One hundred years of struggle for Chilean Communists

Joaquín Rivery Tur

The Communist Party of Chile (PCCh), over the course of its 100 years of existence has found ways to translate into action its desire for liberty and social justice in this South American country.

Its significant prestige was evident during the massive student demonstrations last year which challenged President Sebastián Piñera’s right-wing government. In the vanguard of the movement were Karol Cariola, Secretary General of the Young Communists and Camila Vallejo, a member of its executive and currently Vice President of the nation’s Student Federation. Thousands of students demanded a free, quality education and did not retreat despite brutal repression. Communists also supported the demands of workers and the massive protests against the government’s neoliberal policies, as well as calls to reform the Constitution.

The PCCh finds itself in a good position, as it nears the 100th anniversary of its founding as the Partido Obrero Socialista, (Socialist Workers’ Party) on June 12, 1912 by typographer Luis Emilio Recabarren, along with 30 miners and workers in the northern Chilean city of Iquique, within the offices of the newspaper El Despertar de los Trabajadores (The Workers’ Awakening).

The name was changed at the party’s 2nd Congress, January 2, 1922, when members voted to join the Communist International.

Given the crisis facing Chile at that time, early in the 20th century, the recently created party called for the proletariat to take power and make a revolution, initiating a struggle which was immediately answered with ferocious repression by the ruling bourgeois class.

Over decades of struggle, Chilean Communists have faced periods of intense persecution and were obliged to function underground on a number of occasions, reconstituting them selves again and again. Members were attacked, imprisoned and murdered, as was the renowned singer-songwriter and Marxist Víctor Jara whose torture and death was one of the worst crimes of the 17-year Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, which could not eliminate Communist ideas in Chile, despite its brutality.

In 1933, the PCCh was part of the Popular Front in an alliance with the Socialist Party, the Radical Democratic Party and the Workers’ Federation, giving it more weight in Chilean politics and participated in international efforts to provide material, moral and political support to the Soviet Union during WWII.

While forced to work underground, the PCCh supported Salvador Allende Gossens for the first time in the presidential elections of 1952. Toward this end they established, with the Socialist Party, the National Liberation Front or People’s Front, although it was as yet too early to obtain a victory given the relentless propaganda attacks of the United States and the Chilean oligarchy.

The Communists returned to the struggle with their anti-imperialist, anti-oligarchial platform for social and economic changes and when they were again legalized in 1958 supported Allende’s candidacy with the Popular Action Front

(FRAP). Support for the left’s candidate increased significantly but Allende was again defeated with a massive propaganda campaign by the right-wing.

The Party did gain ground and allies. In 1964, prospects in the election battle appeared promising with Allende garnering more support than ever before. However, in a calculating move, the right withdrew its candidate to support the Christian Democracy’s Eduardo Frei Montalva, who with demagogic speeches and reformist promises took votes from Allende. The class struggle continued to intensify until, in 1969, another coalition was formed, again including the PCCh, to enter the 1970 elections as the Popular Unity alliance with a program which attracted the masses, fed up with the broken promises of the bourgeois parties.

Allende won, but the nationalization of the copper industry and other measures meant to benefit the poorest sectors of the population were unacceptable to the United States, the oligarchy and the fascist military, led by Pinochet, who on September 11, 1973 unleashed a bloody coup organized by the CIA, which left in its wake thousands of people dead, missing or tortured.

The Party’s Secretary General Luis Corvalán, (an untiring leader and loyal friend of Cuba) was taken prisoner and most of the Central Committee members were forced into exile, leaving a vacuum and a level of disorganization which required the creation of an new body, led by underground and largely unknown individuals, to regroup the members. In 1974 the Internal Leadership Team was able to begin functioning.

At the beginning of the 1990’s, with Pinochet gone, the Party’s leadership decided to take on the challenge of the struggle despite the legal obstacles which remained in Pinochet-era laws and the Constitution meant to limit their political influence and prevent their participation in Parliament.

Under these conditions, the PCCh decided to participate in elections at all levels and in 1999 Gladys Marín, then the combatitive Secretary General of the party and recipient of Cuba's José Martí Order awarded by the Council of State, won 3.19% of the vote. Upon her death in 2005, Guillermo Teillier, another outstanding revolutionary took on the leadership of the Party.

During the parliamentary elections of that year, the PCCh reached an agreement with the Democratic Coalition which allowed for the lection of three deputies - Hugo Gutiérrez, Lautaro Carmona and Teillier.

The Communist Party also used its prestige as a participant in struggles against neoliberal laws enacted by Pinochet to protect the local oligarchy and the transnational corporations plundering the country's natural resources, now with a small Parliamentary delegation.

One of the party’s current tasks is the elimination of so-called binominal elections, a legal trick implemented by the dictatorship to prevent the left from gaining representation in the legislature.

The indigenous Mapuche have had the unconditional support of the party, which opposes repression of students and supports strikes by workers seeking to improve their standard of living. All of its activity has been devoted to the liberation of the dispossessed and greater social justice in Chile.