Political recomposition, regroupment... such possibilities could appear rather exaggerated face-to-face with the realities of daily life in Santiago (see last week's article).
In fact, these two apparently contradictory aspects of the situation in Chile are closely connected. By continuing with repression on a massive scale the junta is pursuing a double objective.
on the one hand, to prevent a recomposition of the workers movement, either on the trade union or political level;
on the other hand, to demonstrate to the bourgeoisie as well as the imperialists that for as long as such a policy is needed there is no serious bourgeois alternative to the military regime and its leadership, the junta.
In this way they are trying to strip the bourgeois opposition sectors - and their politicoeconomic policies - of all credibility.
This is for Pinochet a crucial problem. The wholehearted backing of a bourgeoisie recognising the junta's role in eliminating the revolutionary peril, and the enthusiastic support of a reactionary petty bourgeoisie relieved of their fears, have given way to divisions, to disaffection, and even in some cases to outright opposition.
• ECONOMIC CRISIS • all the product of its economic policies. In the framework of Chile's economic structure and in the international economic context, these policies have led to an unprecedented economic crisis. Only the big capitalists most closely connected to traditional export activities and to international capital have drawn any profit from this. Hence it is necessary to look at the evolution of the Christian Democrats as a whole, and not just of this or that camp, their activity limited by censorship and repression, the Christian Democrats now understand that to constitute a credible alternative to the junta, it is not enough to be the repreThe political isolation of the regime is above sentatives or the expression of an important capitalist sector.
Their former big influence in the military apparatus is today much reduced: the repression, as far as one can tell, is considerable even here, and the officers too closely connected with the Christian Democrats have been systematically purged. The Christian Democrats can thus hardly hope to gain a real influence here, at least in the short term.
class and popular sectors In spite of all the difficulties which Turning the ambiguity of their situation to account, and mixing in populist demagogy with the demands of the bourgeois sectors they represent, the Christian Democrats whose role was decisive in preparing and ensuring the success of the coup-thus find themselves in this initial stage a decisive pole in the re organisation of the trade union movement and in the political restructuring of the working This is not one of the least paradoxes of the Chilean situation in April 1975 - that the working class of the communal defence-squads, who so recently were mobilised for the socialist revolution, are beginning to reorganise in large part under the bourgeois leadership of the Christian Democrats. That too is the consequence of the defeat, and the result of a certain political strategy.
Who can deny this, when one of the most important trump cards possessed by this bourgeois leadership is the Communist Party itself, whose general perspectives and concrete work support and openly favour this recomposition of the Christian Democrats Next week: The Parties of Popular Unity.
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Part 2 of Jean-Pierre Beauvais' eye witness account