Open letter to Daniel Andrade Schwarze

Approximate reading time: 3 minutes, 20 seconds

Comrade Daniel Andrade Schwarze,

former President of the Engineering and FECH Student Center

Former Democratic Revolution Leader

Dear Daniel,

I address you publicly as a way to accompany you in the festivities at the end of this eventful year 2023. What surprises you in political prison in Antofagasta, where you were taken in such an aberrantly unjust and ignominiously public manner.

You are the main victim of a ferocious attack from the darkest part of our society, incited and generously financed by the great abusers of our people, the same ones who half a century ago managed to overthrow the Popular Unity government and lead President Salvador Allende to martyrdom.

This cunning attack is certainly not directed only against you, but against what you have brilliantly represented, your former party and political generation, born and trained in the new rise of the massive political struggle that our people began a decade and a half ago, which broke out on October 18 and, enduring an unprecedented pandemic, it has been sustained and manifested in the 19 national elections held since then.

With your imprisonment they seek to crush and tear apart your entire young and extraordinarily qualified cohort, singularly honest and honest perhaps even to the point of naivety, to whom they have contemptuously snapped that “they had it all and lost it all.”

Nor is this reactionary offensive directed at your political generation, but it is also directed against the notable revolutionary, democratic and progressive cohorts that have preceded them.

Particularly noteworthy among them are those that were born and trained in the heat of the previous massive irruptions of our people in politics, in the ’80s and of course in the ’60s and early ’70s, of the last century.

The latter, to which I have the immense privilege of belonging, was born from the popular irruption that already resides in the hearts and minds of our people and will be considered by history, nothing less than the Chilean Revolution with a capital letter, carried out by for the first time in an impeccably democratic and singularly peaceful manner.

This is how the tragic background of La Moneda in flames has already been engraved in the heart of humanity, elevating the figure of its leader, Comrade President Salvador Allende, to the heights of universal history.

You have nothing to regret, much less be ashamed, nothing, of what has brought you to the place where you are this end of the year. Quite the contrary, you should take pride in being there representing everyone. They are perks of the noble job of popular politician that you have embraced.

We will never forget the dignity and intelligence with which you have behaved in these difficult times. That’s how people know each other, in hard times.

My generation, for example, which, like yours, knew at a very young age the most extraordinary successes and victories of the people, was not in these where it affirms its self-esteem and respect today, but in the dignified manner in which we behave when, as inevitably happens in politics and in life, we endure the most atrocious of defeats.

It was the same September 11, 1973 where we forged the broad democratic alliance that resisted from day one, weaving a protective veil that could be painfully pierced but never penetrated by the dictatorship.

Thus protected, we learned to fight in all areas until a decade later assuming the leadership of the people in their new massive political irruption, the most heroic of all, which ended the dictatorship and recovered democracy.

That same alliance suffered political and personal divisions, but never definitive ruptures, then elected all the progressive Presidencies and accomplished great things in the three decades that followed.

However, unfortunately, he never even attempted to decisively confront the restored, hateful and fanatical offspring of the old agrarian oligarchy.

Nor did they set out to put an end to the great abuses that were then imposed on our people and that remain the same and worse to this day.

Ending what began on September 11, 1973, as a talented but very reactionary journalist said, is the trance in which we have found ourselves since 18-O and the one that has you imprisoned in these end-of-year celebrations.

I have no doubt that the Judiciary, whose profound change for the better is one of the great works of these thirty years, will soon get you out of prison and will adequately compensate you for the arbitrariness to which they subject you today.

I also have no doubt that the broad alliance that ended the dictatorship and that has been reshaped with the support of the majority of the people in the recent plebiscite, will be able to rise to the challenges of today, which are not minor.

I trust it will correct a wrong course and a pernicious and petty “back-and-forth” that is also responsible for you finding yourself imprisoned today.

I trust that our broad coalition will strengthen itself in adversity as we did half a century ago, will stop putting up with being beaten on the ropes and will go on the offensive, hitting the chins of our adversaries.

Thoroughly using the broad legal powers of the considerable political power that it currently holds, to carry out or at least convince the people of its decision to carry out, the necessary reforms. Those whose postponement leads people without exception to catastrophe, in the words that President Arturo Alessandri Palma cried out without being heard a century ago.

With the determination and loyalty to the people that constitutes the legacy of President Allende.

When this happens, the sacrifice that you endure today on behalf of the rest and the entire people will not be forgotten.

A big end-of-year hug from your old companion and friend comes to you through your mother Paulina Schwarze, who accompanies you at all times and has the kindness to keep your comrades informed up to the minute of how you are doing.

Manuel Riesco

Vice-President Cenda

former president of the Engineering Student Center and former vice president of FECH

former MAPU leader and Communist Party of Chile