40 years after the military coup, we libertarians keep our memories fresh for the present and the future. We do not look to the past as a gesture of defeat - rather we looking for confirmation that today's fight is the same one that the popular classes have been carrying on in Chile forever. [Castellano]
43 years on from the rise to power of Unidad Popular, we libertarians are reclaiming the experiences of organization from below which built the buds of socialism, born in the heat of the struggle and propelled by the circumstances and creative power of the people to overcome the strict institutionalism of the Chilean State. In these experiences we recognize the thread that weaves the mobilizations of the workers towards their emancipation. The Cordones Industriales [Industrial Belts] and Comandos Comunales [Neighbourhood Councils] were the ways that workers, the urban poor and the students developed in order to arrive at the road to socialism, in the full understanding that the struggle is much more than a vote or a seat in parliament. Today, like yesterday, we are convinced that the self-organization of the popular classes is the way to achieve our goal: the end of class society and the fullest freedom in the fullest equality.
Today we will be on the streets celebrating the courage and commitment of those millions of anonymous men and women who devoted themselves to the indispensable task of recovering what was always theirs and used every method in their power to hit the bourgeoisie and imperialism. Those who worked tirelessly to build an organized people out of the factories, the poor urban areas and high schools in the early Seventies. Those who fought the dictatorship of terror, torture, rape, murder and disappearances with all their might, and who continue today to resist patriarchy and the wildest imaginable capitalism, strengthening the coordination of struggles in order to build popular power from below today.
We are also marching to remember those who were killed at the hands of civil forces, the Armed Forces and Order & Security Forces who for 17 years instituted a reign of terror. We remember with rage and pain the human rights violations which, however, never completely silenced us. We remember also the desaparecidos and those murdered in those 23 years of democracy. The promoters of consensus and "putting it all behind us" cannot deceive us. They are the same ones who, when they have just cleaned their hands of the blood of the dictator, will make the same bloody mess again in this democracy of the rich. We are the same people, the same force that is conquering its future in every fight.