[The following article, the last in a series of four, appeared in the June 6 issue of the French Trotskyist weekly, Rouge. The translation is by Intercontinental Press.]
"The Resistance Will Win! MIR"
This hastily painted slogan ran along an entire wall in the working-class quarter of San Miguel. In the early hours of the morning a squad of soldiers, under the jeering stares of numerous passersby, is already hard at work whitewashing the "seditious" inscription.
Undoubtedly painted the previous night, just before the curfew, it remained for barely a few hours. The officers seem to fear this sort of wall painting. Not only do they rush to cover them up immediately, but the orders to the patrols are strict: Shoot without warning any person caught in the act of painting slogans.
Moreover, woe to those who live opposite a wall carrying such an inscription. They are considered jointly responsible, because they did not see nor denounce the perpetrators of the crime. They risk a prison sentence or worse.
This is one form, among many others, the Chilean junta's deliberate policy of terror takes. One aspect of this policy is to whip up an incredible hysteria against the MIR [Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria- Movement of the Revolutionary Left].
Listening to the radio, reading the gutter newspapers, or watching television is enough to become convinced that the MIR is responsible for a thousand and one heinous crimes everywhere.
A woman is raped in an isolated district: it was the MIRistas who did it. Some drug traffickers are arrested: again they are MIRistas. A robbery is committed: inevitably it is the hand of the MIR that is behind it.
To believe the junta, the MIR is everywhere, behind all the shady deals and foul crimes from the north of the country to the south.
Such a systematic campaign has a dual purpose. The aim is first to discredit the organization by attributing to it everything that smacks of gangsterism or common delinquency; and second, to justify the continuation of the repression by playing up the strength, the omnipresence, of the MIR.
The effects of this campaign are not always the ones the junta planned. No Chilean worker can seriously believe that the MIR, whose positions under the Unidad Popular were known to all, has changed from a revolutionary organization into a gang of delinquents. And many, looking for the faintest glimmer of hope, draw the naïve conclusion that such a campaign reflects a considerable strength on the part of the organization, whose prestige — already large before — is still growing.
The reality is much more complex.
"This defeat is not that of the working class, nor is it ours. It is the defeat of the reformist organizations and their strategy.... We are now facing the historic responsibility of creating the conditions for a successful mobilization of the workers to overthrow the dictatorship, for the socialist revolution. Having gone through the experiences they have, the Chilean masses will never again allow themselves to be dragged into such a dead end...."
It was a comrade of the MIR Central Committee who told us that, a few weeks after the coup in mid-October 1973. His remarks accurately reflected the thinking and state of morale of the militants in the organization. They were surprised at the nature of the coup and the breadth of the repression, but were optimistic even when faced with the new responsibilities and the tasks these involved.
In the first weeks of the dictatorship, the organization proved its cohesiveness and solidity. There were no desertions and the disorganization was in the end limited. Many of the leadership's analyses were — unfortunately — confirmed, and they responded with great political maturity to the new situation. This included their opposition to all ultraleft temptations to counterattack or to initiate actions that were isolated from the organization and its apparatus.
Eighteen months have passed during which hundreds of militants have fallen. At the cost of considerable effort, it was necessary to fill in the gaps, to rebuild as quickly as possible what was undone, and to stubbornly reconstruct what was destroyed. Few organizations in the history of the world revolutionary movement have undergone repression as severe as the drive against the MIR. It was the prime target of the Chilean military's effort to destroy all forms of workers organization and the even stronger campaign to wipe out all revolutionary tendencies. Even fewer organizations have survived under such circumstances.
The MIR has survived. The slogans on the walls, like the tiny stickers overlooked here and there in public places, are testimony. Further proof is provided by those militants who for several months have been rebuilding the activity of the organization in one of the principal slums of Santiago, setting up several cells of sympathizers there. It has also won over a nucleus of worker militants, members of the Communist party under the UP and recruited since the coup.
Numerically small-in comparison with what it was at the time of the coup-the MIR is still not in a position to capitalize on the increased prestige it has won. The conditions of political activity in Chile today force most militants to spend the greatest part of their time in preserving the organization under conditions of the utmost clandestinity. External activity is reduced accordingly.
The organization has been weakened politically as well as numerically. A large part of its best cadres, including the core of its leadership team, are dead or imprisoned. And this at a time when crucial political problems are being posed or will inevitably be posed.
The orientation worked out in the months following the coup have not appreciably varied. The context in which they were elaborated is no longer exactly the same, however. The hopes for a relatively rapid realignment of forces in the workers movement, for which the MIR wanted to be an important pole of attraction, have not been fulfilled. What is more serious, the historic defeat of reformism in Chile has not led to what the MIR predicted, somewhat mechanically: new relationships of forces within the workers movement.
Moreover, the Communist party has broken the occasional ties with the revolutionary left that were established in the wake of the coup. Undoubtedly it decided that this conflicted with its strategy of seeking to establish a front with the Christian Democracy.
In these conditions, and leaving aside the ambiguities in the situation that we have mentioned several times, the unity proposals made by the MIR to the whole of the Chilean left have hardly any chance of being put into practice, even partially. The political front of the resistance to regroup the parties of the UP, the "left" sectors of the Christian Democracy, and the MIR that was proposed more than a year ago by Miguel Enriquez is more unworkable than ever. The fact that in a process of realignment the entire Christian Democracy has become part of the opposition clears the path for reintegrating those "left" sectors into the bourgeois opposition. At the same time, it reinforces the credibility of the CP's orientation.
Efforts to set in motion the rank-and-file resistance and united mobilizations the MIR proposed along with the political front were limited both by the reality of the objective situation and by the relationship of forces inside the workers movement. Where they exist, the resistance committees are structures more suitable for mobilizing the periphery of the revolutionary left than for providing the basis for organizations of a broader, united character.
The political isolation resulting from the influence and tactics of the reformists poses with greater sharpness than ever the problem of a revolutionary front. Because the MIR dominates the far left, it is the only organization that can serve as the axis, the backbone, of such a front. But at the same time, precisely because it is such a dominant force, it plays down the need for a revolutionary front. Numerically, the forces that such a front would embrace would not be-at the beginning-qualitatively different from those of the MIR itself.
Politically, on the other hand, the impact of such a front would be very different on confused sectors; on waverers in the left of the Socialist party; on those who, although isolated, continue to make demands in the critical style of the MAPU [Movimiento de Acción Popular Unitaria-Movement for United People's Action]; and on a number of Communist party militants.
This is what our comrades in the Liga Comunista de Chile [Communist League of Chile] are pressing for in the resolutions of their second congress-held a few weeks ago in Chile-which we will give an account of in a future article. The remarkable activity of this small nucleus of Trotskyist militants, their progress over these past months, just like the heroic and difficult resistance of the MIR, is not without significance in Santiago as the month of April draws to an end.
Defeat and repression, betrayals and maneuvers, have not been able to snuff out the flame of revolution in Chile.