Imperfect Unions

When Communists' votes helped President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla into office last November, he paid off with three Cabinet posts--the first for the comrades in South America. Of the three, Agriculture pleased the party most. The wretched lot of Chile's 500,000 landless campesinos invites Communism. For a day's work, the average field hand gets 35¢, a large piece of hard bread, and, occasionally, a sack of beans. His home (on most farms) is a small, windowless, mud-&-thatch hut, with a dirt floor.

Lately Chile's rural roto (ragged one) has been hearing talk of farm unions that might get him more pesos. "What can we lose?" he says.

Agriculture Secretary Miguel Concha has led the Communist agitation for legalized farm unions. Last week Gonzalez Videla had on his desk a bill, passed by Congress' rightist majority, designed to block Concha's efforts and to maintain existing farm labor conditions. The bill restricted each union to the fundo (estate) where its members worked, forbade them to federate, and banned the troublemaking migrant workers from membership. Cream of the clauses was one stipulating that only literate workers could join. This barred 90% of the campesinos.

Man in the Middle. Leftists screamed. Rightist landowners replied that the alternative was to let Communists, who had already grievously hurt the Chilean economy by endless strikes in coal, copper and nitrates, take over the whole business of agricultural production. Gonzalez and his Radicals, who favored genuine, non-political unions, were caught in the cross fire.

Chile was getting another lesson in a familiar contemporary Latin American pattern. Poverty made Communists; Communists used poverty to advance their political ends; reactionaries answered with repressive measures that perpetuated poverty.

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