For 24 hours last week. Chile's economy lay in a coma: mines, factories and banks were idle, steel shutters covered shop windows. Some 500,000 workers were out on a one-day general strike.
The C.U.T.. Chile's biggest labor federation, staged the strike as a protest against the arrest of its president, Clotario Blest, who had made a rabble-rousing speech denouncing President Carlos Ibanez and his Cabinet as "traitors to the fatherland." Blest was released on bail a fortnight ago, but the strike was called anyway. It was an ugly symptom of the nation's...
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