The
Sino-Soviet ideological dispute, the Soviet Union's
invasion of Czechoslovakia (and other
Warsaw Pact etc. events), the presence of the
Cuban Revolution in Latin America, and the emergent global student movement partially inspired by the thought
Frankfurt School and the
New Left (by the time of the early
opposition to the Vietnam War) were the main ideological issues that the traditional
Chilean left (the
Socialist Party and the
Communist Party) had to deal with amid their relative political stagnation in the beginning of the 1960s. By the early 60s, amidst a political dominance of the right-wing and center-right wing parties strongly supporting US policies, the traditional left parties' "reformist" doctrine of a non-revolutionary road to socialism began to be questioned by different militant groups within those parties. The questioning for changes and the opposition against such changes resulted in several small groups or factions. The Maoists left the Communist Party and the Socialist Party group of students. At the same time, since
World War II, there were some minor Trotskyist formations and minor left-libertarian groups, which also had a discrete ideological influence in the student movement in Santiago and Concepción. The group led by
Miguel Enríquez, temporarily allocated in the cell "Espartaco" at the Socialist Party, called itself the "Revolutionary Socialists" faction. It was formed by Miguel and Marco Antonio Enríquez,
B. Van Schouwen,
Marcello Ferrada de Noli (a left libertarian and then the leader of the socialist cell "Espartaco" in Concepción), and Jorge Gutiérrez. When this fraction was finally ousted from the Socialist Party (Senator Ampuero) in February 1964, it continued as an independent fraction until they merged in the organization VRM. There the young socialists met with Trotskyites, most of them twice their age. When MIR was founded on 12 October 1965 at the locals of an anarchist union in Santiago, less than 100 participated, and all the above ideological tendencies were represented. Revolutionary socialists (by Miguel Enríquez and B. Van Schouwen), former communists (represented by the Maoist Cares), Trotskyists (by Dr. Enrique Sepúlveda and Marco Antonio Enríquez, Miguel Enríquez's brother), left-libertarians or social anarchists (by Marcello Ferrada de Noli), and anarcho-syndicalists (by
Clotario Blest). It took some time before the MIR finally could achieve its ultimate identification as a solely Marxist-Leninist political organization, and this was the work of Miguel Enríquez for the two years to come. The first document approved at MIR foundation congress was the
"Tesis Insurreccional", the political-military theses of MIR. The document was written by Miguel Enríquez (Viriato), Marco Antonio Enríquez (Bravo), and Marcello Ferrada de Noli (Atacama), all three from Concepción. Two reasons explain this document and its co-authorship: The first is that the group of young students from Concepción led by Miguel Enríquez was the most numerous. The second is that the group from Concepción internally had some different ideological profiles, which were represented in the document written by the co-authors. The differences in ideologies are due to the wide support base it drew from. The MIR in Concepión utilized its grassroots approach by relying on a diverse group of organizations to make up its supporters. Students from the university would hold debates and often be open to hearing others opinions on issues that were at hand. The supporters in Concepción have been highlighted by historian Marian Schlotterbeck in her book
Beyond the Vanguard: Every Day Revolutionaries in Allende’s Chile. In her book, she described the structure that was used to organize the sub-groups of the MIR, she said, "delegates would be drawn from the labor federation (CUT), unions, peasants councils, student federations, and pobladores' organizations," pointing towards the diversity of supporters that the movement was able to gather. Moreover, Schlotterbeck also shows how events within the Concepción province attributed to the MIR organization were begun by grassroots actors on their own initiative rather than organized by the party itself, such as the conversion of the private bakery "El Progreso" into the communal bakery "El Pueblo." So, while national party members at Santiago nearly all believed in the Marxist-Leninist style of revolution, the on the ground reality in some cases was distinct with the working class leading the MIR into a socialist revolution rather than the other way around. The
Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia, 1968 was a divisive issue for the Chilean left. Whilst the Allende faction of the Socialist Party remained neutral, the far-left militants of this party opposed the Eastern bloc invasion, as did MIR. In 1969, following the "
Osses case", a direct (non-fatal) operation acted by four militants of MIR in Concepción against the right-wing tabloid
Noticias de la Tarde, the Christian Democratic Party government used the incident to ban the MIR and begin persecution of its known leaders. The government publicized a national list of 13 young MIR leaders for their capture. Among them, all between 22 and 26 and with links to the University of Concepción, were Doctors Miguel Enríquez and
Bautista van Schouwen, Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli, medical student Luciano Cruz, sociologist Nelson Gutiérrez, lawyer Juan Saavedra Gorriategy, civil engineer Aníbal Matamala, and economist
José Goñi (Goñi later became a
Minister of Defense and
ambassador of Chile in the USA). Some of them were captured after spectacular operatives coordinated by the central headquarters of the Chilean Political Police in Santiago, tortured, and imprisoned in the Cárcel of Concepción and in Santiago. On 1 May 1969, fifteen armed MIR guerrillas stormed the
Bío-Bío radio station of Concepción and transmitted a discourse urging the people to take up arms and overthrow the current government. On 21 May, a group of local MIR sympathizers took to the streets of Concepción and attacked the branches of 'The City Bank' in the city and the offices of the
La Patria newspaper. The banning of MIR by the Christian Democratic government in 1969 drastically changed the organization of MIR, which entered a clandestine political existence with semi-autonomous operative-structures that survived even during the first years of the military resistance of MIR against the 1973 Chilean coup. The threat from the MIR was underlined by the discovery at the end of May of a guerrilla training camp in the southern province of
Valdivia. Beginning in March 1968, a series of MIR bomb attacks took place in various parts of the country that targeted, among others, the
U.S. consulate, the
Chilean-American Institute in
Rancagua, the main office of the Christian Democratic Party, the office of Chile's largest-selling
El Mercurio newspaper and the residence of senator
Francisco Bulnes of the
National Party. Although MIR built up an arsenals of
light arms, assault
automatic weapons, and also mobile mortar-launchers from its own handcrafted manufacturing (the
Talleres), MIR supported rather than opposed the
presidency of Salvador Allende and his
People's Unity coalition. Nationwide unrest and
political polarization escalated, as did
left-wing and
right-wing violence. Before 1973, the organization may have staged few attacks compared to its
urban guerrilla peers, but it tried to infiltrate the
Chilean Armed Forces in anticipation of a
coup d'état against Allende and discussed plans to replace the existing police and military with a
militia recruited from the Popular Front's supporters. The MIR commanders, Oscar Garretón and Miguel Enríquez, were tasked with infiltrating
Chilean Navy personnel. In August 1973, it formed the
Revolutionary Coordinating Junta (JCR) with other
South American revolutionary parties (the Argentine
ERP, the Uruguayan
Tupamaros and the Bolivian
National Liberation Army). However, the JCR never achieved real effectiveness. ==The day of the military coup==