Gabriel González Videla, Former President of Chile (left) and Gabriel Boric, President of Chile (right) and in the background the flags of Chile and the United States. Photo: United World.
By Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein – Aug 28, 2024
How during the Cold War a government betrayed and persecuted the communists who then left, and how they are trapped in another government today despite persecution.
In 1946, the Chilean Congress elected Gabriel González Videla as president of the republic. His victory was supported by an alliance made up of radicals, communists and democrats, after obtaining the largest number of votes in the September 4 elections.
During his first year in office, González Videla included the communists in his administration, granting them three positions in the cabinet. But in April 1947, the communist ministers decided to leave the government after irreconcilable differences with the president. Soon, the distancing turned into a rupture and a few weeks later into an insatiable persecution ordered from Washington at a time when the Cold War began, ending the “Good Neighbor” policy as an instrument.
This gave way to the doctrine of “collective self-defense” that led to the creation of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance (TIAR) in 1947 and the Organization of American States (OAS) in 1948. Thus, Washington’s control over Latin America and the Caribbean acquired legal status with the approval of the local oligarchies. The communists were no longer needed. Hitler and fascism had been defeated and now, the enemy was the Soviet Union.
Feeling supported by the greatest world power, González Videla had the “Law on Defending Democracy” approved, a legal instrument that authorized him to repress the communists. Also called “Cursed Law”, it banned the Communist Party of Chile (PC) and was used for repression against the popular movement, particularly that of the workers. At the international level, González Videla, who in Chilean history is known as “the traitor,” broke relations with the Soviet Union and the socialist camp, something that not even the United States did.
Within the framework of this policy, concentration camps were opened in the country – especially in the north – where communists and other political and social leaders were held in the difficult conditions of the Chilean desert. In one of them, Pisagua, the young lieutenant Augusto Pinochet Ugarte carried out his first actions as an army officer.
The poet Pablo Neruda, who at the time was a senator for the communist party, publicly accused the president of being pro-Nazi since the late 1930s, when he was Chile’s ambassador to France. In that country, invaded by the Nazis, the now president cradled a visceral anti-communism that allowed him to rub shoulders with the most rancid of the society of the occupied country.
After the approval of the Cursed Law, González Videla changed the original orientation of his government, now giving room to right-wing parties, both conservative and liberal. Already at that time he managed to put a sector of the socialist party as the tailgate of a cabinet aimed at the repression and persecution of the social movement. By handing over the management of the economy to the right, González Videla allowed strong measures to be applied against the workers, favoring big capital. Then-senator Salvador Allende strongly rejected and denounced the cursed Law and the repression.
His opportunistic and traitorous disposition led to him being recognized as the only Chilean president who governed with all the parties on the country’s political spectrum, from the right to the left, adapting at all times to conditions that allowed him to remain in power. Loyalty, dignity and principles were not words existing in his dictionary.
Seventy-five years later, another Gabriel, following in the footsteps of his namesake, won the presidential elections in Chile, adopting, like him, betrayal as a method. In the same way that González Videla won with a coalition of parties and then, in a very short time, in practice, governed with another, Boric won with one program and is governing with another. Copying Videla’s practice, Boric has incorporated a diverse range of characters into his government, including some who, not being officially right-wing, have become the great supporters of the repressive neoliberal economic model subordinated to the United States and its allies in the NATO and the European Union for the benefit of large economic groups and transnational corporations.
Where Boric distanced himself from González Videla, acting in a more “intelligent” way, is in the application of a “brilliant” political imprint that has led him to divide the communist party in reality, persecuting and imprisoning – just like González Videla – to Daniel Jadue, its most important leader, while at the same time he charges his ministers and other communist aides of betrayal.
Taking advantage of the accentuated and generalized “Stockholm syndrome” that Pinochet injected into large sectors of the Chilean left, Boric uses the support of Bachelet and the incorporation of Tohás, Allendes, Letelieres and other pieces of that extensive fauna of children and grandchildren of Popular Unity leaders who now serve their imperial masters.
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The last straw for such a despicable performance has fallen to the minister spokesperson of the Boric government, called Camila Vallejo, who from her position in the leadership of the PC pushed for Daniel Jadue, the most recognized leader of the Chilean popular movement, to face Boric in unnecessary presidential primaries so that Boric could be elected as the presidential candidate of the “united left” with the right-wing vote. In a macabre operation, Vallejo, who served as head of Jadue’s campaign command, led him to those primaries, knowing that the right would turn to vote for Boric. It is worth saying that, in Chile, the primaries are open and any independent citizen can participate, regardless of whether or not they are members of the parties that support the candidates.
People linked to the mayor Jadue have stated that not even a week passed before Vallejo, now incorporated into Boric’s presidential campaign command, never answered Jadue’s phone again, excluding him from any participation in the process of consummating the government. One of the most horrendous betrayals of the extensive Chilean practice that begun in 1818 when Bernardo O’Higgins, the “father of the country” ordered the assassination of Manuel Rodríguez, the most brilliant, illustrious and selfless fighter for independence.
Once in government, the Boric-Vallejo duo began the persecution of the popular movement: militarization of Araucanía, persecution and prison for Mapuche leaders, repression of social fighters and defenders of human rights, active and enthusiastic support for the Nazi government of Ukraine, full subordination to Washington in almost all the excesses it committed in the world and maintenance of the capitalist accumulation model that has its main support in the AFP, all of which culminated in the arrest without evidence of Daniel Jadue (communist), and in his subsequent dismissal as mayor for being prevented from freedom, celebrated with a complicit silence by Boric and Vallejo (communist). What would Luis Emilio Recabarren, Elías Lafertte and Ricardo Fonseca think of this? How would Víctor Díaz, Marta Ugarte and Víctor Jara have acted? What would Gladys Marín have done?
It is the task of sociologists and political scientists, perhaps also of psychologists, to investigate these twists and turns of Chilean history. It would be good to know why these characters who were elected by the communists are now, in government, persecuting communists. Of course, there is a difference: in the 20th century, the Communist Party was part of the government and left, because it began to be persecuted. Now it is part of the government and has not yet left, becoming a persecutor. By González Videla, the Communist Party was betrayed, now it is trapped in the camp of the traitor.
It must be said that in the past, the ethics of the PC surpassed its militancy, becoming a mantle that positively covered Chilean politics, signaling with its imprint a model to follow and a way of acting in politics that was a source of pride for its members, militants and admiration from their allies and even from the right. They couldn’t buy the PC with anything. The party fought and resisted with dignity and fortitude the dictatorships of González Videla and Pinochet. It overcame difficulties, prison, persecution, torture, death and forced disappearances. And it went ahead.
Now, the PC seems to have a price: they have paid it with a few positions in the administration so that together with those affected yesterday and today by Stockholm Syndrome, they do the dirty work in favor of Washington and the business groups. That is why their hatred and cruelty against Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. It seems strange, but in Boric’s case it is his own hatred, in Vallejos’ case, it seems remote-controlled from Washington. In any case, as Silvio said, both are seeking to save themselves “between unique and odd” while they search for a place in the imperial parnassus in order to get “a little corner on their altars.”
I never expected anything from Boric, I said it before he was elected. Son of a Christian democrat and descendant of Ustasha fascists from Croatia, he carries human misery in his blood, and when Camila betrayed Jadue, once again, with my unbridled optimism of reason I remembered President Allende in his final words: “… “Other men will overcome this gray and bitter moment in which betrayal tries to prevail.” I have no doubt that once again it will be like this, comrade president.
Sergio Rodriguez-Gelfenstein
Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, a Venezuelan international relations expert, Gelfenstein was previously Director of the International Relations of the Presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, his country’s ambassador to Nicaragua and an advisor for international politics for TELESUR. He has written numerous books, among them “China in the XXI Century – the awakening of a giant,” published in several Latin American countries.
