CHRISTIAN DEMOCRATS LOSE IN BELLWETHER CHILEAN STUDENT ELECTION
Santiago, Chile
In elections held by the Student Federation of Concepcién November 19, the Christian Democrats suffered their first defeat in five years. They were beaten by a joint slate put up by the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria and the Partido Socialista. The MIR-PS candidates won 1,270 votes as against 1,060 for the Christian Democrats.
The winning slate was headed by 23-year-old Luciano Cruz Aguayo, a student of medicine and member of the MIR who came to prominence last September during some student actions in which he declared a hunger strike. The student demonstrations culminated in mass actions in the streets of Concepcién.
The son of a former army officer, Luciano Cruz, joined the Communist party. He was expelled from that organization in 1964 for adopting positions that were too radical for this "peaceful coexistence" minded party.
The outcome of the university elections in Concepcién were held to be of symptomatic importance for the country as a whole. The daily El Mercurio declared in an editorial November 21:
"The university election in Concepcién represented a decided turn of the students toward extremist positions. The slate headed by Luciano Cruz of the MIR overcame the Christian Democrat candidate despite the lack of Communist support. The Communists ran their own slate, getting 257 votes.] The strengthening of the extremist positions tilts the balance among the national political parties and marks a new milestone in the current regroupment of the Chilean left. It appears
symptomatic that the coming apart of the FRAP [Frente Revolucionario de Acci6n Popular -- the Socialist and Communist party bloc formed in the last presidential elections], noted in the elections for the FECH [Federacién de Estudiantes de Chile], should be repeated in the south; but this time leading to a collapse of some proportions for the Communists and the Radicals. [The Radicals received 527 votes in the election.] The Socialists were able to verify that their alliance with the MIR can pay off better than bowing to the FRAP. On the other hand, the Communists, upon being isolated, showed lack of pulling power in the vote."
At the same time, the Christian Democrats still appear to be holding their own among the students at the University of Santiago. In the October 22 elections, the Christian Democrat slate won with a vote of 6,191. The Communist party slate came second with a vote of 3,412; the joint MIR-PS slate got 1,965; the Partido Radical 1,136 and the Partido Nacional 994.
As yet definitive conclusions cannot be drawn inasmuch as the returns are not yet in from other universities. It could be that the Christian Democrats are maintaining their majority nationally despite the outcome of the election in Concepcién. In that city the growth of the MIR and the militant struggles it led during the past year have evidently had an important effect.
In Santiago, the strong showing of the Christian Democrats, the Radicals and the most reformist sector (the Communist party) indicates that the Chilean students have not yet entered the stage of deep radicalization and are still voting for the bourgeois reformist and traditional left sectors.