Directed by Patricio Guzman • Documentary • 1978 • 78 minutes

THE POWER OF THE PEOPLE deals with the creation by ordinary workers and peasants of thousands of local groups of 'popular power' to distribute food, occupy, guard and run factories and farms, oppose black market profiteering, and link together neighborhood social service organizations. First these local groups of 'popular power' acted as a defense against strikes and lock-outs by factory owners, tradesmen and professional bodies opposed to the Allende government, then increasingly as Soviet-type bodies demanding more resolute action by the government against the right.