Chileans united to
Pinochet dictatorship,

Says visiting unionist

Chilean trade unionist Alamiro Guzman
barely made it out of the country.

The internationally renowed secretary of
the Coordinadora Nacional Sindical (CNS)
left Chile to embark on a Canada-wide
Speaking tour just hours before the borders
Were closed following the assassination of
the mayor of Santiago.

The killing was an act Guzman and the
Mass movement for liberation which he,
leads deplores. In an interview with the
Tribune, the long-time foe of the bourgeois

‘ and fascist forces in the South American
acific coast country stressed that the strug-

Sle against the fascist junta led by Gen.
Augusto Pinochet is not directed against any
Particular individual who might happen to

I power.

“The CNS is very clear on this point. We
don’t support any vandalism, and we con-
demn this kind of vandalism,’’ Guzman,
Speaking through translator Nacson

Spinoza, asserted.

Guzman is not an exile, like other Chilean
trade unionists, progressives and others who
Oppose the U.S.-backed Pinochet dictator-
ship. He’ll return to Chile following his tour,

€spite the fact that the organization he
T€presents is, in the junta’s eyes, illegal.

He faces possible arrest and imprison-
ment, but does not consider this important.

President of the National Confederation

Of Miners, a militant Chilean union with
Strong ties to the progressive government of
alvador Allende Gossens, he has been in-
Carcerated many times. :

What has kept Guzman from meeting the
fate of so many of his compatriots — lengthy
mprisonment, exile or death — is his
Tenown as a trade unionist, both in Chile and
Mternationally. And with crumbling junta
Mcreasingly sensitive to international opi-
Hion and the strength of the broadening op-
Position to its decade-long repression within

€ country, arrest and torture, while ever-
Present, are no longer the inevitable conse-
uence of anti-junta activities.

Opposition to the regime has long since
Moved from the underground to the open.

uzman noted that as he was speaking,
Preparations were underway for the Na-
“onal Day of Protest Sept. 9, the fifth in a
Monthly series in which thousands of
“hileans in some 16 cities have rocked the
Junta’s rule by taking to the streets in day-

Ong demonstrations.
€ CNS has been the main organizer of

these events. Founded in 1978 to unite the
fight against Chile’s repressive Labor Code,
the mainly trade-union organization also en-
compasses womens’, peasants’ and
students’ groups. Its labor members include
construction, textile, mining and
metalurgical unions, which collectively
represent some 500,000 workers.

The CNS is allied to, but independent
from, the Central Union of Chilean workers
(C.U.T.), the labor central banned by decree
when Pinochet seized power. The organiza-
tion still operates from abroad, with the
head office in Paris and branches around the
world, including several Canadian cities.

“Its main task is to achieve a united front
to fight for trade union and human rights,
and for areturnto democracy in Chile,’’ said
Guzman.

The central’s long-term aim is the aboli-
tion of the junta’s military rule, but it
organizes Chileans around key demands for
immediate changes, targeting chiefly the
creation of jobs to end Chile’s staggering
unemployment rate of 1,300,000 people,
and hikes in the below-poverty-line average
monthly wage of $150, he said.

‘““We also make a constant issue of the
2,500 disappeared persons (the junta
murdered thousands more during and since
the bloody September, 1973 coup that over-
threw the democratically-elected Allende
government, but the smaller figure
represents those who have never been ac-
counted for) demanding an accounting by
the junta. And we demand that all exiles be
allowed to return, without any conditions
imposed on them,’ Guzman said.

Additionally, the CNS demands an end to
military rule of the universities, with full
rights of autonomy from government
restored, and the repeal of expulsions which
have affected some 300,000 students.

These are the demands put forward with
repeated force each month as thousands of
Chileans beat pots and pans, march, erect
barricades in the working class and poor
districts, and jam the streets with
automobiles, horns blaring, on the national
protest days. They are material manifesta-
tions of the unity achieved in the anti-junta
fight, involving CNS members as well as
middle class people ‘‘and even some sectors
of the ruling class,’’ noted Guzman. By that
yardstick they are a successful _ tactic,
although, he stated, “‘repression has also
come forward” with the arrest of union

a el OR

fight

ALAMIRO GUZMAN .. . Pinochet may go, but more than the man must change.

leaders and the killing of demonstrators.

On those days public transportation is
shut down, the markets are empty, all public
offices are boycotted, and children stay
home from school. There are brief work
stoppages, lasting a few minutes. General
strikes, however, are ruled out at this stage
since anyone who leaves work can be fired
immediately.

The protests are also the scene of occa-
sional acts of ‘‘vandalism,’’ which Guzman
stressed are not the policy of the united pro-
test movement.. He laid the blame at the
doorstep of Chile’s intelligence agency, ever
anxious to discredit the movement. Follow-
ing such acts, regular police move in ‘‘ and
arrest those who happen to be nearby,’’ he
noted.

The latest press reports from foreign cor-
respondents have played up the ‘‘National
Front’’ opposition to Pinochet’s rule. Com-
posed of middle- and ruling-class elements,
including the right-wing Christian
Democratic party, it operates with the exclu-
sion of ‘‘socialists and Communists’? and
other representatives of the working class.

The front may follow such a policy, but
the CNS continuously stresses unity of all
democratic forces, said Guzman. ‘‘This con-

tradicts the position of the centrists. It is too —

late to exclude anyone, since the people are

New groups swelling ranks of

insneered over the Socred government’s
fon peweenice in the face of massive opposi-
a 0 its budget and accompanying legisla-
oe groups are adding their collective
Solid to and joining with the province-wide
figh arity Coalition which has pledged to
‘ he at seislation,
line a, kh Solidarity Coalition, represen-
oon, 03000 Sikhs in the area between Van-
fightiy and Abbotsford, officially joined the
ack last week, and welfare recipients
: clisabled people are forming a province-
Hum Organization to fight the Ministry of
mu ‘an Resources’ axing of a popular com-
ly program.
an, 1S Week the protest focuses on workers,
I concentrate on the themes of wages
tas ‘Unemployment. In Vancouver the pro-
actions will culminate with a large
Unemp eration, involving the area’s
Emer Oyed workers, at the Drake Street
and aed Services on the corner of Drake
Saturday Streets, beginning at 12 noon,

Uj fanwhile, representatives of trade
S, Community organizations, women’s

passers-by.

groups and others involved in massive
Solidarity Coalition actions against the
Socred cutbacks budget, have been scooping
up piles of petitions demanding repeal of the
26 bills of Socred legislation. :
“Volunteers are taking them (the peti-
tions) away like crazy,’ commented a
worker at the Solidarity Coalition office Fri-
day, as the first of eight “‘theme’’ weeks —

this one on the abolition of the Human -

Rights Commission and Branch — was

drawing to a close.

Friday night was marked by a candlelight
vigil at Robson Square in Vancouver, thesite
of provincial government offices, to observe
the “death of human rights in B.C.”

Participants, whose numbers changed as
people arrived and departed during the 6
p.m. to midnight demonstration, sat quietly
on the courthouse steps while others col-
lected signatures for the petition from

On Sept. 7 the newly-formed Sikh

Solidarity Coalition announced its par-
~ ticipation in the provincial fightback. Con-
sisting of 50,000 members of six Sikh

temples in the Lower Mainland, the
organization was formed to fight the ‘‘pro-
found attack”’ on ethnic minorities from Bill
27, the new Human Rights Act, said coali-
tion leader Charan Gill.

Gill, known for his activities as president
of the B.C. Organization to Fight Racism,
Commission, whose members were fired
one week after the budget was introduced
July 7, and of the Labor Ministry’s Human
Rights Branch, as the chief reasons for the
Sikh community’s involvement in the coali-
tion.

The Sikh coalition will encourage the 23
other temples in B.C. to join in the budget
fightback, said Gill at a press conference at-
tended by Sikh leaders, B.C. Federation of
Labor president Art Kube and coalition
leader Renate Shearer, a fired human rights
commissioner.

Elsewhere in Vancouver, the CIP
Fightback — a group of welfare receipients,
disabled people and community workers
banded together to fight the Ministry of
Human Resources’ cancellation of the
$50-a-month stipend paid to volunteer

united already.”’

The future of Pinochet and his junta with
their policies of high unemployment, low
wages and brutal military and police repres-
sion is now seriously threatened. There is a
broadly based call for the resignation of
Pinochet himself, but Guzman emphasized
that demand has limited significance.

“If the change is only of an individual,
without political and social significance,
then the revolutionary movement will con-
tinue the fight,’’ he promised. ‘

“Imperialism is putting forward the idea
of changing the man, but also to preserve
capitalism — but the working people of
Chile want real change — revolutionary and
very radical change,’’ Guzman asserted.

On the first stop in his cross-Canada tour,
Guzman addressed an audience in Van-
couver Sunday at an event held to protest 10
years of the junta’s rule. It was organized by
the local branch of C.U.T. in cooperation
with Canadians for Democracy in Chile and *
Vancouver’s Chilean Community.

The broadly-based Solidarity Office with
Chile has also hosted several events centering
around the Sept. 11 International Day of
Protest against the dictatorship. Still to come
are a “‘Chilean party’’ at the Burnaby Chris-
tian Fellowship Saturday, and a film show-

_ ing at Vancouver Technical School Sept. 23.

coalition

workers under the community Involvement
Program — staged a small rally and press
conference at the Carnegie Community
Centre Friday.

~The group has already won a partial vic-
tory, with the reinstatement of payments to
some CIP recipients whose contracts run un-
til next March. The ministry reneged after
the group threatened to sue for breach of
contract, but the rest of the 2,500 volunteers
who received the honorarium in addition to
their regular welfare payments for com-
munity work were cut off that day, said rally
chairman Barry Coull.

The cutback chops an estimated 12 per-
cent from volunteer workers’ monthly in-
come. And MHR saves $750,000 ‘‘one-half
of what they'll (the government) spend
advertizing their crummy budget during the
next two weeks,”’ said Fightback chairman
Ellen Frank.

But Frank noted other CIP groups are
becoming established in centres around the
Province. Collectively they plan to form a
provincial coalition with representation on
the provincial steering committee of the
Solidarity Coalition, she said.

PACIFIC TRIBUNE—SEPTEMBER 14, 1983—Page 3