The Revolutionary Left Movement (Spanish: Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria, MIR) is a Chileanfar-leftMarxist-Leninistcommunist party and former urban guerrilla organization founded on 12 October 1965. At its height in 1973, the MIR numbered about 10,000 members and associates.[7] The group emerged from various student organizations, mainly from University of Concepción, that had originally been active in the youth organization of the Socialist Party. They established a base of support among the trade unions and shantytowns of Concepción, Santiago, and other cities. Andrés Pascal Allende, a nephew of Salvador Allende, president of Chile from 1970 to 1973, was one of its early leaders. Miguel Enríquez was the General Secretary of the party from 1967 until his assassination in 1974 by the DINA.
Although it was involved in military actions and assassinations, particularly during the Resistance to the 1973 Chilean coup d'etat, the MIR states they reject assassination as a tactic[8] (see below on the assassination of Edmundo Pérez Zujovic by the VOP).
By the early 60s, amidst a political dominance of the right-wing and center-right wing parties strongly supporting US policies, the traditional left parties' "reformist" doctrine of a non-revolutionary road to socialism began to be questioned by different militant groups within those parties. The questioning for changes and the opposition against such changes resulted in several small groups or factions.[10][11]
The Maoists left the Communist Party and the Socialist Party group of students. At the same time, since World War II, there were some minor Trotskyist formations and minor left-libertarian groups, which also had a discrete ideological influence in the student movement in Santiago and Concepción. The group led by Miguel Enríquez, temporarily allocated in the cell "Espartaco" at the Socialist Party, called itself the "Revolutionary Socialists" faction. It was formed by Miguel and Marco Antonio Enríquez, B. Van Schouwen, Marcello Ferrada de Noli (a left libertarian and then the leader of the socialist cell "Espartaco" in Concepción), and Jorge Gutiérrez.[12] When this fraction was finally ousted from the Socialist Party (Senator Ampuero) in February 1964, it continued as an independent fraction until they merged in the organization VRM. There the young socialists met with Trotskyites, most of them twice their age.[13][14]
When MIR was founded on 12 October 1965 at the locals of an anarchist union in Santiago, less than 100 participated, and all the above ideological tendencies were represented. Revolutionary socialists (by Miguel Enríquez and B. Van Schowen), former communists (represented by the Maoist Cares), Trotskyists (by Dr. Enrique Sepúlveda and Marco Antonio Enríquez, Miguel Enríquez's brother), left-libertarians or social anarchists (by Marcello Ferrada de Noli), and anarcho-sindicalists (by Clotario Blest). It took some time before the MIR finally could achieve its ultimate identification as a solely Marxist-Leninist political organization, and this was the work of Miguel Enríquez for the two years to come.[citation needed]
The first document approved at MIR foundation congress was the "Tesis Insurreccional", the political-military theses of MIR. The document was written by Miguel Enríquez (Viriato), Marco Antonio Enríquez (Bravo), and Marcello Ferrada de Noli (Atacama),[15] all three from Concepción. Two reasons explain this document and its co-authorship:
One is that the group of young students from Concepción led by Miguel Enríquez was the most numerous. The second is that the group from Concepción had internally some different ideological profiles, which were represented in the document by the co-authors. Several tendencies were represented on the Central Committee, but later, the only line that prevailed was the Marxist-Leninist. Both Maoists and Trotskyites abandoned MIR or were ousted by the new Secretariat led by Miguel Enriquez. The few anarchist and left liberal cadres supporting the "tendencia social-humanista" and that remained in the organization, were confined to academic tasks and trusted the ideological polemic with the emergent "Christian Humanism" and old Stalinists.[citation needed]
The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 was a divisive issue for the Chilean left. Whilst the Allende faction of the Socialist Party remained neutral, the far-left militants of this party opposed the Eastern bloc invasion, as did MIR.
In 1969, following the "Osses case", a direct (non-fatal) operation acted by four militants of MIR in Concepción against the right-wing tabloid Noticias de la Tarde, the Christian Democratic Party government used the incident to ban the MIR and begin persecution of its known leaders. The government publicized a national list of 13 young MIR leaders for their capture.[16] Among them, all between 22 and 26 and with links to the University of Concepción, were Doctors Miguel Enríquez and Bautista van Schouwen, Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli, medical student Luciano Cruz, sociologist Nelson Gutiérrez, lawyer Juan Saavedra Gorriategy, civil engineer Aníbal Matamala, and economist José Goñi (Goñi later became a Minister of Defense and ambassador of Chile in the USA). Some of them were captured after spectacular operatives coordinated by the central headquarters of the Chilean Political Police in Santiago, tortured, and imprisoned in the Cárcel of Concepción and in Santiago. [citation needed]
On 1 May 1969, fifteen armed MIR guerrillas stormed the Bío-Bío radio station of Concepción and transmitted a discourse urging the people to take up arms and overthrow the current government.[17] On 21 May, a group of local MIR sympathizers took to the streets of Concepción and attacked the branches of 'The City Bank' in the city and the offices of the La Patria newspaper.[citation needed]
The banning of MIR by the Christian Democratic government in 1969 drastically changed the organization of MIR, which entered a clandestine political existence with semi-autonomous operative-structures that survived even during the first years of the military resistance of MIR against the 1973 Chilean coup. The threat from the MIR was underlined by the discovery at the end of May of a guerrilla training camp in the southern province of Valdivia.[18] Beginning in March 1968, a series of MIR bomb attacks took place in various parts of the country that targeted, among others, the U.S. consulate, the Chilean-American Institute in Rancagua, the main office of the Christian Democratic Party, the office of Chile's largest-selling El Mercurio newspaper and the residence of senator Francisco Bulnes of the National Party.[18]:69–70
In June 1971, a small group known as the Vanguardia Organizada del Pueblo (VOP), founded among others by two former MIR militants expelled from the Organization in 1969, conducted the abduction and murder of the former Minister of Interior Affairs during the Christian Democratic government, Edmundo Pérez Zujovic. The Minister had been singled out by sectors of the oppositional left and worker-unions as the top government politician supposedly ordering the repressive actions which culminated in the Masacre de Puerto Montt on 9 March 1969. At this massacre, nine working-class men and woman were killed by police in Southern Chile. Following the assassination of Perez Zijovic, the MIR Political Bureau condemned this action in "categorical" terms in a special issued communiqué.[citation needed]
MIR explicitly condemned terrorism perpetrated against individuals ("atentado personal"). Ideological issues that would help to explain this anti-terrorist posture of MIR have been referred in historical notes by MIR leaders who survived the epoch.[19]
Fewer than 60 individuals died as a direct result of fighting on 11 September 1973, but the MIR and GAP continued to fight the following day. In all, 46 Allende's "praetorian guard" (the GAP, Grupo de Amigos Personales) were killed, some of them in combat with the soldiers that took the Moneda.[21] Before the coup, Miguel Enríquez had convinced Allende to form a praetorian guard.[22] Allende's praetorian guard under Cuban-trained commando Ariel Fontana should have had some 300 elite commando-trained GAP fighters defending the palace and nearby buildings in time for the military coup,[23] but the use of brute military force, especially the use of Hawker Hunter bombers, Puma helicopter-gunships[24] and the cordoning of Santiago, may have handicapped many GAP fighters from taking part in the action.
During Pinochet's dictatorship, the group was responsible for several attacks on government personnel and buildings. In 1976, there had been plans to infiltrate 1,200 Marxist guerrillas from Argentina into Chile in an operation christened Plan Boomerang Rojo (Red Boomerang Plan), but the infiltration failed to materialize because of the co-operation of the Argentine authorities with Chile.[25]
After the Chilean military takeover on 11 September 1973, the Chilean Army deployed the entire 4th Division under Major-General Héctor Bravo in Neltume, Valdivia, after 60-80 local left-wing militants attacked with molotov cocktails the local police station with the aim of capturing the armoury. Between 3 and 4 October 1973 Major-General Bravo ordered the execution of 11 MIR members and sympathizers: José Liendo, Fernando Krauss, René Barrientos, Pedro Barría, Luis Pezo, Santiago García, Víctor Saavedra, Sergio Bravo, Rudemir Saavedra, Enrique Guzmán, Víctor Rudolph, Luis Valenzuela Krauss-Barrientos.[26] On 23 October 1973, 23-year-old Army Corporal Benjamín Alfredo Jaramillo Ruz, who was serving with the 2nd Cazadores Infantry Regiment, became the first fatal casualty of the counterinsurgency operations in the mountainous area of Alquihue in Valdivia after being shot by a guerrilla sniper. The years 1980–81 saw the MIR return in strength to the Valdivia province where they sought to establish a guerrilla group in Neltume. The MIR had in September 1970 given basic military training to some 2,000 lumber workers in the Panguipulli Lake area and won over the trust of the general population,[27] some 500 miles south of Santiago. In the renewed military offensives in the area, MIR guerrillas around Lake Panguipulli, with the help of local militants and sympathizers, halted the initial advance of the Chilean Army. Later, in order to disperse them and subdue the province, the Chilean Army ordered a full Brigade of elite troops in the form of Special Forces and Paratroopers and their accompanying U.S. military advisors.[28] In the various military operations carried out in the cities of Talcahuano, Concepcion, Los Angeles and Valdivia between 23 and 24 August 1984, the military and police forces deployed executed six captured MIR militants and sympathizers.[29]
On 15 July 1980, MIR guerrillas killed 43-year-old Lieutenant-Colonel Roger Vergara Campos, head of the Chilean Army Intelligence School, also shooting his driver, 42-year-old Sergeant Mario Espinoza Navarro. On 30 August 1983, MIR guerrillas assassinated 57-year-old Major-General Carol Urzúa Ibáñez, military governor of Santiago and his armed escorts, 30-year-old corporal Carlos Rivero Bequiarelli and 34-year-old Corporal José Domingo Aguayo-Franco. During October and November 1983, the MIR bombed four offices of U.S. affiliated corporations. In June 1988, the MIR bombed four banks in Santiago, causing serious structural damage. According to the Rettig Report, MIR leader Jecar Neghme was assassinated in 1989 by Chilean state agents.[30]
According to MIR commander Andrés Pascal Allende, in all some 1,500-2,000 MIR members were killed or forcefully disappeared under the Chilean military regime.[31] After Chile's return to democracy in 1990, the party was resurrected. It currently participates in the Juntos Podemos Más coalition.
The MIR and the case against Pinochet
Relatives and friends of the MIR members assassinated by the Pinochet regime filed a civil lawsuit before judge Juan Guzmán Tapia against Pinochet.[32] The criminal complaint states that the MIR had been formed in 1965 and that due to ideological and tactical differences did not become part of the Popular Unity government headed by Salvador Allende. Still, the organisation had served as a base of support for Allende and had shown willingness to confront violent sedition directed against the Popular Unity government organized by its US-backed right-wing opponents.[32]
Subsequently, with the 11 September 1973 Chilean coup and the overthrow and death of Allende Chile entered a period of severe military repression in which members of the former Allende government and its supporters were deemed enemies of the state. From the onset on 11 September 1973 the MIR became a major focus of death squads and its members began to be subjected to extrajudicial executions and forced disappearances.
As a consequence, the MIR initiated a resistance against the military junta's violent repression that accompanied the clandestine publication of the document Qué es el MIR? (What is the MIR?) which proposed a series of resolutions to confront the repression, including political pressure, denunciations and propaganda. On one page (page 37 of the political document), the MIR presented the political question of arms in this resistance.[33]
The lawsuit noted that the armed struggle was not central to the ideology of the MIR and that it had historically been a political organisation whose strategy had principally involved the mobilization of working class people and the poor in an attempt to exert political pressure to effectuate political and social change to advance their political cause.
The lawsuit noted that under the pretext of war serious violations of human rights had been committed in violations of both international and constitutional law. The document noted that the cruellest example was the extermination of the MIR political organization, in which according to the document its members fell victims to the following crimes:[33]
The Christian Democratic Party is a Christian democratic political party in Chile. There have been three Christian Democrat presidents in the past, Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Patricio Aylwin, and Eduardo Frei Montalva.
The Socialist Party of Chile is a centre-left political party founded in 1933. Its historic leader was President of Chile Salvador Allende, who was deposed in a coup d'état by General Augusto Pinochet in 1973. The military junta immediately banned socialist, Marxist and other leftist political parties. Members of the Socialist party and other leftists were subject to violent suppression, including torture and murder, under the Pinochet dictatorship, and many went into exile. Twenty-seven years after the 1973 coup, Ricardo Lagos Escobar won the Presidency as the Socialist Party candidate in the 1999–2000 Chilean presidential election. Socialist Michelle Bachelet won the 2005–06 Chilean presidential election. She was the first female president of Chile and was succeeded by Sebastián Piñera in 2010. In the 2013 Chilean general election, she was again elected president, leaving office in 2018.
The 1973 Chilean coup d'état was a military overthrow of the democratic socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity coalition government. Allende, who has been described as the first Marxist to be democratically elected president in a Latin American liberal democracy, faced significant social unrest, political tension with the opposition-controlled National Congress of Chile. On 11 September 1973, a group of military officers, led by General Augusto Pinochet, seized power in a coup, ending civilian rule.
Miguel Humberto Enríquez Espinosa was a physician and a founder of the Chilean Marxist-Leninist urban guerrilla Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), founded in 1965. He was General Secretary of the MIR between 1967 and his death in 1974.
An authoritarian military dictatorship ruled Chile for seventeen years, between 11 September 1973 and 11 March 1990. The dictatorship was established after the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown in a coup d'état backed by the United States on 11 September 1973. During this time, the country was ruled by a military junta headed by General Augusto Pinochet. The military used the breakdown of democracy and the economic crisis that took place during Allende's presidency to justify its seizure of power. The dictatorship presented its mission as a "national reconstruction". The coup was the result of multiple forces, including pressure from conservative groups, certain political parties, union strikes and other domestic unrest, as well as international factors.
Jaime Jorge Guzmán Errázuriz was a Chilean constitutional law professor, politician, and founding member of the conservative Independent Democratic Union party. In the 1960s, he strongly opposed the University Reform movement and became an active organizer of the Gremialist movement. Guzmán vehemently opposed President Salvador Allende and later became a trusted advisor of General Augusto Pinochet and his dictatorship. As a professor of Constitutional Law, Guzmán played a significant role in drafting the 1980 Chilean Constitution. He briefly served as a senator during the transition to democracy before being assassinated in 1991 by members of the communist urban guerrilla organization group, the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front (Autonomous).
The Fatherland and Liberty Nationalist Front was a Chilean fascist, political and paramilitary group that fought against the democratically elected Popular Unity government of Salvador Allende, in Chile.
The Popular Unitary Action Movement or MAPU was a small leftist political party in Chile. It was part of the Popular Unity coalition during the government of Salvador Allende. MAPU was repressed during the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. In this period, some of its most radical members formed the Movimiento Juvenil Lautaro, whose leaders were political prisoners during the dictatorship and with the return to democracy. Another faction of the former members of the party joined the social democratic Party for Democracy in 1987.
Neltume is a Chilean town in Panguipulli commune, of Los Ríos Region. It lies along the 203-CH route to Huahum Pass into Argentina. The town's main economic activities are forestry and, more recently, tourism since the Huilo-Huilo Biological Reserve was created in 1999. During large periods of the 20th century, Neltume was a site of social mobilizations and unrest, events which culminated in 1981 with the crackdown of the "Toqui Lautaro" guerrilla set of by MIR to fight the military dictatorship in Chile.
A referendum on whether Augusto Pinochet, the head of a military dictatorship, should become president for eight years under resumed civilian rule was held in Chile on 5 October 1988. The "No" side won with 56% of the vote, marking the end of Pinochet's 16+1⁄2-year rule. Democratic elections were held in 1989, leading to the establishment of a new government in 1990.
Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte was a Chilean military officer who was the dictator of Chile from 1973 to 1990. From 1973 to 1981, he was the leader of the military junta, which in 1974 declared him President of the Republic and thus the dictator of Chile; in 1980, a referendum approved a new constitution confirming him in the office, after which he served as de jure president from 1981 to 1990. His time in office remains the longest of any Chilean ruler.
Edgardo Enríquez Frödden was a Chilean physician, academic and minister of education under the Salvador Allende government.
Marco Antonio Enríquez-Ominami Gumucio is a Chilean-French, filmmaker, politician, and perennial candidate. From 2006 to 2010 he was a Socialist Party deputy in Chile's lower chamber. In 2009 he quit the party and ran for President of the Republic as independent, where he finished third with 20% of the vote. He is currently the leader of the Progressive Party, which he founded in 2010.
Jorge Félix Arrate Mac Niven is a Chilean lawyer, economist, writer and politician. He has been Minister of State in the governments of Chilean presidents Salvador Allende (1970–1973), Patricio Aylwin (1990–1994), and Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle (1994–2000). A long-time member of the Socialist Party of Chile arrate was during much of the 1990s the leader of the eponymous Arratismo faction in the party. During the indictment and arrest of Augusto Pinochet (1998–2000) Arrate was positive to the prospect of Pinochet being judged abroad. Given that his was contrary to the government stance he was removed from his post as minister in June 1999. In 2009, he was appointed as candidate for president of Chile in representation of the political alliance Juntos Podemos Más and other leftist political movements, obtaining 6.21 percent of the total votes in the elections of that year.
Bautista van Schouwen Vasey was a medical doctor and one of the founders of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), the Chilean guerrilla organization which earliest resisted the Military Coup of Augusto Pinochet in 1973. Five among the "Ten most wanted" opposition figures wanted by the military government after the 11 September coup were militants of MIR. Bautista van Schouwen was at the time member of MIR's "Comisión Política" and the "Secretariado", the highest executive organ of the MIR. The military had set a reward of 500 000 Escudos to anyone who would lead them to the capture of Van Schouwen. He was abducted in Santiago December 13, 1973, in the church Parroquia Capuchinos, after having been caught when the priest who was sheltering them, unwittingly let slip to his military cousins, that they were at the church. Father Enrique White was also detained and tortured, later exiled to England. Van Schouwen and his lieutenant Patricio Munita had previously obtained clandestine refuge in the Capuchinos church-premises. They were soon after their capture killed under torture in the Army-managed detention and torture centre of Villa Grimaldi. The assassinations of Van Schouwen and Munita were however concealed by the Pinochet government and the Van Schouwen case during several years labelled as desaparecido by Human-rights organizations in Chile.
Following the 1973 Chilean coup d'état, an armed leftist resistance movement against Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship developed until 1990 when democracy was restored. This conflict was part of the South American theater in the Cold War, with the United States backing the Chilean military and the Soviet Union backing the guerrillas. The main armed resistance groups of the period were the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and Frente Patriótico Manuel Rodríguez (FPMR), the armed wing of the Communist Party of Chile. These groups had a long-standing rivalry, including over Marxist orthodoxy and its implementation.
Events in the year 1973 in Chile.
The following lists events that happened during 1971 in Chile.
Marcello Ferrada de Noli is a Swedish professor emeritus of epidemiology, and medicine doktor in psychiatry. He was research fellow and lecturer at Harvard Medical School, and was later head of the research group of International and Cross-Cultural Injury Epidemiology at the Karolinska Institute until 2009. Ferrada de Noli is known for his investigations on suicidal behaviour associated with severe trauma. He is the founder of the NGO Swedish Doctors for Human Rights, SWEDHR. He is also a writer, and painting artist.
Allendism is an ideological current that bases its positions and lines on the government of Salvador Allende, former president of Chile who, together with the Popular Unity, ruled the country until the coup d'état of 1973, headed by Augusto Pinochet. Within the political spectrum, it is located between the left and the center-left, basing its principles on democratic socialism, institutionalism, and reformism. The followers of this current are called allendistas.
↑ Historian Julio César Jobet describes how repeated attempts by the traditional Chilean left ("FRAP", a front formed by the Socialist Party of Chile and the Communist Party of Chile) to win the presidential elections of 1958 and 1964 failed. The author mentions as cause, "the sterile alliance of the working class parties with petty-bourgeois democratic parties". The new Popular Unity (Chile) was only able to access government in the elections of 1970. See pages 57-60 in "El Partido Socialista de Chile", Tomo I, Ediciones Prensa Latinoamericana S.A., Chile, 1971.
↑ Frank Gaudichaud (2013), "Chili 1970-1973. Introduction Générale". Presses Universitaires de Remnes, ISBN978-2-7535-2663-1
↑ C. Camilo Fernández Carrozza & Pablo Garrido González (2016). "Progresistas y revolucionarios: el Frente de Acción Popular y la vía Chilena al Socialismo 1956-1967". Izquierdas, 31:71-101, diciembre 2016
↑ Pedro Naranjo (2004). "Biografía de Miguel Enríquez". CEME. Page 10 and Note 10
↑ Eugenia Palieraki (2008). "L'option des armes. Nouvelle gauche révolutionnaire et violence politique au Chili (1965-1970)". English abstract and full text in Spanish. Polis, 2008, N° 19
↑ Mark Ensalaco (2000). "Chile Under Pinochet- Recovering the truth". University of Pennsylvania Press. ISBN0-8122-3520-7
↑ Pedro Alfonso Valdés Navarro (2008) "Elementos teóricos en la formación y desarrollo del MIR durante el periodo 1965-1970". Universidad de Valparaíso, Chile. Tesis de grado. Pages 1-121
↑ Diario "El Mercurio", Santiago de Chile, "A Través de la Historia Terrorista del Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR)", 25 August 1973.
↑ Determinants of gross human rights violations by state and state-sponsored actors in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, 1960-1990, By Wolfgang S. Heinz & Hugo Frühling, Page 423, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999
↑ La Iglesia del silencio en Chile: un tema de meditación para los católicos latinoamericanos, Page 460, Sociedad Colombiana de Defensa de la Tradición, Familia y Propiedad, 1976
↑ Determinants of gross human rights violations by state and state-sponsored actors in Brazil, Uruguay, Chile, and Argentina, 1960-1990, By Wolfgang S. Heinz & Hugo Frühling, Page 545, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1999
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