In the Sixties Unity was a reformist project Socialist crossed.
Popular Unity workers' out indemnity automobile, and copper industries was taken into public ownership.
In July 1971 an important threshold was The copper mines were nationalised, including those owned by the United States. No compensation was paid. The right-wing press węnt berserk and the army exerted pressure, • which Allende resisted. The Chilean President went on the attack:
'Here are four numbers the people should These companies invested the sum of 30m dollars. In fifty years they have taken 4.5 billion dollars... compensate Annaconda, Salvador, but the debts of those companies are 736m dollars and it is logically foreseeable that we will have to assume those debts.
'Thus will be paying of 736m dollars di companies who over a period of fifty years took out 4.5 billion dollars.
The masses: were convinced. chiefs and the bosses were sullen and the US Department intensified its efforts to was lacking nationalised In the multinational subsidiary workers will not or Kennecott, or El the workers' demands.
mills.
an indirect sacred to the copper smashed.
The army 'destabilise' the Allende government.
was workers' control industries. If had established it would have transformed a legal decree into a concrete measure, changing the overall relationship of class forces by drawing the copper miners - traditionally right wing -closer towards Popular Unity.
following year, 1971, companies (Fords and Northern Indiana Brass Company) threatened mass redundancies. The occupied the plants and demanded nationalisation. The government acceded to In May 1971 the workers seized 14 textile They were nationalised. The Chilean capitalists were alarmed. Their monopoly in the manufacturing sector had The confidence ot the increased. tenfold and saw a growing class polarisation in the country.
In the autumn of 1972 the bourgeoisie went 'on strike' by imposing a lock-out. The workers occupied many of the plants and an embryonic other parts of Latin America.
mobilisation greater. is these the been more reprehensible.
two exercise real power.
the interests of been workers Chilean exceptionalism.
Allende. Revolutionary That is the lesson of Chile.