Revolutionary Left Movement (Chile)

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Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria Revolutionary Left Movement




Founded	1965

Ideology	Marxism-Leninism Communism Scientific socialism

Website http://www.chile-mir.org/

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 assassination in 1974 by the DINA.

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 (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.

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's 1973 coup d'état and the Operation Condor campaign of state terrorism staged throughout the Southern Cone^{[citation needed]}.

During Pinochet's dictatorship, the group was responsible for several attacks on government personnel and buildings, including assassination attempts on Pinochet himself. The years 1980-1981 the MIR had a guerrila group in Neltume. According to the Rettig Report, MIR leader Jecar Neghme was assassinated in 1989 by Chilean state agents ^[1].

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