Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)
좌파혁명운동 (칠레)
A Chilean Marxist–Leninist organisation founded in 1965 around students of the University of Concepción, bringing together young dissidents expelled from the Socialist Party with Trotskyists, Maoists and anarchists. Inspired by the Cuban Revolution, it rejected the electoral "peaceful road" and aimed to set up a workers' and peasants' government through insurrection. Miguel Enríquez led it from 1967. It stayed outside Popular Unity but gave the Allende government critical support while organising land and factory occupations and "people's power"; after the coup it became the core of armed resistance and a prime target of the junta's repression.
In depth
The MIR's founding congress met in an anarchist union hall in Santiago with fewer than a hundred people and adopted political-military theses on "the conquest of power through insurrection". The largest group were young revolutionary socialists from Concepción expelled from the Socialist Party, among them the Enríquez brothers and Bautista van Schouwen. Over the next two years Enríquez turned a mixture of tendencies into a Marxist–Leninist organisation, and in 1969 its members seized a radio station in Concepción to call for armed revolt and attacked bank branches.
When Allende was elected in 1970 the MIR leadership suspended armed action and came out of hiding. It adopted a stance of critical support and grew through mass fronts such as the Revolutionary Peasant Movement (MCR), the Revolutionary Workers' Front (FTR) and the Revolutionary Shantytown Dwellers' Front (FPR). In Cautín in the south it worked with Mapuche communities on "fence-moving" to restore old boundaries, and in Santiago it organised squatter settlements such as Nueva La Habana. At its height in 1973 it had about 10,000 members and associates. It competed with the Communists, who stood for reform within the law, in the unions and universities, and stood with the Socialist left on the radical wing of Popular Unity.
Enríquez warned from 1972 that a coup was coming, and after the Tanquetazo offered the organisation's armed capacity for the president's protection. Yet on 11 September members waited in vain for weapons and instructions and dispersed. After the coup the MIR leadership, regarding asylum in an embassy as betrayal, stayed underground to resist, but much of its leadership was killed or disappeared, Enríquez himself shot by the DINA in October 1974. After splits in the late 1980s it ceased most activity after 1990.