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Tour of CUT lead

Protests hit appointment
of Chilean fascist envoy

A campaign against the appoint-
ment of Mario Arnello as the
Chilean junta’s ambassador to
Canada is under way. The Toronto
Coordinating Committee for

_ Solidarity with Democratic Chile is

pressing elected officials and
urging organizations to demand
that Arnello not be accredited.

In a letter printed in Montreal’s
La Presse, the record of this man is
listed. Here are excerpts from that
letter dated Feb. 15, 1977:

“Mario Arnello is perhaps
unknown to Canadians, but is
regarded as infamous by the great
majority of Chileans. As vice
president of the extreme right-
wing National Party, he was the
one who began the ‘civil dis-
obedience’ campaign which defied
the legitimacy of president
Salvador Allende’s constitutional
government. It was in this climate
that the bloody coup d’etat of Sept.
1973 took place. Arnello must
therefore be considered one of the
civilian planners of the cruellest
military coup d’etats ever ex-
perienced in Latin America.

“Amello has never hidden his
fascist ideology. Since he was a
student at the National Institute of
Chile, he has always confirmed his

Nazi convictions. During World
War Two he was one of the most
widely-known leaders of the Nazi
movement and wore the uniform
and swastika. In this garb he took
part in street fighting against —
democratic Chileans attempting to
prevent the spread of fascism to
Chile.

“After the war Armello par-
ticipated in the National Socialist
Revolutionary Movement which
was led by another well-known
Nazi, Jorge Prats. Arnello finally
became integrated in the National
Party in the 1960’s — a party
created to regroup the most reac-
tionary elements of Chile’s right
wing. During the period of the
Christian Democratic government,
Arnello, as leader of the National
Party, was imprisoned by the then
Minister of the Interior, Bernardo
Leighton. In October, 1975
Leighton was murdered in Rome
by. the DINA Pinochet’s. secret
police.

“Tn 1970, when the CIA acting
with the Chilean extreme right
planned the assassination of
General Schneider to prevent the
elected Salvador Allende from
assuming office, Arnello’s name
again appeared — this time along

ers emphasizes

solidarity with Chilean unionists

Two representatives of the
embattled United - Workers
Federation of Chile (CUT) ad-
dressed delegates to the Van-
couver and District Labor Council
Tuesday night as they continued a
three-week North American tour
that has already brought in-
tensified pressure to bear the
Tuling fascist junta in Chile.

Luis Meneses, secretary general
of the CUT and Jorge Frias, an
executive member of the com-
Mission spent three days in Van-
couver, visiting with trade
unionists and seeking ways to
increase trade union solidarity
with Chilean democrats.
Travelling with them in this
country was Oswaldo Cortes,
Canadian representative for the
CUT.

Organized by the International
Confederation of Free Trade
Unions, the tour was sponsored in

Canada by the Canadian Labor

Congress which last month stepped
up its campaign on behalf of
Chilean political prisoners.

The visit of the two CUT
representatives to the United
States was particularly significant
in that it was followed by an un-
precedented denunciation of the
fascist juntaby AFL-CIO president
George Meany.

In an open letter to Sergio
Fernandez Fernander, the junta’s
Minister of labor and social
Security, Meany wrote:

“The crimes committed by your
government in the name of anti-
communism are typical of the
most tyrannical fascist regimes of
our century.

“Your reference to the anti-
communist posture of the Chilean
Sovernment that would disguise
consistent repressing of human

" rights and trade union freedoms in

Chile is immediately transparent.”

Meany’s comments marked the
first time that the AFL-CIO
leadership has taken a position in

opposition to the junta and were

attributed to the consistent actions
of union groups in the U.S. coupled
with the visit of the CUT leaders.

Even as late as its convention in
October, 1975, the AFL passed a
resolution describing the fascist
coup as ‘“‘a necessary act’? and
criticizing the government of
murdered president Salvador
Allende.

In his address to Vancouver
labor council delegates, Luis
Meneses underscored the im-
portance of the solidarity of North
American unionists and told the
meeting, ‘while our main concern
is always Chile, we must also be
concerned with the international
position of the junta — because it is
still receiving technical and
financial assistance from other
countries.

“We must make it clear to
everyone that ‘financial
assistance’ is being used to repress
further the people of Chile and
particularly the workers.”’

Meneses voiced the appreciation
of the Chilean union movement for
Canadian solidarity but added “‘the
actions of the international trade
union movement must be very
strong — and we in the CUT must
never be satisfied with what is
being done; every day we must
give more of ourselves to this
struggle.” =

At an earlier press conference,
the Chilean trade union leader had
noted the meetings with the
Canadian Labor Congress
executive council and with other
trade union bodies where concrete
suggestions for solidarity actions
had been made.

He emphasized particularly the
boycott weapon which has
assumed new importance because
of the economic policies of the
junta.

Although Chile has traditionally
been an importer of foodstuffs the
fascist junta has reversed this and
is increasing exports of various
foods including fruit, wine and
meat.

“How can this be?’ Meneses
asked. ‘The people do not have the
money to buy food — that is the
answer.”

From the time of the military

LUIS MENESES... call for
solidarity with Chilean trade
unionists.

coup until the present, he said, the
people have lost 50 percent of their
income — and at a time when
prices have risen astronomically.

“The junta is commercializing
the hunger of the Chilean people.”’

Economic policies in Chile
coupled with the unemployment
rate that lists more than two
million out of work constitutes the
economic repression in Chile — but
then there is the political
repression of which the Chilean
workers are the most numerous
victims. :

“From its beginnings 24 years
ago,’ Meneses noted, ‘‘the CUT
has fought for the ideals of labor,
for improved living conditions, for
an end to exploitation. Most of all,
we fought against the tran-

snational corporations responsible ~

_ for the misery of Chile.

“For that, the junta is looking
always for ways to exterminate the
trade unions, to persecute and
oppress our movement.”

After the fascist coup, the main
resistance to the military dic-
tatorship came from Chilean
workers with the result that 75
percent of the trade union
movement was smashed.

“We saved 25 percent despite the
terrible repression. But even today
most of the victims of the junta’s
persecution are workers,”’ he said.

That persecution has also taken
something on a new and ominous
form: victims are arrested in
public but then they disappear. In
fact, more than 2,500 have
disappeared in such a way while
the junta denies any knowledge of
their existence.

Despite that, the resistance of
workers continues, manifesting
itself in scores of different ways.
“We are proud of the Chilean
workers’ struggle,’’ Meneses
declared, ‘‘in the face of the junta
they have never yielded. It they
had, the junta would not now need
to intensify its repression.

“The history of our movement —
ever since its beginnings — has
always been a history of struggle
against oppression. But the
working class has always been

able to overcome, to continue down .

the road towards social progress.”

Meneses also emphasized that
within the ranks of the Chilean
trade union movement there were
“many different ways of thinking.

“But,’? he emphasized, “they
must all have in mind only one
task: to seek ways of struggle that
will defeat the junta, that will
enable us to regain the freedoms
that today we are denied.

In that struggle, they will need
the assistance of international
solidarity. ‘‘Every resolution
condemning the fascist junta,
every action on behalf of political
prisoners, is of great importance to
us,” Meneses stressed.

“‘geryone who wishes to live in
freedom has something to give to
our cause.”’

with his close friend Jaime
Melgoza who led the operation
which ended with the death of
Schneider, who upheld Chile’s

constitution.

“While National Party leader,
Arnello participated in the gang-

ster organization ‘Fatherland and

Liberty’ — the armed group of the
right wing’s opposition to Allende.
Its leaders today occupy important
posts in Pinochet’s apparatus of
repression.

“Following the 1973 coup d’etat,
Arnello received his reward for
‘just and loyal service’ and was
named Chile’s ambassador to the
United Nations in 1975. There he
vainly attempted to convince the
delegates that Chile had: ‘absolute
respect for human rights.’ This
was overwhelmingly contested by
this largest of international
organizations. :

“Arnello took advantage of his
post in the United States to make a
series of contacts. At the end of
that same year, he took part in a
meeting of the Committee of Co-
ordination of Civic and Revolu-
tionary Organizations: — an
organization of exiled Cubans
financed by the American secret
services. Arnello at that time
established contacts with
Guillermo Novo and Orlando Bosh.
The latter is today detained in
Venezuela because of his part in
the criminal attack last October
against a Cuban airliner which cost
the lives of 73 persons.

“These are the same
organizations and the same
leaders who were behind the.
assassination of Orlando Letelier,
Minister of Defense in the Allende
government, an assassination

“perpetrated in Washington in

September, 1976. The contacts
established by Arnello had this
very concrete result the
elimination of one of the Chilean
left’s most outstanding men whose
influence in Washington must have
certainly upset Pinochet.

“Bosh, according to the North
American press, worked for the
CIA. After his stay in Chile, he
entered Costa Rica bearing an
official passport issued by the
Pinochet junta with the mission of
assassinating the general secre-
tary of the Movement of the
Revolutionary left, (MIR), Andres
Pascal Allende, nephew of the
deceased Chilean president.

“For the organizations of the
Resistance in Chile, there is no
doubt that Mario Arnello is the
military junta’s representative in
the international terrorist ap-
paratus set up by the reactionary
forces of the continent. His
-presence in Canada is directed
against the activities Chilean
refugees undertake here within the
framework of the law. There can
be no questioning the fact that
Arnello’s arrival will strengthen
the apparatus of DINA, already set
up in all of North America.”’

SIGN THE
NEW STOCKHOLM
~ APPEAL

-PACIFIC TRIBUNE—MARCH 4,.1977—Page 3