Warning Tremors in Chile

...the establishment of a popular, pluralistic, revolutionary, and democratic government...

...Between 5,000 and 10,000 persons are held in city prisons or concentration camps at any one time...

...Duringthepast year, the reconstructed unions have carried out more than forty major work stoppages for wage increases and in defense of arrested union leaders...

...While close to half the population sympathized with the coupin 1973, perhaps lOpercent still support the military junta today...

...The single most important political task of the Left was the definition of a political program and a strategy to overthrow the junta...

...The Left is somewhat divided, however, over whether all or only part of the large, centrist Christian Democratic Party can be brought into the coalition...

...General Augusto Pinochet, the junta's leader, has said that "there will be no elections, neither during my lifetime or that of my successor's successor...

...While every party suffered serious losses in the initial period of repression, only several of t h e smaller parties were completely shattered...

...Spokesmen for the Chilean navy and air force have tried to dissociate their services from various junta policies...

...However, this has not been the case...

...The strategy calls for the formation of a broad antifascistfront encompassing all sympathetic groups within and outside the Popular Unity coalition...

...The incident graphically depicts Chile today...

...The pro-junta forces in t h e Christian Democrats have become negligible...

...nationalist and populist economic development...

...In 1974, a liberal-moderate coalition in Congress eliminated all military aid to Chile...

...aid to Santiago...

...The fascist ideologues in the military and ultraconservative parties want to eliminate the market economy, control the monopolies, and create a true civilian fascist movement patterned on the Falange or Nazi parties to give a continued dictatorship more mass support...

...In October 1974, General Carlos Prats, the exiled constitutionalist commander-in-chief, was murdered with his wife in Argentina...

...This spring, Chile's chief creditors, the Paris Club, refused to negotiate an extension of her enormous debt...

...They sense an earthquake coming...

...Like creatures that stir in anticipation of a natural disaster, t h e political animals in Chile are uneasy...

...Two years after a military coup overthrew the Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende, ostensibly to save the nation from chaos and terror, the Chilean economy lies in ruins and all democratic political institutions have been destroyed...

...In mid-July, pro-junta newspapers published startling accounts of sixty Chilean exiles who had, supposedly, been killed in Argentina in intra-Left fights...

...More have imposed restrictions on credits, investments, and trade with the junta...

...an independent foreign policy...

...Last July, delegates from the six Popular Unity parties held a four-day conference in Berlin and produced a basic political agreement calling for the overthrow of the junta...

...In addition, church leaders have vigorously denounced the government's violations of human rights...

...At the same time, it organized an elaborate repressive apparatus...

...Mismanagement of the economy was the j u n t a ' s first mistake...

...In consequence, the World Bank defined Chile as a poor credit risk...

...Under such pressures, the junta has resorted to ever more desperate measures to cover up its crimes...

...International investors and lenders are reluctant to become heavily committed to what they see as an increasingly hazardous prospect in Chile...

...Their objective is to moderate the worst aspects of the junta and obtain new international support by refurbishing Chile's image...

...Within days another fifty-nine bodies turned up after a supposedly violent battle with Argentinian border police...

...And so, in carefully worded letters from Chile, people are writing to friends abroad about sharp changes in the weather...

...Any shift in the government, whether to more moderate policies or to new extremes of repression, will simply mark the first step in the unraveling of the Right...

...Only hours after the first concrete information became available, the Peace Committee and parents of the missing persons released documented evidence that all the names belonged to persons who had been seized by the junta...

...Today, the secret police agency, DIN A, runs a series of interrogation and detention centers which handle hundreds of persons at a time...

...The junta has reacted violently to the threat of a Left-sponsored democratic coalition...

...Most of the parties have been able to reorganize, and today they function throughout Chile...

...Many governments have broken diplomatic relations...

...The junta remains in power only because it controls the armed forces, operates a brutally repressive apparatus, and continues to receive covert and overt support from Washington...

...The high level of organization was demonstrated by recent national conferences, all clandestine, held by CUT and the largest peasant unions...

...Church sources in Chile estimate that as many as 90,000 Chileans—1 per cent of the population—have been arrested...

...After two years, repression and violence continue unabated...

...Warning Tremors in Chile ADAM SCHESCH One night during the first week of May, the noise of banging pots and pans began to resound in the neighborhoods of Iquique, a mining city in northern Chile...

...The economic debacle is accompanied by an equally acute political crisis...

...Restoration of a "free market economy'' has meant unlimited license to the monopolies to raise prices, lower wages, and manipulate distribution...

...On the next night, army units surrounded some of the noisier sections...

...The moderates have also been warned...

...Chile is a major earthquake country...

...But the case of t h e 119' 'aparecedos'' backfired...

...Yet, despite this control and support, most informed observers speculate about the likelihood of a major change shortly after the new year...

...First, the junta has become increasingly isolated at the international level...

...At this point, the Chilean Left will b e able to play only a secondary role in immediate events, but few now doubt its long-term potential...

...More than 20,000 deaths are attributed to official repression...

...It was an attempt "to repress hunger," a smuggled copy of ResistenciaDemocratica, a clandestine newspaper, reported: "All the detained residents were released for 'lack of evidence.' The protest had been so general that repression would have involved seizing 90 per cent of the Iquiquenos...

...More than 70 per cent of Chile's organized workers had backed t h e Left before t h e coup...

...In t h e classic fascist tradition, leaders who might play a unifying role have been assassinated...

...A major question centers on the possible role of former President Eduardo Frei, who has shifted from open support of t h e junta to uneasy opposition...

...In addition, serious acts of sabotage have been committed against a number of major plants and mines...

...Despite the multifaceted opposition to the junta, conservatives in the United States have sustained their efforts to increase U.S...

...National production has failed drastically, and thousands of small producers and merchants have been forced out of business...

...Frei is a pivotal figure for the political moderates, including t h e few left in the military, who want to replace the junta without the support of the Left...

...The junta also has enemies on the Right...

...The Christian Democrats, who were supported by a quarter of t h e population, are a concern to both the Left and t h e Right...

...The massive repression might have served the junta if it had accomplished its major goal—the destruction of the political parties and organizations of the Left which had constituted the Popular Unity government...

...It returned all nationalized monopoly industries to their owners and placed economic policy in the hands of Milton Friedman's "Chicago Boys," a group of economists trained by the conservative University of Chicago savant...

...Leighton, a founder of the Christian Democratic Party and one of Chile's most respected political figures, has opposed the coup from the beginning and had led the struggle for a Christian Democrat-People' s Unity alliance from exile in Rome...

...The principal mass organization of Chile's working class, t h e Central Unica de Trabajadores (CUT) was also severely repressed, but once the Left parties had reorganized, the reconstruction of CUT became a primary task...

...for 5,000 escudos a day, she noted that a kilo (about two pounds) of bread costs 1,500 escudos and a kilo of sugar 2,500 escudos...

...The massive repression has produced two unexpected results...

...Second, the churches of Chile have begun to take an active role in protecting the people from their government...

...The Party is about evenly divided between those who favor an alliance with the Left and those who want to pursue an independent path of opposition...

...They demonstrated that prices have risen by 5,000 per cent since the coup, while wages have risen by only 2,500 per cent...

...In the aftermath, demands have intensified for information on the fate of hundreds of other detainees...

...The national police have become increasingly bitter and disillusioned about their neglect by the junta, and more reluctant to carry out repressive activities...

...At the same time, the unemployment rate has risen from 4 per cent under Allende to 20 per cent...

...This year, more than 100 members of the House signed a petition calling for its restoration...

...These conditions can have a nightmarish effect on individuals and families...

...The junta relies on mass roundups in working class housing developments and shantytowns to capture individual members of resistance groups...

...Recently, seventeen junta-appointed labor union leaders petitioned to have wage settlements linked to the cost-of-living index...

...Frei himself was sharply criticized after he broke his long silence and finally criticized the j u n t a ' s economic policies last June...

...One year later, Bernardo Leighton and his wife were severely wounded in Rome...

...When it seized power, the junta abolished all political parties, closed the Congress, burned the electoral rolls, stifled the free press, and outlawed most unions...

...Brazilian and American experts arrived immediately after the coup to train Chileans in the most advanced torture techniques...

...Visitors estimate that in working class neighborhoods unemployment runs as high as 50 to 60 per cent...

...anew government structure, and transforming of armed forces into a people's army...

...Pressures on the junta from both the extreme Right and the moderates have increased in the last few months...

...The various denominations work through neighborhood branches of the Peace Committee, offering welfare, medical, and legal services...

...In a letter I recently received from a woman who works in a restaurant from 8:30 a. m. to 11:30 p.m...