JEAN-PIERRE BEAUVAIS concludes his eye-witness account of the situation in Chile today by looking at the MIR (Movement of the Revolutionary Left).
The resistance will win! MIR' This slogan, hastily painted, runs the length of a boundary wall in the popular quarter of San Miguel. It is early in the morning, but already a team of soldiers - under the mocking gaze of numerous passers-by - are busy whitewashing the wall to cover up the seditious' inscription.
Undoubtedly painted the previous night, just before the curfew, it can only have been up a few hours. But the military seem to fear this kind of wall painting: not only do they make every effort to cover them up immediately, but the orders to patrols are strict - open fire without warning on anyone caught doing it. Woe also to anyone who lives opposite a wall carrying such an inscription: treated as equally responsible because they did not see or turn in the authors of this hideous crime, they risk pris0ll.....Or CYClEWOSC known under Popular Unity, has been transformed from a revolutionary organisation into a gang of criminals. And many, naively clinging to the slightest ray of hope, draw the conclusion that such a campaign must reflect the strength of the organisation, whose prestige already large - has thus increased still further. A rape is The reality of the situation is rather more COmDICA... MIR - fewer still have survived responsibilities and tasks it implied.
solidarity.
been contirmed - and morale of the organisations militants: surprise at the nature of the coup and the scale of the repression, but optimism about the new In these first weeks of the dictatorship the organisation gave evidence of its cohesion and There were no desertions, there was only limited disorganisation, and the leadership many of whose analyses had unfortunately - reacted with considerable aimed to be an important pole- have not been realised. More seriously, the historic defeat of reformism in Chile has not been translated as the MIR rather mechanically forecast - into a new relationship of forces inside the workers movement (see previous articles).
Furthermore, the Communist Party has broken the casual links which it established with the revolutionary left in the period following the coup, doubtless reckoning that they contradicted its strategy of aiming to establish a common front with the Christian Democrats.
In these conditions, and leaving aside the ambiguities that we have noted on several past occasions, the proposals for united work made by the MIR to the whole of the Chilean left have hardly had a chance to take on a concrete meaning, even in a partial way. The Political Front of the resistance proposed more than a year ago by Miguel Enriquez. - to be made up of the parties of Popular Unity, the so-called "left' sections of Christian Democracy, and the MIR - is more than ever unrealisable. The move into opposition by the whole of Christian Dem ocracy has meant the assimilation of these 'left' sections in the framework of the bourgeois opposition, while also reinforcing the credibility of the CP's perspectives.
As to the forms of resistance and united mobilisations at the base proposed by the MIR along with the Political Front, both the facts of the objective situation and the relationship of forces inside the workers' movement have limited their scope. The resistance committees where they exist, tend to be mobilising structures for the periphery of the revolutionary left rather than larger structures of a more broad-based character.
----- pull-quotes -----
Few organisations have experienced the kind of repression which has been directed against the