Leer en Español
This Saturday, September 10th, in the portal El Libero, I came across a reflective article in which the former undersecretary of Salvador Allende, Óscar Guillermo Garretón, sends a message to his fellow socialists to open a sincere discussion on the causes of the failure of the Apruebo on September 4th, which he qualifies as the biggest defeat of Chilean socialism since the overthrow of Allende and one of the biggest in the history of the Latin American left.
It is surprising and even refreshing that a Marxist leader analyzes with such frankness the defeat of September 4th since the left is accustomed never to making self-criticisms, which does not guarantee that the champions of the ‘Apruebo’ will listen to his advice or rectify their pretensions.
Garretón begins his letter by complaining to his colleagues about their superficial analysis of what happened when they falsely point out that the reasons were the “millionaire campaigns of the right-wing… or when they denigrate the media since there was an active presence of Apruebo and for the interventionism of the Government in all the media, as well as marked preferences for that option in TV morning shows.”
According to Garretón, the real causes lie in the lack of realism of the Apruebo leaders: the plebiscite, the first thing it taught us—he explains— “is the sidereal distance of the elites with the popular sentiment and rationality. Even greater in the new elites installed in the Convention and the government who trusted with closed eyes in the triumph of the Apruebo. They felt they were ‘people,’ ‘transforming vanguard,’ and even in their wildest dreams, they never saw the magnitude of the defeat that was coming to them.”
Garretón insists that this is the “terrible case of the representatives of native peoples and their plurinationalist intelligentsia who can now confirm that the majorities of the Rejection in the areas with the greatest presence of native peoples surpass the already comfortable difference at the national level. It is the ridiculousness of continuing to feel like a people, ranting against the three communes, when in 338 communes out of a total of 346, the Rejection won.”
These data are very deep and revealing, affirming the old leader since the constituent members pretended to impose themselves and to impose realities that are not: “The representatives of the indigenous peoples did not represent the mass of the indigenous peoples. The conventional champions of poverty did not represent the poor. The identity narrative they defended did not represent the deep identity of the national society”.
Allende’s former undersecretary makes a severe prognosis: “As long as they do not take the painful, heartbreaking step of thinking about where they went wrong and do not continue lamenting the errors or perversities of others, that left is condemned to defeat. They can exceptionally win elections, but they will quickly disillusion, as happened to President Boric‘s government. They have a cultural abyss that inexorably separates them from the majority of Chileans and makes their failure inevitable, sooner rather than later.”
The leader is categorical in his rejection of violence and armed struggle as a means to access and maintain power, as it is clear when he states that: “The failed guerrilla attempts bathed young jungles and cities of the continent in blood and the only three triumphant attempts -Cuba, Nicaragua, and Venezuela- are a disaster, from which even the left itself seeks to distance itself.”
Surprising, I repeat, what is exposed in this article. But also interesting because Garretón’s manifesto applies exactly to the rest of the Marxist leaders in Latin American countries, who are eaten away by arrogance and are unable to identify themselves with the needs of the people, despite their flamboyant speeches in favor of the neediest.
Citizens do not eat speeches. The failure of socialism is inevitable, sooner rather than later.
Nitu Pérez Osuna es una reconocida periodista venezolana en el exilio. Por muchos años fue una de las caras principales del canal de noticias más importante de su país, hasta que fue vendido a aliados de la dictadura chavista, por lo que fue despedida. Nitu Pérez Osuna es perseguida política de Nicolás Maduro y se ha dedicado a denunciar, no solo a la dictadura de su país, sino a los regímenes socialistas de todo el continente.