The 1972 October strike (), also known as the "bosses' strike" or the "truckers' strike", was a month-long general strike carried out in Chile from 9 October to 5 November 1972 against the Popular Unity government of President Salvador Allende. It began with an indefinite strike by transport operators in Aysén Province, triggered by the government's decision to establish a state transport company in the province, amid longstanding grievances over freight rates and other operating conditions. The movement was taken nationwide on 9 October by the National Confederation of Truck Owners (CNDC), led by León Vilarín, and quickly expanded to include shopkeepers, small manufacturers, bus and taxi operators, and professional associations representing doctors, lawyers, engineers and other groups.
The strike took place amid a severe economic crisis: expansionary monetary policy and price controls introduced under Economy Minister Pedro Vuskovic contributed to widespread shortages, a growing black market, and rapidly accelerating inflation. The official consumer price index rose by 163.4 percent between December 1971 and December 1972, while some analysts estimated that effective inflation exceeded 200 percent by the end of the year. The government initially maintained an overvalued exchange rate and subsequently introduced devaluations as the economic crisis worsened. Official price-fixing produced acute shortages and a flourishing black market in which many goods were sold well above their official prices; in response, the government created a national distribution company and neighborhood-level Supply and Price Control Boards (JAP) to ration scarce goods.
Declassified U.S. government records later documented CIA funding of Chilean private-sector organizations and the opposition newspaper El Mercurio as part of the Nixon administration's broader covert effort against Allende's government. The extent to which CIA-linked funding directly supported the October strike is less clear: the Church Committee found that the 40 Committee did not authorize funds to be given directly to the truckers, although anti-government strikers were supported by several private-sector groups that received CIA funds; the CIA subsequently learned that one such group had passed $2,800 directly to strikers.
President Allende declared a state of emergency in 18 of Chile's 25 provinces, ordered the arrest of strike leaders, and used the government's experimental Cybersyn telex network to coordinate roughly 200 loyalist trucks that kept essential goods moving into Santiago. The opposition's National Trade Union Defense Command responded with a set of political and economic demands published as a newspaper insertion known as El pliego de Chile ("Chile's list of demands"), calling for an end to expropriations, the return of nationalized enterprises to private owners, and constitutional limits on the presidency. Sources differ on the number of deaths associated with the strike: some identify four fatalities, while historian Francisco Javier Morales Aguilera counted as many as seven.
The strike ended on 5 November 1972 after Allende reshuffled his cabinet, bringing active-duty military officers into government—including army commander Carlos Prats as interior minister—in an attempt to restore order and reassure the opposition. Strike leaders who had been arrested during the conflict were subsequently released. Historians regard the strike as the first of a series of "bosses' strikes" that punctuated Allende's presidency, deepening the country's political polarization, drawing the armed forces further into politics, and establishing a template that opposition groups repeated in a second, longer truckers' strike in July–August 1973 shortly before the military coup that overthrew Allende.
Background
In its first year in office, the Popular Unity government succeeded in lowering inflation, but the expansionary "Vuskovic Plan" of 1971–72 initially maintained an overvalued exchange rate; the escudo was subsequently devalued as the economic situation deteriorated. The economy contracted by about 1.2 percent in 1972. The official consumer price index rose by 163.4 percent between December 1971 and December 1972, while contemporary and later analysts argued that the official index understated effective inflation because of the abnormal functioning of markets; economist Roberto Zahler estimated that effective inflation exceeded 200 percent by the end of 1972. Official price-fixing produced acute shortages and a flourishing black market in which many goods were sold well above their official prices; in response, the government created a national distribution company and neighborhood-level Supply and Price Control Boards (JAP) to ration scarce goods.
These measures failed to reverse the crisis, and discontent grew, particularly among the middle and upper classes. On 1 December 1971, thousands of women marched from Plaza Italia to the presidential palace, La Moneda, banging empty pots and pans to protest food shortages during a visit by Cuban leader Fidel Castro; the demonstration, backed by opposition parties, was attacked by pro-government militants and led the government to declare a state of siege. The "March of the Empty Pots and Pans" gave rise to the multi-class women's organization Poder Femenino ("Feminine Power"), which went on to petition and demonstrate against the government and to support later opposition mobilizations, including the October 1972 strike. On 21 August 1972, shopkeepers staged a one-day "warning strike" after the death of merchant Manuel Aguilar García during a confrontation with police, a protest joined by the Federation of Secondary Students of Santiago (FESES).
Course of the strike
Outbreak The immediate trigger for the Aysén transport strike was the government's decision, through the CORFO-Aysén institute, to establish a state transport company in the province. The proposal was officially described as complementary to private transport, but it was opposed by local transport operators, who saw it as contrary to earlier agreements with the government. Longstanding grievances also included freight rates, fuel, tires and spare parts.
The Aysén transport operators declared an indefinite provincial strike on 1 October 1972. The action was subsequently supported by transport organizations elsewhere, and on 9 October the National Confederation of Truck Owners (CNDC), led by León Vilarín and backed by other trade associations, called an indefinite national strike, sharply worsening the distribution of goods across the country. Contemporary U.S. wire reports described the strike as posing "a crippling blow" to Allende's government, noting that talks between the truckers and the government had broken down before the walkout began.
Interior Minister Jaime Suárez Bastidas branded the strike "political, illegal, and seditious," and Vilarín and other transport leaders were arrested and taken to the Santiago Public Prison on the night of 10 October. Truckers responded by blockading the country's main highways on 12 October, producing shortages of fuel and other essential goods; Allende declared a state of emergency in 18 provinces, placing them under military control, and about 160 drivers and truck owners, including Vilarín, were formally charged with violating Chile's internal security law, while Chilean sources later put the number of people detained nationwide at around 300. The strike leaders and other detainees were subsequently released as the conflict was brought to an end. The far-right Frente Nacionalista Patria y Libertad and the Comando Rolando Matus sabotaged roads by scattering tire-puncturing spikes known as miguelitos to hinder vehicle traffic.
Spread of the movement As the strike progressed, it was gradually joined by urban transport operators, the Confederation of Retail Trade (Confedech), led by Rafael Cumsille; the Confederation of Small Industry and Crafts (Conupia); the Confederation of Production and Commerce (CPC), chaired by Jorge Fontaine; and the association of microbus and taxi-bus owners. The Chilean Medical College and FESES joined on 17 October, followed by associations of engineers, lawyers, dentists, teachers, port workers, pilots of the state airline LAN Chile, and the Catholic University student federation, leaving the country virtually paralyzed. Cumsille himself was jailed on 18 October.
An American academic account of the period estimated that the CNDC's membership—almost entirely owners of one or two trucks—was joined within weeks by bus and taxi drivers, shopkeepers, doctors, nurses, dentists, airline pilots, engineers, and part of the peasantry, with the opposition Christian Democratic and rightist parties lending their support; the work stoppage was estimated to have cost Chile $150–200 million in lost production. A wire report two weeks into the strike found nearly all of Chile's roughly 155,000 shopkeepers had shut their doors in sympathy, gasoline was rationed, and doctors, dentists, nurses, airline pilots, private bus owners, university students, engineers, small farmers and bank clerks had joined walkouts or sit-ins. A U.S. intelligence memorandum from mid-October likewise reported that shopkeepers and small businesses had joined the strike with at least 65 percent effectiveness and that some professional groups, including engineers and doctors, had signaled they might follow suit.
In response, the pro-government Frente Patriótico de Mujeres (Women's Patriotic Front) was formed on 17 October to organize volunteer distribution of basic goods and offset the effects of the trucking shortage, while the director of the State Railway Company, Alfredo Rojas Castañeda, reported that trains kept running as usual to guarantee supplies to the population during the strike. Left-wing grassroots organizations in working-class neighborhoods also organized alternative food-distribution and transportation networks during the strike, an expression of what participants called "popular power"; the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) supported these initiatives as part of its emphasis on bottom-up political organizing.
The Cybersyn telex network The government also drew on the still-experimental Project Cybersyn, a computer system built to manage the nationalized sector of the economy in real time. Its most complete component, a telex network linking state-run factories and agencies, proved useful during the strike even though the system's more ambitious features were never finished. Using the network, officials tracked which roads remained open and which drivers had stayed loyal to the government, and coordinated a fleet of roughly 200 non-striking trucks to bring food and fuel into Santiago even as tens of thousands of trucks sat idle. Stafford Beer, the British cybernetician who designed the system, estimated that the telex network was carrying roughly 2,000 messages a day at the height of the crisis. Eden Medina's history of the project similarly credits the telex network with helping the Allende government coordinate the movement of essential supplies during the strike.
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