These days have been enormous because of the social presence that is facing the State of Emergency that Piñera invoked after losing political control at the hands of the mobilized people. The mobilizations that began against the transport hike quickly transformed into a rejection of the years of a compromised democracy that maintains the inheritance of the dictatorship intact. A high public debt, privatization of fundamental rights, precarious work and life conditions in general: it is against all this that the people have risen against the Pinochet regime.
The overwhelming demonstration of the people´s rebellion is symptomatic of a world in upheaval, in which the peoples rise against the attempts of world capitalism to unload the crisis on the peoples´ backs. Ecuador, Haiti, Hong Kong, Honduras and Catalonia experience massive social upheavals and the regimes act with undemocratic force, generating strong polarizations that call into question the continuity of governments. Our country proved to not be the “oasis” that Piñera publicized.
Now that he called the CUT, the PC and FA*
The popular rebellion that has been confronting the militarization of the country for days with massive mobilizations, assemblies, protests, barricades and a general strike that port workers and other organizations have joined, demonstrates the people´s capacity to stop the State of Emergency. That dynamic is the counterpart of Piñera´s repression, which has caused dozens of deaths, injuries, torture, the exercise of sexual political violence and mass detentions, a social situation that has nothing to envy from the years of Pinochet´s state terrorism. This repressive framework, of an anti-democratic regime and popular rebellion, has not found positive responses from the main trade union, student and social leaderships headed by the PC and the FA, who have maintained a conciliatory policy and did not adhere to Monday´s strike.
This situation changed because of the social pressure. «Unidad Social», the common front of the PC and the FA that involves the CUT, No More AFP, the College of Professors, among other unions, under pressure from the popular uprising, had to call a national strike for Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 of October, a late but fundamental position that must continue to develop in continuity until soldiers return to their barracks and the political leaders of the current situation fall.
Guarantee the strike, self-organization as engine and pressure.
The people have proven to have greater valor than those leaders. They will undoubtedly continue to mobilize and contribute to a massive turnout on Wednesday and Thursday. That is why we have to develop instances of self-organization and deliberation as engine of the movement, to continue pressuring the leaderships to maintain the mobilization until the State of Emergency falls, at the same time empowering a proactive body to discuss what country should be built, dismantling the Pinochet regime and establishing the foundations of a free and sovereign Constituent Assembly.
It is because of all this, that we believe that we must follow the lead of the port workers, who have maintained an effective strike to disrupt the State of Emergency and the demand Piñera step down, from the first day that the revolt broke out. That framework of mobilization must be expressed strongly for both days of the strike, transgressing with force the will that is heard in the streets to put an end to the Piñera government. This is the perspective we defend in Movimiento Anticapitalista, as a minimum guarantee to get out of the crisis.
Movimiento Anticapitalista
* United Workers´ Center; Communist Party; Broad Front.