Why The Dictators Were Necessary
*Bolivia, August 21, 1971: Colonel Hugo Banzer overcomes armed popular resistance to overthrow the nationalist military government of Juan Jose Torres. "*Uruguay, June 27, 1973: Military...
...3. Oscar G. Garreton, "Monopoly in Chile and the Participation of Workers and the State in Economic Management," in Dale Johnson, ed., The Chilean Road to Socialism (Garden City: Anchor Books, 1973), p. 440...
...THE MILITARY MOVE IN TO STAY By 1971, the eve of the Bolivian coup, the panorama for imperialism in the Southern Cone looked bleak indeed: Allende in Chile...
...BOLIVIA: In 1970, a convergence of progressive military forces and the Bolivian Workers Federation was able to defeat a right-wing coup attempt and allow General JuanJose' Torres to assume the presidency...
...They took over vacant private lands, and then forced the government to grant them land titles, public utilities and assistance in building permanent housing...
...Argentina is considered one of the "Big Three" Latin American economies along with Brazil and Mexico...
...The women in these countries have been among the most active in Latin America in combating the tradition of "machismo," while at the same time joining the picket lines and doing support work for members of their families when they are on strike...
...Yet the strikes and mass mobilizations continued...
...Some 20,000 government troops were engaged in the military confrontation with ERP guerrillas in northwest Argentina...
...The demands of the masses for an advancement of their economic and social rights threatened not only the holdings of U.S...
...5. On the crisis of accumulation in the case of Chile, see "Chile: Recycling the Capitalist Crisis," NACLA's Latin America & Empire Report, -Vol...
...It is as raw materials exporters, however, that the countries still claim importance...
...Hector Ca'mpora, a progressive Peronist, was elected president in 1973 after worker and popular insurrections forced the military government of General Lanusse to relinquish power...
...There is nothing more anti-constitutional, more anti-legal, more anti-parliamentary, more repressive, more violent and more criminal than fascism...
...U.S...
...The Tupamaros participated in the Frente through its own mass organization...
...By the end of 1972 the latifundios, which had previously controlled 80% of Chile's arable land, had virtually disappeared...
...2 Throughout Latin America the economic crisis signaled the end of a period of capitalist expansion, and the exhaustion of old patterns of development...
...CHILE: A left electoral coalition, the Popular Unity (UP), won the 1970 elections 18MarchlApril 1979 Demonstration supporting popular control of food during UP government...
...interests...
...interests and their allied class forces inside the countries acted...
...4. Noticias, (New York), January 20, 1971...
...The capitalist classes were unable to produce and reinvest a sufficient amount of profits to stimulate strong growth in their economies-what is called the "crisis of accumulation...
...By 1976 military regimes ruled the Southern Cone...
...30, No...
...anti-guerrilla tactics, into the realm of fullscale counterrevolution...
...Torres, although he needed left support, was also afraid of real change...
...X, No...
...For many years, Chile was the world's second largest producer of copper--with 15.2% of the world's production in 1963 -representing a large stake for some im17NACLA Report portant U.S...
...Chile, September 11, 1973: A military junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet smashes the democratically-elected Popular Unity government, murdering President A llende...
...Argentina, March 24, 1976: A military junta led by GeneralJorge Videla overthrows the civilian government of Isabel Pero'n...
...New Chile, NACLA, 1973, p. 96...
...Bordaberry began to rule by decree, a civilian facade for the military dictatorship...
...WOMEN: Women began to enter the labor force with the expansion of industry, especially after the 1930s, and have won significant political and economic rights...
...Capitalist economies 15NACLA Report throughout the world, led by the United States and other advanced industrial nations, had begun to suffer the effects of a prolonged slump in economic growth...
...6. "Bolivia: The War Goes On," NACLA's Latin America & Empire Report, Vol...
...In the late 1960s, 80% of Anaconda's worldwide profits derived from its Chilean operations in copper, and Anaconda and Kennecott reaped annual profits in excess of 25% .14 But the United States is not only intent on maintaining its economic interests...
...Argentine students won university autonomy-a system protecting the university from intervention of state security forces-in 1918...
...Why were these countries, with their differing political histories, all subjected to right-wing military coups at roughly the same time...
...In 1969 it forced the regime of Ovando Candia to take more nationalist measures vis a vis foreign capital (such as the nationalization of foreign oil companies), and in 1970 pushed the Torres government to begin restructuring the entire economy to meet popular needs...
...More precisely, they are an answer to capitalism's inability to maintain its domination in the face of an assault by the exploited workers and peoples of the Southern Cone...
...Banzer emerged the victor...
...The Chilean Industrial Bourgeoisie and Foreign Capital," Roger Burbach, unpublished Ph.D...
...Class struggle in Chile played a similar role in blocking capital accumulation...
...the Southern Cone plays a crucial geopolitical role as well...
...For the next three decades, the history of the region was often written in the violent struggles of the workers who fought to improve their material conditions...
...In the wings the U.S...
...As Fidel Castro warned the Chilean people during his visit to Chile in December 1971: But what do the exploiters do when their own institutions no longer guarantee their rule...
...During the 60s Argentina and Uruguay were also Latin America's first and second largest beef exporters, respectively.1" The region also possesses significant mineral wealth...
...corporations, financial institutions and the various arms of the government itself were hardly neutral observers of this deepening crisis...
...The specific events prior to the coups were different but the patterns are similar...
...When the UP gained strength in the March 1973 parliamentary elections, without precedent for off-year elections, the signal for the coup was given...
...Uruguayan labor legislation includes maternity benefits and the CGT in Argentina compelled the first Peron government to require childcare in all factories employing more than 50 women...
...3 In Argentina, the toll on the more inefficient enterprises was evident in the number of bankruptcies, which grew from 1,647 in 1968 to 2,982 in 1970...
...A Popular Assembly, including delegates representing miners, workers, peasants and left parties, sought to broaden Torres' program and to form a popular militia to defend the government against the Right...
...With the return from exile of an aged and conservative Pero/n, the more progressive aspects of Campora's anti-imperialist and democratic program were eliminated...
...In the earlier part of the century, the Socialist and Communist parties grew out of the struggles of the miners and industrial workers...
...For four years, from 1961 to 1965, 26,000 angry miners prevented the implementation of this plan...
...7 Yet in spite of these setbacks and the continuing massacres of miners and their families, the movement maintained its hold on the nation's economy...
...8 The victory of the Popular Unity government in the 1970 elections only deepened the crisis of the capitalist class, as the workers demanded and received an even greater portion of the economic wealth they produced...
...government promoted the idea of a South Atlantic Treaty Organization (SATO) as a counterpart to NATO...
...The region has both Atlantic and Pacific coasts, and is contiguous to the mineral deposits in Antarctica...
...Bolivia's oil and natural gas reserves, along with major offshore oil deposits in Argentina, brought the two into view as strategic imperialist reserves in the early 1970s...
...imperialism to secure its holdings in that region against these deepening bourgeois rifts...
...rate of economic growth declined from 4.7% in the first half of the 60s, to 3% in the second half, and to 2.1% from 1970-75.1 The U.S...
...political organizations, and imposing economic measures unparalleled in their rejection of the social needs of their peoples...
...After two days of heroic resistance by poorly armed workers, the Left and some members of the military, Gen...
...The coups were a necessary response of U.S...
...2. Business Week, October 17, 1977...
...The workers and people responded to this concerted threat by organizing self-defense committees and other forms of popular power...
...STUDENTS: With economic development and modernization, the struggle for more educational opportunities became part of popular demands to share in the fruits of an expanding society...
...Bolivian peasants sparked the 1952 social revolution in that country, and although the agrarian reform that followed was set back by succeeding governments, most highland peasants to this day tenaciously hold onto their lands...
...By the time he realized the greater danger was from the Right, it was too late...
...The workers held their own in these economic struggles and even made advances: the real wages of Chilean workers rose every year from 1967 to 1970, while unemployment remained constant or even dropped slightly...
...In the neighboring 14MarchlApril 1979 countries as well university autonomy became the militantly guarded right of academics, students, their families and those hoping their children might go to school...
...Uruguay, June 27, 1973: Military commanders stage an internal coup, establishing a dictatorship with right-wing civilian president Juan Marisz Bordaberry as its figurehead...
...holdings...
...But their working conditions were primitive and their salaries insufficient to meet even their basic needs...
...In Chile the strength of the nitrate and copper miners, along with the industrial workers, forced the inclusion of progressive labor and welfare provisions in the 1925 constitution...
...What is their reaction when the tools they have historically counted on to maintain their rule break down and fail them...
...Chile: un nuevo modelo economico, Sergio Alvear (Madrid: Ediciones ERA, 1977...
...plans for stimulating capitalist development in Bolivia were at an impasse as long as the miners and the working class as a whole remained a factor in determining economic policies...
...What matters in Bolivia at the moment," railed London's Economist in September 1964, "is that the tin miners, who produce three-fourths of the country's revenue, have become a truculent and unruly law unto themselves...
...In September 1973, the UP government was toppled...
...Peron's death in 1974 left the government nominally in the hands of his widow...
...Chile and Argentina both represent relatively important markets, on a Latin American scale, for durable consumer goods exports from the United States, Europe and Japan...
...By examining both the forces that led to the emergence of the Southern Cone dictators, and the effects of their protracted domination, we will see the extent of continuity and the nature of the modifications being promoted...
...URBAN POOR: Accelerated industrialization and urbanization in the post-war period have brought thousands of peasant and provincial residents streaming into the major cities of Santiago, Buenos Aires, La Paz and Montevideo, where they have been relegated to slums on the outskirts of the cities...
...Throughout the Southern Cone, U.S.-backed and trained military leaders seized control of the state, violently repressing the mass movements and their 13NACLA Report Food for Peace distribution to Chilean Indians under Alliance for Progress program...
...In Chile, the Frei government's attempts at agrarian reform bogged down under the opposition of the rural oligarchy, but inadvertently unleashed a revolutionary peasant movement...
...The more lucid Latin American revolutionaries saw them coming...
...INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC CRISIS By 1967 the indicators of a worldwide recession were clear...
...Recycling the Capitalist Crisis," op...
...They simply destroy them...
...POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS: Progressive and revolutionary parties have developed to unite the various demands and movements for social justice, democracy and economic independence...
...In the Southern Cone, more than any other region of Latin America, the upsurge of popular movements in the 60s and early 70s presented an unparalleled challenge to U.S...
...In the mid-1960s, certain sectors of the bourgeoisies, in conjunction with transnational corporations, had solidified their control of key areas of the economy, squeezing out many of the medium-sized and small industries that operated with less advanced technology...
...Their living conditions make them a particularly explosive sector in their demand for jobs and better housing and living conditions...
...Argentina is by far Latin America's largest wheat producer, and accounts for more than 80% of the continent's wheat exports- an important source of reserves in a world faced with a growing food crisis...
...Participation of the armed forces would have to be more direct in shaping the countries' long-range economic and political structures...
...U.S...
...While the monopoly sectors clearly held sway on the economic front, many of the less efficient enterprises used existing high tariff barriers and their political clout in the government and in the political parties to wrest some economic concessions...
...In Argentina, for example, the Revolutionary Workers Party and its armed branch, the People's Revolutionary Army (PRT-ERP), emerged from the struggle of the agricultural proletariat in the sugar cane and lumber regions of Argentina...
...VIII, No...
...HISTORY OF THE STRUGGLE FOR PEOPLE'S RIGHTS The struggle for economic, social and political rights in the Southern Cone is part of a complex historical process shaped by international as well as domestic factors...
...Under rightist and military tutelage she declared a state of siege in November 1974, and the paramilitary death squads, financed in part by funds from the U.S...
...Education itself brought greater political and social awareness, and at the universities progressive movements played an important role in breaking the hold of traditional oligarchies...
...Torres in Bolivia...
...investments in Chile as a whole amounted to $962 million in 1968,' and of Chile's 100 largest firms, 81 were either directly under foreign control or had some foreign penetration.' 0 In Argentina, over half of the largest 120 firms were under foreign control in 1971, and accounted for two-thirds of their sales...
...2, (February 1974), p. 6. 7. Deadline Data on World Affairs, (Bolivia), issued February 4, 1966, p. 43...
...Popular mobilizations against both the repression and IMF economic austerity measures culminated in a general strike in June 1975 which provoked a governmental crisis and toppled three ministers...
...This basic conflict made it difficult for the bourgeoisies to maintain a united front against the popular movements...
...In the Southern Cone these changes exacerbated already existing tensions as the faltering economies failed to meet increasing material needs...
...Argentina and Chile in particular have become markets for North American and European manufactured goods and, in recent decades, bases for direct foreign investments in mining, manufacturing and agricultural activities...
...The prospect of anti-imperialist and/or revolutionary governments in these countries also represents a direct threat to key transportation lines for oil from the Persian Gulf, and to important port facilities, especially in the Rio de la Plata area...
...9. Statistical Abstract of Latin America, (Jas...
...ARGENTINA: Dr...
...Land takeovers began there in 1969, and the peasants pushed the Popular Unity government to deepen the agrarian reform process...
...It was not the modern urban bourgeoisies however, nor the U.S.-backed reform programs, that broke the back of these latifundios...
...Bolivia's tin mines were seen as the key to economic development in the 1960s...
...Banzer staged his coup in August 1971...
...The armed forces moved to take direct political control in March 1976, after workers staged a wildcat general strike in rejection of one more IMFimposed austerity plan...
...Hour of the Furnaces, NACLA, 1975, p. 29...
...Finally, as the United States is acutely aware, a revolution in any one country could easily trigger others in the region...
...U.S...
...Energy supplies in the region are all the more significant as the entire Rio de la Plata basin holds a tremendous hydroelectric power potential, and Argentina is developing large nuclear power plants using its own uranium...
...URUGUAY: After the inauguration of cattle-rancher Juan Maria Bordaberry in 1972, general strikes, mass mobilizations and spectacular Tupamaro actions threatened to create a revolutionary crisis...
...Struggles carried out by the tin miners of Bolivia and by the entire working class of Chile in the 1960s illustrate the key role played by the labor movements in this crisis of accumulation...
...By the early 1970s, however, these measures were no longer adequate to protect U.S...
...growing strikes, guerrilla actions and the Frente Amplio in Uruguay;* the fall of a dictatorship at the hands of the Argentine masses...
...Far more critical was the necessity to contain the popular struggles engulfing the Southern Cone...
...The pace of economic development, the growth of the working class and the petit bourgeoisie, changes in the lives of the peasantry, and the economic and political interests of the United States- all are key factors that have affected the struggle for human rights in the Southern Cone countries...
...In June 1973, the military, which had been dictating policy for a year, dismissed the same Congress which had given it extraordinary powers...
...In the past decades, particularly during the Alliance for Progress/counterinsurgency push of the 60s, the United States has responded to these strategic concerns by strengthening and modernizing the armed forces of the region...
...Yet the state-owned Bolivian Mining Corporation (COMIBOL), the largest in Latin America, was also the most inefficient...
...The Chilean Right marshaled all its forces using the press, demonstrations and parliamentary tactics to sabotage the UP program...
...Within half a decade, repressive, militarydominated governments took power in four Southern Cone countries, murdering or imprisoning hundreds of thousands...
...to curtail both its reformist rhetoric and its aid programs...
...Foreign and local capital have established significant industrial bases in Chile and Argentina, and import sizable quantities of machinery and intermediate goods for manufacturing and construction...
...The United States began to destabilize the Allende government right after the election, by withholding credit and utilizing the power of the CIA and transnational corporations...
...The Vietnam war, coupled with the onset of the international economic crisis, led the U.S...
...cit., p. 9. 11...
...THE STRAW THAT BROKE DEMOCRACY'S BACK The onset of the international economic crisis in its more acute form made it imperative for U.S...
...Today, these parties play an important role in the antidictatorial struggles in their countries...
...The economies of the Southern Cone have played much the same role in the world capitalist system as have those of other Latin American nations as suppliers of raw materials for industrialized nations...
...imperialism for a host of reasons, mainly economic and geopolitical...
...corporations...
...Such an alliance could act as watchdog and even intervene militarily in conflicts in Latin America and Southern Africa...
...The U.S...
...Congress, except for the Frente Amplio representatives, voted a "State of Domestic War" in April 1972, granting the military unlimited repressive power...
...1, May 1978...
...The National Liberation MovementTupamaros (MLN-Tupamaros) began with the fight of Uruguayan cane cutters and other rural workers for better wages and living conditions...
...The Chilean Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR) has led many of the peasant struggles for land and the slum dwellers' fight for better housing...
...Statistical Abstract of Latin America, op...
...Chile's slum dwellers by the late 1960s had become a highly organized and combative force...
...In the 1971 presidential elections, the nation's first experience of popular electoral alliance won 18% of the nationwide vote and over 30% in the capital city...
...Today these regimes are being pressured by the Carter government, via its human rights policy, to end some of their more brutal excesses...
...multinationals, but also the local bourgeoisies and their control of the existing political systems...
...provided General Banzer with financial and technical support and coordinated communications for the coup-plotters, while Brazil supplied both money and arms for the right-wing conspiracy...
...Why the Dictators Were Necessary 1. Hugh Moseley, "Is There a Fiscal Crisis of the State...
...Drug Enforcement Agency, swung into action...
...At the same time, counterinsurgency training had not enabled the Latin American militaries to check the growth of the popular movements and massbased political parties...
...imperialism and the local ruling classes to an unprecedented crisis in the traditional political and economic structures of the region...
...W. Wilkie, ed., UCLA Latin American Center Publications, 1977), Vol...
...The primary factor in the crisis of these economies in the late 1960s and early 1970s was the strength and militancy of the labor movements in the face of efforts by imperialism and its local allies to make drastic adjustments in the economy at the expense of labor...
...cit., pp...
...Social and Economic Progress in Latin America, Interamerican Development Bank, 1972...
...The United States, through its $40 million "Triangular Plan," launched a major effort to modernize tin production in Bolivia...
...human rights policy in the context of broader strategy objectives...
...In Chile in 1970, the bourgeoisie split over the presidential candidacy of Christian Democrat Ramiro Tomic...
...In Bolivia, the National Liberation Army (ELN), organized by Che Guevara to carry the struggle for the liberation of Latin America to a new level, has formed the Bolivian Revolutionary Workers Party (PRT...
...Rather it was the peasants themselves who rebelled against centuries of primitive exploitation...
...The situation demanded that counterinsurgency efforts move beyond *The Frente Amplio (Broad Front) was a coalition of the Uruguayan Communist and Christian Democratic parties, along with smaller leftist parties and fractions of Uruguay's two traditional ruling parties...
...Aid has been provided, sometimes under the guise of economic "development" projects, for the construction of roads, communications systems and military bases to enhance the integration of the entire region's military forces...
...In the end, U.S...
...In Bolivia, many of these rights were won somewhat later, only when the tin miners became the core of that country's working class...
...In recent decades, other parties have formed in the heat of the ongoing popular and working class struggles...
...What was the rationale...
...Some smaller capitalists backed Tomic with the hope that his programs would provide them relief, while the dominant sectors opposed his program as too reformist and supported archconservative Arturo Alessandri...
...With the onset of the recession in 1967, and the resulting austerity policies of the Christian Democratic government of Eduardo Frei, the Chilean working class faced a deterioration in its economic position...
...The main targets were the militant sectors of the trade union movement and the Left...
...In Chile and Argentina, they gained the right to vote in the late 1940s, and by the 1950s labor codes in all the Southern Cone countries included provisions for the special rights of women workers...
...In Chile, for example, by 1966, 144 industries dominated all branches and sub-branches of manufacturing, and just 17% of Chile's firms controlled 75% of the shares of the joint stock companies...
...Only after heavy fighting between the military and armed miners was the Bolivian government 16MarchlApril 1979 finally able to reorganize COMIBOL, fire 30% of the miners, curb their unions and cut back their pay...
...THE IMPERIALIST STAKE IN THE CRISIS U.S...
...The Southern Cone countries are important to U.S...
...imperialism and its local allies called on the only force capable of protecting their interests--the armed forces...
...Conflict intensified among all social sectors-not only between the workers and their employers, but also within the ranks of the local bourgeoisies...
...The fight was intense, as reflected in the increasing numbers of workers involved in strikes, from 195,000 in 1966 to 656,170 in 1970 (over one-fifth of the entire work force...
...Bolivia is the world's second largest producer of tin, and has significant reserves of iron ore...
...The monopoly sector in Argentina, for example, took a stand against the economic and political policies of Peronism, while the smaller, more nationalist sectors sought to use Peronism to build up a protected national industry...
...More recently, the U.S...
...Bolivian students have fought side by side with miners, and Argentine, Chilean and Uruguayan students have been in the forefront of resistance to military and police repression...
...He proposed a nationalist, progressive program and expropriated several U.S...
...direct investments at the time were $1.35 billion...
...This seemingly abrupt shift makes the Southern Cone a key region for analyzing the U.S...
...6 Modernization, however, meant not only the introduction of new machinery, but massive layoffs and wage cuts for miners who already lived on subsistence salaries...
...8. "Recycling the Capitalist Crisis," op...
...and Socialist Salvador Allende became president on an explicitly anti-imperialist, antimonopoly and anti-oligarchic program for social development...
...TOSSING OFF OLD DISGUISES The Banzers, Bordaberrys, Pinochets and Videlas are the result of a profound crisis in their countries' political, economic and social systems...
...rate of profit, the capitalists' most crucial measure of success or failure, fell from 13.4% in 1966 to 9.2% a decade later...
...Monthly Review, Vol...
...Large labor confederations such as the General Labor Confederation (CGT) in Argentina evolved to direct these labor struggles...
...Student struggles have often gone far beyond their own particular interests...
...In Chile, Uruguay and Argentina, significant gains were won, including the eight-hour day, child labor laws, collective bargaining, pensions and the right to strike...
...dissertation, Indiana University, 1975...
...WORKERS: At the beginning of the twentieth century, miners and industrial workers were already an important force in the societies of these countries...
...9 (November 1977...
...Monopolization was just as prevalent in finance and the control of credit: at the end of 1967, 3% of the borrowers from private banks received 60% of the total credits granted...
...Earlier, in the 1960s, the United States had tried to contain the revolutionary movements in Latin America with a twopronged effort: the reforms of the Alliance for Progress and the build-up of the counterinsurgency capabilities of the armed forces...
...PEASANTS: By the 1950s, the backwardness of the agricultural sector dominated by the traditional latifundios--huge and often unproductive estates--had become a serious obstacle to economic development and modernization...
...interests...
Vol. 13 • March 1979 • No. 2
