Fast Work

In Santiago last week, a student protest against a 14% hike in bus fares turned into ugly rioting over the cost of living. The rioters even tried to rush La Moneda, the presidential palace, but tear gas held them off until palace guards could slam shut the great wooden doors.

Convalescing after a minor operation, President Gabriel Gonzalez Videla got the bulletins at his seaside home in Vina del Mar. An old hand at tackling crises, he ordered his plane made ready for the short flight to the capital, returned to La Moneda on the second day of the rioting.

Gonzalez gave his cabinet a nutshell diagnosis of the situation: "The Communists have taken advantage of the students. We have to stop them at once." Then he put the riot-torn city under military rule, and went into a huddle with his aides to draft a message to Congress asking for special powers.

Called into an emergency midnight session, Congress by morning passed a law giving the President extraordinary powers to arrest, to impose censorship, and to restrict the right of assembly. Gonzalez, who had been up all night, signed the law at 7:30 a.m. The first arrested was former Communist Deputy Humberto Abarca.

The government's fast work brought order to Santiago. Students started back to school, buses ran again. The rioting's toll: 10 dead, 130 injured, 300 arrested.

At week's end, Gonzalez faced what he called another Communist attempt to oust his government. At the undersea coal mines at Lota, south of Santiago, hundreds of strikers (according to official reports) tried to seize the mines. There were also walkouts in the nitrate and copper mines of northern Chile. Again moving quickly, Gonzalez sent armed forces into six strike-hit provinces with orders to take over mines and communications and isolate the strike areas.

The ear-to-the-ground President knew that all the unrest could not be blamed on Communists. "Special powers are not enough," he said. "We must put an end to the origin of the evil...The Communists took advantage of the situation, but also the self-interest of some other quarters is much to blame. Capital was given remunerative prices; now it is time for workers to get the same." He proposed reforms in public medical care, better pension laws. And he ordered bus fares reduced.

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