[The following editorial appeared in the November 29 issue of Avanzada Socialista, weekly paper of the Argentine PST (Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores - Socialist Workers party), an organization in sympathy with the Fourth International. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
Among their "virtues " the brutal Chilean repressors include persecuting all advanced culture and scholarship in the country in a frenzied attempt to destroy them. One of the military junta's hostages is the well-known historian and professor Luis Vitale. In the first days after the coup, he, along with thousands of political suspects and trade-unionists, was imprisoned in the Santiago Stadium. As of now, his whereabouts and fate are unknown. The military has refused to grant even his family, his wife and daughter, any word of him.
Luis Vitale is originally from Argentina. Many years ago he settled in Chile, becoming an importanttradeunion leader. He was one of the most prominent signers of the reports and resolutions of the first and second congresses of the Central Unica de Trabajadores [CUT- United Federation of Workers] and a member of the CUT national leadership from 1959 to 1962.
As a trade-union leader and wellknown Trotskyist militant, Vitale made major theoretical contributions to the Fourth International, as well as the Chilean workers movement, with his analysis of the problems of agrarian reform, Chile's industrial growth, and the struggle against imperialism.
Later he became professor of history and geography at the University of
Concepción. Vitale is especially known for his Marxist Interpretation of the History of Chile, into which he poured all his research on the development of Chile as a country dominated by imperialism.
The influence that Vitale's work has had among the Chilean people is undoubtedly one of the factors that goaded the murderous junta to vent its rage on him. In arresting him while he was lecturing at the University of Concepción, the military junta has transformed Vitale into a symbol of the power that learning and culture have when they are put at the service of the workers and the people.
For all these reasons, Avanzada Socialista joins in the campaign that is starting up throughout the world to call for the release of Luis Vitale and the many thousands of persons imprisoned for their political and tradeunion activities, and to demand an immediate and unconditional halt to the repression in Chile.
Along with calling for the release of Manuel Cabieses Donoso [the editor of Punto Final reportedly blinded by the junta], Luis Corvalán [CP general secretary], and Guarany Pereda [an SP leader], the demand for the release of a representative of the country's persecuted culture and scholarship such as Luis Vitale should become one of the main rallying cries of the struggle in support of and in solidarity with Chile.
We demand also that the military junta disclose the place and conditions of Vitale's confinement and let representatives from the organizations around the world protesting the repression in Chile visit him in order to ensure his life and civil liberties.
In order to facilitate Vitale's release and safe-conduct out of the country, the officials in the Argentine Department of Education should publicly offer him a professorship in the National University. The Argentine government should intercede with the Chilean military junta in order to obtain permission for him to leave the country, and it should assure that he will be able to establish himself freely in Argentina.
Luis Vitale has become a symbol of the violation of democratic rights in Chile. The popular forces in our country should try to distinguish themselves as his greatest defender and the guarantor of his asylum in Argentina.