Chile

This article deals with the presidential primaries and the general situation of the workers’ and youth movement and the electoral policies and alliances of the left parties. It provides useful background analysis to the first round of the presidential elections which took place yesterday. It was published in July in issue 8 of America Socialista.

For the last 10 weeks the capitalist media has been whipped into a frenzy by the story of 33 trapped miners in the San Jose Copiapó copper and gold mine in Chile. Though the event has been widely covered, it has not been much reported on, but rather, it has been turned into a narrative that leaves an increasingly unoriginal Hollywood salivating with eyeball dollar signs. The television reporting, as the miners were being rescued, was nothing less than abysmal.

The huge earthquake that struck Chile back in February has revealed all the negative consequences of decades of deregulation and privatisation, as the people come to the terms with shoddy building methods and lack of services to deal with such a catastrophe. Privatisation literally kills!

A recent screening of Part Two of The Battle of Chile (The Coup d’État) in Bolivar Hall in London highlighted the events that led to the September 11, 1973 coup that removed Allende from power. That experience is full of lessons for today’s revolutions in Bolivia and Venezuela, and beyond.

On Friday, October 19, the screening of the first and second parts of the legendary documentary film “The battle of Chile”, organised by Hands off Venezuela, drew a very large audience at the Bolivar Hall in London.

On June 25, miners from El Salvador, Andina, El Teniente and Ventana mines carried out a total strike, which was successful despite brutal police repression. Ever since, the tension at the mines and confrontations with the police have been increasing due to the aggressive and repressive attitude the company and the Bachelet government have adopted.