The material presented below is the work of great didacts, talented filmmakers and political analysts. Patricio Guzmán, the Chilean documentary filmmaker and author of The Battle of Chile (BOC), filmed literally in the teeth of the bloody Chilean counter-revolution, with his precious footage smuggled out of the country with the help of a brave anti-fascist, none other than Harald Edelstam, the Swedish ambassador (who had already distinguished himself in World War II by rescuing Jews and many anti-fascists from the Nazis), needs no introduction. The documentary, made with little money, and eventually completed with the help of Cuba, is a masterpiece of astute and precise storytelling. Indeed, Guzmán's small team seems to be always wherever something critical is happening:
* in the copper mines, where the workers, the country's "labor aristocracy", stupidly decide to oppose the Allende government;
* surveying the critical truck owners' strike that selfishly and myopically paralysed the country at a decisive moment (an ominous sign that, as Communist party leader Luis Corvalán feared, the middle and lower middle class had not been fully won over to the revolutionary project);
* or within the Chilean Congress itself, where one naked betrayal after another seals Chile's fate in accordance with plans already drawn up in the late 1960s (we now know for certain) in the US White House and in the sordid "intelligence agencies" entrusted with such tasks. All this in perfect coordination with Chile's native oligarchy. 

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And, of course, Guzman's lens also records the debates within the workers' councils - fraught with fear, hope and indecision; the horrible situation in the slums where morale remains unbroken; and the whining and hateful defiance that permeates the halls of the upper class, where a coup is seen as their ticket to salvation from "the filthy communists", a sentiment echoed by threatened upper classes at least since the French Revolution. All this, plus the cascade of events on the streets themselves, where almost in harsh dialectics, constant demonstrations and clashes introduce the viewer to a class struggle in real-time, the likes of which has never before or since been seen on the big screen. To say that anyone truly interested in social change needs to see The Battle of Chile to complete their education is almost to state the obvious.

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To complement the eloquence and lucidity of Guzmán's images, we also offer the reader the work of Jack Woddis, perhaps one of the most underrated geopolitical analysts of the 20th century. Born in Britain and a member of the British Communist Party, Jack spent many years in the merchant navy. Almost entirely self-taught, Jack acquired a formidable education that enabled him to understand the world class struggle as a witness and participant. Author of many books whose relevance remains as strong today as the day they were written, he is probably the only modern analyst to have produced a book focusing exclusively on that crucial phenomenon, the involvement of modern bourgeois armies in counter-revolution. Given that this is a question of immense importance, literally life and death for revolutionaries, as has been seen on so many occasions, from Indonesia to the Congo to the Southern Cone of Latin America, the real question is why more revolutionary thinkers have not explored the factors that explain the behaviour of the military. It is true that the military caste has always been something of a mystery in many cultures. Confined most of the time in their separate barracks and compounds; usually interacting (and relying) only on their own, like the police, they are not really that easy to understand, and yet, as Woddis reminds us, they are not beyond the explanatory power of Marxism.

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The work presented below is a chapter from Woddis's Armies and Politics (1977) that focuses on Chile, more specifically on the 1973 coup that overthrew the Popular Unity government of President Allende. (Contrary to widely accepted chauvinist propaganda, the Chilean army has staged other coups). The book has other segments also worthy of attention, such as the encouraging study of the Portuguese army's 1975 revolution that liberated Portugal from the fascist Salazar dictatorship and also helped liberate Portugal's African colonies (which turned out to be another protracted and painful struggle due to the inevitable meddling of the United States and other powers determined to prevent liberation, but we will leave that for another day). In any case, the Chilean process is extremely important, as Woddis himself underlines in his introduction to the subject. We hope you will read and watch these materials, and share them with your family, friends and colleagues.