sophisticated army against a completely disarmed population.
So, for the first few days after the military coup there was complete
disarray and chaos. Allende made an appeal saying that workers should be in
the factories doing their duty. But this was a meaningless strategy to face
an army with. From my area we could see aeroplanes bombarding the centre of
Santiago. It was as if they dropped a bomb on Downing Street. Military
personnel and tanks were on the street.
The repression was savage, massive, ruthless. If you were a well known
person there was no trial, no concentration camp-there was execution on the
spot. They persecuted the leaders ruthlessly.
I spent two and a half years in prison. I was not an important
political leader. They did that to me, and to hundreds of thousands of
others, to teach us a lesson. We were told in the concentration camps, "This
is a lesson. We have the power to kill you right now because you rose up
against the social order that we defend."
Allende and the Popular Unity government had come to power in 1970.
Popular Unity was made up of six parties-the most important of which were
the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, which dominated the working
class movement in Chile. The 1970s were a period of really intense struggle.
The ordinary people of Chile were really politicised when Allende was
elected and their expectations were very high.
I remember when Tony Blair was elected in this country after 18 years
of the Tories. There were expectations then as well. But in Chile that was
magnified three or four times. The Popular Unity government promised to
alleviate conditions for the poor. It had a political strategy that became
known as the "Chilean road to socialism". Allende was democratically elected
within the framework of capitalist democracy and he began to implement very
mild reforms. He nationalised companies, mainly those owned by other
countries, like the US multinationals such as the ITT telephone company and
the mining companies.
I think there were around 150 companies nationalised by the Chilean
state. Allende was from the old school of social reform. He was an extremely
honest politician, more honest than the people we have here in parliament.
He genuinely believed that society could be reformed by parliamentary means.
That's why I feel I have to criticise him.
During the coup he said that he was going to stay in the presidential
palace because that was his duty. He had been elected by the majority of the
people. At that time the Chilean people also genuinely believed society
could be changed by democratic means, through elections and representation
of the oppressed in parliament. Later on this was not the case.
So Allende's reforms did not touch the Chilean bosses. For example,
his government provided half a litre of milk for children under the age of
seven-a very important move in a poor country. There were also mild agrarian
reforms, with compensation for the landowners.
The whole strategy of the Popular Unity government was based within
the constitutional means of Chilean society. When we talk about Chilean
society, we are talking about a capitalist society.
In 1972, the bosses decided to try to overthrow Allende using
political means for the last time. The lorry owners, who owned large fleets
of lorries, went on strike.
It was like a pack of cards. The big capitalists tried to paralyse the
country to create economic chaos and panic. They were joined by the bosses
owning factories, the landowners and then by middle class professionals like
doctors, lawyers and university lecturers. The Popular Unity government had
no coherent strategy for dealing with the bosses' offensive. It was
paralysed.
But the response of the masses from below gives an extraordinary
lesson for every socialist. It was a bread and butter issue-there was no
food. There was also the danger that Allende was going to be overthrown. The
working class showed a remarkable ingenuity. I remember in October 1972
there was a really important meeting in the shanty town where I grew up. We
were told that the bosses were on strike and that food was the priority.
There was a general assembly in my neighbourhood and we began to discuss
what to do.
It was clear to us that the food supply had to be maintained by any
means. We formed a committee to expropriate the food supply from the
supermarkets. We also formed a committee of self defence and a committee for
education, because the level of education in the shanty town was very poor.
These sorts of organisations were called comandos comunales. They were
similar to the neighbourhood committees formed in Argentina recently. Within
the comandos comunales there were branches dealing with defence, food
supply, health.
It was an amazing experience. When you are involved in a revolution
you learn very quickly. People began to realise that they were taking
control of their own destiny. We were able to maintain order in the
neighbourhood more effectively than before because everything was discussed
democratically.
This was the response of the shanty town dwellers to the bosses'
offensive. In workplaces, workers formed cordones industriales. They were
similar to the soviets in Russia in 1917 or 1905 or to other workers'
committees that have developed in the class struggle. The cordones were
already there when the bosses went on strike. But now they organised better,
and independently of the trade unions. They took over the land and the
factories and ran them with the principle of workers' democracy. Production
and distribution of goods were discussed collectively.
In some areas there was a link between the cordones at the point of
production and the comandos comunales. I think there was an embryo of
popular power and also an embryo of dual power. On the one hand the workers
were building an organisation based on democracy and collective running of
society from below, on the other there was the official society.
Without exaggeration it was one of the richest experiences of the
Chilean working class. The independent action of the working class and the
comandos comunales were really the leadership of the working class at that
moment. The Popular Unity government was caught in a straitjacket. They
compromised with the bosses even though the bosses aimed to overthrow
Allende.
There was a sharp contradiction. The government was telling us that it
was our government. But when we marched to the government to ask if it would
legalise our occupations the police would beat us up and trample us.
One of the cordones called a big meeting in a stadium which was
described as being like the formation of a soviet. The working class did not
just operate independently, it also gave leadership to the opposition to the
bosses' strike. In fact, the movement saved the Popular Unity government.
Without that movement I think that the Popular Unity government would have
been finished in 1972.
It was the highest point of the class struggle not only in Chile, but
world-wide in that decade. Workers showed not only their capacity to
organise, but they also went beyond the mild reforms that the Popular Unity
government had proposed.
While I was in exile I talked with one of the leaders of the cordones
in Santiago, who was a member of the Socialist Party. He told me that,
during the bosses' offensive and the reaction of the working class, there
was a huge discussion in the Popular Unity government. There were two
positions.
The Communist Party took the position was that we should stop and go
no further-that was the instruction to all their militants. The right wing
of the Socialist Party had the same position, that we should stop the
reforms and give back the land and the factories. You can imagine the
demoralisation that this caused.
But there was another wing of the Popular Unity, the left wing of the
Socialist Party and the Movement of the Revolutionary Left. They said we
should advance and deepen the reforms.
But the tragedy is that these were elitist arguments, which were made
in conferences. Nobody thought to break completely with the structures of
the Popular Unity government, which were incapable of giving an answer to
the concrete problems.
At the time I thought, "Popular Unity is our government but it is
giving back the things that we have conquered." But I also felt loyalty to
the government that we had elected. There was a dual feeling towards the
government. But as the class struggle intensified the consciousness of one
section of the class developed. Some workers, mainly those involved in the
cordones, went beyond the authority of the Popular Unity government.
One of the cordones in Santiago called for coordinated cordones across
the whole region of Santiago, which has a population of four million. They
even called for soldiers to defend the cordones.
When the first attempted coup took place in June 1973 there was the
same reaction as before-we had to defend the government. And again there was
massive activity from below. But, in order to pacify the class struggle, the
leaders of Popular Unity said that they were going to control the workers
and they even appointed army generals in the government.
The Popular Unity government was more afraid of activity from below
than it was of the bosses. How can a revolutionary movement, born in the
heat of the struggle, defeat the bosses' strike but then, in a very short
time, allow a military coup to slaughter them? The answer is that the
political leadership was weak, confused, demoralised and in disarray.
An alternative developed from below but it was handicapped. In spite
of the combativity and creativity of the comandos and cordones, there wasn't
an organisation to coordinate the action of the working class. When workers
go into action they do not have a general picture of society. After the rich
experience of October 1972, we didn't have a revolutionary party to
generalise that experience.
Because of the pressure of the Chilean bosses as well as US
imperialism, the government gave back certain factories that were
occupied-they compromised. The revolutionary movement was confused as well.
They said the movement existed to reinforce and defend the government. So
there was no clarity.
The role of the revolutionary party is to generalise the struggle. If
that generalisation happens the practical experience of the working class is
richer.. During the uprising in Chile, if there had been a revolutionary
party coordinating and generalising the struggle and with the slogans "All
power to the cordones" and "All power to the comandos comunales", Chile
could have been on the verge of building a new society.
So the absence of a revolutionary party was the tragedy of Chile
really. Eventually the movement was defeated in the most savage manner. It
was a question of political leadership. We had a political leadership
interested in reforming rather than changing society. The Popular Unity
government said that the armed forces were going to respect the constitution
of the country-that you elect a government for a period of time and when
that period of time is over you can elect another one. This foolish faith in
the armed forces as the guarantor of the social order was so strong that
they put Pinochet in the government.
They said that the role of the armed forces was for external
aggression and it would not intervene against workers. But in the 1930s we
had a military dictatorship. And the military was used to oppress the
people. There was also a paramilitary police force with small tanks, machine
guns and all the instruments of oppression. This still existed under the
Popular Unity government and continued oppressing the poor.
The poor were told that the army was respecting their government, but
at the same time it was killing and beating them. These kinds of argument
were on the agenda of every meeting-was the army going to be loyal to the
government or was it going to side with the bosses? When the bosses saw in
October 1972 that they couldn't get rid of the revolutionary movement or the
reformist government by political means, they went for another option.
The idea that the armed forces are an institution that respects the
democratic wishes of a particular nation was disproved really bitterly in
1973.
While we were in prison we were not even allowed to organise by
political affiliation. They made everything illegal: unions, strikes,
political parties. They shut down parliament. There was a sporadic fightback
with guerrilla tactics. Sporadic and insignificant really. The military coup
was carried out to kill the revolutionary movement. The Chilean ruling class
and the US ruling class realised that Popular Unity couldn't control the
working class and that the working class were building a completely
different model. To eradicate this they had to be ruthless.
Even human rights activists were killed. I came out of Chile in 1977,
and moved to England. The British government, like any capitalist
government, were very happy that there was a coup in Chile. I think one of
the Tory ministers went there two or three years after and said it was a
pity he couldn't implement the monetarist policies that were being imposed
in Chile. Monetarism is another name for neo-liberalism.
In Chile the tanks rolled over the workers, disarming and persecuting
them. These were the special conditions under which monetarism was applied.
They privatised everything that had belonged to the Chilean state and
increased exploitation to raise profits.
There were Chilean economists who were sent to the US to study
economics called the Chicago boys. They were the economic brain of the
dictatorship. The British government said these were the policies that they
would like to apply in Britain-privatisation, increased exploitation. Chile
was the ideal political conjuncture for the international ruling class to
apply the economic model that now is called neo-liberalism.
New alternatives for Latin America began with Seattle. Anti-capitalism
is a worldwide phenomenon. Developing a revolutionary alternative and a
socialist current is a task not only for the Latin American left, but for
all the international left. We can see that capitalism is in crisis. The
epoch we are living in now is an epoch of fighting back. Even peasants in
remote parts of the world are fighting the system.
People can see that the official representatives of the working
class-the Labour Party in this country, or the Socialist Party in Chile-are
not resisting neo-liberalism.
So the left faces a historic task. Socialism is possible and the
centre of gravity for building a new society must be the organised working
class. This epoch of fighting back is the epoch to build a revolutionary
party and this party has to be at the heart of the struggle. In Chile in
1972 workers showed an alternative but there was no generalisation of the
struggle.
The working class has the economic power to paralyse society in one
day. But liberation from capitalism also requires an organisation with the
strategy of socialism.
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1964 Christian Democratic candidate Eduardo Frei beats Salvador
Allende in the elections by promising "a revolution in liberty".
1964-9 Frei government buckles to the Chilean rich and reneges on its
promises to give land to the peasants and to alleviate poverty. A wave of
strikes, protests, factory occupations and of land seizures by the poor in
protest at the Frei government.
In 1969 there are 148 land occupations and 1,939 strikes involving
over 230,000 workers. In 1970 there are 5,295 strikes involving 316,280
workers.
1970 Salvador Allende is elected, with 36 percent of the vote, and
heads Popular Unity coalition government which includes the Socialist Party
and the Communist Party. The poor and oppressed celebrate throughout Chile
and around the world.
1971 Allende government nationalises the copper mines. US
multinationals respond by beginning an economic boycott. In April Popular
Unity gets more than half the votes in local elections-an increase by 14
percent.
October 1972 Right wing go on the offensive. Bosses, including lorry
owners, organise action to try to bring down the government.
Workers respond by seizing lorries, breaking into supermarkets closed
by the bosses, and throwing out factory owners who tried to stop production.
Workers set up "cordones"- coordinating committees linking together workers
in different factories and workplaces.
Allende responds by passing a law giving the army extra powers and
inviting top military officials into his government.
June 1973 Attempted coup by the right. It fails, put down by soldiers
loyal to the government. Huge mobilisation of workers in response. A
government minister tells them to go home. Allende urges calm and stresses
his "complete confidence that loyal forces will normalise the situation".
July 1973 Second round of action by the lorry owners. Allende relies
on the army rather than workers. But workers take to the streets and
continue to set up cordones. On 30 July the Guardian writes, "Since 29 June
many more cordones have been organised until now they dominate all the
access roads into the capital."
August 1973 Allende welcomes all three armed forces leaders into the
cabinet, including General Pinochet who one month later would organise the
coup.
11 September 1973 Right wing organises successful coup, aided by Henry
Kissinger and the US government.
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'Allende can no longer hope to satisfy the owners of industry and the
working class. He will have to choose to side with one or the other. But one
side is armed, the other not. And Allende shows no inclination at all to
break his pledges to the middle class of a year ago not to "interfere" with
the state machine.
Instead he will probably use his influence, and that of the
bureaucrats within Chile's working class based parties and trade unions, to
persuade workers to put up with harsh conditions and an erosion of last
year's reforms.
Such a course will tend to create confusion and a lack of direction
among many workers. But it is not likely to lead to any great loss in the
spontaneous militancy in the factories and mines. Because of that it will
not satisfy those who continue to hold real power in Chile. In the past we
have seen a number of examples of regimes in some ways similar to Allende's.
After a period their mass support became demoralised and the
government themselves were easily overthrown by right wing military coups.'
a.. Socialist Worker, 20 November 1971
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'The Chile experience is exciting the British people, because their
own perspective of achieving socialism is only possible within the
constitutional framework, following a path similar to that taken by Chile.'
a.. El Siglo, he Chilean Communist paper 25 March 1972
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Songs of resistance
UNDER PINOCHET thousands were murdered and many more were forced into
exile. Thousands were rounded up in the football stadium in Santiago. One of
them was folk singer Victor Jara. Pinochet's thugs broke the bones in his
hands and said, "Go and play your guitar now." Then they killed him.
These are extracts from his last song, written while he was held in
the football stadium:
'There are five thousand of us here in this small part of the city. We
are five thousand. I wonder how many were in all the cities and in the whole
country? Here alone are the thousand hands which plant seeds and make the
factories run.
How much humanity exposed to hunger, cold, panic, pain, moral
pressure, terror and insanity? Six of us were lost as if to starry space.
One dead, another beaten as I could never have believed a human being could
be beaten.
The other four wanted to end their terror-one jumping into
nothingness, another beating his head against a wall. But all with the fixed
stare of death. What horror the face of fascism creates! They carry out
their plans with knifelike precision.
Nothing matters to them. To them, blood equals medals, slaughter is an
act of heroism.'
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