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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Chile
Index
The Communist Party of Chile (Partido Comunista de
Chile--PCCh)
is the oldest and largest communist party in Latin America
and one
of the most important in the West. Tracing its origins to
1912, the
party was officially founded in 1922 as the successor to
the
Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Obrero Socialista--POS).
It
achieved congressional representation shortly thereafter
and played
a leading role in the development of the Chilean labor
movement.
Closely tied to the Soviet Union and the
Third International (see
Glossary), the PCCh participated in the Popular Front
(Frente
Popular) government of 1938, growing rapidly among the
unionized
working class in the 1940s. Concern over the PCCh's
success at
building a strong electoral base, combined with the onset
of the
Cold War, led to its being outlawed in 1948, a status it
had to
endure for almost a decade. By midcentury the party had
become a
veritable political subculture, with its own symbols and
organizations and the support of prominent artists and
intellectuals such as Pablo Neruda, the Nobel
Prize-winning poet,
and Violetta Parra, the songwriter and folk artist.
As a component of the Popular Unity coalition that
elected
Salvador Allende to the presidency in 1970, the PCCh
played a
strong moderating role, rejecting the more extreme tactics
of the
student and revolutionary left and urging a more
deliberate pace
that would set the groundwork for a communist society in
the
future. The military government dealt the PCCh a severe
blow,
decimating its leadership in 1976. Although the party
called for a
broad alliance of all forces opposed to the dictatorship,
by 1980
it moved to a parallel strategy of armed insurrection,
preparing
cadres of guerrillas to destabilize the regime and provide
the
party with the military capability to take over the state
should
the Pinochet government crumble.
After the attempt on Pinochet's life in 1986, the
democratic
parties began to distance themselves from the PCCh because
the PCCh
was openly opposed to challenging the regime under the
regime's own
rules. The PCCh's strong stand against registration of
voters and
participation in the plebiscite alienated many of its own
supporters and long-time militants, who understood that
most of the
citizenry supported a peaceful return to democracy.
Particularly problematic for the party was the Manuel
Rodríguez
Patriotic Front (Frente Patriótica Manuel
Rodríguez--FPMR), an
insurrectionary organization spawned by the PCCh. The
party found
the FPMR difficult to rein in, and the FPMR continued to
engage in
terrorism after the demise of the military government. The
FPMR had
eclipsed Chile's better-known revolutionary group, the
Movement of
the Revolutionary Left (Movimiento de la Izquierda
Revolucionaria--
MIR), formed in the 1960s by university students, a
movement that
barely survived the repression of the military years.
During the
Aylwin administration, a group known as the Lautaro Youth
Movement
(Movimiento Juvenil Lautaro--MJL), an offshoot of the
United
Popular Action Movement-Lautaro (Movimiento de Acción
Popular
Unitario-Lautaro (MAPU-L), sought without success to
maintain a
"revolutionary" offensive
(see Terrorism
, ch. 5).
The dramatic failure of the PCCh's strategy seriously
undermined its credibility and contributed to growing
defections
from its ranks. The party was also hurt by the vast
structural
changes in Chilean society, particularly the decline of
traditional
manufacturing and extractive industries and the weakening
of the
labor movement. The collapse of the Soviet Union and its
East
European allies represented a final blow. Although the
PCCh
obtained 6.5 percent of the vote in the 1992 municipal
elections,
by mid-1993 it was enjoying less than 5 percent support in
public
opinion surveys and did not fare well in the 1993
presidential
race.
The Socialist Party (Partido Socialista--PS), formally
organized in 1933, had its origins in the incipient labor
movement
and working-class parties of the early twentieth century.
The
Socialist Party was far more heterogeneous than the PCCh,
drawing
support from blue-collar workers as well as intellectuals
and
members of the middle class. Throughout most of its
history, the
Socialist Party suffered from a bewildering number of
schisms
resulting from rivalries and fundamental disagreements
between
leaders advocating revolution and those willing to work
within the
system.
The Socialist Party's greatest moment was the election
of
Salvador Allende to the presidency in 1970. Allende
represented the
moderate wing of a party that had veered sharply to the
left. The
Socialist Party's radical orientation contributed to
continuous
political tension as the president and the PCCh argued for
a more
gradual approach to change and the Socialists sought to
press for
immediate "conquests" for the working class.
After the overthrow of Allende's Popular Unity
government, the
Socialist Party suffered heavy repression and soon split
into
numerous factions. Some joined with the Communists in
supporting a
more insurrectionary strategy. Another faction of "Renewed
Socialists," led primarily by intellectuals and exiles in
Western
Europe, argued for a return to a moderate socialism for
which
democratic politics was an end in itself. The latter
faction broke
with the Marxist-Leninist line of the immediate past,
embracing
market economics and a far more pluralist conception of
society.
Guided by leaders such as Ricardo Lagos Escobar and
Ricardo Núñez
Muñoz, the Renewed Socialists reached an accord with the
Christian
Democrats to mount a common strategy to bring an end to
the
military government.
Prior to the 1988 plebiscite, the Socialists launched
the Party
for Democracy (Partido por la Democracia--PPD) in an
effort to
provide a broad base of opposition to Pinochet, one
untainted by
the labels and struggles of the past. Led by Lagos, an
economist
and former university administrator, the PPD was supposed
to be an
"instrumental party" that would disappear after the defeat
of
Pinochet. But the party's success in capturing the
imagination of
many Chileans led Socialist and PPD leaders to keep the
party label
for the subsequent congressional and municipal elections,
working
jointly with the Christian Democrats in structuring
national lists
of candidates.
The success of the PPD soon created a serious dilemma
for the
Socialist Party, which managed to reunite its principal
factions--
the relatively conservative Socialist Party-Almeyda, the
moderate
Socialist Party-Núñez "renewalists," and the left-wing
Unitary
Socialists--at the Social Party congress in December 1990.
Heretofore an instrument of the Socialists, the PPD became
a party
in its own right, even though many Socialists had dual
membership.
Although embracing social democratic ideals, PPD leaders
appeared
more willing to press ahead on other unresolved social
issues such
as divorce and women's rights, staking out a distinct
position as
a center-left secular force in Chilean society capable of
challenging the Christian Democrats as well as the right
on a
series of critical issues.
As the PPD grew, leaders of the Socialist Party
insisted on
abolishing dual membership for fear of losing their
capacity to
enlarge the appeal of the Socialist Party beyond its
traditional
constituency. By 1993 both parties, working together in a
somewhat
tense relationship, had comparable levels of popular
support in
opinion polls. In a March 1993 survey by the Center for
Public
Studies (Centro de Estudios Públicos--CEP) and Adimark (a
polling
company), 10.6 percent of Chilean voters identified with
the PPD
while 8.5 percent registered a preference for the
Socialist Party.
As the 1993 presidential election approached, PPD leader
Ricardo
Lagos signaled his intention to challenge the Christian
Democrats
for the presidential candidacy of the CPD. His move
indicated the
determination of the parties of the moderate left to
remain an
important force in Chilean politics. However, Christian
Democrat
Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, the son of the former president,
defeated
Lagos in a convention of CPD parties held on May 23, 1993,
making
him the strong favorite to win the presidential elections
scheduled
for December 11, 1993. Frei Ruiz-Tagle won by a vote of 60
percent,
while Lagos received 38 percent.
Other parties that could be placed on the center-left
included
the Humanist-Green Alliance (Alianza Humanista-Verde) and
the
Social Democratic Party (Partido Social Democrático), an
offshoot
of the Radical Party, which managed to elect one of its
leaders to
the Senate. These new parties were successful in
mobilizing support
against Pinochet in the plebiscite but faltered in
subsequent
elections.
Data as of March 1994
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