Die Fäuste vor der Kanone

“The armed forces of Chile, trained in the United States, write a black page of our history with the blood of the workers. In the name of big business, they fulfil their counter-revolutionary duty against the working class in all of Latin America. […] They want to stop a history moving with full force against them, because the workers of Chile stand united and full of courage. […] In this film we’ll show how Imperialism in the 1920s started the first counter-revolution against the workers movement of Chile. Events and people of today are recognisable easily in these distorting mirror images of the past.”

Thus commences one of the first ever feature-length Chilean exile documentaries. Die Fäuste vor der Kanone remembers the desperate origins of Chile’s labour movement around the turn of the century. Especially the period called Patagonia Rebelde when several strikes in saltpetre mines were ruthlessly quelled. Witnesses remember while newspapers and photographs of the day show how eagerly the bourgeoisie collaborated with the owning class. There is a lot to be learned from this history and Ancelovici and Lübbert make sure the audience correctly understands these lessons.

– Olaf Möller