Chile: interview with Tomás Pizarro Meniconi, president Cordón Industrial Recoleta in 1973
The experience of the Industrial Cordons is without a doubt one of the most important processes in the history of the workers' movement in the country., key organizations that faced the coup reaction, but they went further by becoming true spaces of self-determination for the working class., incipiently exercising the germs of a double power, fundamental for revolutionary transformation. The historical value of this process told by its protagonists 50 years of the triumph of Popular Unity and 47 years since the end of the peaceful path to socialism as a result of the military coup, invites the new generations to draw the conclusions of the Chilean revolutionary process in the 70's, the limitations of the UP and what the Industrial Cordons were, little studied and little claimed, That is why from the Anticapitalist Movement we bring it to the present through an interview with Tomás Pizarro Meniconi, president of the Recoleta Industrial Cordon in 1973.
Interviewed by Maura Galvéz – Bernabé for the Anticapitalist Movement.
Maura Gálvez – Bernabé: Today we are with a very important interviewee for us who recapitulates one of the most important processes of the Popular Unity, in which workers' organizations were formed, Industrial Cords.
He is with us to talk about this., the companion Tomás Pizarro Meniconi, who was president of the Cordón Recoleta until the year 1973. Hello partner how are you?
Tomás Pizarro Meniconi: Hola, bueno, greetings to all the audience, to all people interested in rescuing the history of the Chilean labor movement, particularly in this chapter in which it was my responsibility at that time to be a participant in something that we did not know was going to have the significance until almost 50 years later, certainly grateful for all the efforts made by those who value this experience and at the same time, They want to consider it as a reference for political learning for the new generations, so for the rest available and naturally with great pleasure.
Maura: Thank you very much mate, It is an honor to have you with us today telling us about this important moment of organization of the working class.. We wanted to know to get to know, You were president of the Cordón Recoleta until the year 1973, If you can tell us what the construction process of the Cordón Recoleta was like, particularly.
Tomás Pizarro Meniconi: And, mira, actually the history of laces is very brief. The first was the Cerrillos Industrial Cordon that was formed between July and August of the year 72 and then in that second half of the year 72 The Vicuña Mackenna Industrial Cordon was created. There were only these two industrial cordons for the October strike of the year 72 and the response of the cordons was to keep the companies operating to the extent that the reaction sponsored by the CIA and Yankee imperialism was to generate a boycott and disaster in the economy., generating an artificial shortage.
The response from these two large industrial enclaves along Vicuña Mackenna Avenue and Cerrillos Avenue was that all of those factories, All these unions agreed on a plan to increase production. There was demand, The policy of the government of President Salvador Allende was to increase purchasing power, Thus, the entire population could buy more and that naturally, in the productive capacity that was often badly damaged to generate this shortage and attribute it to the government, but on the other hand there were many possibilities to buy, but the products were not enough. So, The battle of production was one of the great slogans that the Industrial Cordones of Cerrillo and Vicuña Mackenna gave in response to the October strike when this boycott generated by the different employers' organizations became evident., The Cordones decided to seek to generate the same commitment in other industrial sectors., In this, what the colleagues from Vicuña Mackenna and Cerrillos do is give themselves the task of going to make contacts with other companies, I worked at the Vía Sur company, an inter-provincial transportation company, We were the only company in the social area that was on Recoleta Avenue.
On Recoleta Avenue there were around 150 companies of different sizes, since 50 workers, the smallest one like the El Castillo textile company or the largest one, which was the Curtiembre Beltrán and La Reborde, which had about 800 workers, but the only company in the social area was us. The companions of the Cordón Vicuña Mackenna summon us, talk to our union, This was around January of the year. 73, after the October strike and they told us that we should also create an Industrial Cordon because the companies that were on Recoleta Avenue were located in the same way as in Cerrillos or Vicuña Mackenna. The union thought it was interesting that we could carry out this type of actions because we had already carried out some during the October strike., In particular, we as a transport company kept all our machines rolling towards the south of Chile., naturally if there were intentions to stop the country, We, as workers who also participated in the administration of the company, decided that for no reason were we going to give in to this pressure to the detriment of the population and we kept working.. We had that experience of commitment and also because it was a company that had a joint administration process with the CORFO delegates., who were the executives of the company and from us, unions, because we had two, the drivers and administrative union and the industrial union. We were around 180 industrial workers and around 80 of the administrative, The two unions work together in the administration of the company.
Faced with this situation, the colleagues from Cordón Vicuña Mackenna thought that we had the conditions to also demonstrate that we were in the battle of production., but at the same time they entrusted us with the task of organizing the Industrial Cordon and in the union the board discussed, We discussed the issue and they assigned me to be the representative of the union of the Vía Sur company in Cordón. It also meant that the task of making contact with other companies fell to me because we had the responsibility as unions of a company in the social area to convene the rest of the unions.. This is how we stayed for approximately three months and at the end of April and beginning of May we had established the Recoleta Industrial Cordon., which is created by 51 unions of all sizes, we were approximately 30 thousand, We were a small Industrial Cordon, Cerrillos had some 200 thousand workers, Vicuña Mackenna had almost 500 thousand. We were a small Industrial Cordon. Nevertheless, the level of commitment and intense relationships with colleagues who visited us often and supported us in different tasks, They also asked us to do things and we did them, For example, we put our machines at the service of what at that time were popular holidays..
We were then born in May of 73. For him 1 By May we were already an Industrial Cordon, of the new and small ones and we remained coordinated with the other Industrial Cordons.
Maura Galvéz – Bernabé: Mate and in that sense, Having been born so close to the coup and in a turbulent process in the country, what was the policy that they promoted from the Cordón Industrial Recoleta and what was the policy of the UP at that time??
Tomás Pizarro Meniconi: The UP policy for workers was absolutely transferred through the CUT. The CUT had a total commitment and depended on the policies of the Ministry of Economy and naturally, of the Allende government. They weren't seeing what we were seeing., because we, for example, were very critical of the modification of the government program that had proposed building a social area with 411 companies that were going to be expropriated because they had strategic characteristics and at the same time were sensitive to the country's economy. And the Ministry of Economy in the hands of the Communist Party - that is why there was a lot of relationship with the CUT to implement a policy that was in accordance with the opinions of the ministry.- The Ministry of Economy was reducing the companies to be expropriated. So, We demanded that all companies that were strategic and sensitive be expropriated and were precisely where there was a boycott by the employers.. The main contradiction arises there, we are committed to the battle of production, but at the same time we want to decide what to do with that production, For us it was important to place all the companies' products in the hands of the population that needed them because an artificial shortage had been caused and on the other hand also, there was a boycott on production.
In the struggle with the Ministry of Economy and therefore, also with the CUT, We believed ourselves to be complete owners of the spaces we had acquired.. Yes we had a board of directors of the company, By the way, we were also going to have ideas to improve the services and not only abide or obey what the ministry was ordering., We did not agree with the reduction of the social area and we made it known to our CUT colleagues, also to the Ministry of Economy and that's where the friction began. We were just born on May 1st, 73 And from the outset we had a quite severe conflict because the cordons proposed to place all the products directly in the hands of people who needed them., skipping the distribution channels because naturally there were boycotts there, the bottlenecks, the shortage. We were interested in bringing our products directly, then fairs were held, They were sold in the streets. At that time it was notable, unlike today's unions., we had a decision on production quota, that is, in any company, Even in those that were not in the social area, the unions had production quotas and therefore could decide what to do with that quota., the commissaries.
(The commissaries) They were an instrument that had been achieved through union struggles and the decision that the unions had for the destination of these quotas was independent of the will of the owner of the company and that quota the unions took to the streets, They sold them directly, They made an agreement with the Supply and Price Boards, with the Neighborhood Associations, They made agreements with other unions as we also did, for the destination of these products.
This decision-making power was the first thing we became aware of because there had never been such a massification of product volumes that we could coordinate and say hey, just as our colleagues from the direct execution construction told us “lend us a bus to go to the beach” and we said “yes, Of course", We had the conditions and we made it easier for them. Other colleagues, for example, of the textile industry, Mix, where they made shirts and had high technology, they worked polyester, nylon and stuff like that, The union decided that they were going to increase production so that there would be more shirts. So the union fee was also negotiated with other unions., we bought shirts, clothing. That kind of solidarity, those types of decisions, in the background, that power was the most dynamic.
In the political part is when we saw ourselves in a certain way in that desire, in that dream, bueno, it wasn't a dream, but a decision, but we saw that our decision clashed with government policies because they asked us to stop, that is, place the products in the hands of a small social area, Note that the companies that were finally expropriated did not even reach the 41 that the government decided to expropriate, from 400 to stay less than 5% of them. Therefore, If there are no companies in the social area, why would we have to place the distribution that we could do directly in the hands of the bureaucrats of the Ministry of Economy?. Those were the crashes. Now perceived on an everyday level, Unfortunately, the CUT and the parties that were in it classified us as union parallelism, which was not what we did, we were still in the CUT, we were not creating another union center, But our decisions made them uncomfortable., that is, we made decisions, no la CUT, not the Ministry of Economy, that was the conflict at the cordon level with the government.
Maura Gálvez – Bernabé: And in that sense, a 50 years of the victory of the UP and 47 years of the military coup. What reflection does the experience of the Industrial Cordons leave us for today??
Tomás Pizarro Meniconi: What I am convinced is that the main lesson is active solidarity, That is to say, solidarity for us was not a slogan, This has marked me forever throughout my militant life., The slogans do not necessarily express reality or what you can do.. The solidarity economy, for example, which today is expressed in buying together, in common pots, in barter, in the delivery of products that you have left over to give to someone who needs it, Everything that in the time of the Cordones was multiplied by incredible volumes. At that time, for example, there were only two detergents and both detergents were produced by the same company that is fashionable today because they are going to reduce their presence in Chile., I'm talking about Unilever, They had two detergents that washed the same but they had two colors on the packaging., Unilever workers could not allocate their union production quota for direct supply, that was in Cordón Barrancas, So a delegation of workers from other Cordones went to tell the owners of that company, that it was a transnational, What they had to do as the union decided. That was a concrete action, It was not a sentence, It was a concrete action, go stand at the door of a factory other leaders to tell the businessmen to do as the workers say. Those types of actions.
Good, If we look at it at this time we have a very small union organization, is not enough to be 10% of the entire working mass, unfortunately the consciousness industry, which is the best that works in Chile, It is what has made many people feel that extreme individualism is a manifestation of freedom, that naturally does not help solidarity. Now in this day and age, the things that are seen as important are not worrying about the common good., is caring about your own individuality, Unfortunately this has been generated by the consciousness industry.
What can be rescued today, I'm going to say it in a grotesque way, I think it's good that there are four union centers, because this difference between the four union centers at least shows that there is a debate about which of them can improve the conditions to promote unionism.. The promotion of unionism also involves the union centers dialogue among themselves, even argue, debate why one is better than the other. I'm talking about the Autonomous Central of Workers, I'm talking about the Classist Central, of the General Central of Workers, even from the CUT. But that dialogue, the fact that it does not exist, does not mean that there are no expressions of incipient unionism, with difficulty. Because if there is one of the great achievements of the coup d'état, it is having completely eliminated the organization of the working class.. There are many modifications, different civil society organizations, neighborhood meetings, ONG’s, the ones you want, but from unions, After the agreement to end the dictatorship, it has been prevented. Devices that are absolutely counterproductive to unionism have been promoted, For example, independent worker unions, what I know here, unions of construction workers or fishermen, Basically they are micro companies disguised as unionism. But this distortion was caused by the State because they are not interested in having unionism that promotes awareness about the destiny of the worker himself and that is what the new generations must understand., A union is not only an organization to achieve better collective bargaining or a better salary., A union is a fraternity where people live together for more than 8 hours day by day with our fellow humans, with other co-workers, with colleagues on the production line, with the people around us and that way of living is also part of unionism and in that the effort to create any union is good, independent that have distortions in their process, but to non-existence, naturally it is better that something exists, despite the difficulties that unionism is experiencing today of not having counterparts with whom to generate dialogues on how it is best to organize production to produce the well-being or the most basic satisfaction of having a product that someone generated with their work..
Maura Gálvez – Bernabé: Buddy, Thank you for this story of such an important part of history to which we new generations still cling., having clarity that the emancipation of humanity will be the work of the workers and this impressive experience, not only for Chile, but globally, As you said at the beginning, she wanted to be sneaky., is not at any event in September, not shown, At no point in history does the experience of the industrial cordons appear, something that we want to bring to the present, not only because of the experience of struggle, what it meant and the learning it means for all of us., but also to see how we can take that red thread of class organization to apply it today in a world in crisis, in a capitalism in crisis, where the organization of workers becomes fundamental. The creative and democratic development that the industrial cordons developed is undoubtedly an enormous experience for the new generations., so thank you very much for this space, We hope to continue in contact and continue going to that source of history to bring it to the present., thank you very much mate.
Tomás Pizarro Meniconi: Thanks to you too and hoping that this interest in rescuing the historical memory of the working class increases., these types of talks abound, new testimonies abound and certainly, that the documentation that emerges with much more force today also grows and abounds, because it is precisely the way that this brief but very intense experience can be transmitted to new generations as one of the most valuable episodes of the Chilean working class., thanks to you.
