ATTACKS CASTRO OVER STRIKES IN CHILE
Eduardo.Frei Montalva, Christian Democrat president. of Chile, has accused Fidel :Castro of being behind the, strike wave that has closed many of the country's copper mines. Frei! s attack was made in the form of: a "reply" to references made by Castro in a speech | March 13°to efforts of the Chilean government: to ‘repress the strikers instead of granting their gust demands. =
The. ‘text of Castro! S$ remarks are not yet: available in the United States. They came,..however, on the eve of a general. strike called for March 15 by the Chilean Workers Central Union to protest. the murder March 11 of seven demonstrators, including two women, by police at the Anaconda Copper Company's El Salvador mine. (A policeman was likewise killed in the bloody attack on the unionists. )
The capitalist press has pictured the hastily called 48-hour general protest strike as a dismal failure. However, some 35,000 workers reportedly responded out of a total of 400,000 organized in unions.
In 1 describing the strike action, Juan de Onis, special -COr— respondent of the New York Times, said that "The Moscow-oriented _ Communist party seemed to be just going through the motions of striking, while the radical Socialists, who have affinities with Peking, did the: shouting. "
- “On March 14 Frei called the protest strike "a. systematic . ‘attempt: at destruction of the authority of the state. " He said that at the Tricontinental Conference held in Havana last January, "subversive™ plans were drawn up. "In Havana,-:a political declaration was formulated that'.said that guerrilla warfare in Chile would take on special forms that called for strikes, invasion of rural estates, collective demands and revolutionary violence. ® ar
The strikes in the imperialist- ~owned copper mines dia not
An.
have to be fomented by foreign agitators, however, as Frei asserts in the hoary tradition-of all strike-breaking governments. The Chilean miners have legitimate grievances, the main one being the remorseless. inflation that has cut down their purchasing power. They require a seventy per cent wage increase merely to balance the family budget. When Braden offered thirty per cent to the El Teniente miners they went out on strike. January 3 (The Tricontinental Conference closed January 15.) : . .
Since then, without any speeches from Castro on the topic of: the copper mine strikes in Chile, Frei arrested a score of union leaders, declared some of the strikes illegal, sent carabineers to put down the sympathy demonstration at El Salvador and ordered. carabineers to occupy Anaconda's Salvador and Potrerillos mines .- vo
Salvador Allende, who ran against Frei in the September ‘4, 1964, election for the presidency, stated at the Tricontinental Conference that it was becoming increasingly evident that socialism could not win in Chile along the electoral road. Frei, it would seen, has done much to confirm the accuracy of Allende's declaration.
For revolutionary Marxists the current struggles in Chile are of exceptional interest. Aside. from the exposure of, Frei's dema- .. gogy only sixteen months after he assumed office, the strikes have offered a testing ground as to the sincerity of the Chilean delegation at the Tricontinental Conference in declaring that a peaceful. road to socialism had been barred in Chile. The sincerity of the. Cubans in orienting the Tricontinental Conference toward affirmation of "armed struggle" as the: road to successful revolutions in Latin America was also'being tested in Chile. While the picture is as yet: far from complete, it would seem that. the evidence up ¥o this. point is favorable.
- CASTRO