Title: The position of the anarchists towards Pinochet’s case
Date: September 2000
Source: Retrieved on 8th August 2021 from struggle.ws

It is necessary to put this subject in the class struggle, for the affair of the cashier and subsequent trial to Pinochet, place ourselves in the same dilemma that in 1988 (year of the “democratic” elections for the people to “decide” wether the dictator stayed in power or if he left it), that´s to say, the public opinion is told to trust in the burgueoise institutions. That year the main subject was the “free ballot”, and in front of a clear triumph of the NO option (to the staying of Pinochet in government), it is evident for us, that more than a popular triumph, it was for the whole of our class a defeat, because the people was sedated with the illusion of a political participation restricted to the mere fact, after all futile, of the voting. With that, we affirm it was taken away from us, all the power of decision and effective control that was developing in the grass root democracy generated in the popular organizations of resistance.

Nowadays the subject of the cashier generates encountered reactions, because some inclines towards the actual chance of a trial to Pinochet, where it must be decided between two alternatives: to find him guilty or not guilty of the charges for wich he´s blamed. Notwithstanding, the point is the same that was mentioned before, that is, what´s really at stake is the reliance and credibility on the burgueoise justice. Eventhough it is true that we all desire an effective punishment to the dictator Pinochet, it is also true that what should be at stake, would be a trascendent historical trial to the dictatorship, but what´s actually at stake is the reliance that the popular masses can have on the judicial system, that will always be biased to the interests of the class to wich it is serf, the bosses.

When putting the subject on its structural scope, we reach the substance of the matter, that this can be seen as nothing more than another episode in the class struggle. In fact, the point here is clear: popular or burgueoise justice. What makes us wind up in the urgent need to agitate the construction of a kind of justice coming from the class itself and not to trust or allucinate with a justice coming from above, both of the State and from those in power.

The subject is not about making Pinochet the centre of our political activity, like it happens with some popular currents wich make short reach demands with little effectiveness the centre of their practice, obviating all kind of structural undermining to the capitalist system.

It is urgent to go from the immediate tasks to the revolutionary ones, able to undermine the system on its very basis, task that implies the reclaim in our memories of the fallen and the rescue of their struggles. We know very well that the victims of the dictatorship´s brutal repression were the bloody cost we had to pay for the refoundation of the burgueoise State, what demands from us the immediate put in evidence of the concrete conditions that characterize the current scenario of the class struggle and to go forward the traditional left discourse. Thus, we must be able to elaborate a revolutionary discourse that sum up the universe of social struggles and wich leads us to the front of the revolutionary demands, what means the actual transformation of society and each of its institutions.

In brief, we are for an effective punishment for Pinochet and all those who result to be responsible of the brutality of his regime and at the same time, to make a denounce to the Capitalism as an inhuman system that protects all crimes and their causes.