Chile: The Lesson That Venezuela Learned? (HUGO BLANCO)

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Chile: The Lesson That Venezuela Learned?

By Hugo Blanco

Global Research, March 19, 2007
Rebelion

While in exile, I was lucky to be part of the process of changes staged by the Chilean people up until Pinochet's coup d'état.

I can summarize my experience with the chess player's maxim: "Attacking is the best defense," a truth I painfully attested to in the case of Chile. As it often happens, these changes were soon challenged by the corporate sector with a number of attacks that the government failed to rebuff with a firm hand, taking a soft, conciliatory line on them instead of joining forces with the people against the saboteurs. Encouraged, the attackers reinforced their siege, whereas frustration and disappointment got the better of the ordinary citizens backing the process. Therefore, the time was ripe for the coup to succeed.

Having reached maturity in their struggle as well as in their conscience, the Chilean people became disillusioned with the Christian Democrat government and elected Unidad Popular's candidate Salvador Allende despite the smear campaign unleashed against him by the big owners.

Calmly and without taking any spectacular revolutionary measure, the government moved on and tried to implement the agrarian reform law enacted by its predecessors, decreed considerable price reductions for essential goods, and accorded the right to strike.

For their part, the poor were gaining ground:

The workers took control of industries where damaging actions like sabotage against production were committed, and prepared to defend themselves against right-wing paramilitary gangs tolerated by the police.

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http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=BLA20070319&articleId=5115

The author:Hugo Blanco was leader of the Quechua peasant uprising in the Cuzco region of Peru in the early 1960s. He was captured by the military and sentenced to 25 years in El Fronton Island prison for his activities. While in prison, he wrote Land or Death: The Peasant Struggle in Peru (Pathfinder Press, 1972), which is must-reading for anyone who wishes to understand the struggle of peasants and indigenous people in Latin America for liberation.