1973-08-08

Welcome to Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection and analysis of important events and issues in Latin America, as seen by leading world newspapers, with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. 

The London weekly, Latin America, reports from Chile that for the first time in two years, the right-wing Christian Democrats have been talking to the government instead of engaging in a mutual slinging match. The right-wing leadership of the Christian Democratic party agreed to talks only after an urgent warning from the church that civil war could be imminent. This followed last week's assassination of President Salvador Allende Naval aide-de-camp, Captain Arturo Araya, and widespread sabotage upon the declaration of another transportation owner strike similar to last October's, although bus and taxi drivers did not immediately join in the stoppage, except in a few areas. 

By the end of last week, the situation looked exceptionally grave. Although the Christian Democrats remained deaf to Allende's desperate appeals for talks, both left and right pinned the guilt for Araya's assassination on opposing extremists. Though the right seemed to have a much more clear-cut motive to provoke a military coup. 

On Monday, however, the political temperature dropped several degrees when talks between the government and opposition got underway as a result of the church appeal. But although the imminent threat of civil war has receded, many observers feel the country may have passed the point at which compromise is possible. On both sides, there are powerful groups and individuals strongly opposed even to seeking one. 

Most socialists and the revolutionary left feel that the working class is becoming imbued with a really revolutionary spirit. They cite the occupation of factories, the development of local workers councils, and they are not willing to lose it. 

The opposition, on the other hand, seems to be preparing a last ditch stand to defend Chile's traditional institutions. Allende, believing that everyone would lose in the event of a confrontation and that the first to be lost would be such revolutionary reforms as he has been able to achieve looks increasingly isolated in the middle. This report on Chile from Latin America. 

Accusations that the Brazilian government has been using torture as a part of its official policy of repression have been common from as long ago as 1968. These allegations have, in the course of time, become more detailed, and the lists of tortured ever longer. In 1970, Brazilian president Emílio Médici admitted that there had been cases of torture, but he denied that this was an official policy and promised that the torturers would be brought to justice. However, in the intervening years, the government and its agencies overseas have taken up an increasingly rigid stand and have denied that there have been any cases at all. 

With the imposition of rigid press censorship, it became increasingly difficult to substantiate allegations of torture that were made. The one body within Brazil that has from time to time taken issue with the government has been the church, but until recently, its complaints were mainly directed against torture perpetrated on members of the clergy. Earlier this year, however, the church began to take up a much more militant attitude, particularly since the death of a student at the hands of the police.

Latin America says that in the second week of July, Brazil's National Council of Bishops, referring to a decision by a military tribunal, listed a number of other cases of torture, including an incident in which four priests were forcibly removed from the house of a bishop by the military police, who then proceeded to torture them. The accusations by the Council of Bishops happened to coincide with the publication by the New York Council on Religion and International Affairs of allegations by a former advisor to Senator George McGovern that there had been more than 1000 political prisoners in Brazil and that probably between 40 and 120 have been tortured to death. 

In the light of these accusations, it may be significant that three police officers are now to be tried in Rio de Janeiro for torturing two prisoners. One of the officers is already well-known as the man who, after conducting a television campaign against delinquency and drug addiction, was reputed to have allowed the escape of a drug peddler for a bribe of $30,000. The indictment of the three policemen states that the two prisoners were submitted to all kinds of torture in an attempt to force them to admit their complicity in a murder that took place in June 1972. 

In the view of most observers, the mere fact of this trial is an admission by the government that torture is being used in Brazil, and this in itself is a step forward. It is being seen as an indication of new and less repressive policies to be introduced when General Ernesto Geisel takes over the presidency next year. But other observers are less optimistic. They point out that both these cases relate only to common criminals and that this cannot be taken as an indication of any easing of repressive measures against political prisoners. This analysis is from the London Weekly Latin America. 

Reaction to current nuclear testings by France was published this week by Mexico's Daily Excélsior. Peru broke diplomatic relations with France in protest of its atomic explosions. It expressed a desire for similar actions by other American countries. The French government protested, announcing that the tests could not be halted. 

Three persons representing 20 French political groups and trade unions delivered a note to President Georges Pompidou asking that an end be put immediately to the series of tests. The daily Le Monde in an editorial maintained that the government cannot ignore that psychologically, its nuclear politics are a failure, provoking indignation from other countries without attaining enthusiasm from the French people. 

In New York, Secretary General of the United Nations, Kurt Waldheim deplored the French explosion at Mururoa and asked all those interested to abide by the UN rules prohibiting nuclear testing in the atmosphere. 

But the rightest French press, Le Figaro, wrote, "It is doubtful that the New Zealanders and Australians can legitimately express an opinion concerning French defense needs because European security is none of their business." 

In Lima, Peruvian officials announced the rupture of diplomatic relations with France. They're confident, however, that relations with France will resume when France ceases the nuclear testing. 

The Santiago weekly, Chile Hoy, further states, "France insists on controlling the zones near Mururoa, which they claim to be an extension of their sea territory, but the action of expelling ships within a radius of 72 miles is beyond the limits of their sovereignty." 

Before the wave of protesting was begun, it was enough for a nuclear country to announce their testing plans so the danger zone could be avoided by ships. Now different foreign ships have decided to stay within this danger zone as a means of protest. 

The fact of undeclared war in Guatemala is being openly admitted. Despite the grand public relations campaign being waged on his behalf, General Laugerud, the official presidential candidate, was recently forced to admit that everyone in Guatemala knows that the country is in an undeclared state of war, which began 13 years ago. The violence is increasing and the government and its handpicked candidate for the 1974 election had been trying to use that violence as a political issue by claiming that it is a part of a plot to discredit the government in the pre-electoral period. 

The fact that violence is increasing was demonstrated dramatically one week in June when one landowner, two farm administrators and a rightist congressman were murdered all by people with no clear ties to organized political groups. A wealthy landowner, businessman and former president of the US sponsored Penny Foundation was killed by several peasants whose land he was trying to take over. Congressman Hector Soles Juarez, a renowned right-winger was killed after two unsuccessful assassination attempts, but no group on the left has claimed responsibility for the act. 

Guatemala Report continues saying, "During the past year the government's main overt efforts to control the situation aside from direct armed confrontations have been aimed at maintaining a continuous high level of fear in the population and a constant awareness of the strength of the repressive forces." 

This tactic has been most apparent in the so-called Cleanup Operations carried out without obvious provocation in different parts of the country, but primarily in Guatemala City. These cleanup maneuvers are ostensibly designed to rid the country of common criminals, and as the elections approach, are increasingly focused on combating marijuana, an issue which the government is trying to use to distract attention from these serious problems facing the country. 

In recent months, there are indications that the government, unable to totally pacify the country, may now be trying to use political violence and organized subversion as an issue in the election. According to Laugerud, the government cannot control the situation because it is fighting organized violence, manifested in the repetition of similar acts all over the country in which landowners, farm administrators, military commissioners, and policemen have been killed. 

Several army officers have recently acknowledged that despite massive pacification efforts, the problem of political violence and concretely of the guerrilla, has not been liquidated. Despite the general level of censorship, the press has also reported the existence of armed groups in the northern part of the country. 

These developments make it clear that the government no longer feels obliged to maintain a liberal political image and that the election will bring no moratorium on official and semi-official violence. Thus, any lull in the government's undeclared war must be seen as tactical and temporary rather than as the beginning of peace, tranquility, and stability. This critical view of the undeclared war in Guatemala is presented by the Guatemala Report. 

The Miami Herald reports that the Brazilian government has been telling its consumers recently that they are the ones who must take action to stop the inflation which has plagued this country for many years. In government-sponsored newspaper ads, housewives are told to shop around and think before they buy. 

Inflation in Brazil was approaching 100% a year when the armed forces threw out a civilian administration in 1964. The military regime opened the country's doors to foreign investment, held down workers' salaries, outlawed strikes, and forced people to pay taxes. As a result, inflation last year was only 14%. This year, the government says it will be 12%, the lowest in two decades. 

Also, Brazil's gross national product has increased by more than 9% annually for the past six years, to around $50 billion. Exports for this year are forecast at a record $5.3 billion with 40% coming from manufactured goods. However, critics of the regime point out that most Brazilians have not benefited from the economic growth. Per-person income in Brazil is around $500 a year. In the United States, it is about $4,000. Millions of farmers in the country's vast interior still live mainly on what they grow and barter. They do not participate directly in the money economy. 

While top Brazilian executives are reported to be bringing in annual salaries of $200,000 or more, sugar cane cutters in the Northeastern states get a dollar for every ton of cane that they can chop, stack and bundle. It takes a strong worker nearly an entire day to cut a ton. 

A group of Roman Catholic bishops charged recently that Brazil's present economic system does not help Brazilian society, but only the profit interests of foreign companies and their associates in our country. The clergyman said the only only solution is social ownership of the means of production. 

The government acknowledges that workers pay has not increased as fast as the economy as a whole, but they argue this is the price of controlling inflation. About the lopsided distribution of income, Brazil's finance minister said, "Nobody is satisfied with the way income is distributed in Brazil, but if some country had discovered a better way to distribute income, it would've been put in action." 

In striking contrast to original estimates of Perón, an almost magical change of heart has led the United States to view Perón as Argentina's best hope. The New York Times comments that, "In a reversal of attitudes, the United States government has come to view Juan Domingo Perón not as a menace, but as Argentina's best hope for political stability and economic progress." 

This reappraisal was advanced in interviews by top officials of the State Department involved with South American affairs, and was confirmed by the Argentinian Embassy as its understanding of current United States policy. 

The new position of the United States comes as no surprise to leftist elements in Argentina and throughout Latin America who have bemoaned Perón's moves toward the right for many weeks. In reorganizing his political movement at home, Perón seems to have embraced conservative elements within his party by his appointments of two right-wing labor leaders to important positions within the party. 

Meanwhile, members of the Peronist Youth Movement who are responsible for mass mobilizing in support of Perón are angry because they were not consulted in the recent restructuring of the party. According to Latin America, Perón himself doubtless realizes that he is placing a tremendous strain on his political basis. They have long comforted themselves with the belief that he was quite different from men like José Rucci, leader of the General Labor Confederation. And last November, Perón played up to this belief, murmuring to the youth leaders that he knew who the traitors were. 

Now the revolutionaries are having to fall back on a new formulation, which is that Perón is surrounded by reactionaries who keep him a virtual prisoner. The preceding article by Latin America. 

You are listening to Latin American Press Review, a weekly roundup of news and events as seen by leading world newspapers with special emphasis on the Latin American Press. Our feature this week is an interview with Dr. David Barkin of Lehman College of City University of New York, discussing recent events in Chile. 

Dr. Barkin, could you please describe the current situation in Chile? 

That's hard, but in a word I guess we could say it's confused. The present situation is one of a great deal of upset of strikes throughout the country, of great deal of scarcity of food, and of a great deal of political maneuvering. But to understand what's going on, we cannot simply stay in the events of the month of July or June, but we have to go back to the month of October when we had the large strike, which lasted almost a month and in which the truck drivers began—who tried to force the Allende the government to go easy on some of its policies of changing the economic structure so that the people who were working in the factories and in the fields could improve their living standards. 

Back in October, the strikes by the truck drivers, who also are the truck owners, forced a confrontation in which Allende came out winning. By Allende I mean the Popular Unity government, which was legally elected as the government of Chile back in 1970 and has a six-year term of office. 

Now, that situation, which happened in October, created a large economic upset for the country. $200 million is the estimated cost of that situation because of lost exports and economic upset in the country. 

During that period of time, as I said, Allende came out winning because what happened was the government came out with more support among the working classes who realized that the truck owners and other small business people and large business people, of course, were very much up in arms against the interests of the working classes, against the interests of the peasants, because these groups of people represented interests which were not directed towards satisfying basic housing, medical care, educational and food needs for the mass of the Chilean people. As a result, you had a situation in which Allende won, basically. He won, he was able to reestablish a balance of power with Salvador Allende the president at the political helm. 

Now in June, you had another series of events which culminated in a strike by one group of people within the copper mines, the administrative workers. The administrative workers within the copper mines were arguing that they should get an escudo and one half increase in pay for every escudo, that all the other workers in Chile got as a result of inflation. 

Now, this was an inadmissible situation for the Chilean government because the copper workers were already the best paid workers in Chile. As a result, there was a huge and lengthy and very costly copper strike, which took place in Chile. That was resolved, but it was resolved, again, at the cost of great deal of political turmoil, which involved Allende taking very strong measures. 

Now, during the past six or seven weeks, the situation has gotten worse in the sense that the right has correctly seen itself as being threatened by the growing strength that Allende has shown among the working classes, and has therefore had to take much more severe measures to try to control or to get back some of the power which led to the assassination of Allende's military aide-de-camp, the Navy man who was shot in a very, very brutal fashion, machine-gunned in his home one evening several weeks ago. 

Now, what that has forced Allende to do is again, to take stronger measures, and has forced, again, a heightening of tension. But has at the same time made it quite obvious to large segments of the Chilean population that there are conflicts, very severe conflicts of interest between what the right is trying to do and what the Popular Unity government is trying to do. But the Popular Unity government in turn finds pressures from the left, which is asking that Allende go even further in taking over enterprises which are owned by the people who are creating the civil war. 

And about the role of the United States, in December, Salvador Allende denounced past aggressions of the United States economic interests against the Chilean people. Do you think intervention in Chile's affairs continues? 

That question's very hard to answer, because obviously—the answer Chileans give is clearly yes. Although the people who are involved in this are not carrying cards which say, "I'm a member of the CIA" or "I work for ITT." 

What happens is that there's a great deal of intervention in a number of different fronts. The most obvious of them being that the right wing still finds economic support, the right groups. Not only Patria y Libertad or Father Land and Freedom Group, which is the group that's responsible for the assassination of Allende's aide-de-camp, but also for the centrist groups or the so-called centrist groups, the Christian Democratic groups, which are now the opposition party in Chile. 

These groups find, through their normal economic ties with America's largest multinational corporations, that it is easy to find economic and political support, and as is quite clear from an analysis of the American press, the American press is still trying to mobilize American opinion against attempts to give the Chilean working classes a decorative standard of living by claiming that this is going against American interests. 

What it seems to me is that we have to try to understand that it's different groups of Americans who have interests in the welfare of different parts of the Chilean population, and that our support must be for the working people, the people and the peasants who are trying to improve their standard of living. But it seems clear that at least economic support is coming from the United States to help in these counter-governmental efforts. 

On the international front, Chile is finding a great deal of support in most international organizations from groups that are not controlled by the United States government. 

Have recent events hurt Allende's popularity among the working class? 

That is a very important question to answer because in it lies the possibility of understanding three more years of Popular Unity government. I think that contrary to hurting Popular Unity and Allende's popularity, recent events have strengthened it. We have the March 4th elections as testimony to that, where there was a very, very substantial increase in voting and in voting for the Popular Unity government throughout broad sectors of the economy, including the famous conservative women. And I say famous because women are supposed to be, in Latin America, traditionally conservative and traditional. 

As a result, the women's vote is taken as a particularly strong vote of confidence in Allende. What happens is I think that the women realize more than ever how it is that prices and supplies are being manipulated in the grocery stores for the benefit of certain people, and are going through a process of trying to understand the economic situation, and realize that they have to support certain actions. 

Interesting thing, since March, I think his popularity has grown even more with the recent events in the assassination, the copper strike and things like that, so that the right and the Democratic Christian groups have been forced to accelerate their own activities because they feel menaced by the growing solidarity within the working classes. 

If anything, the interesting thing about the working classes and the polarization and Allende's popularity has been their growing radicalization and their demands for more stringent and stronger moves by the government than the government feels it can politically go through right now. But in electoral terms and in terms of the future, I think that yes, his popularity has grown. 

Will the Allende regime survive the current difficulties, and what do you foresee for the future? 

I think I just tried to indicate that yes, the Allende government will survive. The Allende government will survive because Salvador Allende has demonstrated himself to be a magnificent politician, an extraordinarily agile person in terms of manipulating and in terms of playing a very delicate political game, which is heightening, which is becoming more serious, and the stakes are getting higher. Both the threats and the stakes are higher also. 

Right now, Allende has successfully resolved the conflicts between the extreme right and the extreme left by playing a centrist ground. As a result, he's getting attacks from all sides. He's trying a dialogue with the Christian Democrats, which I think is going to have very problematic results. None of these attempts in the past have worked, and I don't think they'll work now, but we'll see. 

But let me just close by saying in the future, I think that there's a great deal of reason to be optimistic because what's happened is the working classes, the majority of the people are beginning to take their own dynamic in trying to control their own lives and in demanding voices, which during past years have been spoken for by the leaders of the country. 

As a result, you have a situation in which the industrial and the agricultural sectors of the economy are beginning to demand participation in decision-making in an autonomous way. And if nothing else, that's perhaps the most exciting thing that's in the future for Chile. 

In view of your optimism for the future, what do you think about the rumors that Chile is on the brink of civil war? 

I think those rumors are very convenient fabrications and misunderstandings by different groups, both within Chile and especially in the American press. The notion of civil war itself is a very difficult notion in a country with a president who's trying to lead the country on a transition through a peaceful way and through the political process. 

The political game in Chile is a very, very complicated one. And the stakes are high, and Allende's success is the reason why the right has been forced to take some of the violent actions that it's taking, and why the economic sabotage, which is going on throughout the economy is taking place. 

The threats from the left are very clear, and I think that there's an attempt by the left, by some elements within the extreme left to also suggest that the country is on the brink of civil war. 

But civil war would require a different sort of display of forces and a different sort of availability of arms and distribution of those arms, than is currently available in Chile. The armed forces are very powerful, and the United States has equipped them very well during the past three years. And they have up to now been very effective in controlling the distribution of arms and have recently been collecting a great number of loose arms, which they find among different groups in both the right and the left. 

The armed forces, if it came to a showdown, would probably support the Christian Democratic groups, but I don't think that that kind of showdown is in the offering, and I don't think that civil war is the way in which the political problems of Chile are going to be resolved. 

Thank you, Dr. Barkin. We have been talking about recent events in Chile with Professor David Barkin of Lehman College City University of New York. You have been listening to Latin American Press Review, a weekly roundup of news and events in Latin America, as seen by leading world newspapers, with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. Comments and suggestions about the show are welcome and may be sent to us at 2205 San Antonio Street, Austin, Texas. This program is distributed by Communication Center, University of Texas at Austin.