PRICE INCREASES SPUR CHILEAN WORKERS INTO ACTION
t
. - Santiago de Chile
Eduardo Frei's Christian-Demoerat government.-was inaugurated last November 3 amid celebrations that were especially fervent in Washington. Frei seemed to have found the magic formula for effectively softening the class struggle in Chile.
On April 16 ‘the euphoria came to an end when street demonstrations flared over a fifty per cent increase in bus fares. A tense situation had been building, however, over price increases in bread, cooking oil, meat, etc. aaa
The street demonstrations were touched off under the initiative of the Partido Socialista Popular, Vanguardia Revolucionaria Marxista, and Espartaco. They were able to bring out a number of
t Als students who went through the streets, blocking the "micros": and buses and slowing down traffic in general.
The Communist and Socialist youth then followed suit, “making a united front with the groupings that had started the action.
Luis Hernandez Parker, one of Chile's most outstanding political commentators, observed: "The PSP, Vanguardia and Espartaco, after many months of activity, have finally succeeded in mobilizing broad sectors of the worker and student masses,
Later some violence occurred, although those responsible have not been identified. This included burning of sentry boxes, dynamiting of unoccupied "micros" and buses, some stone=throwing and breaking of bus windows, etc.
The movement spread into the provinces outside of the capital. The workers began a wave of strikes. These included oil workers, copper miners, Health Department workers, etc.
The Arauco peasants occupied land in Canete on April 20, resisting the carabineros who were sent against them, a
These new facts show that despite the defeat of Allende [the candidate opposing Frei in whom the Socialist and Communist parties placed great hopes as offering a parliamentary road to power], the masses of Chile remain ready for combat. In struggle and action they will gradually unmask the Christian Democracy, the new front of bourgeois liberalism, deepening the crisis of the Communist and