Chilean workers challenge Pinochet regime

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The following interview with Victor Toro was conducted May 2 in Chicago by Larry Cooperman. Toro is a Chilean trade unionist in exile in Mexico. He was a founding member of the MIR (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria/Movement of the Revolutionary Left) and was on its central committee until 1979, when there was a split in the MIR. After the coup in Chile, he engaged in the underground struggle against the Pinochet dictatorship. In 1974, he was arrested and held in a clandestine jail. After being systematically tortured and held in complete darkness for a year, he was released to a public jail, weighing only 66 pounds.

After three more years in Chilean jails, Toro was released into exile. He has lived in Cuba, Nicaragua, and Mexico since then, and has traveled throughout Europe and Latin America testifying to his experiences in Pinochet's prisons.

He is currently on tour of the United States in order to explain the political situation in Chile and to build solidarity with the struggle of the Chilean working class against the dictatorship.

Socialist Action: You are a leader of the Metropolitan Workers Command (Comando Metropolitano de Trabajadores-CMT). Could you tell us about this union federation?

Victor Toro: The CMT is the result of a process of struggle and organization within the union movement. Its history begins with the coup d'etat of Sept.

I THOUGHT WE KILLED ALL THE COMMUNISTS DEMOLRALY NOW DEMOC FREE 299920 DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY 2'0E CHILEANS WANT HAUS cratico Popular).

We have heard through the official reactionary press, El Mercurio, that 200,000 to 300,000 workers came out. The real number is surely three times more than El Mercurio and the pro-imperialist press have been telling us.

S.A.: You spoke of three political currents in the country. Could you explain who they are and what they represent?

V.T: The Democratic Alliance is composed of sections of the commercial bourgeoisie, of the small and medium industrial, agricultural, and mining bourgeoisie which were, for the most part, in the conspiracy against Salvador Allende. They supported the military dictatorship for a long time after the coup in 1973. The strongest political current within it is the Christian Democratic Party.

We define that alliance as a bourgeois INST between the role played by the bourgeoisie and that played by the deteriorated Communist parties.

Today, the revolutionary left supports the tendencies within the CMT as the basic axis for advancing the struggle on both the organizational level and the level of trade union struggles.

S.A: How do you see the future of the workers' movement in Chile?

V.I: A broad agreement has been reached by the trade union organizations on the necessity of a general strike within the next 90 days. The first general strike will take up the platform of struggle of the protests for trade union, social, and economic rights. It will raise the demands for bread, liberty and democracy; for Pinochet's resignation; for the establishment of a constituent assembly; for the establishment of a revolutionary democratic government.

Finally, the strike will pass from "peaceful" struggle to much more radical blows against the regime. We are not talking abut a definitive insurrectional strike against the Pinochet dictatorship, but rather the elevation of the struggle to strike at the economic, institutional, and military nerve centers that continue to support the dictatorial regime.

The strike will allow us to pass from the struggle to destabilize the regime to the open overthrow of the regime. In this context, popular assemblies are being created on a national level as well as in the factories, the fields, and the working-class neighborhoods. This situation is deepening the bourgeois and

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