Allende has chosen his way out of the crisis forced by the lorry owners' boycott, which began on 9 October. Bowing to the imperatives of the armed forces and the ruling class parties, on 31 October the entire Cabinet resigned, and the military were brought into a new administration. The government's response to the crisis scarcely lived up to the 4 September promise to organise against the fascists. Rather, the military gained control of the situation, with a curfew in the main urban centres, and a ban on all demonstrations, left and right. CONTINUED STRUGGLE In the face of this the Chilean working class has continued to struggle. In Concepcion, liaison committees have been set up to organise solidarity and self-defence; and both there and in Santiago, the workers have forced the nationalisation of several firms, including Dow Chemicals, which is protected by OPIC, the U.S. government agency to guarantee foreign investments.
While locally Popular Unity has been forced by the workers to take action in these cases, it has completely betrayed at the government level. On the same day as the government dissolved the Lorry-owners Confederation, the Christian Democrat and National Parties, which still have a majority in Parliament, brought a case to indict four ministers for violating the Constitution: Chanchol (Agriculture), Suarez (Interior), Matus (Economy) and Palma (Education). Allende conceded victory to the Right.
In bringing the military into the government, Allende was supported by the Radicals and the Communist Party - whose line in the recent crisis was that the workers should 'produce" more (for their capitalist employers) to ensure economic stability. So the Stalinist Figueroa is now Labour Minister in the same Cabinet as the commanders of the Army, Navy and Air Force.
DECISIVE CHANGE The most important military figure is the Commander-in-chief of the Army, Carlos Prats Gonzalez: trained at Fort Levenworth, US, promoted by former President Frei after the attempt on General Schneider's life, instrumental in persuading the American military mission not to leave Chile when Allende came into office, on 'good terms" with the leadership of Christian Democracy. No wonder he has been able to persuade the lorry owners to go back to work (with suspension of all charges, dropping of nationalisation plans, and guarantees to the private sector).
Prats Gonzalez, bourgeois commentators happily declare, is "no gorilla'. Nor was Velasco when his regime first installed itself in Peru: which has made him very effective as a defender of the interests of the bourgeoisie, as it has disoriented the workers movement he is now viciously repressing. In Chile too, the military now takes on the task of ruling for the bourgoeisie. The nature of the Popular Unity government has changed decisively. The workers and peasants of Chile, to prepare against the counter-revolution, face the need to take up the struggle against the Generals, and against further treachery on the part of the social-democratic and Stalinist leaderships.
*PROVOS AND PROTESTANTS' In the introduction to the interview with Sean Mac Stiofain and Joe Cahill published in our last issue, we claimed to reprint the full text of the interview. In fact, we were forced at the last minute to omit for reasons of space a final exchange in which Mac Stiofain deck red his support for the Palestinian struggle.
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