BY ELIZABETH STONE
Below we print excerpts from the introduction to Fidel
Castro on Chile, an Education for Socialists publication. The
booklet is copyright (c) 1982 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by
permission. Subheadings are by the Militant.
In the fall of 1970, Salvador Allende Gossens, a Socialist Party left-winger and longtime supporter of the Cuban revolution, was elected president of Chile. He ran as the candidate of Popular Unity, a coalition of the Socialist Party, Communist Party, Radical Party, United People's Action Movement (MAPU - a left split from the Christian Democratis), and two smaller parties. The CP and SP were the dominant forces in the coalition.
Allende's victory reflected a broad radicalization of the Chilean masses. Popular Unity committees sprang up throughout the country to work for Allende's election, and when it became clear that Allende was going to get the largest vote of the three candidates running, masses of people poured into the streets to celebrate.
During the first year of the UP government, a number of far- reaching reforms were carried out. Foreign holdings in copper, nitrate, iron, and coal were nationalized, as well as many banks and textile mills. Steps were taken to implement a land reform law passed under the previous Christian Democratic government but never carried out. Along with this, peasants began seizing land. The government opposed such seizures, but in most cases went along with them, offering to pay the owners.
Workers received a significant increase in wages. A half quart of milk a day was supplied to children. Thousands of political prisoners were released. And Allende opened up diplomatic relations and trade with Cuba and took other foreign policy stands, such as opposing U.S. intervention in Vietnam, that earned the wrath of the U.S. government....
Allende's class-collaborationist course
Despite Allende's radical rhetoric, and despite some
significant anti-imperialist action, Popular Unity was a class-
collaborationist coalition, a popular front. It subordinated
the struggles of the masses to an orientation of collaborating
with bourgeois parties and forces. The top UP leadership
opposed a perspective of mobilizing the working class and its
allies to take power, dismantle the old army and state
apparatus, and build a new one based on the toilers. They
looked to the army brass and to agreements with the Christian
Democratic Party to protect them from the imperialists and the
right wing. At critical points in the Chilean struggle, the UP
brought members of the top Chilean officer corps into the
government as a guarantee to Chilean capitalists. Even when
attacks from the right wing became severe, the main forces in
the UP were afraid to organize the masses for an effective
fight because this would frighten the Christian Democrats and
cause them to turn against the government.
The UP government was also scrupulous in making sure that everything was done without infringing on bourgeois legality. It proclaimed that the "revolution" was being made in the context of bourgeois institutions.
Unlike the UP leaders, the imperialists and the Chilean ruling class had no allegiance whatsoever to bourgeois legality. From the beginning, imperialism began to plot to get rid of Allende. In fact, the U.S. corporation International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) connived with Richard Nixon's administration to try to prevent Allende from even being elected. And after the election, there were further plots to try to keep Allende from taking office....
Given his framework of not challenging bourgeois legality and the norms of capitalism, Allende found himself more and more in the position of calling upon the workers to sacrifice to meet the payments demanded by the imperialists.
As the crisis deepened, the right-wing actions against the government began to grow and involve larger layer of the middle class. In October 1972 small shopkeepers went on strike against government searches for hoarded goods. Upper class and middle- class women began to demonstrate against the shortages. Fascist movements began to grow and to carry out violent attacks. Right- wing forces carried out bombings, assassinations, and provocations. The bourgeois press produced an unending stream of lies against the UP and the workers' movement. Finally, right-wing bosses' "strikes," spearheaded by the truck owners, paralyzed the economy.
Washington directly aids rightists
U.S. imperialism played a direct role in this
destabilization campaign. The U.S. embassy, the CIA, U.S.
corporations, U.S.-trained Cuban counterrevolutionaries, and
the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD) - the
AFL-CIO bureaucracy's government-funded counterrevolutionary
operation in Latin America - all had a hand in the action.
When U.S. aid to Chile was cut, there were two notable exceptions: 1) U.S. military aid and training continued for the Chilean armed forces; and 2) a million dollars were made available through AID to finance counterrevolution. Most of the latter was channeled through AIFLD and used to help organize and finance the truck owners' strike, as well as other activities of the right wing.
Working people in Chile responded to these attacks by defending the Allende government and by taking steps to keep the economy running. When the capitalists began to sabotage production, the workers occupied the plants and continued to produce without the bosses. In the summer of 1973, the army responded with searches of the plants, harassing and arresting workers under the pretext of searching for weapons. The Christian Democrats backed up the army in their growing attacks on the workers and the UP.
This process culminated, three years after Allende's election, in a bloody military coup. Thousands of workers, political activists, and people from the poor neighborhood were massacred, along with many foreign revolutionaries who had obtained political asylum under the UP government. Allende himself was killed as he fought to defend the national palace against attacking troops. It was a terrible setback not only for Chile, but for the oppressed and exploited masses throughout all of Latin America.
These tragic events provided important lessons for the workers movement. They showed what imperialism was ready to do to defend its interests. They also showed the bankruptcy of a perspective of relying on the bourgeoisie in the struggle against imperialism....
Cuba's role
Cuba responded to the events in Chile in the following ways:
1) by solidarizing with Chile as a country that was charting a
foreign policy independent of Yankee imperialism and taking its
natural resources out of the hands of the imperialists; 2) by
defending the Popular Unity government in the face of a
concerted drive by imperialism and Chilean reaction to
overthrow it; and 3) by attempting to bolster the positions of
those in Chile who were trying to mobilize the masses to defeat
the right-wing forces and to make a revolution, and to
influence the broadest possible layer in the UP and Chilean
labor movement along these lines.
The Cubans jumped to the defense of Chile as soon as the U.S. attacks began, even before Allende became president. They sought to expose what the U.S. was doing and viewed the election itself as a victory against this. Granma [the daily published by the Communist Party of Cuba] carried a banner headline, "Anti-imperialist Victory in Chile."
The Cubans recognized that one of the reasons for Washington's fury against Allende was his well-known support for the Cuban revolution. Allende was a friend Che [Guevara] and Fidel [Castro] and he frequently spoke in support of Cuba in his speeches. More important, Chile's extension of diplomatic and trade relations to Cuba was the first big breakthrough against Washington's policy of isolating Cuba in Latin America. A year later come the invitation to Castro to come as an official guest of the UP government. This was the first time that Castro was able to visit another Latin American country in eleven years. During his three-and-a-half-week trip, Castro was greeted by hundred of thousands of Chileans. He spoke to large rallies of workers, peasants, and students.
The Cubans and Castro identified themselves with the UP government and the anti-imperialist measures. At the same time, however, Castro's political line for Chile, and his projection of what the workers needed to do to carry the struggle forward, was in opposition to the line of the UP leadership. This is shown clearly in the speeches he gave while he was in Chile.