CHILE: Miguel Enriquez, the Man Behind the Legend

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo González

SANTIAGO, Oct 6 2004 (IPS) - The 30th anniversary of the death of Miguel Enríquez, leader of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), was commemorated this week in Chile with tributes aimed at remembering the human side of one of the country’s most legendary political figures.

Enríquez was gunned down on Oct. 5, 1974 when secret police and military forces burst into the house in Santiago where he had been living underground, organising resistance to the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet (1973-1990).

A two-hour shootout ensued, although the house’s occupants were greatly outnumbered. Enríquez’s common-law wife, Carmen Castillo, who was eight months pregnant at the time, was seriously wounded. She gave birth to their son, Miguel Angel, in exile, but he died within weeks of birth and his remains are now buried in a London cemetery.

In one of the most moving ceremonies held to mark this anniversary, Castillo and a group of former MIR leaders went to the house in Santiago where a miniature shrine pays homage to the fallen revolutionary who was shot down there.

The ambush was organised by the now-defunct National Intelligence Directorate (DINA), Chile’s secret police, and carried out with back-up from army troops. Even a helicopter was used in the operation. Nevertheless, two other MIR leaders managed to escape with their lives, José Bordaz and Humberto Sotomayor.

Enríquez, a doctor by profession, was barely 30 years old at the time of his death. In 1967, at the age of 23, he was elected general secretary of the MIR. He had been one of the founders of the group in 1965, along with other young people critical of what they saw as the "reformist" stances of the Communist and Socialist Parties, the traditional bastions of Marxism in Chile.

Inspired by the Cuban revolution and Argentine-Cuban revolutionary Ernesto Che Guevara, the MIR planted the seeds of insurrectionist struggle in Chile during the administration of Christian Democrat Eduardo Frei Montalva (1964-1970).

The MIR’s revolutionary propaganda activities were suspended during the presidential campaign that led to the 1970 victory of the Popular Unity left-wing coalition, headed by Socialist Salvador Allende. With Allende as president, Enríquez and his party adopted a "supportive but critical" position towards the new government.

For some analysts, the push for more radical action by the Popular Unity government, exerted by the MIR and factions within the Socialist Party and the United Popular Action Movement (MAPU), was what led to the extreme political polarisation in Chile that created the conditions for the military coup on Sep. 11, 1973.

In Enríquez’s view, however, the coup demonstrated "the failure of the reformists, not the revolutionaries," and he sought to reverse this defeat through armed resistance to the Pinochet regime.

His group adopted the slogan "The MIR does not seek asylum" to highlight how it differed from other left-wing groups, whose leaders escaped the dictatorship under the protection of foreign embassies. Ultimately, this stance proved suicidal for the MIR, which lost most of its leaders between 1973 and 1976.

Nevertheless, what many saw as the heroic death of Miguel Enríquez proved to be a significant political asset for the MIR, especially in terms of international support, and the group was able to rebuild and organise guerrilla actions against the dictatorship in the early 1980s.

But the "revolutionary leftists" of the MIR and other proponents of "popular rebellion", like the Communist Party, were eventually overshadowed by the growing movement to seek a peaceful return to democracy, led by the centre-left forces of opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship.

On Oct. 5, 1988, exactly 14 years after Enríquez was shot down, Pinochet was finally defeated through a presidential plebiscite, which opened the way for elections in December 1989. The democratically elected government led by Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin took power on Mar. 11, 1990.

IPS asked a group of 15 university students, "What is being commemorated this Oct. 5?" Almost all of them responded, "The victory of the ‘No’ vote," referring to the 1988 plebiscite, when Chileans had to vote "Yes" or "No" on whether Pinochet should remain in power. Only one answered, "The death of Miguel Enríquez."

In leftist circles, however, the 30th anniversary of the MIR leader’s death in combat has been marked with a series of events focused primarily on Enríquez as an individual, and on the significance of the "revolutionary left" in the history of Chile and Latin America.

For the first time in many years, Enríquez’s successor as MIR general secretary, Andrés Pascal Allende, has engaged in public debate with Nelson Gutiérrez, another of its former top leaders.

In the mid-1980s, the group split into three factions: the Political MIR, led by Gutiérrez, the Political-Military MIR, led by Pascal, and the Military MIR, led by Hernán Aguiló, who lived underground in Chile throughout the entire dictatorship.

Martín Hernández, yet another former leader of the group, commented on Tuesday, "At the time of the final battles against the dictatorship, the MIR, which had started this struggle almost single-handedly, was exhausted and completely incapable of influencing events." Hernández headed up a failed attempt to rebuild the party until just a few years ago.

The MIR’s dissolution has done nothing to diminish the legacy of Enríquez, however. His name lives on through a group that calls itself the Miguel Enríquez Rebel Youth, while his life and death serve as inspiration for other small organisations seeking to revive the so-called revolutionary left.

"Myth, legend, hero, symbol? There are many ways of looking at Miguel Enríquez," said journalist Hugo Guzmán. But what is most remarkable, he added, is the fact that he continues to inspire and motivate the young, while remaining so firmly in the hearts and minds of older generations.

"Miguel’s whole being, his entire existence, revolved around life and his love of life. His revolutionary ideals were totally tied in with who he was as a person; he had no interest in being a martyr or a messiah," said Carmen Castillo, who is now a filmmaker living in Paris, but travelled to Chile for the tributes to Enríquez.

A similar desire to remember the man behind the legend was the inspiration for a new documentary, Miguel: la humanidad de un mito (Miguel: The Human Side of a Myth). Made by journalist Víctor Gómez, the documentary features testimonials from numerous personalities, including poet Gonzalo Rojas, winner of the 2003 Cervantes Prize, a prestigious Spanish literary award.

"We wanted to present a human portrait of Miguel, totally removed from the pamphleteering you typically get in these kinds of biographical documentaries," Gómez told IPS.