1973-10-04

This is The Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection, and analysis of news and events in Latin America, as seen by leading world news sources with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group of Austin, Texas. 

The New York Times reports that the Chilean military junta has notified foreign embassies that Chilean citizens will no longer be given safe conduct passes abroad. The junta has admitted now that 7,000 persons are being held in the national stadium in Santiago. Meanwhile, there is a growing concern for some 14,000 foreigners, mostly Latin American leftists, who were in Chile as political exiles during the government of the late President Salvador Allende. 

The United Nations Commission for Refugees has sent a mission to Chile to try to obtain guarantees for the safety of these exiles. The commission has proposed that a camp or other refuge be set up for foreign political refugees under the supervision of the United Nations and the International Red Cross. The junta was said to be studying the proposal, but foreign embassies, according to the Times, doubted that it would be approved. 

A senior embassy official was quoted as saying, "There's been a definite hardening of the junta on the question of political asylum." 

The Times also reports that the Authors League of American Writers and Grove Press, the publishing house, sent separate cablegrams to Chile, decrying what were described as acts by the ruling junta against writers in Chile and their works. The Authors League statement said that it, quote, "Deplores the book burning and suppression of writers by the Chilean government." 

Also, The New York Times reports that middle-ranking officers of all three military services began plotting the coup against President Salvador Allende as far back as November of 1972. The officers planning the coup, which resulted in the death of President Allende on September 11th, held discussions with one another and with middle-class union and business leaders. 

By August of this year, the military leaders had rejected any thought of a civilian political solution and had encouraged middle-class unions to continue their prolonged strikes against Dr. Allende's government to set the stage for a military takeover. "We would have acted even if Allende had called a plebiscite or reached a compromise with the political opposition," said an officer deeply involved in the plotting of the coup. 

Although the actual order for the coup was given on the afternoon of September 10th, military garrisons throughout the country had been put on the alert about 10 days earlier. 

To make certain that there were no breakdowns in the armed forces, officers considered loyal to the Allende government were placed under arrest when the takeover began. In some cases, junior officers arrested their commanders. The details of the military coup were given and cross-checked in separate conversations with the officers of all three military branches and with civilians who had kept themselves closely informed of developments as the coup was being hatched. 

The informants asked that their names not be revealed or their service branches cited. 

The vast majority of the officers of the Chilean armed forces were staunch anti-Marxists even before Dr. Allende assumed the presidency in November of 1970. But these officers asserted that the first attempts to coordinate action in the Army, Navy, and Air Force against the Allende government grew out of a 26-day general strike of business and transportation owners in October of 1972. 

The strike ended when Dr. Allende invited General Carlos Prats, the Army's commander-in-chief, and two other officers, into the cabinet. "Just about everybody in the armed forces welcomed this," an officer said, "Because at this time we considered Prats, a traditional military man who would put a brake on Allende." 

But almost immediately, General Prats came to be viewed as favorable to the Allende government. By late November, Army and Air Force colonels and Navy commanders began to map out the possibilities of a coup. They also contacted leaders of the truck owners, shopkeepers, and professional associations, as well as key businessmen who had backed the October truckers' strike. "We left the generals and admirals out of the plotting," the officer said, "Because we felt that some of them, like Prats, would refuse to go along." 

The greatest obstacle, according to these officers, was the armed forces' long tradition of political neutrality. For more than 40 years, they had not interfered in the political process. "I could have pulled my hair out for teaching my students for all those years that the armed forces must never rebel against the constitutional government," said an officer who formerly taught history at a military academy. "It took a long time to convince officers that there was no other way out," he said. 

The plodding subsided somewhat in the weeks of political campaigning leading to the March legislative election. The civilian opposition to Dr. Allende thought it could emerge with two-thirds of the legislative seats and thus impeach the president. "It was supposed to be a last chance for a political solution," one officer admitted. "But frankly, many of us gave a sigh of relief when the Marxists received such a high vote because we felt that no politician could run the country and that eventually, Marxists might even be stronger." The Marxist vote was 43%. 

By the middle of March, the plotting resumed and colonels invited a number of generals and admirals to join. "In April, the government somehow found out that we were plotting," said an officer, "And they started to consider ways of stopping us." All the officers interviewed asserted that the Allende government began secretly to stockpile weapons and train paramilitary forces in factories and rural areas, with the intention of assassinating key military leaders and carrying out a counter-coup. 

Highly publicized was the abortive coup of June 29th, in which about 100 members of an armored regiment in Santiago, led by Lieutenant Colonel Roberto Souper, took part. On August 28th, President Allende and allegedly General Prats forced the resignation of General Cesar Ruiz, the Air Force commander in chief. Jets streaked out of Santiago to the southern city of Concepción to prepare for an immediate coup, but leaders of all three branches urged their officers to wait until General Prats could be removed. 

General Ruiz himself pleaded with his men to abandon the idea of immediate action. 

The leaders of the three branches then confronted General Prats and demanded his immediate resignation. As soon as General Prats resigned on August 23rd, along with two other generals considered to be pro-Allende, the high command of all three services began mapping out the details of the takeover. That is from The New York Times. 

Andy Trosgear of the Asia Information Service reports that a spokesman for the Chilean military junta has acknowledged that armed resistance is continuing in Chile's southern provinces. Prensa Latina quotes National Police General Cesar Mendoza as saying that the military and police commands have taken all steps to neutralize these guerrillas. 

Prensa Latina adds that according to other sources in Santiago, armed guerrillas are operating out of the southern provinces, as well as in the industrial center of Concepción. 

In Santiago itself, only isolated shots are heard at night, Prensa Latina reports. It is believed that the resistance in the capital is regrouping its forces. According to last week's report, many of the leaders of the popular Unity parties and the MIR, the left revolutionary movement, are now underground. Last week's Prensa Latina reported that a national revolutionary council had been formed and was operating underground. That report from the Asia Information Service. 

Excélsior of Mexico City, reports that Senator Luis Corvalán, secretary general of the Chilean Communist Party, has been apprehended and turned over to a military court for trial and sentencing. The 63-year-old Corvalán was second only to Senator Carlos Altamirano on a list of 17 leftist leaders being sought by the new military regime. 

That government is offering a half million Chilean escudos to any person submitting clues to the whereabouts of the others. Altamirano, it is believed, has taken refuge in the Venezuelan embassy in Santiago. 

Also, the newly appointed chancellor of the junta has announced that the new regime is willing to resume talks with the United States over compensations to US-owned copper firms whose mines were nationalized by the Chilean Congress under Allende. He denied, however, any intention on the part of the junta to turn the five copper mines back over to those North American firms. 

He noted that the nationalization of the mines was, "The result of a unanimous vote by Congress". Nonetheless, he emphasized that the junta's policy was to accept foreign investments in all sectors of the economy, including mining. The military government also made known Saturday the planned execution of an important leader of the left revolutionary movement. That from Excélsior. 

From Chile itself comes the word of the death of Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda on September 23rd. Neruda's death came just 12 days after the coup, which resulted in the death of Neruda's close friend, Salvador Allende. Neruda had been suffering from cancer. 

At Neruda's funeral on Tuesday in Santiago, a crowd of almost 2000 cheered the Chilean Communist Party, sang "The Internationale", and chanted, "With Neruda, we bury Salvador Allende". The daring left-wing demonstration was in direct defiance of the military junta. Yet even the risk of arrest could not stop the crowd from chanting, despite the heavy contingent of soldiers stationed around the mausoleum. 

Meanwhile, the New York publishing house of Farrar, Straus, and Giroux announced Thursday that the manuscripts of the poet's memoirs, as well as a number of unpublished poems written before Neruda's death, are missing. Neruda's home in Santiago has been ransacked and all his books seized. The military junta has denied responsibility and called the incident regrettable. Yet it is popularly believed that military police sacked the house in search of leftist literature and arms. 

Pablo Neruda's activism was as stronger as his lifelong commitment to poetry. Neruda's career as a poet officially began in 1924, when he published "Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair" at the age of 20. Following a tradition of long-standing, the Chilean government sent the young poet on a series of consular missions. In 1934, he was appointed counsel to Madrid. There he published the first and second series of his enormously successful work, "Residents on Earth". 

When civil war broke out in Spain in 1936, Neruda made no secret of his antifascist convictions. He used his post as counsel in Madrid to aid the Spanish loyalists. Finally, the Chilean government recalled him when his partisan behavior became simply too embarrassing. 

From then on, Neruda became progressively involved in politics. His poetry reflected the direction in which his entire life was moving, and he became a very controversial figure. Neruda later wrote of this time in his life, "Since then, I have been convinced that it is the poet's duty to take his stand along with the people in their struggle to transform society, the trading to chaos by its rulers into an orderly existence based upon political, social and economic democracy." 

After serving as counsel on Mexico for several years Neruda returned to Chile in 1943, he joined the Communist Party and decided to run for a seat in the National Senate. He was elected to the Senate in 1944 and served for five years until the conflict between the Chilean government and the Communist Party reached its peak. The party was declared illegal by an act of Congress, and Neruda was expelled from his seat. 

He made his way secretly through the country and managed to slip across the border. He lived in exile for several years traveling through Mexico, Europe, the Soviet Union, and China. In 1950, he published his "General Song". 

Neruda returned to Chile in 1953 and in that same year was awarded the Stalin Prize. He became the leading spokesman of Chile's left while continuing to write poetry prolifically. He also wrote exposes of Chilean political figures, and articles condemning US foreign policy in Latin America. In 1954, he published "The Grapes and the Wind", which contained a great deal of political verse. 

In 1971, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for poetry. Neruda strongly condemned US economic policies in Latin America. He felt that the United States used its dominance over the Latin American countries to finance US national security ventures and to supply US industrial needs, all at great cost to the Latin American countries themselves. 

A series of what might be construed as political assassinations have followed in the wake of Juan Perón's ascension to the presidency of Argentina. According to reports in Mexico City's daily Excélsior, José Rucci, the leader of the General Worker's Confederation, was gunned down on September 25, in front of his home. Scarcely 24 hours later, the leader of the Perón's Youth Movement, Enrique Grinberg was the victim of four armed assassins. 

Excélsior quotes a communication from Grinberg's organization as saying that the death was the work of a right-wing group, trying to impede the events of the people on the road to liberation. The communication underlying the fact that Grinberg's only crime was being connected with Peronism. 

Excélsior also reports that Argentina's Revolutionary People's Army, the ERP, in response to accusations, has denied having assassinated José Rucci. They maintain his death was the work of killers in the pay of the syndicalist bureaucracy stood up by Rucci himself. 

The Marxist Leninist ERP was declared illegal by the government only hours after the confirmation of Juan Perón as president. By means of a decree, they were prohibited from engaging in any political activities, according to Excélsior. 

You are listening to The Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection, and analysis of news and events in Latin America as seen by leading world news sources, with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. Comments and suggestions are welcome and may be sent to the group at 2205 San Antonio St. Austin, Texas. 

This program is distributed by the Communication Center, at the University of Texas at Austin. The views expressed are solely those of the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group and its sources and should not be considered as being endorsed by UT Austin or this station. 

Our feature this week is the text of a lecture given by Tim Harding at a conference in Madison, Wisconsin in April of last year. Mr. Harding has traveled and done research extensively in Chile, and his subject is the plight of the Mapuche Indians in southern Chile, focusing particularly on the interaction of the Mapuches with the Allende government. 

It should be remembered that Professor Harding's words were written at a time last year when the Allende government was still in power, and the agrarian reform was an ongoing process. While the new military junta has not said specifically how it will deal with the question of agrarian reform, many observers feel that the previous reforms will be ended if not reversed. 

The Mapuche Indians constitute 4% of the population of Chile today. The story of the Mapuche is particularly important to the subject of agrarian reform in Chile, because in the province of Chile with the greatest rural population, that is the province of Cautín in southern Chile, 69% of the population is Mapuche. They are located on 2,000 reducciones. The settlements are not unlike Indian reservations within the United States. 

Besides living on the reservations, the Mapuche Indians form part of the rural proletariat, that is they go out and work in the surrounding properties for extremely low wages. The Mapuches have traditionally been subjected to discrimination, they have gotten the least of the benefits of what society has had to offer in Chile. 

Many people wonder about the reasons for the low position of the Mapuches in Chilean society. There are very good historical reasons which are so parallel to the oppression of Indians within US society that images of what happened to American Indians at the Wounded Knee Massacre and other places can be called to mind to give some idea of what has happened to the Mapuche population. 

Unlike the conquest of the Inca and Maya civilizations, the Mapuche had a frontier situation of combat with both the Spaniards and the Chileans. The final conquest of the Mapuches might be put as late as the 1880s after centuries of colonial contact. Pedro de Valdivia, the first Conquistador of Chile, wrote back to the king of Spain that he had never fought so valiant an enemy as the Mapuches. 

The conquest of the Mapuches was begun by the Jesuit priests. They tried to keep it peaceful, but as in the United States, every treaty with the Mapuches was broken and warfare kept recurring. They were finally reduced to the reducciones or reservations. As the years wore on the amount of land left to the Mapuches shrunk constantly due to the encroachments of powerful surrounding landlords. 

The beginning of the resistance to this came in 1961 when under the influence of the Communist Party and the National Labor Confederation, a federation of peasants and Indians was organized. This organization began to engage in land seizures. Mapuche groups joined the Federation and recede the land which had been taken away in the previous century. 

When a Mapuche leader was asked by the magazine Ercilla, "Are you people communists?" He said, "It's true, most of us belong to the Communist Party, but what do you expect us to do? They're the only ones that help us even if at times they use us as instruments in their own interests. Look at the owners, the latifundios, they are liberals, conservatives, and radicals. To whom do you expect us to turn?" 

There were only about 14 land seizures between 1961 and 1966. They didn't significantly change the situation of the Mapuches in the south. The Frei government's response to the Mapuche problem was to propose a comprehensive bill, which was to make it easier for the Mapuche communities to be broken open and their land was taken away. 

In response to this, partly under the same Christian Democratic influence, the Mapuches organized into a National Confederation. They went to Congress and oppose the Christian Democratic bill by mobilizing and demonstrating they kept Congress from passing that bill. 

Then the Mapuche Confederation wrote their own bill. At this point, the Allende regime and the Unidad Popular was elected. The Unidad Popular people acted as lawyers advising the Mapuches on how to draw up their legislation. The bill would provide credit education and training for the Mapuches so they could join the mainstream of Chilean society. 

The Unidad Popular members in Congress, though, then took the bill and revised it, limiting the amount of Indian control. The bill was going to set up a corporation for Indian affairs, which would define legally the position of the Mapuches reducciones and establish mechanisms for running them. 

The Mapuches wanted to control this corporation which was to be funded by the government, but the Unidad Popular also wanted control. Thus, there was disagreement about this and extended negotiations took place. Finally, the Unidad Popular people agreed to a compromise with the Indians, in which they both more or less shared control of the corporation. That bill has been introduced to the Chilean Congress, and so far has been effectively blockaded by the opposition members. 

In the meantime, the action was taking place in Cautín province, which was not involved in the previous land seizures. The Revolutionary Left Movement, commonly known as the MIR, through their rural organizations, became active in organizing among the Mapuches. Most commonly they simply hooked up with existing organizations. Thus, this should not be seen as controlled by outside groups, but as outside groups acting as links to the political process. 

The MIR working with Mapuche leadership began a series of land seizures in Cautín province that coincided with agendas taking power. These seizures were not only Indian, they were also by non-Indian peasants. As the Allende government came into power, it responded favorably to these land seizures, since it gave them an excuse to get the land reform program off to a very rapid and dramatic start in Cautín, which was not only the largest but also the poorest rural population. Cautín had experienced the least agrarian reform under the previous Frei regime. 

Thus there were many reasons for Allende to go with the impetus that the MIR was giving him and to respond to these land seizures by accelerating the expropriation of properties in Cautín. Most of the land seizures in Cautín involved landless workers who seized properties that were large enough or underutilized enough to be subject to legal expropriation. 

A government official readily admitted that it was this pressure, combined with the needs of the Cautín poor, which compelled the government to put first priority on land distribution in Cautín. Clearly, the government welcomed the land seizures because it gave them the opportunity to rapidly expropriate a large number of properties and to show dramatic progress precisely where social pressure was the greatest. 

Land seizures in the South continued, however, on fundos which had not been marked for expropriation. Landowners and opposition leaders attacked the government for being responsible for lawlessness and violence. Actually, there was little violence against the landowners, but each incident was blown out of proportion by the opposition press. 

But the problem with respect to the Mapuches was that many of the properties that they seized were less than 80 hectares in size. According to the agrarian reform law which the government had inherited, properties of this size were not to be seized. The government was thus put in the position of being asked to legalize seizures of land which were too small according to existing law. But why were the lands too small? It seems that the largest landowners in these areas had never felt the need to dispute with the Mapuches over land. But the smaller marginal landowners were told by the larger landowners, "If you want land, don't come to us, go to the Mapuches." 

The poorer landowners in the more desperate positions, using force and violence, then seized the land from the Mapuches and held it. Thus they were the ones the Mapuches were directly responding to when they seized the land back again. At this point then, the small landowners were the ones who were the most sympathetic to an extreme right-wing reaction to agrarian reform, just as the small-property middle class tends to react more strongly to socialist reform measures. 

The large landowners have thus organized the small landowners into armed vigilante groups in order to oppose the land seizures. They defend not only their own small properties but their large holdings as well. Thus a situation exists which some even describe as an ongoing civil war between land-seizing groups and counter-reform vigilante groups in southern Chile. 

In addition to these vigilante actions, some landowners use tactics such as refusing to plant, dismantling equipment, slaughtering breeding stock, or sabotaging production. Professor Harding visited an expropriated fundo in central Cautín. The former absentee owner had allowed dairy production to decline purposely and had fired all but nine of a workforce of 81. The workers who had joined the Ránquil Farm Workers Union, which was affiliated with the Unidad Popular, requested expropriation from the government. 

A government agency intervened in the property and appointed a temporary administrator to set up the asentamiento. The workers who had been fired returned to work on the property and now formed part of the community. A five-man production council was elected from among the workers to administer the property. 

The council, in cooperation with government officials and other technicians from the Ministry of Agriculture and the State Bank, then made a careful inventory of the property and drew up a production plan for farming the property as a collective unit. An 18-year-old youth with a primary school education was sent for a three-week training course in accounting so that the council could keep its own books for the property. 

The council negotiated with the State Bank for credit, borrowing to stock the farm with dairy cattle, breeding animals, and two tractors. Natural pastures were replaced with improved grasses, new sections were plowed for cultivated crops, and forests were planted on steep hillsides. A section of the property was set aside for garden plots and the construction of houses. The workers realized that since they were literally working for each other, anyone who shirked while drawing his wage was freeloading on the others. 

Group pressure was applied to anyone who was underproducing during working hours. But all this happened on one of the larger land holdings, which was legally expropriated. There still remained the problem for the government of what to do about the Mapuche seizures, which were still too small. 

Rather than calling in troops to forcibly drive the Mapuches out, the government responded by negotiating. First, government negotiators told the Mapuches that they shouldn't take their problems out on the small landowners, since they too were poor people. The enemies, they said, were the big property holders. The Mapuches answered, "That may be true, but the property is taken away from us, and the ones we can walk to are the small properties." 

The Unidad Popular representatives proposed three solutions, which still have not been completely enacted. 

One solution was that the Mapuches were to receive concentrated credit, which they had not received before, and technical help to increase the productivity of the land they already had. Secondly, some of the smaller properties would be bought up by the government by cash payment, as opposed to expropriation. Thirdly, the government would place the Mapuches on the less populated asentamientos, the expropriated farms, where there was employment. 

This last possibility was basically a way of keeping people quiet for a time, while they explored other solutions, and it hasn't necessarily worked very well. 

Another problem faced by the Mapuches regards employment status. While they were agricultural proletariat on the asentamientos, they then became hired hands of the cooperative and faced the problem of relating to the new cooperative as employees, rather than actual members. 

The projected solution to that problem was the idea of a center of agrarian reform, in which all people in an area of an expropriated fundo are put on equal footing in terms of the use and resources of that land so that no difference or distinction would be made between employees and cooperative members. 

The government has responded to the Mapuches with some bewilderment, Professor Harding says, because just as the Unidad Popular has a considerable problem dealing with the women's question, they also have a considerable problem dealing with the Indian question, based on prejudices which have been unconsciously accepted even by some members of the Unidad Popular, an attitude of trying to sweep the problem under the rug, of ignoring the Mapuches. 

Yet there has been an enormous willingness on the part of this government, more than any other, to have at least a dialogue, to treat the Mapuches as people who have a right to a certain amount of self-determination. At least the government has become gradually more aware of the problem from the Mapuche point of view. 

Although the Communist Party had had a tradition in the early 1960s of leading land seizures, they have not cooperated or led Mapuche movements since that time. Now it is the MIR that has worked with the Mapuches most effectively and has won the most direct confidence of the Mapuche toward the outside political system. The attitude of the Mapuche is one of let's wait and see. There is more hope now that they can solve their problems. 

But unfortunately, at the end of last year, in one land seizure, a group of armed landowner vigilantes killed a Mapuche chief. At the funeral, the speaker was the head of the MIR organization. He said that the MIR, of course, didn't create the problem with the Mapuche and that it still is for the government to deal with the problem in a more serious way. 

You've been listening to a text of a lecture given by Professor Tim Harding at a conference in Madison, Wisconsin, in April of last year. Mr. Harding has traveled and done extensive research in Chile. 

You have been listening to The Latin American Press Review, a weekly selection, and analysis of news and events in Latin America as seen by leading world news sources with special emphasis on the Latin American press. This program is produced by the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group. Comments and suggestions are welcome and may be sent to the group at 2205 San Antonio St. Austin, Texas. This program is distributed by the Communication Center, at the University of Texas at Austin. 

The views expressed are solely those of the Latin American Policy Alternatives Group and its sources and should not be considered as being endorsed by UT Austin or this station.