Chile's Struggle on the Left

...Frei had made it clear, shortly after entering office, that his proposal for the "Chileanization" of the nation's copper industry was the key to all the proposed reforms, that only with revenues gained from a new arrangement with the American copper companies could his government finance the changes it sought in agriculture, education, health, housing and industry...

...Yet the events at El Salvador suggest that the Christian Democrats lack this...

...But Chileans are wise to the many ironies of their nation's current political life, and the incident at El Salvador, the northern copper mining town where government troops and strikers met in a bloody confrontation, signified no betrayal of the revolution to them...

...It was simply the latest manifestation of a political vendetta between the Christian Democratic government of President Eduardo Frei Montalva and his Marxist opposition...

...It even has a young leader to match the dynamism of Frei, 37year-old Emilio Mâspero, Secretary General of the continental organization with headquarters in Santiago...

...The gap is easily explained...

...This is a somewhat ironic charge coming from an organization whose relationship to FRAP, if not of the sweetheart variety, is very intimate...

...For a century-and-a-half the political history of this continent has been characterized by a wasting struggle for political power among oligarchic groups on the Right...

...The party's guardians of the Marxist mysteries gazed into their crystal ball and predicted that Frei's would be another reactionary government serving the right...

...In this surly mood, FRAP was not inclined to cooperate with the program of sweeping reforms announced by Frei upon entering office...

...Chile's Communists are a tame breed compared to the fire and brimstone Socialists, whose vulgar flirtations with Castro and Peking have marked them out, in the eyes of their more subdued allies, as adventurers and "coffee shop guerrillas...

...Although certain categories of strikes are illegal under Chilean law, they have often taken place in the past because the government, fearful of arousing labor's wrath, has looked the other way...

...Then early this year the big Kennecott El Temente mine shut down completely for 88 days when union leaders and management failed to reach agreement on a new contract...

...Like Christian Democracy, it is a continent-wide movement animated by Christian-humanist doctrines, social revolutionary objectives, and an abiding faith in Latin American solutions to Latin American problems (which makes it leary of both Yankees and Marxists...

...But FRAP promptly announced its opposition on the grounds that nothing less than outright nationalization would do...

...Chile's basic labor laws are 40 years old and go a long way toward explaining why trade unionism has made such a comparatively small dent in this otherwise advanced Latin American country...

...and for four years the Christian Democrats have been rebuffed...

...Yet as the experience of Salvador shows, the battle is nonetheless crucial to those hoping to institute social reforms in a non-Marxist setting...

...The workers, however, chose to demonstrate their resentment of being shot at by government troops...

...Our problem is to give authentic representation to all of the workers in this country...

...Christian Democrats not only failed to win any new posts, they lost three of the four they had previously held...

...The terms being sought by the union were, again, revealing of its motives...

...Actually, the Christian Democrats stood well to the left of FRAP and still do...

...But it is being newly financed by European, particularly German, money...

...The copper miners for instance, whose blood would soon be spilled in evidence of "Rightist oppression,' cleared a neat $1.70 per hour, which by Chilean standards put them well into the middle class, while the Christian Democrats were bending their efforts on behalf of los marginados - those voiceless, unorganized Chileans who live in poverty at the margins of national life...

...This time, Frei decreed a forcible return to work at all mines except El Teniente, where legitimate negotiations were underway, and he dispatched troops to back his order...

...Although only 8-10 per cent of Chile's 2 million member labor force is organized, 6 per cent (or more than half those who are signed up) owe allegiance to the powerful Central Union of Workers (CUT), which has 12 Communists and nine Socialists on its 21-member national executive board...

...On the other hand, a new nonMarxist labor central will be established to rally all workers dissatisfied with CUT-"within one year" according to José Goldsack, President of the Latin American Confederation of Christian Trade Unionists (CLASC) in Chile and one of the leaders of the new movement...

...But the lesson of El Salvador is sharp in their memories, and they are tackling their trade-union problem with a new sense of urgency...

...CUT is the laughing stock of the Chilean trade union movement," says Héctor Alarcón, head of the Christian Peasant Union and a leader in CLASC...

...The way was cleared for the social and economic reforms which have already begun to flow...

...On the one hand, the Government is preparing legislation to facilitate a drive to organize the 90 per cent who are without trade union representation...

...The hope is that in Chile CLASC can be built into as viable an alternative to Marxism in labor as Christian Democracy has proved to be in politics, CLASC is a natural choice for the role, since the AFLcio-backed Inter-American Regional Organization of Workers (ORIT), is virtually defunct in this country and a scattering of other, independent unions have neither the resources nor the ideological cohesion to accomplish the task...

...William P. Lineberry is an editor and writer currently on an extended tour of Latin American countries...

...It asked a flat 100 per cent increase in wages, knowing full well that the productivity-conscious Frei government had set an anti-inflationary guideline geared to 1965's 25.9 per cent rise in the cost of living...

...What we must have is a separate, new central completely independent of extraneous interests, be they governmental, political or religious...

...Our problem," he said, "is to organize the workers into a free and authentic labor movement...

...These men oversee a labor empire that, while small in size, includes most of Chile's economically vital industries - copper, coal, steel, petroleum, railroads, etc...

...But Frei had chosen to meet FRAP's challenge with a "gettough" policy of his own, and when union agitators began inciting the workers in El Salvador and other copper centers to walk off the job in sympathy with their comrades at El Teniente, the government cracked down...

...It is the Socialists who push for violence, and the Communists who have stressed "the peaceful way...

...The Communists and Socialists, who control the copper miners, are so bent on proving that Frei's government is nothing more than "the new face of the right" that they practically tied blindfolds on the eight who were killed...

...Organized labor in Chile, from whose ranks the Communists and Socialists gain most of their adherents, is basically a middle-class constituency with middle-class interests...

...It is a tribute to Frei's integrity that he stood fast to his aims throughout those 18 months of frustration, despite pressures from Left-wing elements within his own party for an "opening to the Left...

...Since serious reforms cost money (for example, Frei's radical agrarian program is expected to cost upwards of $100 million in expropriated land), Frei was simply stating the facts...

...Rightists, of course, are expected to battle this legislation to the wire, but it will be more interesting to see what stand the Frapistas take...

...But while the Frei Administration could take comfort from the fact that its "'get tough" policy with the miners had paid off in popular support and the resumption of production, the policy nonetheless gravely damaged Christian Democratic efforts to win copper workers' support away from the Marxist opposition...

...The Chilean labor movement has a Marxist tradition stretching back almost 40 years...

...What is more, a series of mass popular demonstrations in support of Frei's policies made it clear that Marxist tactics in this particular instance had backfired, and instead of the government backing down by withdrawing its troops, it was the miners who quietly returned to their jobs...

...The Conservative Alessandri had not been averse to making a live-and-let-live deal with the unruly Frapistas, but Frei has been determined that his program not be bartered away in deals with either the Marxists, who scorn liberty, or the rightists, who scorn revolution...

...This is the type of authentic trade unionism President Frei says he wants for Chile, and the current struggle will determine whether it can be attained in the months ahead...

...and during the course of the debate on the bill in Congress a group of Rightist Senators, led by the Liberal party's Julio von Muhlenbrock, proposed nationalization also...

...At the end of March the El Teniente workers accepted a new contract and peace returned to the copper mines...

...This became evident in midApril when the Chilean Confederation of Copper Workers held special elections at El Salvador and other strike centers to fill vacancies in its leadership arising from the strike...

...But CLASC is being careful to preserve its basic independence from the government, for already CUT leaders are attempting to pin a "sweetheart" tag on the proposed new central...

...The great masses of Chileans have no organization, and without organization no power, and without power no representation in the life of the country...

...Like good Marxists everywhere, they deeply resented the Christian Democratic intrusion into their sacred "revolutionary" preserve...

...In the courts the main leaders of CUT and the Copper Workers Confederation were charged with instigating strikes harmful to the national economy and were duly imprisoned...

...Moreover, the Frapistas had grown accustomed to their sole custody of the Left...

...And within CUT, as in FRAP, the Communist-Socialist alliance has been troubled by factional bickering over strategybickering which was aggravated by the events surrounding El Salvador...

...One representing the interests of the workers and the workers alone...

...Nor was copper the only target...

...It is, moreover, a battle of significance for all Latin America, where the power of organized labor has been steadily on the rise...

...Such meetings had been declared illegal by the government, as the Marxists well knew, and when troops moved in to break one up at El Salvador the angry miners charged them...

...It is difficult to say which side lost more in this tragic encounter...

...As one Chilean labor expert puts it: "Suddenly it was clear to the whole country that the biggest gap in the government's position is labor...

...At El Teniente it had taken a strike of 88 days to win a disappointing wage hike of 34 per cent, a sharp drop from the original 100 per cent demand...

...What a pity it would be if after all those years the only change in this deary picture would be a meaningless shift on the political spectrum to a similarly wasting struggle on the Left...

...Together with other non-Marxist elements in the Chilean labor movement, Christian Democrats are currently launching a two-pronged attack aimed at breaking FRAP'S grip on organized labor and hence organized labor's threat to the "Revolution in Liberty...

...In the Chamber of Deputies, though, the Christian Democrats held a strong majority, and in the Senate they were gradually picking up support from the Radical and Conservative parties, FRAP therefore resolved to remove the struggle to the mines and the union halls, where its strength was greatest...

...The union's regular officers in these areas had been jailed by the government, and Christian Democrats hoped that the workers would rebuke their old leaders' tactics by electing Christian Democrats rather than Marxists...

...They were looking for martyrs...

...For a government of the democratic Left, struggling to institute sweeping social reforms on behalf of workers and peasants, the support of organized labor is almost essential...

...These marginados have thus far been the real gainers under Frei, and perhaps nothing better demonstrates the general bankruptcy of Marxism in Latin America today than the valiant defense of a privileged labor oligarchy recently put up by FRAP at the expense of the downtrodden in Chilean society...

...At mines where government troops had succeeded in preventing agitators from stirring up the workers or goon squads from intimidating them, work proceeded peacefully...

...It was the Socialists in FRAP and CUT who pushed hard for the strikes in copper, while the Communists went along grudgingly...

...The union's demand, moreover, was more than double the highest wage increase that it had ever put forward...

...And since the Chilean economy almost literally has feet of copper, with some two-thirds of the nation's foreign exchange and a major portion of the government's income derived from this largest of Chilean industries, priorities obviously dictated that the copper bill come first...

...Thus the Frei government emerged from El Salvador with an even slimmer foothold in Chile's organized labor movement than before...

...This is no battle of giants, for the Chilean trade union movement is small and weak...

...Most importantly, CUT is closely tied to the Chilean Popular Action Front (FRAP), the Communist-Socialist political alliance which over the past 10 years has regularly pulled a solid 25 per cent of the popular vote...

...Instead, so close is this relationship that CUT is generally characterized as "the trade union arm of FRAP,' a characterization amply supported by the recent copper strike...

...This is a serious problem and is of great concern to the Christian Democrats...

...The Marxists then played their final card...

...Pacing the floor of his office in Santiago, President Frei recently addressed himself to this issue with obvious animation and concern...

...FRAP was bitterly disappointed by its defeat at the hands of the upstart Christian Democratic party in the Presidential election of 1964, just when its own chances for gaining power seemed brightest...

...It is a good bet that the same motivation - obstruction of Frei's entire program - prompted the Frapistas and their Right-wing bedfellows...

...As for cut, though it handed a sharp defeat to Christian Democrats in the recent Copper Workers election, its own position among the workers is none too strong...

...Throughout the economy, wherever CUT held sway over the workers, sporadic walkouts mounted, so that editorialists began referring caustically to Chile as the "country of a thousand strikes.' Wildcat strikes protesting Frei's proposed legislation began hitting the copper installations last October...

...For that is precisely what FRAP'S maneuverings, right down to its call for a general strike, amounted to...

...For four of these six years Christian Democrats have sought to penetrate CUT from within, the aim being to convert this Marxist central to Christian trade union principles...

...By early March the government's losses in precious foreign exchange due to the strikes were approaching $90 million, or almost enough to finance the entire agrarian reform program...

...In one year under Frei there were more walkouts in copper than in all six years of the preceding administration of President Jorge Alessandri, a Conservative...

...CLASC itself is organizationally weak in Chile (except among organized peasants, where it dominates...

...In the aftermath, eight lay dead and more than 35 were wounded...

...ENERGETIC AND CRUSHING REPUDIATION OF THE MASSACRE, crowed Santiago's Communist daily El Siglo in big, bold headlines...

...Even if CUT could be taken from within, the Marxists would turn around and form their own central, anyway...

...But at El Salvador and Potrerillos defiant miners gathered in strike meetings under the eyes of nervous troops, and tensions crackled...

...The political nature of the strikes which followed came as a rude and unexpected shock to the government...

...On April 1, after a year-and-a-half in office, Frei won the first major legislative victory of his "Revolution in Liberty" when his copper bill finally was passed by Congress...

...THE MIDDLE-CLASS MARXISTS Chile's Struggle on the Left By William P Lineberry Santiago WHEN A GOVERNMENT of the democratic Left, swept into office on a platform of "Revolution in Liberty," opens fire on a crowd of striking miners and kills eight, as happened in Chile this past March, a raised eyebrow or two might seem in order...

...And I am sure of this-the Marxists are a minority...

...Two Communists and a Socialist picked up the difference, and the copper workers are now more solidly Marxist than ever...

...The political backlash from El Salvador has not served to sweeten this alliance, and one Socialist labor leader in Santiago admits that "CUT is now at its weakest point in six years...

...There are some trade unionists who still want to penetrate CUT, but I have no interest in winning over a dead man...

...and though it maintains no political affiliation, its philosophic affinity to Christian Democracy is unquestioned...

...But the general strike they called in celebration of having found some fizzled abysmally even among the many unions they dominate...