the mine are still submerged...
...We think that within those parties there are forces capable of arriving at a unitary conception...
...The struggle or democratic liberties, for the rights and social gains of the working class and the people, the defense of the living standard of the masses and the repudiation of torture makes it possible for millions and millions of the oppressed and exploited to be won over to the resistance...
...1973...
...For us, the problem is different...
...The third point refers to the second aspect that I mentioned earlier...
...We support these forces and their struggle for socialism...
...The survival of the popular forces and their reorganization under new conditions were the first achievements...
...Nevertheless, it does do more than simply reproduce a general aspect of fascism...
...But the workers and revolutionaries of Chile are willing to pay a high price for the reestablishment of liberty and justice, and above all else, to embark on the definitive road to the proletarian revolution and to establish Socialism in Chile...
...THE WORKING CLASS, THE PEOPLE AND ITS VANGUARD HAVE NOT DIED...
...LC: The contradictions within the Left parties are not fully developed...
...We must argue different viewpoints, and, in the last analysis, the attitude which these forces adopt on concrete, political questions...
...The formation of an area of socially-owned industrial property and the placing of the financial system under state control displaced the monopoly bourgeoisie from their leading role...
...To the thousands of companeros imprisoned, tortured, assassinated...
...We had hoped that China would take the same actions as the Soviet Union...
...The main features of the class struggle in Chile over the past three decades, according to the author, are the struggle between the bourgeoisie as a unified force against the working class and the internal struggle which developed within the bourgeoisie itself This latter conflict pitted the large bourgeoisie (those with monopoly interests, inexorably tied to foreign imperialism) against sectors of the medium and small bourgeoisie...
...We never had any illusions about the chances of sustaining a popular regime as a totally isolated "island" in Latin America...
...For this reason, we call on workers, revolutionaries and all progressive sectors around the world to push forward more forcefully than ever the international struggle of support for the Chilean people and their popular resistance...
...But what effect did this blockade have on the class struggle within Chile...
...This is proof that conditions are good for the Chilean resistance...
...The nationalization of the property of the transnational monopolies and the development of a truly sovereign and independent international policy brought the Chilean people face to face with Northamerican imperialism...
...There is no reason to doubt that it will be able to give this response...
...IT IS PART OF THE PROLETARIAN AND THE PEOPLE'S STRUGGLE FOR LIBERATION...
...It is evident that the principal objective of the big bourgeoisie's political economy is the rapid accumulation of a high rate of surplus value at the cost of inexorably squeezing the workers...
...imperialism, as it allies with either or both of these sectors...
...And, in this sense, Chilean military-fascism does not present any innovation on those fascist regimes which have preceded it in history...
...Jos6 Venturelli5 To The Workers, Revolutionaries And People Of The World I. A criminal alliance between the officer corps of the Armed Forces, the big domestic bourgeoisie and North American imperialism violently overthrew the Unidad Popular government, establishing a bloody gorila dictatorship in Chile...
...Our party has completed the first phase of reorganization and "clandestinization" throughout the country...
...The significance of this act of sabotage is heightened by the fact that British workers at Rolls Royce, the manufacturer of these planes, have refused to repair any Chilean aircraft...
...This does not prevent us from signing a common declaration, like that of February 12 [See the "Declaration of the Chilean Left," in this issue...
...National Secretariat of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left [MIR].9 Chile: The Political Economy of Military-Fascism Past publications of NACLA [especially New Chile and "Chile: The Story Behind the Coup," NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report, Vol...
...Only then, say our reformists, can we talk of the problem of the conquest of power...
...The struggle against the gorila dictatorship is the common factor which mobilizes the most diverse sectors of the population, whose interests are not otherwise identical...
...The creation of the Political Front of the Chilean Resistance is an urgent task in the fight against the Dictatorship...
...Thus small daily sabotage of equipment and machinery can attain a higher degree of effec- tiveness when coordinated at a higher level with specialized armed actions, such as bombings or arson...
...For that reason the MIR has established as a rule that no leader or member should seek exile...
...imperialism in the coup in three areas: military, intelligence, and Embassy/ State Department...
...In the fields, the worst grain harvest in the country's history is produced...
...Popular organizations capable of exercising mass control over distribution would be given control of this new system...
...At the same time other more aggressive actions are taken when conditions are favorable...
...Confronting a powerful enemy, it is not enough to decide to struggle if that decision is implemented through an infinity of individual acts, if the struggle lacks a unified leadership and organization, if it is not possible to centralize the creative initiative of the masses...
...For this reason, the polarization of the class struggle will mean its intensification on all levels...
...To accomplish this task the people are reorganizing their political and social forces under severe conditions of repression...
...It expresses the concrete necessity which the Chilean bourgeoisie, as a class, feels to re-orient its investments toward productive activities...
...First, the big bourgeoisie has reinforced its position, resolving in its favor the conflict which provoked a crisis in the earlier period...
...the parties, the organizations, will have to recuperate from the fascist onslaught...
...Q: How does the MIR view China's and the USSR's position vis-a-vis the Junta...
...The work-week has been extended, real wages cut, union organizations banned, worker and poblador [shanty-town] leaders arrested, tortured, assassinated, and hundreds of thousands of workers thrown out of their jobs...
...Official silence surrounds.the causes of this flood-- the worst disaster recorded in the 108-year history of the mine...
...In the development and strengthening of the popular resistance against the Dictatorship, the international solidarity, shown especially by workers around the world, has played, and will continue to play an ever more important role...
...Editor's note) 4. Only in its last period did the UP government try to establish a differential readjustment of wages and salaries which would benefit those with a lower income...
...On the level of the Left as a whole, we find several concrete tasks that must be undertaken immediately, and to do so, cooperation is not only possible but necessary...
...The working day is arbitrarily lengthened, establishing a true system of forced labor...
...It is true that many members and leaders of these political tendencies courageously stood up to the gorilas and many fell, heroically fighting shoulder-to-shoulder with the workers...
...We are much more skeptical about such an analysis...
...This tradition is today embodied by those fighting against the dictatorship-challenging the repression and the terror...
...i.e., when these sectors disassociate themselves from the Junta and seem to be strongly discontented with it, we may be tempted to assume that the Junta is weakening and the revolutionary forces gaining strength...
...Now we are taking a step forward...
...Its hegemony carries along with it, therefore, the sharpening of intra-bourgeois contradictions as well as conflicts with the petit bourgeoisie...
...The refusal by numerous governments to recognize the Junta, the breaking off of diplomatic relations, various forms of diplomatic pressure, attitudes of certain international organizations, conditions and limitations put on financial aid, as well as protest strikes, the refusal to unload Chilean ships in foreign ports, sabotage directed against arms shipments, the rallies and marches against the Dictatorship in different cities of the world, the pressure exerted on various governments to take a strong stand against the Junta, the many forms of propaganda being distributed abroad, denouncing the crimes of the Dictatorship -- the systematic violation of human rights, the reign of terror and misery imposed by the officer corps of the Armed Forces -- all of this has strengthened the resistance struggle and has weakened the stability of the military Dictatorship...
...In other words, the "economic reconstruction" of Chile, much hailed by the military-fascists, has therefore been openly given over to the big national and foreign capitalists...
...High-level leaders and cabinet ministers are reaping huge profits while the workers are forced to carry the weight of the economic crisis...
...An international committee to defend the human rights of Chilean political prisoners should be constituted, with grass-roots level branches and a permanent committee in Chile...
...This contrasts with the role of many of their leaders, who since the beginning condemned the coup and joined the great anti-fascist task...
...Thus the overthrow of the UP government has created a central task for the bourgeoisie: the re-orientation of capital toward productive activities...
...Branches of the resistance must be established and multiplied in every factory, farm, settlement, barracks and school...
...This struggle will be unceasing, constantly expanding to ever-larger sectors of the population...
...to regroup the Left around a policy that allows it to effectively combat the Dictatorship until it is overthrown, thus opening the road to the independent struggle of the workers...
...Obviously, political reasons alone could explain this since the Chilean bourgeoisie (and this is still more evident for foreign groups) cons is te ntly refused, from the start, to collaborate with the Allende government.' Nevertheless, there were also purely economic reasons to explain why the bourgeoisie abstained from any type of productive investment, and these reasons have much to do with the political economy of the Popular Unity government...
...New Chile (Berkeley: NACLA...
...And yet it was here that the UP encountered its greatest difficulties since it faced a serious balance of payments crisis...
...They recover their voices...
...government and the international agencies under its influence.' Other factors also intensified the shortage of foreign exchange such as the rise in the international prices of food -stuffs (an item of considerable weight in the Chilean import structure) and the fall of the world market price of copper, onlyalleviatedin the last year of the government...
...Thus, for example, in respect to the auto industry: the government only proposed the rationalization of production, opening up the field to the bids of foreign capital and, in passing, simplifying the models produced...
...This expresses our intentions and our tactics today...
...To the degree that we will be able to put this line into practice, we will be able to propose to other revolutionary forces in the world the choice of supporting or not supporting the revolutionary struggle in Latin America...
...The fundamental task of organization consists in spurring the creation of a broad front of resistance against the gorila dictatorship, incorporating within it all sectors of the left and all sectors of the democratic petty bourgeoisie that are willing to struggle against tyranny...
...Santiago, Chile: January 1974...
...The operation extends 6 kilometers below the bottom of the Pacific ocean...
...BAUTISTA VAN SCHOWEN October 1973 Member of the Political Commission and the Central Committee of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) Today in the hands of the gorilas...
...thousands of public employees are without work...
...A bus appears with scrawled lettering: "Gorilas, the resistance will triumph...
...They were not ready to move to a higher form of struggle...
...Today it is necessary to organize committees of support for the Chilean resistance in various countries and cities, creating a network of base level committees in the factories, neighborhoods, universities, schools, etc...
...For its part the government, faithful to its plan for winning over the middle sectors, continually gave the merchants guarantees and refused to expropriate the large private distribution houses (a condition sine qua non for the control over distribution), limiting itself to the operation of a State center which accounted for only 33 percent of wholesale distribution.' The struggle for the appropriation of income thus was moved into the stores and markets, which became the scene of a daily confrontation between the petit bourgeoisie and the popular masses who fought over bread, shoes or matches...
...Orlando Saenz's exit from the government a few months ago is a good demonstration of this conflict...
...For example, in early June, the Junta participated in a meeting of copper producing countries held in Zambia...
...The attitude of firm and resolute solidarity in almost all the socialist countries constituted a hard blow against the fascist dictatorship on the international front...
...But obviously we don't want to remain at that point...
...VICTORY WILL BE OURS...
...Enriquez clarified that the tactical goals of the first phase will only be reached if they are preceded by the successful preparation, organization and unity of and between each and every Left party in Chile...
...After denouncing the role played by former President Eduardo Frei and the Christian Democratic Party [PDC] in aiding and abetting the reactionary coup plotters, Enriquez pointed out that many honest, progressive Christians, members of the PDC, are currently struggling against the military regime...
...The working class has not yet found the best forms of struggle, the best methods for confronting the military Dictatorship and expressing its true interests...
...9 Similar acts of solidarity in this country and elsewhere have lent courage and determination to resistance fighters in Chile and throughout Latin America...
...4. Noticias [New York...
...The best way of advancing in this direction is to deepen the revolutionary struggle in our individual countries...
...In addition to expressing his confidence in the overwhelming desire of the Chilean Left parties to reach unity, Enriquez said that the creation of the Political Front of the Chilean Resistance is the strongest aspiration of the Chilean workers and peasants...
...It is clear that this will require more effort of the other parties than of the MIR, because the MIR, while it had to adapt tactically, for a moment, to the real conditions which were imposed on it, did not change its fundamental political line...
...b) to constitute the political front of the anti-Dictatorship resistance, incorporating the entire Left and a sector of the Christian Democratic Party (the democratic petit bourgeoisie...
...even passing the highly conservative "Edwards Group" in the process...
...This is the expression of Big Power politics imposed on the Chinese foreign policy, a policy which resembles that of the USSR for some years now...
...The proletariat struggles not only against tyranny, against this Dictatorship...
...The main problem is the first: knowing how to develop a revolutionary line, a line for armed struggle, and at the same time, link it more and more tightly to the real mass movement at its present level of consciousness...
...It will follow only when we first have set into motion a true workers' resistance...
...But we have no illusions about the possibilities of attracting this sector...
...This conglomerate of social sectors whose leading group retained for three decades, even during the UP government, a privileged position within the State apparatus has experienced a bitter defeat...
...Of course, its search for an agreement with certain sectors of the national bourgeoisie influenced its decision...
...3. See, in particular...
...It has an uncompromised history of struggle and, therefore, the military Dictatorship cannot implicate the MIR in the charges of corruption which it now levels at the parties and members of the UP government in the hopes of justifying its crimes...
...THE POPULAR RESISTANCE WILL TRIUMPH...
...He also spoke of President Salvador Allende who, he said, "died with dignity, courageously defending his beliefs...
...To it the people and sectors whose democratic and humanistic consciousness is bringing them to the struggle against the dictatorship are being incorporated...
...Q: what are the principal obstacles to the establishment of a coordinated resistance movement, especially taking into consideration the particular political, economic and structural conditions of Chile...
...Since they stand at the head of the capitalist forces and orient the development of the system as a whole, their politics tend to coincide with the objective tendencies pushing dependent capitalism ahead, converting it into an increasingly exploitative system as well as one which excludes ever greater numbers of people...
...What does the MIR think of the latest declarations of the Unified Secretariat of the Resistance in Rome...
...The situation of urban and rural workers and of the popular sectors in general has also worsened...
...And, in the absence of a revolutionary response by the working class, it is through this mechanism that capital can unite the basic conditions for the victory of fascism: the cohesion of the bourgeoisie, the opposition of large sectors of the petit bourgeoisie to the working class and the winning over or neutralization of popular sectors who, in other circumstances, would be certain allies of the proletariat...
...Nothing like this took place...
...3) IMPERIALISM ORGANIZED THE COUP From the moment of the popular triumph in 1970, by means of plans prepared by the CIA and financed by the transnational companies, the sinister conspiracy that culminated in the assassination of President Allende in the bloody military coup of last September 11 was put into play...
...Brazilian sub-imperialism demonstrates both the integration of the Brazilian bourgeoisie's interests with the large international trusts, as well as the interests of Brazil as a great power seeking an increasing control over the countries of Latin America, economically and politically...
...Many of them were not able to understand how their objective interests coincided with the Popular Government and its program...
...The fact that when pressured by the workers in these latter firms, Allende's government expropriated many of them, does not change the picture since, when they became State property, they maintained their traditional lines of production...
...Furthermore, these contradictions would become more important in the measure that the big bourgeoisie was increasingly able to influence the determination of the nation's political economy...
...And that is the cutting edge.24 Bautista Van Schowen: "The People Will Bring Their Enemies To Justice" What follows is an excerpt from a document written by Bautista van Schowen, member of the Political Commission and the Central Committee of the MIR...
...We are not in a rush...
...We believe, along with Fidel Castro, that revolution is the art of uniting the forces of the people...
...It is important to continue denouncing the crimes and violations of the Junta...
...We Latin Americans must have our own revolutionary line...
...By doing this, it has placed a large sector of the capitalist class into contradiction with the military government...
...For indeed, the U.S...
...This international repudiation has so panicked the dictators that they are unable to administer the affairs of their country...
...3 While the Junta is backed by the big bour- geoisie, the U.S...
...It is for this reason, for example, that we participated in the meeting with the other parties and signed a declaration which is a step backwards from our position, but which does not contradict any of our basic principles...
...In response, the Junta is frantically sending its representatives to all parts of the world in order to justify its brutal rule...
...In this sense, the conditions under which we act concretely on a day-by-day basis -- repression and clandestinity -- have a strong influence...
...Only in this way will the tyranny fall into the most absolute public condemnation and isolation...
...We must regroup our forces, encourage cooperation at all levels, from the coordination and discussion of a common political focus to the realization of joint actions, as we have already done in the past and as we shall do with fervor in the future...
...Many of them discover that they are being used by the minorities that represent big capital, and by imperialism, for anti-national and anti-patriotic purposes...
...The armed junta that has usurped the government thinks with its brutality it can destroy the people and silence the voice, always generous and brave, of a Chile that is suffering...
...In effect, by making use of idle capacity in the plants and stocks accumulated in the pre-1970 period (characterized, as we pointed out, by a recession in the consumer goods industry), industrial production was able to expand markedly...
...From the viewpoint of the class struggle, it would seem that Chilean society is preparing to return to a point previously reached in 1970...
...For the moment, he explained, the MIR has outlined the following immediate tactical goals: 1) the creation of the Political Front of the Popular Resistance, made up of the parties that composed the UP, progressive sectors of the PDC, and the MIR...
...These are the conditions which the MIR is trying to create...
...at the local communal level and at the provincial17 level to widen its base throughout Chile...
...It appears that it is not interested in playing its hand at this moment in this part of the world...
...It was translated from the Bulletin du Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria [(Paris), No...
...Address all correspondence to Box 57, Cathedral Station, New York, NY 10025 or Box 226, Berkeley, CA 94701...
...In the July-August issue we will present our own analysis of the role of U.S...
...In France, the Dictatorship is buying tanks, helicopters, and police cars to increase its repressive capacity against the Chilean workers and to insure that the Dictatorship remain in power by the only means it knows: through military-police repression...
...The organic capacity and the strategic and tactical ability of the revolutionary left, both before and after the coup of September, demonstrates this...
...OUR STRUGGLE WILL END WHEN THE ARMED PROLETARIAT SEIZES POWER...
...This class, on experiencing in its own flesh and blood the limits of the reformist program put forth by the Unidad Popular, is now in a privileged condition to throw off the yoke of reformism placed on its neck by the petit bourgeoisie nearly fifty years ago...
...Those actively participating in this struggle, far from falling prey to depression or negativism, clearly perceive the strength of their forces and the brightness of the future even though they know that the fight will be a long and hard one...
...Some two hundred officers and soldiers of FACH (Chilean Air Force) were detained upon the discovery on May 2nd of an act of sabotage at the air base, el Bosque...
...Its deepening and extension are on the order of the day...
...Many other governments of Western Europe, Latin America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East have taken positions that in one way or another have contributed to the world-wide isolation of the military junta...
...It is important to keep in mind the fact that the Chilean industrial economy does not have at its disposal a real capital goods sector...
...We know that no worker, revolutionary or progressive will remain passive or fail to welcome these butchers with counter-demonstrations, always confronting them with the case of our companero van Schowen...
...Tomorrow, [van Schowen's] assassins will get the punishment they deserve...
...Simply maintaining and developing a clandestine structure under the present conditions is already a form of struggle against the Dictatorship...
...The UP and its parties, at first struck and scattered by the repression, have already reorganized and are operating...
...The official economic policy is to re-establish the monopoly character of production and finance to make it possible for the large national and foreign corporations to resume their process of accumulation based on an even greater level of ex-27 ploltation...
...So great is the repression, however, that the Junta cannot prevent it from becoming international news...
...All this tends to create the conditions for the development of a class struggle in Latin America with an international character...
...We will organize Resistance Committees in each factory, farm, poblacion and school...
...All this means that the class struggle is developing in Chile today without camouflage and, in a certain sense, in a simplified form...
...Interestingly, when this group changed its initial policy of selling its stocks to the government, it shifted rapidly to the Right...
...Yet when the time came for the Chilean representative, Mining Minister General Yovane, to speak, copper was left behind and he used his time to defend the indefensible acts of his government...
...For these reasons, fund raising campaigns for the resistance are a task of primary importance...
...1 0 Without a doubt, the U.S...
...The formation and securing of the alliance between the proletariat and the other sectors of the people and the incorporation of anti-fascist democrats are tasks presently in development...
...First, because the traditional Left parties, reformist in tendency, have tended to emphasize traditional forms of struggle, mass struggles, and have renounced, not only verbally but also in their actions, the line of insurrection by armed struggle...
...The big bourgeiosie had to reach out to the Armed Forces...
...The article which follows attempts to answer some of these questions...
...From this perspective we can examine the problems of mass work in Chile today...
...Among the peasantry it becomes increasingly evident that the demagogic policy of giving away a few individual titles of property Is nothing but a cover for a policy of returning the expropriated28 estates and restoring economic power to the landlords...
...To quote the official MIR introduction to this document: "....We are doing all that the present situation will allow us to do...
...5 Internationally, the Junta is counting on loans and credits to overcome these economic ob- stacles and get it through the next two to three years...
...On the contrary, they will tend to become more profound precisely because the hegemony conquered by the big bourgeoisie will permit the latter to impose its interests upon the other bourgeois sectors as well as the petit bourgeoisie in a much more brutal manner...
...V. The struggle to put an end to the military Dictatorship and its regime of misery will be long and difficult...
...This had to be a fundamental point in a strategy which, by proposing the modification of socio-economic structures inside the framework of parliamentary institutionality, had to count on iniddle sector votes...
...8 (October 1973)] have documented the U.S...
...6. See Chile Hoy (Santiago...
...The junta isolates Chile from traditionally friendly nations and hands itself over to Northamerican imperialism...
...It is necessary to create the conditions which will force the leftist movements of the socialist and the capitalist countries to take a position even if it is not the position they took at the beginning...
...Within the unified Left, we are only trying to resolve practical problems that arise for the Resistance nationally or internationally...
...But it is also due to the growth of the mass movement which has revitalized the working class...
...The propaganda against the Dictatorship must be intensified...
...In the midst of difficult conditions imposed by fascism and surrounded by the solidarity of the masses, the popular parties increase their level of organization and leadership...
...In short, this resulted in the increasing lack of mass consumer goods on the internal market...
...In this way, it neutralized the government's policy of income distribution and also realized enormous profits...
...Today the popular and anti-fascist forces are in a better situation than in the first moments of the criminal repression...
...4) THE CONSEQUENCES OF THE FASCIST BARBARISM There is no doubt that at this level of development of the fascist policies of the dictatorship, it cannot count the majority of the country on its side...
...Evidence of opposition to the dictatorship is also appearing among wide sectors of small proprietors, businessmen and industrialists...
...With such a policy, the ruling class prematurely and precipitously sharpened the intrabourgeois contradictions, alienating wide sectorsof the petit bourgeoisie...
...Many of the pastors have avoided compromising themselves with the fascist crimes and have endeavored to defend the trade union rights of the workers and public freedoms...
...Its conception of the struggle in Chile and Latin America has, indeed, been confirmed by the facts of the situation...
...2 The petit bourgeoisie, as well, has suffered under the Junta...
...The Chilean process demonstrates clearly the incapacity of the petit bourgeoisie to solve the problems of capitalist development once a sector of large capitalists with perfectly defined interests emerges...
...5. The Communist Party, MAPU and the left-wing of the Socialist Party...
...It is through the creation of a truly revolutionary movement that we can force the socialist countries to adopt a position which corresponds to our wishes...
...2) THE ERUPTION OF FASCISM: ITS CRIMINAL, EXPLOITATIVE, DEPENDENT NATURE The fascist junta smashes the very institutionality that the bourgeoisie created and claimed to defend...
...Obviously, it is easy to delude ourselves about this...
...But, because the Chilean working class is so well organized and politically conscious, the Junta has to employ a very high level of re- pression in order to maintain its control of the country...
...Only in the measure in which the working class, by placing itself at the head of all the people, prepares itself to destroy by force the regime of force imposed by the bourgeoisie and imperialism, only in this way can it now14 move beyond the reestablishment of bourgeois parliamentary democracy to construct a true democracy, proletarian and socialist...
...Neither exploitation, nor repression, nor crime can smother what the working class has won in experience, in consciousness and in organization and what the dictatorship is not capable of destroying...
...hundreds and thousands of farm workers have been thrown off their jobs while thousands of university students were expelled and hundreds of professors have been dismissed...
...and, greater willingness on the part of the workers to organize themselves to fight the Dictatorship...
...The people's martyrs already number more than 30,000...
...Q: In the last declaration of the National Secretariat of the MIR in January 1974, the question is raised of the necessity of giving birth to a "broad social bloc which, under the direction of the working class, will integrate all classes and exploited sectors oppressed by the military Dictatorship, principally broad sectors of the petit bourgeoisie, thus heightening the struggle to topple the Dictatorship...
...We think that the main form of struggle is armed struggle...
...32 (January 19-25, 1973...
...The document was written just weeks after the coup d'etat when van Schowen, together with other resistance leaders, were being incessantly hunted by the gorilas...
...We did this with the perspective of carrying out several concrete tasks...
...Only in this way will the people understand the legitimate nature of the struggle and make it their own...
...This understanding must be reached in the arena of struggle directed by the mass movement with the working class and the revolutionary forces who direct the movement of the revolutionary masses...
...The field of action of a Resistance Committee embraces more than its immediate sphere...
...Thus, by unifying the capitalists, polarizing the petit bourgeoisie, and sowing depression in the midst of the people, speculation was converted into the weapon par excellence of fascism...
...By the end of last year, however, mass discontent with the military Dictatorship had spilled out into the streets in a hundred different ways: wildcat strikes and slow-downs at construction and industrial sites, sabotage in the factories, sand poured into delicate Air Force jet engines, postage stamp-sized leaflets plastered onto bus seats, refusals to be conscripted into the armed forces, revolutionary slogans painted on the car doors of the military dictators [see "May First: A Day of Workers' Resistance," in this issue...
...They must carry the burden of an economic and political repression that is growing in a syncronized way-carrying social decay, misery and uncertainty to wider and wider sectors of the population...
...Satisfaction of this sector's needs, therefore, came to depend essentially on the external sector, in other words, on the availability of foreign exchange in order to import these products...
...such is the case of Brazil, Peru, Paraguay...
...We must wait until the revolutionary organizations in these countries can truly develop...
...This agitation and propaganda must be the genuine expression of all the people's aspirations, Thus, every man and woman of the people, every worker, peasant, squatter, student, soldier, will become an active fighter in the antigorila cause, a militant in the resistance against the Dictatorship...
...This is the big problem which has broken the back of practically every Left movement in Latin America...
...The working class and the oppressed masses struggle not only against tyranny...
...25 per year for profit-making and government organizations ($48 for two years...
...As far back as last December, in a declaration from Rome by all the parties and movements of the left, they made public their decision to combine forces to realize the tasks destined to guarantee and develop the broad movement of solidarity with the struggle of the Chilean people that has arisen all over the world...
...In effect, while the contradictions between the ruling class and the workers grow sharper, the policies of the big bourgeoisie tends to split the bloc of classes which supported the military coup, causing the divergent interests of the various bourgeois sectors to smash against each other as well as against the interests of the petit bourgeoisie...
...In this way the Dictatorship broke the social base that brought it to power, losing the support of broad sectors of the petit bourgeoisie and simultaneously activating the entire working class and the poor people in the cities and countryside...
...They are desperate," said a poblador, "because the only ones that are well off are those with connections, the managers and the capital- ists...
...But it is not only this which demonstrates the class character of the military-fascist regime...
...Its members are now some of the Junta's top economic advisors...
...This incapacity became evident when, as the class struggle increased bringing society to the brink of a total breakdown, the petit bourgeois sectors had only two alternatives...
...Remember what I say...
...Copyright 0 1974 by the North American Congress on Latin America, Inc...
...All this slowed down the production of mass consumer goods and was, in itself, sufficient to generate a serious disequilibrium in the economy given an increased demand for these items, product of the income redistribution policy...
...We are now in the midst of making our own position known regarding our strategic objectives, our current tactics, and the manner in which we think that international solidarity should be built...
...Wages and salaries have been re-adjusted by approximately 300 percent but the Junta itself foresaw, for 1973, an inflation of close to 600 percent...
...in other words, to re-activate the process of capital accumulation...
...Q: Recent news from Argentina notes the forma- tion of a "junta of revolutionary coordination" of various revolutionary organizations in the Southern Cone of South America (MIR, ELN, ERP, MLN-Tupamaros...
...Editor's note]May First: A Day of Worker Resistance "..they were throwing leaflets from buses, little birds flying in the proletarian night of the ist of May...hands which threw them in spite of everything...
...Salaries alone cannot maintain them at their accustomed levels...
...The proletariat and other oppressed groups have the obligation to assure through independent organization, propaganda and program, their own autonomy within the anti-gorila resistance front...
...They have abolished all democratic freedoms, closed Parliament, banned all Left parties, suspended the bourgeois parties, suppressed freedom of expression, assembly and association, cancelled trade union rights, the right to petition and strike, etc...
...In other words, there are now sectors of the petit bourgeoisie who are totally dissatisfied with the Junta...
...Eduardo Frei and his supporters, who led the party in the recent period, encouraged the coup, conspired with the fascists and today negotiate with them for positions of power...
...The same problem comes up in relation to the Chilean Left, and we must discuss it...
...But the long lines which formed at dawn, and at times during the night, were daily gathering points for the popular sectors, where they began to feel hostility towards their neighbors, indignation against those who provoked the situation (the bourgeoisie, the bureaucrats, or the government, according to their political tendencies), and an increasingly painful sensation of impotence...
...This has alienated it from the social base it had at the beginning, at the time of the coup...
...We are printing portions of the interview which was conducted in La Habana, Cuba, on June 25, 1974...
...Q: Nevertheless, isn't the Soviet Union partly responsible for the propagation of the theory of the peaceful road to socialism...
...In order to understand the causes of this situation and, consequently, the political economy of Chilean military-fascism, it is necessary to begin our analysis in the period before the coup d'etat...
...The most reactionary forces in our history abolished all democratic liberties and human rights -- all in the name of "democracy...
...It has been buried under the debris of the Moneda [Presidential Palace], drowned in the blood of thousands of workers and revolutionaries who militaryfascism murdered and still murders in Chile...
...This bloc, under the leadership of the working class, will integrate all classes and exploited sectors oppressed by the military Dictatorship, principally broad sectors of the petit bourgeoisie, thus heightening the struggle to topple the Dictatorship...
...the emergence of a constellation of middlelevel worker cadres, uncompromised by reformism...
...Nevertheless, the corresponding legislation presented to the parliament was furiously diverted by the bourgeois opposition...
...It cannot prevent its fascist character from projecting its bloody image into the world outside...
...For us, the main task at the moment is the organization of the working class, the organization of popular sectors around the working class, sectors which are its natural allies...
...the right to kill "escaping" prisoners] continue...
...In them rests the strength to annihilate the dictatorship...
...At the same time they squander the small resources that the country commands, directing the highest percentage of the National Budget ever known to military expenditures, that is to say, to the maintenance of the apparatus of terror and the acquisition of new and modern armaments that permit them to repress the people in the most brutal way, to strengthen the new axis formed with Brazilian sub-imperialism and to justify the geo-political fantasies of the Chief of the junta...
...Yet these public relations journeys have only provided a clearer picture of the orilas...
...PHOTO CREDITS Cover: Chas Gerretsen, Gamma p.3: Liberation News Service p.4: Graphic by Jose Venturelli in Chile: Ein Schwarzbuch (Koln: Pahl-Rugenstein), 1974 p.11: From Chile: Ein Schwarzbuch p.16: David Burnett, Gamma p.20: Chas Gerretsen, Gamma p.22: Chas Gerretsen, Gamma p.29: From Chile: Ein Schwarzbuch Unofficial translation of the document, "Declaration of the Chilean Left," by Tricontinental News Service.s18 Revolution Is The Art Of Uniting The Forces Of The People The following article was excerpted from an interview with Luis Cerda, the MIR's representative in Europe...
...Thousands of workers and their families are persecuted only because they profess leftist ideas...
...A Resistance Committee pamphlet circulating in Santiago reads: "The dictatorship is not invincible...
...Nonetheless, this does not represent a return to the past...
...But for us armed struggle is not just one possibility among others, a form that the mass movement can adopt...
...2. The October 1974 issue of NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report will contain a more complete analysis of the economic situation...
...We will reorganize the CUT, the unions, the federations in spite of the dictatorship and against it...
...LC: This coordination is the result of a polit- ical line and political work that have been car- ried out for three years with important results...
...In this last aspect, the objective of this bourgeois sector was a regressive re-distribution of income which would increase the purchasing power of the high income groups, the slightly more than 5 percent of the consumers capable of purchasing their products...
...Placing unity as a task of the first priority, these parties have applied themselves to leading the struggle of the people of Chile that will culminate in the overthrow of the fascist gang that has usurped the government...
...The MIR has only lost three members of its Central Committee: two were imprisoned and are dead, and only one deserted the struggle and went into exile...
...British workers, for example, have been exemplary in this respect...
...What has motivated the policy -- which we find so positive -- of the Soviet Union towards the Junta...
...We must unite those forces...
...This industry was almost totally in the hands of medium and small entrepreneurs...
...Enriquez explained that the MIR is not rejecting its program for armed people's war, but considers that it would be a serious error to put this above the tremendous need to unify the Chilean Left in the struggle against the Dictatorship...
...The military dictatorship is their last recourse...
...It is this challenge which today confronts the Chilean vanguard...
...But we must develop this point: for us, ideological struggle is very important, and we have always engaged in it, but it is not the only area in which to develop our relations with the organizations of the Left...
...All democrats are today against the dictatorship, whatever their ideological, religious or cultural definition...
...The fight for socialism continues in Chile, but on a vastly different level from that of September 1970...
...From the moment the Junta revealed itself for what it is -- as an expression of large foreign capital -it was clear that it could not expect real support from the people...
...President Salvador Allende30 Unity on the Left The following interview with Edgardo Enriquez Espinosa, member of the Political Commission of the MIR, was received with the cooperation of Prensa Latina as this issue of the Report was going to press...
...WE WILL TAKE IT BACK IN STRUGGLE...
...Q: Do you think that all the parties which formed the Unidad Popular have really learned the lessons of the failure of the reformist path...
...will feel profoundly attracted to the program of struggle and resistance...
...What the working class needs to carry out this task is to translate its class interests into revolutionary politics and to implement these politics on the basis of objective conditions created by the new level of the class struggle...
...But above all-the interests of the true dominators of the system--national monopoly capital and imperialism-have to be destroyed...
...It is rumored, however, that he is dead...
...We believe today that not the Christian Democratic Party itself, but sectors of Christian Democrats, must unite with the resistance...
...weekly publication of the National Foreign Trade Council], March 6, 1974...
...The junta is trying to consolidate the terror and turn it into a permanent way of life for the people of Chile...
...But only organized struggle will permit a wall to be raised against the advances of gorilismo and prepare the working class and the people to pass to higher forms of combat...
...The author, Ruy Mauro Marini, examines the political economy of the current military Junta and its roots in the past...
...LC: Of course...
...I think this is an important aspect to consider...
...The production of coal has been reduced to zero and the junta will face serious fuel shortages in the winter of 1974...
...Thus, it is likely that, through a policy of accelerated concentration of capital, new signs of intra-bourgeois violence will emerge...
...It will grow until it becomes the broadest movement in the history of the Chilean social struggle...
...We may mention here, as an example, the case of the MIR, which still maintains its military apparatus as well as its political organization...
...In factories and farms, which have been returned to their former owners, they prohibit the creation of any type of organization which can uphold the workers' rights...
...The mass movement must organize and resist in accordance with the new circumstances...
...It was inevitable, then, that intra-bourgeois contradictions would sharpen...
...But this is secondary...
...Junta representatives have been unceremoniously confronted with their own bloody acts in Venezuela, Colombia, Mexico, France, Spain, the United States and wherever else they have dared to show their faces...
...in other words, the easy game of bourgeois parliamentarianism...
...However, that position has often been taken by the Soviet Union towards other countries and, on the contrary, China has reacted differently...
...This will permit us, in a second phase, to carry the struggle onto the terrain we truly want to take it...
...The government proceeded in this manner for the same reasons that it did not actively promote the transformation of the luxury goods industry.11 The UP's economic orientation called for nationalization of basic industries (copper, coal, steel, etc...
...These are the same people who, later on, justified the assassinations, the executions and the torture of workers and revolutionaries, and who today are trying to justify the dictatorship's crimes, through lies and deceit, portray- ing the rabid reactionary dictatorship as though it were the champion of democracy and freedom and the saviour of the people...
...This seems to us more important than solemn agreements with the PDC or the petit bourgeoisie...
...And those who have erected a pretorian guard in the capital know it well...
...It is in this second aspect that one discovers the clearest stamp of the big bourgeoisie on the political economy of the military regime...
...The ruling class' incapacity to unite its forces and present a single candidate for the 1970 presidential elections was largely a product of this situation...
...But above all, many sectors of their membership and social base of support have already resolved this contradiction or are on the way to doing it, individually or collectively...
...Only in this way can the struggle against the gorila dictatorship be converted into a huge school which prepares and educates the proletariat for the realization of its historical mission: the conquest of power, the workers' and peasants' revolution, socialism...
...Because this sector was tied to the increased production of luxury goods and because of the specific nature of Chilean industrial development (in durable consumer goods, chemical and electronics industries, principally), this sector began to seek a reorientation of credit lines in its favor, to foster the entrance of foreign capital and technology, to re-mold foreign commerce (in terms of imports as well as, and most importantly, exports, with the creation of the Andean Pact of particular importance in this field) and re-structure the internal market...
...Only in this way can the resistance struggle against gorilismo be converted into a wide resistance and then into a great popular and revolutionary counter-offensive...
...Many of its leaders have collaborated with the fascists...
...The desperate action of seeking external financial mechanisms to ease the situation of foreign revenue payment is developed by coming to an understanding with international monopolies, by de-nationalizing various industries and by searching for some disguise by which to hand over the real control of Chilean copper to the large Northamerican corporations...
...In a society such as Chile, where the crisis of capitalist accumulation has intensified, the dictatorship has instituted an anti-popular and repressive policy to ward off economic stagnation and crisis...
...International solidarity has been a powerful moral endorsement for the Chilean people in their fight against brutal repression, has had repercussions also in the internal isolation of fascism, and has been able to stop, on many occasions, the hand of the executioners...
...The working day in factories and offices has been lengthened without a corresponding wage increase...
...Its attempts at autonomy, either through Allende-style reformism or as the institutional opposition headed by the Christian Democrats, resulted in a resounding failure, causing it to lose even those positions which, regardless of its ups and downs, it was able to conquer and maintain during the last decades...
...Planned absenteeism among skilled workers has slowed production, while in the public sector papers are purposely shuffled to paralyze the inhuman official policy of discharges...
...We are certain that it will continue to grow, that it will take root in the popular masses, that it will be felt with even greater force in each factory, in each school, in each home, encouraging, from all points of the globe, the resistance that is developing in Chile and that will end in victory, opening for our people the doors of a new, truly democratic society...
...What the Chilean example demonstrates-and an analysis of the behaviour of the bourgeoisie in other countries under similar conditions will reveal the same--is that, in a moment of crisis, capital can halt its process of accumulation and provoke the degeneration of the whole economy through its transformation into speculative capital...
...Obviously, we try to show the petit bourgeoisie, and even some sectors of the middle bourgeoisie, that this military Junta is not in their class interests...
...Pamphlets outlining specific tasks or ridi- culing the military, have begun to rebuild the confidence of the masses and to dissipate the terror that the gorilas try to instill in the people...
...We feel that their analysis will help clarify the nature of the Junta, the resistance struggle and the road which lies ahead...
...To accompany the growth of demand, production of mass consumer goods would therefore have to count on the importation of raw materials, intermediary goods and capital and, above all, investments which would increase the productive capacity and, in a certain measure, permit the conversion of a part of the luxury goods industry into a capital goods industry...
...We greatly regret the Chinese position, but in a certain way, we understand the reasons why China has adopted that attitude...
...There are about 20 thousand workers at Lota...
...In seeking these objectives, new forms of struggle have evolved in addition to older forms such as strikes, sudden stoppages and sit-downs...
...and, on the other, by the relative inelasticity in the supply of intermediary goods and equipment...
...This spells super-exploitation for the workers...
...The world can mobilize with urgency to save the lives and liberty of all of them...
...Workers and students everywhere should demand that the Chilean butchers acknowledge that they have him in their power, alive and tortured, or show us his mutilated corpse...
...More pressure than evershould be exerted on governments to break off diplomatic relations with the Dictatorship and to stop all financial and military aid...
...WORKER: Past victories cannot be lost...
...The action of the traitor generals is, therefore, determined by the global strategy of large international capital-of which they are merely the policemen, put in charge of repressing the Chilean people...
...Their class character is also demonstrated when they apply, with an iron fist, the economic measures demanded (in the pages of El Mercurio) by the big bourgeoisie...
...FOOTNOTES I. It should be noted that at least one major Chilean financial group attempted to work with the Unldad Popular government for at least a short period...
...This is not only caused by the destruction of the democratic veil with which capital had disguised its domination...
...Each day conditions ripen for the development of a popular resistance that confronts the fascist regime, corners it and ends by hurling it from power...
...We are told that one Santiago poblador said, "They want to kill us by hunger...
...No one can expect miracles in the Chilean situation...
...Only the strength of the people, of the workers, of the empleados, farmers, peasants and students is invincible...
...In this economy we see a return of the tendency which dominated the Chilean economy before 1970 and which we pointed out at the start of this essay: the restriction of the market for mass consumer goods, which depends on the purchasing power of the low income sectors, in benefit of an expansion in the area of luxury goods production which is buttressed by the high income groups.13 A dependent economy has its laws and the big bourgeoisie understands them perfectly...
...imperialism...
...slowdowns in the factories, distribution of stamps with slogans in the poblaciones and public offices, and murals painted in the barrios marked the first of May, the beginning of a massive national campaign-- the response of the resistance to increased repression by the gorila dictatorship, All these acts of agitation and propaganda demonstrate the present capacity of the clandestine Resistance Committees and their level of coordination throughout Chile...
...The Popular Unity government had its reasons for acting in this manner...
...For us, it is political practice, the practice of the masses, which must, in the final analysis, define relations between the different organizations of the Left...
...Thus it reaches all levels: the factories, the farms, the universities, the poblaciones...
...decrees the dissolution of all popular political parties without exception, confiscates their funds and all their means of expression, and even submits the parties of the right tocontrol;suppresses the freedoms of the press, of meeting and of petition and the right to strike, ignoring all previously sacred legal norms...
...VIII, No...
...In addition to this, there were very strong interests, such as those of the French and Italian Communist Parties, which forced the Soviet Union to adopt stronger positions in relation to Chile...
...On the other hand, it permits the establishment of a truly coordi-20 General Augusto Pinochet nated revolutionary movement in Latin America...
...imperialists and its own enor- mous repressive forces, it is presently caught in its own vicious circle...
...Subversive phrases are printed with a homemade gummed stamp...
...But now, more unified than before...
...LC: We think that the main problem is knowing how to combine a revolutionary line based on clandestine work and the preparation of armed struggle, with real mass work...
...The proven torture and possible assassination of a Chilean popular resistance fighter should be used throughout the world against the Chilean gorilas...
...Among them are Miguel Enriquez, Victor Toro, Pascal'Allende and others...
...It proposes, then, to defeat the dictatorship, liquidate its present instrumental bases of domination, root out the ideology at its foundation and the pathologies that it stimulates in the social character...
...Salaries fell at the same time that prices and unemployment rose...
...In the name of nationalism, they open our economy to foreign capital, making it more dependent on Yankee imperialism and its outpost, Brazilian sub-imperialism...
...This means that if there is no revolutionary political line that presents itself clearly and openly, this kind of conflict, or contradiction within the Junta, will not lead to a strengthening of the revolutionary camp...
...and the organic expression of these phenomena in the creation of Industrial Belt (Cordones Industriales) and Communal Command (Comando Comunales) organizations: these are irreversible facts...
...WORKERS ALL AROUND THE WORLD SUPPORT US...
...For the petit bourgeoisie, the worker and the slum dweller (poblador) were physically identifiable competitors, beings of flesh and blood who had to be combatted and defeated...
...This implies, with regard to certain parties, a criticism and self-criticism of activities prior to the coup, as well as the present positions of these organizations...
...In this sense not only are the workers the objects of its violence but also sectors within the bourgeoisie...
...We will stop at nothing, even at the cost of our own lives...
...Resistance to the Junta, sporadic at first because of heavy losses and initial disorganization, now grows daily...
...This is why we are obliged to maintain a certain degree of cooperation among ourselves...
...2 In its first year of government, the UP's results in the economic field filled it with optimism...
...But in order not to confuse our position on this matter with a position which we criticize, we must emphasize: we absolutely do not seek an opening toward the center...
...Secret Memos from ITT," NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report, Vol...
...This position has brought them into conflict with fascism and earned them attacks from the junta's mercenaries...
...They will not achieve their objective...
...It is becoming a clear truth for all that the repression can not act with impunity or without response and that with each step new contingents are added to the active resistance against fascism...
...They turn off the radio when the national channel of the junta comes on...
...we ask all the workers, revolutionaries and progressives of the world to accelerate the campaign to stop his torture...
...In practice, the struggle of the masses to regain their political and social rights has already been initiated...
...Luis Corvalan, Secretary General of the Communist Party...
...Various factors led to this situation: the withdrawal of private foreign capital and the financial boycott established by the U.S...
...Today, among the organized and vanguard sectors of the working class, one can already see signs of reactivation: a number of strikes in key industries which have been massively repressed...
...And, in the same framework, one can better understand the10 victory obtained by the coalition of worker and petit bourgeois parties, the Popular Unity (Unildad Popular, UP), which elected Salvador Allende to the presidency of Chile...
...Ercilla, No...
...It is a struggle against the dictatorship on all levels...
...Due to the primacy of the inter-class struggle under the UP government, a new economic mechanism, speculation, was able to unite the interests of the big bourgeoisie to those of the smaller sector of capitalists...
...In the basic industries controlled by the State, such as the coal mines of Concepcion and Arauco, they have imposed a system of forced labor which goes so far as to prohibit workers from leaving the zone without permission from the military authorities...
...workers at Weirs Pumps, of4 Cathcart, would not provide pumps needed for the warships under construction for the Chilean Navy...
...This defeat reflected the historic error of reformist politics...
...Unfortunately, for them, things are not like that...
...Enriquez paid homage to the dead, imprisoned and tortured members of the MIR and the other parties of the Chilean Left...
...It is crucial to continue the boycott of Chilean ships in foreign seaports, as well as the sabotage against arms shipments...
...See NACLA's Latin America and Empire Report, Vol...
...All the parties, including the MIR, find themselves today in a rather difficult situation because of the military coup d'etat...
...The immediate objectives of the popular resistance against the Dictatorship are: a) to push forward the struggle for a minimal program, demanding the reestablishment of democratic freedoms as well as raising the standard of living of the masses by way of a struggle for wage raises equal to the 100 percent rise in the cost of living...
...Letters should be sent to all sectors of the Chilean population, encouraging the resistance...
...The struggle for the most immediate needs25 will rally vast sectors of the population...
...It should be a broad organization that includes all unorganized workers who want to fight the Dictatorship...
...These are just a few of the points presented in Ruy Mauro's article...
...This group, the "Grupo Banco Hipotecario" (commonly nicknamed the "piranas"), controlled approximately eleven financial corporations and four insurance companies as well as important industries...
...Its economic policies have tied it firmly to the monopoly sector of the bourgeoisie and foreign imperialism...
...This cycle has produced two important re- sults to date...
...It must acquire and express the multiplied strength of millions and millions...
...This produced a notable increase in the internal demand for goods and services...
...the proletariat struggles to liberate itself as a class, to end all forms of dictatorship imposed upon it and upon other classes and social strata...
...WORKERS OF THE WORLD, THE POPULAR RESISTANCE OF CHILE WILL GROW AND STRENGTHEN ITSELF...
...We should add that the restriction of the market which results from such a policy particularly affects the mass consumer goods industry, especially the production of low quality goods, generally controlled by small and mediumsized firms...
...if they would or wouldn't support a revolutionary movement...
...16 per year for non-profit institutions ($30 for two years...
...Dependent on salaries for their livelihood and parties for their political expression, the petit bourgeoisie has been hit in both areas...
...The military Junta which took over the government in September 1973 revealed its class character by handing over the formulation of its political economy to Fernando Leniz, ex-president of El Mercurio who is closely tied to infamous North American and Chilean financial groups...
...When, at the beginning, the situation in Chile was totally favorable for preparing for armed struggle, most of the Left parties remained under the illusion that they could maintain, in an undefinable fashion, the mass struggle within the framework of [bourgeois] institutions...
...Our first task is to push for the reorganization of the working class and the mass movement...
...smaller) capitalist sectors which cannot stand up under the unrelenting penetration of foreign capital, deepening the contradiction between the monopoly bourgeoisie and the middle and small bourgeoisie [see "Chile: The Political Economy of Military-Fascism," in this issue...
...I (July-September 1973), 106-123...
...While it was the big bourgeoisie which emerged at the head of the capitalist class after the coup, reaching a dominance which it never before had attained, the conflicts within the bourgeoisie, as well as between classes, has not been resolved...
...We are not willing to fight on a battlefield chosen by the Dictatorship...
...The immense majority of humanity has condemned with indignation the crimes of the fascist junta...
...The development of the values of solidarity and fraternity must bring a large number of them into the anti-fascist struggle...
...4 Furthermore, the country is expected to spend up to $800 million in 1974 for imports of wheat alone, and freight rates are up 15 per- cent to the United States and 30 percent to Europe...
...And, for a bourgeoisie, there is no political opposition better than that which can be done not only with impunity but also for the benefit of its own pocketbook...
...The suppression of union and labor rights must be constantly denounced...
...Fascism is beginning to reap the fruits of its policy of cruel exploitation of the working class, of the plundering of the weakest sectors of the bourgeoisie, of the criminal repression of the workers' and popular organizations, of the silencing of all expression of political life in the country...
...WE WILL DRAG THE ASSASSINS FROM POWER...
...On April 28th, the Lota coal mine-- one of the largest carbon deposits in Chile-- was paralyzed by a flood that hit its central gallery, known as Pique Grande...
...In past NACLA publications we have demonstrated our solidarity with the Chilean people through our analysis of U.S...
...Even those who actively collaborated with the fascists before the September coup, today discover with desperation that the government they helped to create attacks them as well, ignores their Interests and places on their shoulders as well the cost of accumulation of economic power by the monopolies that yesterday flattered and deceived them...
...The working class, overcoming the terror that the usurping junta has imposed, confronts it in the copper and coal mines and in many industries, in defense of its living standard, its trade union and essential rights...
...With each day the workers and popular masses are dragged further into misery, unemployment, to jail, torture and death...
...We think that the contradictions between the different sectors of Chilean society, particularly between sectors of the petit bourgeoisie and the Junta, have grown sharper and sharper...
...The large bourgeoisie and imperialism were hit hard by these advances of the people...
...And, in turn, this has had important repercussions abroad: the people of the world are demanding that their governments cut off all aid to the Dictatorship...
...We believe that the Christian Democratic Party is a political party which has attracted to it a rather important popular sector...
...Victory depends upon it...
...I feel that the Junta's difficulty in destroying the forces of the Chilean Left is the most important sign...
...Our companeros have sent us one of the pamphlets they distributed the first of May, and the stamps with slogans that they distributed in the poblaciones...
...FREEDOM FOR THE DA WSON PRISONERS BEFORE THE WINTER We again call upon international public opinion to intensify even more the massive campaign for an end to the repression, respect for human rights, the closing of the concentration camps, freedom for political prisoners and the repeal of the State of Internal War...
...The encouragement of numerous forms of popular participation in the productive and administrative apparatus and the rise of new popular mass organizations permitted the development of a social movement characterized by a high political consciousness of the masses...
...The USSR can have its own ideas about the "peaceful road",about the manner of making a revolution in this or that country...
...Ideological23 questions are only posed around very concrete problems that the resistance must face...
...It was for this reason alone that the bourgeoisie fought with such rancor the centers of supply and prices (Juntas de Abastecimlento y Preclos, JAP), the popular stores, the communal commands of food supply and other organizations of this nature...
...A period of industrial growth, occurring after the Forties, and the increased penetration of foreign capital, in the following decade, helped to crystalize a sector of the bourgeoisie with an increasingly narrow field of interests...
...More than ever, there is a need for rallies and marches in support of the Chilean resistance...
...Here, those who suffer most from ill-effects are the low income groups, particularly unskilled workers and low-level white collar workers (empleados) as well as the poor sectors who do not have a regular income...
...31 (January 12-18, 1973) and No...
...The expropriation of the large private landholdings developed the peasantry as a social and productive force...
...and the walls of the Panamerican Highway awoke bombarded with red paint, without slogans, only stained the color of blood, entire blocks...
...Rolls Royce workers at East Kilbride would not repair engines for the Chilean Air Force's Hawker Hunter fighters (which were sabotaged inside Chile...
...The government, through Fernando Flores...
...Editor's note] 2. In general, this was analyzed by Cristian Sepulveda and myself in "La politica economica de la 'via chilena...
...With their blood and their social combat Jose Manuel Balmeceda, the anti-imperialist patriot...
...This also coincides with the real interests of middle sectors made up of professionals, small and medium merchants, etc...
...We will point out only that the government did not apply the necessary measures to capture and then reinvest the earnings which economic expansion placed in the hands of private enterprise...
...To apply such a policy, the fascist generals have implanted a brutal repression within the Armed Forces...
...The organization of committees against price rises and lay-offs must be pushed decisively...
...5) THE PEOPLE ARE PRESENT The working class and the Chilean people feel today in their own flesh the effects of a policy based on their exploited labor, on the violent decrease in their living standard and on generalized repression, the object of which is the recuperation of economic power by the groups fascism represents...
...The defeat of the Chilean people in the face of the reactionary forces dramatically shows the price that the masses pay for the vacillations and ineffectiveness of leftist centrism...
...imperial- ism, which since 1962-3 has systematically de- veloped its policy of reinforcing military forces in Latin America with military aid, and on the other hand, the actual economic expansion of imperialism on the continent, translated into an inter-penetration of the interests of the national bourgeoisies with those of U.S...
...The resistance, the clandestine struggle, the production of propaganda within Chile today, the reorganization of the resistance movement and the building of the people's army need enormous quantities of money...
...In the name of the workers and people of Chile, we are grateful for the solidarity that has been given us...
...The Dictatorship is trying, albeit in a rather clumsy way, to provoke us into a level of combat for which we are not really prepared...
...Fidel Castro, September 28, 1973 The Chilean people are fighting back...
...OUR STRUGGLE IS PART OF THE STRUGGLE THAT ALL THE PEOPLES OF THE WORLD ARE WAGING AGAINST IMPERIALISM, REACTIONARY FORCES AND BARBARISM...
...Invaded by its own armed forces, Chile today is a long strip of blood-soaked land where thousands of patriots are assassinated, tortured, deprived of their liberty, expelled from schools and universities, implacably persecuted and deprived of the right to subsist by means of a dignified job...
...1) SIGNIFICANCE OF THE POPULAR GOVERNMENT The three years of the Unidad Popular government represented a profound and historical change for Chilean society...
...c) to open itself up to all sectors of the working class and the unorganized masses -to the mass movement in its entirety -- and to incorporate them into the struggle against the Dictatorship, building the popular resistance movement, in each factory, farm, slum neighborhood, school, university and prison...
...We believe that all forms of struggle must be employed...
...Pressure should be exerted so that the international organizations, universities and other institutions terminate their contracts and exchange programs with the Junta...
...When the mass movement was most weakened by the murders and terror, resistance to the Junta was isolated, uncoordinated, but no less courageous...
...On the other side of the coin, these measures harm all salaried groups equally, whether proletariator petit bourgeoisie...
...To accomplish this, they proposed a wage policy which harmed the immense majority of the workers...
...By 1967--during the second half of the government of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei-the policies of the big bourgeoisie had produced a recession in the mass consumer goods industry, and the worsening of the workers' and semiproletarian masses' living standards as well as those of the lower sectors of the petit bourgeoisie...
...Socialist Party of Chile Communist Party of Chile Christian Left MIR MAPU Worker and Peasant Radical Party MAPU From left to right in the photo: Carlos Altamirano, Secretary General of the Socialist Party...
...He added, however, that the military Junta that governs his country will only be overthrown "at the end of a prolonged, difficult people's war that will be full of sacrifices...
...But when the Soviet Union is confronted with a concrete experience, as it was in the case of Vietnam, Cuba and now in Chile, it is obliged to adopt more advanced positions than it would like...
...4 (April 1972...
...Governments and friendly people have opened their embassies and countries to receive hundreds of politically persecuted individuals...
...The course of Chilean economic development has been determined, to a large degree, by the force which emerges strongest in this intrabourgeois struggle (never forgetting the absolutely critical role played by U.S...
...A second reason is that the petit bourgeoisie has been forced to occupy a subordinate political position in the country...
...They will, therefore, not reject dissemination of their own program or of their independent propaganda...
...closes the Parliament and the Municipalities...
...In an interview with the Chilean weekly, Ercilla, Sahli spoke assuredly of the "necessary disappearance of 'inefficient' firms" in Chile in the future...
...In this sense, we are developing a mass practice with a specific goal, one which we hide from no one, from no political party...
...It is in the face of a concrete situation that the socialist countries are forced to make their choice, that we can develop a genuine solidarity between the socialist countries and the Latin American revolutionary movements...
...This was his thought...
...And, as a recent joint communique of the National Liberation Movement [Tupamaros] of Uruguay, Movement of the Revolutionary Left [MIR] of Chile, National Liberation Army [ELN] of Bolivia and the People's Revolutionary Army [ERP] of Argentina, pointed out, "We have discovered through our own experience the international nature of our struggle, recognizing that we must oppose the united imperialist, capitalist enemy with the strongest unity of our people...
...On the other hand, the Soviet Union had at stake not only the situation of the Chilean Communist Party, but also its global policy which it is trying to spread throughout the world in favor of peaceful coexistance...
...The Committees have been extended, moreover, to large sectors of the petit bourgeoisie, to the small proprietors, merchants, bus and truck drivers....the same groups that carried out strikes and shutdowns against the government of Allende...
...The military coup in Chile fits the model of the reactionary counter-offensive by imperialism in Latin America, whose object is to crush with blood and fire the development of popular struggles on the continent...
...We do not have to recall the basic fact that the bourgeoisie withheld new investments...
...What are the factors that led to the creation of this revolutionary front...
...Expressions of resistance to the policy of fascism arise and multiply...
...Governments, parliaments, the United Nations and other international organizations should show the same attitude towards the Junta...
...In their feverish eyes they perceive the church, the United Nations, the governments of Europe and even the Northamerican press as "marxist...
...lomatic missions accredited in Chile...
...Under the blanket of terror which military-fascism has thrown over Chile, the old mole, of which Marx spoke...
...Considering the intensification of contradictions and class struggle in Chile today, such a centrist line seems to us absolutely unjustifiable...
...The most spectacular action on the first of May was carried out by a MIR commando, that painted the party's insignia on none other than the official car of General Sergio Arellano, chief of the Second Santiago Division and nicknamed "the Jackal of the North" for the executions he ordered on a tour of that zone last November...
...The flood also caused dangerous gases to accumulate in the numerous galleries and shafts of the mine, making it impossible to work in them...
...The Ist of May, flooded with pamphlets, red paint, painted walls, signified the first organized action of agitation and propaganda by the Resistance...
...We are still far from the time when revolutionary armed struggle in Latin America can take on the international character that Che sought to give it, but we believe it is necessary to work toward this end...
...On the other hand, we also believe that the undeniable weakening of the Junta will have only a limited effect on its future options...
...Advancing on the road of unity, we have decided to establish a permanent coordination of the Chilean left on the outside...
...We are currently attempting to reorganize the mass movement, to reorganize the working class, to give the masses a chance to impose their line...
...For that reason, my party has sent me abroad -- not to deliver tearful, sorrowful messages, but rather to speak of our optimism, our hope and our struggle...
...Even greater potential exists in the Christian masses...
...Our party, our leadership cadre, our militants, are ready for war throughout Chile...
...We do not think that it is necessary to take a step backwards in order to reach -- on any basis whatsoever -- an understanding with this sector...
...THE WORKERS AND REVOLUTIONARIES OF CHILE HAVE SWORN ON THE MEMORY OF OUR MARTYRS TO FIGHT UNTIL WE OVERTHROW THE DICTATORSHIP...
...and each time they come and say that there are 5 extremists here and 3 extremists there who are going to devour us...But you know something...
...We will not accept the handouts and the wages of hunger...
...We must seek in each concrete situation the forms with which we will be able to develop a mass resistance in Chile, a mass resistance Which is capable of creating an armed power able to face and crush the military apparatus of the bourgeoisie and imperialism...
...WE MUST SUPPORT THE CHILEAN POPULAR RESISTANCE...
...The principal force of the resistance must be the masses, and particularly the working class...
...This tragic unfolding of what used to be called the "Chilean road to socialism" represents but another stage in the Chilean class struggle beginning in the Sixties, and it cannot be understood if we do not use this period as our point of reference...
...Each day the necessity to shake themselves free of a domination that crushes and attempts to muzzle them becomes clearer...
...Must this broad social21 bloc of which this document speaks also integrate grass-roots sectors of the Christian Democratic Party [PDC], which has, it seems, been torn to shreds by the repressive policy of the Junta...
...The working class and the people ardently push for the broadest unity with all sectors of the population who are willing to join the resistance struggle against the gorilas...
...It is the general form that the mass move ment adopts at a given moment in its development when the contradictions which exist within the national and imperialist ruling classes are sufficiently developed...
...exploitation, the winning back of social and political gains--these are chapters in the present struggle that come before the more decisive stages of the fight...
...We are absolutely certain that September 11 marked the beginning of a struggle that will end only with the people's victory...
...Secondly, we also have seen revolutionary forces in Latin America which posed the question of armed struggle but, being too far removed from the masses, fell into a kind of "Left militarism...
...of those five, four remain and continue their political work...
...6 (May 1974), 4. 10...
...Q: The present period is therefore one of re- organizing the working class, which was scattered when the repression began and which must now be restructured as a political class...
...The campaign for rehiring dismissed union leaders must be a constant task...
...american Ambassador Davis in which he advised the State Department to create "a discontent large enough to stimulate majority support for military intervention...
...Today the struggle to re-establish democratic liberties, the fight for the most elementary rights and the defense of the living standards of the masses, must be the focus of attention and combative unity of the immense majority of the population against the gorila regime, The struggle around these immediate tasks will prevent gorilismo from advancing its attempts to undercut the people's capacity for resistance and isolate the political vanguard from its base...
...In this way, we place in the hands of the workers and people of Chile and in the hands of the revolutionary and progressive forces all over the world a more effective instrument to face the requirements of the present moment...
...For the moment, we have established bilateral relations with the [Left] parties...
...MIR poster on a Santiago wall: "Soldier, don't let them force you into this again...
...We think that that is more efficient than mere debates on doctrine...
...On the first wanted-list published by the Junta, five of the "most wanted" persons were from the MIR...
...That struggle is one we have been leading since the month of September 1973 in different ways...
...To do that we are going to prepare ourselves for as long as we judge it necessary...
...At the same time, the contradictions between the big bourgeoisie, on the one hand, and the medium and petit bourgeoisie, on the other, increased, creating deep fissures in the system of class rule on which they all rested...
...In a cynical public declaration, the junta announces that 1974 will be "the worst year in the history of Chile," declaring with the backing of their guns that the whole population should perform "sacrifices...
...Since the gorilas deny having him in their possession, it is impossible to verify his fate...
...We must create the conditions for a revolutionary movement capable of confronting national and foreign capital in Latin America...
...We should work to permanently improve this organization and make use of the weaknesses and mistakes of the dictatorship...
...For the sector of the PDC which seeks an active role in the resistance, which has truly decided to take a stand on the various battlefields in the struggle against the Junta, there will always be a role to play in the resistance...
...2 (April/May 1974), 21-30], and first appeared in the French periodical, Liberation . QUESTION: What kind of situation do the Chilean people and the Resistance face six months after the coup...
...The preparation for higher phases of struggle and confrontation with fascism is in force.29 8) INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY: AN ESSENTIAL FACTOR FOR THE VICTORY OF THE PEOPLE The peoples of the world have been profoundly moved by the military coup in Chile...
...All this helped generate a powerful advance in the level of the mass movement in the city and the countryside which, besides provoking immediate economic demands, gave rise to their growing political radicalization...
...Put on the defensive by the coup d'etat, confused, fearful and fragmented at first, it slowly began to reorganize and regain confidence in its own strength...
...The most important task today is to organize the resistance throughout Chile...
...In this case, pricing policy-which aids in the super-exploitation of labor--represents a fundamental element once the purchasing power of the masses is restricted (by devaluing salaries via prices) and they are no longer able to compete in the consumer goods market...
...The committee should recruit and organize groups of lawyers who are willing to come to Chile to defend the political prisoners, etc...
...THE WORKERS OF THE ENTIRE WORLD SHOULD DENOUNCE AND FIGHT THE JUNTA...
...On the one hand, it lessened the intra-bourgeois contradictions over the appropriation of profits...
...They speak of hunger...
...It is not only in the working class and its parties that the conditions for struggle and victory mature...
...On the other hand, we believe that the Latin American revolution must have what I call a certain "autonomy...
...A vast and powerful massive movement of solidarity has been developing on all continents...
...7) BROAD FRONT OF STRUGGLE This broad anti-fascist front is made possible by the alliance of the proletariat with the rest of the popular sectors...
...Enriquez called upon world public opinion to offer its solidarity with Luis Corvalan, Secretary General of the Chilean Communist Party, Clodomiro Almeyda, ex-Minister of Foreign Relations, as well as other imprisoned leaders of the UP, He also asked that international public opinion step up all efforts to prevent the execution or further torture of Bautista van Schowen, a 30-year old doctor and member of the MIR's Political Commission...
...Under these circumstances, the most efficient method of defending the poor's level of consumption rested not in rationing, as a certain sector of the government believed,' but in the creation of a system of distribution which would curtail established commerce's possibility of acting as a center of hoarding and speculation...
...But the Junta has also been weakened by a series of internal conflicts and contradictions which have grown sharper since the coup...
...The workers, peasants, squatters (pobladores), students, soldiers, poor petty bourgeoisie, intellectuals, etc...
...Elements collaborating with the Dictatorship must be denounced and isolated...
...What does this common ground consist of...
...If it is certain that the big bourgeoisie embodies the interests of the bourgeoisie as a class, it is no less certain that it can grow only at the expense of the great majority of the capitalists...
...The next step will be the unification of these forces on-the basis of a revolutionary program that will allow them to mobilize and strike back at the Dictatorship...
...We must always keep in mind the forms of struggle that will be victorious in the end...
...LC: This is a difficult question...
...Enriquez affirmed that the Chilean people haven't abandoned the struggle and that the popular worker's resistance has taken important steps forward...
...It can have its preferences for the parliamentary road, etc...
...The choice of each method of struggle and the initiation of each phase of combat will be determined by the correlation of forces and of the organization that the people and revolutionaries achieve at each point...
...It was precisely because the highly conscious, well-organized Chilean proletariat threatened to destroy the power of the bourgeoisie that the latter, with their foreign allies, had to resort to a counterrevolutionary movement which continued past the time of the coup...
...In effect, the increase in the working day and the decrease in salaries are measures which interest all the bourgeoisie...
...But the working class reserves its irrenouncible right to political and organizational independence...
...information bulletins, magazines and newspapers should be published...
...Today the question is to translate this political line into-concrete action.22 Most of the other parties labored under an erroneous conception, a conception refuted by history...
...They could have placed themselves behind the working class-the only class, after October 1972, to present a. revolutionary solution to the contemporary crisis--or behind the big bourgeoisie and its military arm, thereby becoming a manipulated mass lending itself as a social base for military-fascism...
...Food production is a case in point...
...3 (March 1974), 28-30...
...it also has other obligations and tasks, such as relating to the legal organizations that still exist in the midst of the oppressive orila regime -- with unions, federations, neighborhood councils, mothers' centers, etc...
...All this has produced rather important changes in the general political situation and has led to a certain breakdown of the military Junta...
...All this has led to a climate of general discontent...
...It is the gorilas who are going to be devoured...
...Agitation and clandestine revolutionary propaganda will be tools for expressing the daily problems of the masses and must aid the development of resistance branches...
...Nothing allows us to believe that this can be done without recourse, at a given moment, to the use of arms...
...We must go on...
...the organization of the unemployed to exert a growing pressure for satisfactory wages...
...But the problems of coordination are not only technical...
...With respect to the bourgeoisie (as well as the propertyowning sectors of the petit bourgeoisie), the speculation unleashed by the big bourgeoisie achieved its results in two ways...
...sponsored coup in Chile was not an isolated event but rather a concerted attack against revolutionaries and progressives throughout the continent...
...Thousands of workers, laborers, students, peasants and women lost their lives in the resistance struggle or have since been assassinated by the dictatorship...
...Pedro Aguirre Cerda, democratic teacher and visionary...
...We are speaking only of a first nucleus, one which will attract the revolutionary forces of other countries that are, for the moment, in difficult situations...
...It is estimated that 80% T ti e Chilean population is in disagreement with the military junta and thousands and thousands of workers have already actively taken up the struggle...
...We believe that this phenomenon is quite important, but that in po- litical life things never happen automatically...
...On the other hand, we are not at all satisfied, in this respect, with the Chinese attitude...
...At this moment we maintain fraternal relations with all the parties of the Chilean Left, trying to create the most favorable conditions for ideological and political debate, with the goal of finding a common ground more solid than before...
...The infamous December 1971 "march of pots and pans" which joined a sector of the petit bourgeoisie with the fascist-prone lumpenproletariat for the first time in the streets of Santiago, demonstrated this point...
...And, beneath this, the slow work of reorganizing and regrouping the workers' parties and organizations has been going on...
...The people have had a severe blow...
...The day after the coup we immediately raised the question of the creation of coordination inside the country, but this problem has not been resolved yet...
...The pobladores who have known the crimes, massive raids and the razing of entire neighborhoods are reorganizing and lend their support to the struggle against the dictatorship...
...Since the beginning, the MIR has emerged as the Junta's prime target...
...and durable goods which are directed almost totally towards luxury consumption...
...A recent study by the Morgan Guaranty Trust found that Chile will be the country most vulnerable to price rises in oil, with petroleum imports absorb- ing nearly 60 percent of its gross reserves of capital...
...Fires, apparently accidental, have destroyed the Industria Multiplas and the ware- houses of the firm Fuentes y Cia, known for their brutal exploitation of workers and refusal to pay family benefits...
...The attitude of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European countries, their first reaction, has been very positive: breaking off diplomatic and economic relations, etc...
...6. Andean Times [London], March 15, 1974...
...ON THE CLANDESTINE RESISTANCE COMMITTEES The immediate task in Chile is to channel the immense popular discontent against the gorila dictatorship...
...However, the fundamental condition for joining these committees is acceptance of a single common objective: the overthrow of the dictatorship, establishment of democratic liberties and de- fense of the living standard of the popular masses...
...Our militants must be willing to give their lives for the cause of proletarian revolution...
...The Junta (following the directives of the so-called "Chicago boys" -- a group of economists trained under Milton Friedman at the University of Chicago) has removed that protection...
...Our conception of this is slightly different from Che's: the international character of the Latin American revolution is fully confirmed today...
...But it is the workers who have suffered most from the repression of the Junta and who, in turn, will be the only force capable of leading a resistance movement to ultimate victory (see "To the Workers, Revolutionaries and Peoples of the World," and the statement by Bautista van Schowen in this issue...
...The people of Chile have a long and heroic history of struggle and unity...
...The regrouping of social forces must be around a clear, revolutionary position...
...1 While Saenz, head of the Chilean Industrialists' Association [SOFOFA] under the Unidad Popular government, was one of the UP's fiercest enemies, he represented the interests of a certain sector of the national bourgeoisie which needed some protection from foreign capital in order to grow...
...The MIR leader denounced the corruption that is deeply dividing the officer corps...
...The principal reason is that Chinese interests are not threatened by the military Junta in the same way that they were not during the UP...
...Aware that noodles are now a product of mass popular con- sumption (especially in the poblaciones) workers have been adding an extra 300 grams to one kilo packages...
...We must not always dream of an ideal political line...
...The Junta had a choice...
...They must convert themselves into true fighting instruments serving the essential material interests of the working class and the people...
...Where terror has not NACLA'S LATIN AMERICA & EMPIRE REPORT Vol...
...LC: Political and ideological debate with other organizations is something we engage in only when it is absolutely necessary, at the level of the coordination of the Chilean Left...
...Because this constitutes one of31 the MIR's principle positions, the MIR will take all necessary steps to put it into practice...
...Salvador Allende, first authentically popular President of Chile, consistent revolutionary and hero of the struggle for the peoples' independence, wrote the pages of that history...
...In the weeks to come the Dictatorship will renegotiate its foreign debt with the United States, Japan and the European countries, trying to arrange favorable conditions in order to develop an economic policy based on misery and superexploitation for the masses...
...This problem was aggravated by an early type of speculation: the illegal shipment of merchandise abroad where, thanks to the accelerating devaluation of the escudo, these items could be sold at a greater profit...
...Only in this way will the Junta's difficulties and contradictions become unresolvable...
...And it chose to rely fundamentally on force, Now, from this point of view, the Junta is not only trying to reinforce its position by the purge it is carrying out in the army right now -- which is spoken of in the papers -- but it is also seeking to reinforce its position through the support of the United States in particular, and also of Brazil, which is seeking to strengthen its position in Latin America...
...3. Noticias [Buenos Aires], March 9, 1974...
...imperialism's activities in Chile.11 In this issue of the Report we are presenting a variety of documents from the leftist and revolutionary forces inside Chile...
...This would force us to link ourselves to the evolution and fluctuations of international politics...
...But the situation generated by speculation in terms of the circulation of merchandise also obliges the capitalists to worry about the reorganization of the structures of distribution and consumption which were used to undermine the previous government...
...The current phase is also one of preparing the party and clandestine mass organizations...
...Worldwide personalities, heads of governments and political parties, church leaders, and even the Secretary General of the United Nations have taken part in these actions...
...VIII, No 5. May-June 1974 Published monthly, except May-June and July-August when it is published bi-monthly, at 160 Claremont Ave., New York, NY 10027...
...Left: Sergio Onofre Jarpa, President of the National Party Right: Orlando Saenz, ex-president of SOFOFA We have already seen how this presupposes an increased exploitation of labor or, what amounts to the same thing, the generation of a higher level of surplus value for the capitalist...
...The people speak...
...7. A word used in Spanish to describe the fascist sectors of the military...
...The counter-revolution has signified the destruction of 50 years of workers' advances...
...The incorporation of lessadvanced sectors from the city and the countryside into political life...
...Permanent counter-demonstrations should be conducted in front of all the Chilean Consulates and Embassies, unleashing a huge international campaign demanding that the Dictatorship lift the state of seige, do away with the War Councils, end the summary executions and premeditated assassinations, as well as the repression and tor- ture...
...At the same time, they decreed an exhorbitant price hike as an incentive to production, increasing the profits of the propertied classes while depressing salaries, wages and drastically lowering the standard of living of the workers and the petit bourgeoisie...
...This was quite clear in Chile...
...Every right that is violated, every liberty repressed, every capitalist abuse, every military illegality, every murder and torture, every price rise, firing of workers or wage-cut should be converted into a banner of struggle against gorilismo and the military dictatorship...
...The Dictatorship, aware of its growing isolation throughout the world, is organizing an international propaganda counter-offensive, by way of certain embassies and delegations, and by naming well-known Chilean reactionaries as press attaches in the various embassies throughout the world -- mercenary journalists in the service of capital, journalists who used the press and radio to create the atmosphere for the coup d'etat, the overthrow of the Allende government and the repression of the workers...
...Together with the masses, we are forging a popular resistance to the bloody Dictatorship...
...The image of austerity and integrity that the Junta tries to project is nothing more than a great ruse designed to hide the privileges and money that they are reaping...
...On these small pie