Eduardo Artés Brichetti, First Secretary of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action), is running for President of Chile on the Union Patriotica (UPA) ticket.  The following biography was issued by the UPA.  The Chilean general election will be held on November 19, 2017.

Translated by Red Phoenix staff.

Eduardo Artés Brichetti was born in the town of El Tambo, San Vicente de Tagua Tagua, Chile, in 1951. His first years were spent in the rural environment of that town, where he completed part of his primary education in a public school there and later in the city of San Felipe.

Coming from a family of leftist migrant workers Artés settled in Santiago in 1965 at the age of 14, continuing his studies and during the day he laboring as a metallurgical worker.

At that time, he began to make contact with and later joined the Spartacus Movement, student arm of the former Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR), led by then-Senator Jaime Barros Pérez-Cotapos. He was part of the Unitary Movement of Night Students with which he participated in the directive elections of the Student Center in his place of studies.  Later, this was integrated into the formation of the Federation of Night Students (FEDENOCH) whose main banner of struggle and achievement, was the creation of afternoon and evening courses in Chilean universities (it should be remembered that until then higher education had only daytime classes) and that the State promoted the creation in 1966 of the National Training Institute (INACAP) and the Catholic Church in 1968 that of the UC Peasant Worker’s Department (DUOC), favoring young workers in the pursuit of their higher education, with a completely free education.

In the months of January and February of 1969, together with a other young people, he carried out peasant union organizing work in the south of the country, in the provinces of Osorno and Llanquihue, living these two months in different peasant houses inside farms whose owners were recognized landowners  He actively participated in the occupation of these, the last located in the town of “Paso del León” from where he had to flee for two days due to police persecution, later arriving in the city of Osorno.  On this occasion Eduardo Artés was arrested, beaten by police and then interrogated by the PP “Political Police”. He was released on bail, returning to Santiago and did not appear before the courts.

Together with his participation in the struggle of young workers and night students, he was actively involved in the political life of the country, becoming an active member of the Chilean Chinese Culture Institute (founded by the painter José Venturelli, and including former president Salvador Allende, among others) where he studied the experience of the Chinese Revolution (1949) led by Mao Zedong.   He also studied and sympathized with the revolutionary, anti-imperialist and socialist experiences of the People’s Socialist Republic of Albania, led by Enver Hoxha, the Vietnam War of Liberation led by Ho Chi Minh, Democratic Korea led by Kim Il Sung, and Revolutionary Cuba led by Fidel Castro and Ernesto Che Guevara.

The fascist coup d’état of 1973 found him working as a militant of the Santiago Regional Committee of the Revolutionary Communist Party (PCR), a political organization in which he will continue to work until 1979, the year in which a crisis began within the party causing it to dissolve in 1980.  It will be then that from 1979, together with other colleagues, he worked on the founding and development of the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action) — PC (AP), becoming a member of the Political Secretariat of the Central Committee of the party.

During the years of the military dictatorship, comrade Eduardo Artés, along with focusing his efforts on the development and consolidation of the PC (AP), the elaboration of ideological and political documents, the clandestine publication of several newspapers (Proletarian Action, La Truth, Red Star, Workers’ Pen, etc.), participated actively in the formation and actions of the Committees of Resistance to the Pinochet dictatorship; together with other members, he clandestinely founded the Metropolitan Coordinator of Educators, an organization that preceded the Association of Teachers of Chile (AGECH) constituted in 1982. In this regard it is worth remembering that the Chilean Teachers’ Association (CPC) was created by the military regime of Pinochet in 1974, replacing the dissolved Unified Workers Union of Education (SUTE, 1970 – 1973).

As a leader of the National Assembly of Human Rights of the time, he worked actively participating in street protest, periodically visiting political prisoners of different organizations, supporting the organization of settlers, workers, women, students, families of Disappeared Detainees and Political Executives in the struggle for the overthrow of the fascist regime of the Junta Military headed by Augusto Pinochet.

By 1991, as a militant and leader of the PC (AP), he participated in the founding of the Amplio Democrático Allendista Movement (MIDA), also the Broad Front for a Democratic Chile and later the left alliance Poder Democratico y Social (PODEMOS – “Together we CAN”), presenting himself in 2005 as a senatorial candidate for circumscription 7, Santiago Poniente, later he withdrew from this alliance due to differences that existed with the Communist Party of Chile when it called to vote for Michelle Bachelet in the second round of the presidential elections.

He has participated in numerous conferences, meetings and international seminars in Germany, Belgium, Canada, Albania, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, Ecuador, Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina and the People’s Republic of Korea.

In 2015 along with other fighters from different backgrounds, he participated, as founder, of the Patriotic Union (UPA) party whose project is to fight for a New Chile, for a multinational, sovereign, democratic Chile with social justice.

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