Public Statement by the Chilean organisation, Grupos Accion Popular (GAP) on the crisis in the country.  In publishing this statement, APDUSA gives effect to our commitment to internationalism and to strengthen our fraternal interactions with revolutionary left organisations in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. 

The Chilean people are out from their slumber. It is the responsibility of the revolutionaries to keep them awake, when “all” the messengers of the ‘model’ are preparing the potions to contain it, because a people who take the initiative threatens all the strategic consensus that sustains the current system of domination.

We cannot call for peace or order. We can neither stay in reflection or debate about vandalism and rants, as these are secondary issues, nor on the subject of repression and militias in the street, hopefully they remain there and continue to perform the function that the system has assigned to them. Instead, they are confronted with courage, without fear and with consciousness, to strengthen the morale of the struggle.

The opposition and right-wing will play on the same side of the court. They will call us to march peacefully in the center of the cities for their idea of “dignity”, authorized by regional authorities, to divide the “masked” from those who “mobilize peacefully”. The propaganda discourse of the media will be adding coordinated voices from social movements, articulated from the official parties, to place them above the prominence of workers and the people, while installing artificially a list of moderate reforms.

We must confront these opportunistic leaderships, who have been silent and thereby stopping the struggle these last few years, well-accommodated already in the chairs of the congress, and which today are trying to raise as the protagonists of a new “social pact”.

We call on students to be on the streets — occupying the parks, avenues and walls, with determined and combative action. The pobladores, the leading force of these days, must continue to promote protest, raising awareness in the struggle and validation of that struggle and its forms, as the only way to face the living conditions to which this system and its representatives have condemned us. Do not be fooled by anyone who tries to come and stand on top of pobladores, having sat at the table of the powerful to conspire against the people and their legitimate struggle, trying to impose “peace to them”.

We call on high-school students to go out and produce street turmoil, claiming their disobedience which ended up being the spark that triggered the conjuncture, but which found explosiveness because it is directly linked to the precariousness of the families of the people. It is not an isolated, corporatist struggle of high-school students, as they tried to see it at first or to delegitimize it by saying the fee-hike did not affect them as high-schoolers.

We call teachers, as one of the most precarious professionals, because of their direct relationship with the children of the people, for their role as one of the most trampled by this model of society. They must turn to their most powerful weapon, which is their condition as educators, towards their colleagues and their students, identifying themselves as workers who are affected by working conditions and the cost of living as much as the entire people. They must join the people in protests, as a part of them, from their establishments to parks and streets.

We call on the Professionals, who can now show in practice their commitment to the people, uniting in their struggle, because only a different society can turn them into real contributors in building science and benefits for all. In this way, they will be able to attain full dignity as humans in their vocation and professional development.

We call on the people and workers not to be intimidated by the choral speech of all political sections and their representatives, who focus their concern on “vandalism.” They are trying to make us believe that the situation has overflowed to the point where crime has the control. In this way, they aim to divide the people and invisibilize the struggle and participation of workers and pobladores, women, men, young people and even children that we have seen in every corner of the country.

Of course, they are concerned, because what was a latent situation has been laid bare: from the government to the whole of the political opposition, none of them have closeness to the working people. And when the voice of the people is heard and the transformative potential they carry, affect their economic interests and privileged positions, there is no way to control them.

Do not be fooled by the political and communicational brotherhood trying to silence the cry of the people.

Prepare to fight, maintain mobilization and popular protest.

Disobey the repression and restrictions of curfew. Protest until we Win.

GAP

Grupos Accion Popular