OPPOSITION RISES IN CHILE TO VIETNAM WAR
Santiago de Chile
A number of meetings and street rallies of students and workers have been held here to demonstrate solidarity with the guerrilla fighters of South Vietnam who are struggling for national and social liberation. The anti-imperialist mobilization began March 16 with a mass meeting at which an effigy of Uncle Sam, symbolizing Yankee imperialism, was burned in the Plaza de Armas, Following this, participants went through the streets shouting for the withdrawal of the North American troops. This action was sponsored by socialist groups (Partido Socialista Popular, Vanguardia Revolucionaria Marxista, Espartaco).
In succeeding days, the university contingents of these groups organized various actions such as those at the University of Chile and the Instituto Pedagégico where the North American flag was burned,
The Juventud Comunista, under pressure from the revolutionary Marxist sectors, then undertook various anti~imperialist actions, among them a meeting in the patio of the Escuela de Economfa de la Universidad which ended - with the burning | of ‘a paper effigy of the United States,
At the end of March a bomb was set off in the Teatro San Martin where a pro-U.S. film was being shown called "Commandos in Vietnam,"
In the streets of Santiago the walls are covered with slogans accusing the United States of murdering the Vietnamese people,
At the beginning of April a Committee to Support the Revolution in South Vietnam was organized.
Similar actions are certain to continue. They are linked with the domestic problems now perturbing the people of Chile. It is encouraging to see that the revolutionary Marxist groups have © been able to initiate anti-imperialist mass demonstrations and have been able to give an impulse to the Socialist and Communist youth who are going through a phase of criticizing their revisionist leaderships. :
One of the outstanding features of the actions that have been carried out is that for the first time they brought the pro-Peking group (Espartaco) into a common front with the revolutionary Marxist sectors, They had previously refused to join a revolutionary united front because of anti-Trotskyist prejudices.
The pro=Peking group has not only participated in common
-1l3=
actions; it has also signed a joint declaration with the Partido Socialista Popular, Vanguardia Revolucionaria Marxista and Izquierda Socialista demanding that the Frei government come out publicly against the North American aggression in Vietnam in the name of the right to self-determination,.