Chile - June 28, 2022

What not even Piñera dreamed of doing…

With the closure of the Ventanas smelter, the Boric government and the CP advance in the plan to privatize CODELCO to hand it over to imperialism

Hardly had he returned from his tour of Canada and the Summit of the Americas, that Boric strictly complied with the dictates of the mining transnationals and of “his” President Biden, the representative of the Wall Street pirates.

Thus, after a new brutal episode of intoxication in the town of Quintero- Puchuncaví, the government of Boric and the CP announced the closure of the CODELCO smelter in Ventanas using “contamination” as a mere excuse. This is not accidental. Meeting with the CEOs of the main imperialist mining companies in Canada, Boric offered them to come to Chile to plunder 34 mining concessions that today belong to CODELCO. And not only this. After the closure of the Ventanas smelter, Máximo Pacheco, president of CODELCO, announced the construction of a “high-tech” “mega smelter”… together with imperialist companies.
This is the real reason why they are going to proceed to close a smelter like the one in Ventanas in the country that is the bigest copper producer in the world, when there is a large deficit of smelters and refineries, with CODELCO having barely half of the smelters and refineries it should have.
Far was the deceit of "ending pollution" and "taking care of the environment" for these servants to the transnationals who only come to continue surrender the nation to imperialism. Today that actually means scrapping and beginning to privatize CODELCO, handing over part of its concessions to the transnationals and opening up their participation so that they manage the million-dollar business of refining and smelting copper.
To do this, of course, Boric had to have the authorization of the Pinochetista caste of officers that continues to steal billions of dollars a year from CODELCO, not to mention the enormous military budget they manage, which the government and the Parliament of this damn regime of the Constitution of '80 continue to guarantee.

Most cynical is that this class-collaboration government of the Broad Front, the CP and the former Concertación advances in plans that not even Piñera himself dared to dream of, posing as "ecologists", "who take care of the community", people that are going to “end the sacrifice zones”, etc., when not only are they going to leave thousands of miners out onto the streets, increasing unemployment and misery in that area, but meanwhile dozens of private companies go on polluting and poisoning the town of Quintero- Puchuncaví.
For example, Boric is very far from ending the environmental devastation caused by forestry companies in the south of the country... Quite the opposite: he sent the Pinochetista army and militarized Araucanía to defend their interests against the poor peasants of Mapuche ethnic origin and their just demand to recover their lands. This government cares nothing for the life of the working class and the exploited! This is a pro-US government, on its knees before the imperialist pirates, supported by the entire reformist left of Stalinists and renegades from Trotskyism who called to support it and are responsible for all the anti-worker measures that "their" president Boric is carrying out.

Meanwhile, that scam of the Constituent Assembly that spoke of being "democratic" and posed as "sovereign", left the privatization policies of copper and natural resources with constitutional status for the "new" Constitution -a mere make-up of Pinochet's one- through concessions. A new example of how this fraud of the Constituent Convention is nothing more than a cover-up for the interests of imperialism in Chile.

The mining workers of CODELCO tried to confront this plan of redoubled looting and plundering of the nation. Such was the indignation across the miners' sector that they went on a national strike in all the divisions of CODELCO on June 22. More than 14,000 plant miners mobilized demanding investment and the non-closure of the Ventanas smelter, together with various sectors of subcontracted miners, in defense of their sources of work.
But the bureaucracy of the Federation of Copper Workers (FTC), headed by the Stalinist Amador Pantoja, took less than a day and a half to surrender and betray this just struggle at the negotiating table with the government. These bureaucrats who have known for decades that there has been a high degree of contamination in Ventanas and never lifted a finger, stopped the strike with their backs turned to the base of the plant miners and not to mention the subcontracted miners, who found out about this betrayal by TV.
What the FTC bureaucracy agreed to is so miserable that the government's commitment is only to relocate approximately 350 miners on a permanent plant, while it is going to leave more than 2,000 subcontracted miners on the streets, which are the majority and those who carry out the worst jobs, while several thousand more who work in small-scale mining will be left in absolute misery.

Enough!

The working class is the only class that can guarantee an end to the devastation of the environment and what causes it: the imperialist plunder and the capitalists' voracity and incessant thirst for profits. Only the labor movement, leading all the oppressed and exploited sectors of society, will be able to guarantee decent living conditions for poor people, with quality health, because the working class is the only one that, due to its role in production, can attack the interests of imperialism and the capitalists and expropriate the expropriators of the people.

There's plenty of money to put an end to environmental devastation by making all the necessary investments!
There is plenty of money to guarantee decent health for the workers and the poor people!
There is plenty of money to end subcontracting and guarantee decent working conditions for all miners!

For a Workers' Directory in CODELCO, voted in base assemblies, to prevent its privatization and put state mining under workers' control, at the service of the workers and the people!

Enough of the millionaire theft of copper by the caste of Pinochetista officers of the Armed Forces!

We must stop the imperialist looting!
Copper for Chileans!
Renationalization of all natural resources, without compensation and under workers' control!

To make it a reality and defeat the civic-military regime and its government, the Pinochetista generals and imperialism, to move forward to conquer our demands, free all political prisoners, impose the end of the "state of exception in Araucanía,Let's resume the revolutionary combats of 2019!

It is necessary to impose the rupture of all the militant worker and student organizations with the new Boric Concertación and the Constituent farce! Down with the FTC bureaucracy and all the collaborationist bureaucracies of the CUT and the Social Unity Roundtable!

To defend the health of the poor people that is threatened by imperialist voracity, to defend work and everything that is stolen from us, we must set up base assemblies in each mine, port, place of work and study, together with the self-defense committees of all the worker, student and peasant organizations and the worker and peasant militia to confront the repression of the pacos (cops), the genocidal militiamen and crush the fascist gangs.
From the mining and exploited assemblies of Quinteros, together with the ENAP workers, the port workers, the students in struggle, it is necessary to conquer a: National Congress of grassroots delegates from the entire labor movement, the poor peasants and the rebellious youth to resume the path of the Revolutionary General Strike and the revolutionary combat of October 2019, to fight as in the revolution of the Industrial Cordons of the '70!

Today the path is marked by the workers and poor peasants of Ecuador, who are the advance guard in confronting the plans of imperialism and its servile governments throughout the Americas.
Today our class brothers in Ecuador are fighting against imperialism and the government of Guillermo Lasso! There lives the fight for the Dignity of October 2019!

The Ecuadorian masses cannot be left alone in the face of the repression commanded by the Lasso government and the murderous army generals, who are watering the streets of Ecuador with worker and peasant blood. They are our best allies to confront the government of Boric and the CP and the damned Pinochetista regime.

For a unified struggle across the Americas of the working class and the exploited together with the revolted Ecuador!
From Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, the same class, the same fight against the attacks of hunger, unemployment, looting and subjugation by the IMF, imperialism and the slaveowner bosses.

Chile and Ecuador will be socialist or Wall Street colonies!

Editorial Board of “El Cordonazo”,
organ of the Partido Obrero Internacionalista (POI-CI) of Chile,
adherent to the FLTI