Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)

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Revolutionary Left Movement

Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) (Spanish Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria) is a Chilean political party founded on October 12, 1965. The group emerged from various student organizations and established a base of support among the trade unions and shantytowns of Santiago. Andrés Pascal Allende, a nephew of Salvador Allende, president of Chile from 1970 to 1973, was one of its early leaders. Miguel Enríquez Espinosa was the General Secretary of the party between 1967 and his death in 1974.

MIR considered itself a revolutionary vanguard party and advocated a Marxist-Leninist model of revolution in which it would lead the working class to a "dictatorship of the proletariat".

Although MIR built up small arsenals of light arms, it 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 did try 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. In August, 1973, it finally formed the Revolutionary Coordinating Junta with other South American urban guerrilla parties. These factors may explain both the vigorous and brutal purges of armed forces personnel who were suspected of being sympathetic to Allende after Augusto Pinochet came to power in September, 1973 and the cold power politics of the Operation Condor campaign of counterinsurgency staged throughout the Southern Cone.

During Pinochet's rule, the group was responsible for several attacks on government personnel and buildings, including assassination attempts on Pinochet himself.

After Chile's return to democracy in 1990, the party was resurrected. It currently participates in the Juntos Podemos Más coalition.