Chile Striking Back

On the Pan American Highway as it crosses Chile, the usual truck traffic was missing, and the few cars on the road had to dodge miguelitos, nail-studded objects intended to puncture tires. In the capital of Santiago and other cities, thousands of workers waited in vain for public buses and taxis that never came. Downtown shops in Santiago were closed, and there was such a dearth of traffic that some of the smog that envelops the city lifted, allowing peaks of the Andes to be seen to the east.

The occasion for this sudden halt in activity was a two-day general strike, called last week by a vast coalition of labor and other opposition groups seeking the ouster of Dictator General Augusto Pinochet. The work stoppage appeared to be one of the most effective antigovernment actions in the 13 years since Pinochet seized power. "The strike was a complete success, even beyond what we expected," said Juan Luis Gonzalez, who heads the Assembly of Civility, the umbrella group of 250 unions, student groups and civic organizations that joined to sponsor the strike.

The government, caught by surprise, was slow to respond to the action. But by late afternoon on Wednesday, the strike's first day, thousands of troops, their faces daubed with black to conceal their features, arrived at plazas and the teeming slums that border Chile's major cities. During the two-day protest, security forces killed eight people, including a 13-year-old girl who witnesses said was carrying bread home from a Santiago bakery. Thirty-eight people were wounded and 300 arrested, including 180 who have been detained. Leftist guerrillas reacted with counterviolence. They set off at least 30 bombs across Chile. The explosions blew up twelve power towers, casting half the country into darkness for several hours.

The Pinochet government insisted that the strike had been ineffective. Nonetheless, authorities filed criminal charges against 17 walkout leaders, including Gonzalez, accusing them of subversion, and cracked down hard on the media. A total of 27 staff members from the opposition magazine Analisis were charged with antigovernment activities, and could face prison terms if convicted. Four independent radio stations, one of them run by the Roman Catholic Church, were ordered to halt news broadcasts during the protests. Strike organizers were especially encouraged by the participation of truckers. In 1973 a crippling work stoppage by drivers against the Marxist-oriented government of Salvador Allende Gossens helped prompt the coup that brought Pinochet to power.