On September 4th 1970, Salvador Allende was elected President of Chile. Not as a person, but a representative of an alliance of parties and social movements. Based on the marxist Socialist and Communist parties, Popular Unity included left-wing Christian Democrats, and the Radicals, the middle-class based oldest party in the country. The programme was to end economic dependence on imperialism, end the latifundios – the large landed estates – and end economic domination by the oligarchs. Also, of course related to all that, to improve living standards for the people, better healthcare and education. The programme did not promise socialism, but of course the marxist parties did want to move on from these structural reforms to socialism in the medium term.
The large copper mines – the “wages of Chile” – were nationalised in 1971, the most important big companies were taken over and put into joint state and workers’ control. By 1972 all the big latifundio had been divided, the land given to those who had worked it.
Living standards rose sharply in 1971, education was free and increasing, healthcare free and improving. Municipal elections in March 1971 gave a majority for Popular Unity. But resistance increased. The CIA money that had been spent on Chile since 1960 at least greatly increased, subsidising the most important newspaper “El Mercurio”. A business network for information and sabotage was set up. Shortages of goods were engineered, with the resulting black markets. The price of copper fell, and difficulties created on international markets.
The economic situation worsened, inflation increased, and this gradually created the conditions for a coup, with discontent among the middles classes and military officers especially. Parliamentary elections in March 1973 gave a victory for the united opposition. The traditional right-wing parties had united into a ‘National Party’ as their votes fell. The Christian Democrats were despised by them but a combination of spite, and money from West Germany and the CIA led them to form an alliance with the right. Popular Unity however, despite all the shortages and inflation, won 44% of the vote. This closed the way to a constitutional coup and so a military coup was the only way to depose Allende’s government.
The Coup
So on Tuesday 11th September the navy first took control of Valparaiso (with US warships available in the offing in case of need, as shown in the film ‘Missing’), then the army and police acted everywhere else, and the air force was ready to bombard the radio stations in Santiago, and the Moneda presidential palace.
The date was brought forward a couple of days, because on the previous Saturday the military conspirators learned that Allende planned to announce on that very Tuesday that he was to call a referendum on the continuation of his government. That was likely to have ended Popular Unity’s rule, but not meant a bloodbath. That did not suit the fascists, bent on destroying the popular movements.
Could the coup have been prevented, or defeated? Once it was underway, no. Any resistance within the armed forces was quickly crushed and the workers in factories had little or no arms. Both the socialist and communist parties had self-defence military organisations though, and their leaders had been talking to Allende and Carlos Prats, the constitutionalist army C-in-C, in the days before his resignation in August. They presented a proposal for re-mobilising ten thousand young communists and socialists who had done their national service. That could well have stopped the coup, by intimidation. Prats was against it, saying it would split the army, and the proposal was also not supported by the party leaderships.
The coup certainly leaves the lesson that a revolutionary process that does not know how to defend itself from ruling class and imperialist subversion will not survive.
Afterwards
On the day of the coup, and that week, thousands of popular unity activists were arrested, interrogated and often tortured and imprisoned. Leaders such as Victor Jara – not just a popular musician but a communist leader – were killed. Camps were set up for government members, national trade unionist leaders and then for other political and trade union leaders. Torture was routine. Many leaders were only released in 1975 or 6 to forced exile. Britain, and many other European countries, received some of these. Other ‘wanted’ leaders sought refuge in various embassies. Many activists were soon released but, in many cases detained again later and ‘disappeared’. This was common in rural areas, such as where I now live. Such was the repression that an atmosphere of great fear prevailed. Many relatives of people detained were too frightened to denounce the fact; the true scale of the deaths will never be known.
With my wife I left Angol, our small town where we were well known on Thursday. Luckily, a coach had been stranded there and the curfew was lifted for long enough to sell tickets and return to its base in Santiago. A young communist student I knew travelled with us to take part in any resistance. All his fellows at the Technical University had been arrested though. In late September he returned; he was taken from his house by a military patrol, taken to a shed and gunned down in cold blood.
I was arrested by two detectives when I returned to Angol, with a letter stamped with a red seal from the British Embassy. So I had no hassle. The then junior detective had been a socialist party member. He was sacked from the detective force (independent of the police in Chile) in December and went to live in Santiago. He returned frequently to Angol for business but in August 1975 he was detained and disappeared without trace.
Resistance
Rebellion against an illegal regime is legal, and all forms of resistance were developed. The MIR, Revolutionary Left Movement, was the first to start armed actions, such as hijacking lorries of chickens and taking them to poor neighbourhoods. Also bank robberies. In 1981, when poverty was overcoming some of the fear, the communist party started an armed resistance organisation whose most notable exploit was the attempt on Pinochet’s life in 1976. Mass protests began in earnest in 1983, and every year grew steadily in size and scope. None of these organised events had less than 20 deaths at the hands of the military and police. There were many political prisoners but, in large measure due to international solidarity, no death sentences were carried out.
US imperialism began to look for a solution in the face of growing radical protest, and the Christian Democrats were called on again to form a coalition, with ‘renewed Socialists’ for a democratic, but non-revolutionary alternative. Thus in 1988 a referendum was held and a ‘NO’ vote against Pinochet won. Then elections were held in 1990, and the ‘concertación por la Democracia’, with safe neo-liberal polices, won. That coalition held power for the next 20 years, when more copper mines opened, ‘licenced’ to multinationals, and more privatisations took place.
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