I had the opportunity to compile the necessary data: I have spent time with workers, sleeping in their dormitories, and over the past few days I have seen their work on the pampa, with the machines. Some of the jobs they do could be classified as among the hardest work done on this planet. Yet their salaries are barely enough to cover their living expenses, and naturally, they are not enough to meet any needs for cultural enrichment . . .
He went on to say that conditions were so horrendous in the mines held jointly by the Tarapacá and Antofagasta companies that there were only six showers for two thousand people and practically no latrines. “Mr. President,” he pleaded, “how can we tolerate the fact that our fellow citizens are subject to this ignominious exploitation?!”
Neruda gave many lengthy speeches in the Senate throughout his short tenure about issues ranging from the dictatorship in Paraguay to an homage to Gabriela Mistral to women’s suffrage. He was also active in the Communist Party’s campaign for that year’s municipal election. On the first Sunday of April 1947, the Communists made significant electoral gains, winning 16.5 percent of the vote. It was a substantial percentage within a system that included many parties and factions. The Communists were now the third most popular party in the country, behind the Radicals and Conservatives. Even though it was only a municipal election, it had major repercussions, setting in motion a chain of dramatic, often violent events.
The Communists were gaining ground in Chile. They held key positions in the cabinet, they had more members in other government posts up and down the length of the country, and, pivotally, they had the support of the unions. They were able to put class struggle forward as a primary political focus for the country. The other parties and the president saw this clearly. What’s more, the Radical and Liberal Parties were losing traction with voters. They and the other parties had already felt the Communists were getting too much out of González Videla’s presidency, and now they were further weakened while their adversaries were stronger. Unable to compete within the government, they pulled out of it, resigning their posts. Even the Socialists didn’t support the Communists’ power, though they wouldn’t work with the Right either.
The president felt trapped; his alliance had fallen apart, and he didn’t have congressional support. The day after the municipal elections, Volodia Teitelboim, the Communist Party’s representative to the president, and Ricardo Fonseca, the party’s secretary-general, were asked by González Videla to come to La Moneda. Teitelboim wrote:
We thought that it would begin with a few positive words about the win. But he met us in a horrible mood. He became angry, like a blind bull. He couldn’t accept that the Communists could become a grand party through the power of the ballot box. He used an expression that became popular later, asking us to “submerge” ourselves. “You need to submerge yourselves in the darkness. Be like fish, don’t make noise, and stay somewhere where no one sees you. That is a condition for you to survive. Otherwise, you will succumb.”
The president asked three of the Communist Party members from his cabinet to resign. They complied. González Videla replaced them with members of his Radical Party, a move that the Right welcomed. Soon, a heightened battle between the Communists and workers and the government broke out. Incensed by the president’s actions, the Left took to the streets and directly challenged the government. The winds of class warfare were blowing from the Andes to the Pacific, from the desert north to the southern coalfields.
As hard as the Left fought, the government fought back. The United States, with its vital economic interests in Chile, used its leverage to have González Videla unleash a campaign of both propaganda and policy to provoke an anti-communist backlash all over the country. Communist leaders were increasingly imprisoned. The government pointed to the party as the cause of the nation’s problems. Violent confrontations continued. In June, for example, bus drivers and associated workers struck in Santiago. The government ordered the military to intervene. Four workers were killed, twenty injured, and Communist and union leaders jailed. The president declared a state of emergency in Santiago.
Then, on August 22, 1947, the National Congress approved the president’s Law for the Defense of Democracy, which would have severe repercussions for years. It would effectively outlaw the Communist Party and disenfranchise its members, expelling them from the labor movement, universities, and public office. The law also gave the government more power to declare states of emergency to suppress any threat to commercial production or “national order.”
On October 6, the U.S. ambassador to Chile, the writer Claude Bowers, cabled Washington: “González Videla declared war on Communism as a result of what he claims is a Communist plot to overthrow the Government and obtain control of the production (in order to deprive the United States of the use in an emergency) of strategic raw materials, namely copper and nitrates.” The United States assured the Chilean president that emergency shipments of coal would be made available if the ongoing miners’ strikes continued. On October 9, Ambassador Bowers cabled Washington: “Our war with Communists is on two fronts, Europe and South America.” Four days later, he added, “The issue is clear as crystal—communism or democracy.”
In the Senate that same day, Neruda defended the coal strikes and cited a New York Times editorial written two days earlier: “Are the Chilean miners well paid, well fed, well housed, with sufficient medical care and a reasonable hope of security in their old age? The answer obviously is in the negative.” If the answer were reversed, “communism would have had little appeal.”
The Chilean government, however, addressed none of these issues. In a bold political move, on October 21, González Videla broke diplomatic ties with the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, justifying the move
