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World/Review

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| Chilean school prepares —

for end of Pinochet rule

Miguel Lawner was once the architect of
urban planning in Chile’s socialist govern-
ment. Then the coup came, and the person
who helped implement President Salvador
Allende’s social ‘housing policies was in a
concentration camp.

That was in 1973. Now the former civil
servant Oversees an educational institute
that promotes academic freedom and is
part of the movement to end the fascist
dictatorship that still rules the large South
American nation.

Lawner is president of the Alejandro Lip-
schutz Institute of Sciences, which was
established in part to ‘‘answer all the lies of
the government,” he said in a recent inter-
view.

“The government (of Gen. Augusto
Pinochet) claimed in a special campaign last
year that they had built one house every
eight minutes. That is a lie. The Allende
government’s record (of housing construc-
tion) was twice that of Pinochet’s,” Lawner
asserted.

Ina recent national referendum, Chileans
voted by 57 per cent to reject the continued
rule of Pinochet beyond 1990, the year his
term is due to expire under an earlier plebis-
cite held in an atmosphere of fear and con-
sidered rigged.

A reign of terror has marked the years
since Pinochet, the head of the armed for-
ces, ousted Allende’s government in a
bloody coup supported by the CIA.

But the 1980s has seen a growth in the
power of the opposition forces, which

includes everything from the right-wing
Christian Democrats to the Communist
Party and other left groups.

“Since 1983 there has been a huge
increase in people’s struggle in all fields.
There has been an opening of several free-
dom spaces,” said Lawner.

“Tt’s not that Pinochet has lost all power,
but it’s being constantly threatened. He has
lost the capacity to have the whole country
oppressed.”

Lawner said the 43 per cent vote backing

Pinochet is not a true representation of his:

popularity. The dictatorship controls almost
all media and had two years in which to
promote his campaign, he said.

But, Lawner cautioned, the regime still
harasses progressive people and organiza-

-tions.

It regularly cuts off telephone service and
arrests various members, and officials of the
institute sometimes receive anonymous
death threats. And on Nov. 13, police
arrested Jorge Montes, former senator and
a member of the Communist Party’s central
committee, as he was preparing to go
abroad.

Montes — who attended the Commu-
nist Party of Canada’s national convention
in 1985 — was charged in Navy Court for
“statements he had made somewhere five or
six years ago,” Lawner said. He called the
arrest “an awful violation of human rights.”

Lawner was arrested in his office the day
following the coup in 1973. He was incar-
cerated in several concentration camps,

including Dawson Island, before being
deported in 1975. After living in Denmark
for nine years, he returned to Chile when his
name was removed from the list of banned
exiles in 1984.

The Alejandro Lipschutz Institute dates
from that time. It teaches a wide variety of
subjects, from philosophy, sciences and his-
tory to courses that train future leaders in
the student movement, trade unions and the
neighbourhood community committees.

Academic freedom is a major issue in
Chile, where the regime has closed universi-
ties several times and imposed tight controls
on curricula.

The institute, said Lawner, aims to pro-
vide “proposals for the coming democratic
government.”

General elections are scheduled for 1990,
and elections for president and Congress in
December next year. But these do not
ensure democracy, because Pinochet’s Con-
stitution prohibits participation by left-wing
parties, Lawner said.

The Constitution dictates that Chile’s
National Security Council has veto powers
over legislation and decisions by courts, if it
considers that these’ are against “national
security,” he noted. It also allows Pinochet
to appoint for life terms one-third of the
Senate.

“So we on the left want to put an end to
the Constitution and then talk about elec-
tions,” Lawner said. “With this (Constitu-
tion) a huge amount of people are excluded
(from the democratic process), which we

MIGUEL LAWNER ... former Allende
government official heads educational
institute.

can not accept.”

Left parties, including the Communists,
are calling for a general boycott of the elec-
tions if the Constitution is not abolished.
They are also campaigning for the resigna-
tion of Pinochet before 1990. :

Left demands also include the free elec-
tion of university deans, a role for the
neighbourhood committees in governing
Chile, and the abolition of all of Pinochet’s
anti-labour legislation, Lawner said.

Chile’s trade unions set Nov. 30 as the
date fur a general strike to reinforce those
demands.

Lawner was in Canada to solicit support
for the institute from non-governmental .
agencies. He described meetings with
groups such as Oxfam and CUSO as “a
good beginning.”

——t

THEY LIVE. Directed by John Carpenter.
Screenplay by Frank Armitage (Mr. Car-
penter) from the story “Eight O'Clock in
the Morning” by Ray Nelson. Starring
Roddy Piper, Keith David, Meg Foster. At
local theatres.

High technology is the instrument of
high treason by the corporate establish-
ment in They Live, John Carpenter’s new-
est fright film. :

John Nada (Roddy Piper) a young
white construction worker, arrives in Los
angeles on a “pilgrimage” to find a job, in
a populous industrial area photographed
with striking documentary realism unus-
ual for Carpenter. But something evil
hides behind this facade of reality. After
being hired at a construction site, Nada
meets Frank (Keith David), a Black co-
worker, who directs him to living quarters
at a homeless people’s settlement, ironi-
cally called Justiceville.

On a large TV screen, practically
monopolized by commercial ads, Nada
notices a sporadic broadcast warning of a
conspiracy to control the thoughts and
perceptions of the population. This is a
repetition of a disquieting message he has
heard from several preachers. His fore-
boding is confirmed by a horrifying para-
military police raid, like a nazi blitzkrieg,
reminiscent of scenes from John Ford’s
Grapes of Wrath, but with nuclear era
apocalyptic overtones.

The furious assault propels him beyond
his customary resignation to economic cri-
sis and social deterioration, and he under-
goes a radical change in outlook. Out of
the debris left by the raid, he extracts a box
of sunglasses that give the wearer “second
sight” from glasses made by the resistance
movement with headquarters in Justice-

ville. The spectacles erase the synthetic
image of normal faces mentally imposed
by the media. Then they make visible the
skull-like features of conquerors come
from a remote anti-world, who have seized
power on earth. The final goal of these
monsters is the obliteration of all human
identity, replacing the world with an inan-
imate void, as colourless as the Orwellian
slogans Nada perceives through the
glasses on billboards and magazines.
As in Carpenter’s Halloween 3, the elec-
tronic media makes possible the advance
‘of diabolic forces, enslaving mass con-
sciousness, and with an explicit parallel to
communication control by  ultra-right
Republican types, along with the pro-
fascist financial elite. Carpenter has said
that he was inspired to make this film after
he “began to see how far the country had

Rita MacNeil, Valdy play this month

The woman who brought her unique
sound from rural Cape Breton Island to
Canada’s airwaves is in Vancouver for
three concerts Dec. 9-11. That’s the good
news. The bad news is that there are
almost no seats left in the Queen Elizabeth
Theatre when Rita MacNeil performs at 8
p.m. each night. ;

However, the Vancouver Folk Music
Festival, which is doing publicity for the
event, says some tickets more than likely
will be freed up when the concerts begin.
These would be available at the theatre’s
box office on concert nights.

* * *

One event that still has spaces is Valdy’s
Christmas on the Coast, featuring special

Reaganism target of new sci-fi flick

turned” under the Republicans, and with
the movie business “now run by Wall
Street.” The film, he was observed, needed
little research to show the poverty and
squalor, with an actual homeless tent-city
demolished by the police following the
movie shooting in Los Angeles. “You just
have to walk down the street” to capture
on film what’s already there, Carpenter
notes angrily.

At the vanguard of the popular resist-
ance in They Live is the representative
militant unity and unselfish Spirit of the
two workers, Black and white, whose class
consciousness grows rapidly with their
involvement in a harrowing struggle. They
have nothing (i.e., Nada) to lose but their
chains, and a world to win.

— Saul Schulmann
People’s Daily World

guest Gary Fjellgard. The west coast’s
respected long-time entertainer takes to
the stage at the Vancouver East Cultural
Centre, Sunday, Dec. 11, 8 p.m.

Included in the repertoire is Valdy’s
anti-free trade song, Living Next Door toa
Candy Store. Tickets are available from
the Vancouver Folk Music Festival offi-
ces, 879-2931.

* Ok *

Their fans, which range from the pres-
ent generation to those who participated
in the civil rights and peace marches of the
early Sixties, won’t want to miss A Peter,
Paul and Mary Holiday Concert on KCTS
Channel 9 in most areas of B.C. The two-
hour stereo special begins at 8:10 p.m. Sat-

- Springsteen, U2, Pete Seeger, Arlo Guth-

=

Roddy Piper, (1) and Keith David in
They Live.

urday, Dec. 10, and includes renditions of
Christmas songs plus several of the
group’s now-classic numbers such as
“Blowin in the Wind” and “This Land is
Your Land.” __
gies a ye 4

A reminder that A Shared Vision: A
Tribute to Woody Guthrie and Leadbelly,
also airs on Channel 9, Saturday, Dec. 10.
It features the songs of the two progressive
American artists performed by Bruce

rie and several others. It airs at 10:10 p.m.
and is immediately followed by the 1980
documentary,The Weavers: Wasn’t That a
Time, featuring the famed foursome’s
reunion concert at Carnegie Hall.

10 « Pacific Tribune, December 5, 1988