FROM ONE OF THE MOST neglected outposts of the Spanish Empire, Chile
developed into one of the most prosperous and democratic nations in
Latin America. Throughout its history, however, Chile has depended on
great external powers for economic exchange and political influence:
Spain in the colonial period, Britain in the nineteenth century, and the
United States in the twentieth century.
Chile's dependence is made most evident by the country's heavy
reliance on exports. These have included silver and gold in the colonial
period, wheat in the mid-nineteenth century, nitrates up to World War I,
copper after the 1930s, and a variety of commodities sold overseas in
more recent years. The national economy's orientation toward the
extraction of primary products has gone hand in hand with severe
exploitation of workers. Beginning with the coerced labor of native
Americans during the Spanish conquest, the exploitation continued with
mestizo peonage on huge farms in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
and brutal treatment of miners in the north in the first decade of the
twentieth century. The most recent victimization of workers occurred
during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (1973-90),
when unions were suppressed and wages were depressed, unemployment
increased, and political parties were banned.
Another persistent feature of Chile's economic history has been the
conflict over land in the countryside, beginning when the Spaniards
displaced the indigenous people during their sixteenthcentury conquest.
Later chapters of this struggle have included the expansion of the great
estates during the ensuing four centuries and the agrarian reform
efforts of the 1960s and 1970s.
Politically, Chile has also conformed to several patterns. Since
winning independence in 1818, the nation has had a history of civilian
rule surpassed by that of few countries in the world. In the nineteenth
century, Chile became the first country in Latin America to install a
durable constitutional system of government, which encouraged the
development of an array of political parties. Military intervention in
politics has been rare in Chile, occurring only at times of
extraordinary social crisis, as in 1891, 1924, 1925, 1932, and 1973.
These interventions often brought about massive transformations; all the
fundamental changes in the Chilean political system and its
constitutions have occurred with the intervention of the armed forces,
acting in concert with civilian politicians.
From 1932 to 1973, Chile built on its republican tradition by
sustaining one of the most stable, reformist, and representative
democracies in the world. Although elitist and conservative in some
respects, the political system provided for the peaceful transfer of
power and the gradual incorporation of new contenders. Undergirding that
system were Chile's strong political parties, which were often attracted
to foreign ideologies and formulas. Having thoroughly permeated society,
these parties were able to withstand crushing blows from the Pinochet
regime of 1973-90.
Republican political institutions were able to take root in Chile in
the nineteenth century before new social groups demanded participation.
Contenders from the middle and lower classes gradually were assimilated
into an accommodating political system in which most disputes were
settled peacefully, although disruptions related to the demands of
workers often met a harsh, violent response. The system expanded to
incorporate more and more competing regional, anticlerical, and economic
elites in the nineteenth century. The middle classes gained political
offices and welfare benefits in the opening decades of the twentieth
century. From the 1920s to the 1940s, urban laborers obtained
unionization rights and participated in reformist governments. In the
1950s, women finally exercised full suffrage and became a decisive
electoral force. And by the 1960s, rural workers achieved influence with
reformist parties, widespread unionization, and land reform.
As the political system evolved, groups divided on either side of six
main issues. The first and most important in the nineteenth century was
the role of the Roman Catholic Church in political, social, and economic
affairs. Neither of the two major parties, the Conservative Party and
the Liberal Party, opposed the practice of Catholicism. However, the
Conservatives defended the church's secular prerogatives; the Liberals
(and later the Nationals, Radicals, Democrats, and Marxists) took
anticlerical positions.
The second source of friction was regionalism, although less virulent
than in some larger Latin American countries. In the north and south,
reform groups became powerful, especially the Conservatives holding sway
in Chile's Central Valley (Valle Central), who advocated opposition to
the establishment. Regional groups made a significant impact on
political life in Chile: they mobilized repeated rebellions against the
central government from the 1830s through the 1850s; helped replace a
centralizing president with a political system dominated by the National
Congress (hereafter, Congress) and local bosses in the 1890s; elected
Arturo Alessandri Palma (1920-24, 1925, 1932-38) as the chief executive
representing the north against the central oligarchy in 1920; and cast
exceptional percentages of their ballots for reformist and leftist
candidates (especially Radicals, Communists, and Socialists) from the
1920s to the 1970s. Throughout the twentieth century, leaders outside
Santiago also pleaded for administrative decentralization until the
Pinochet government devolved greater authority on provincial and
municipal governments and even moved Congress from Santiago to Valpara�so.
The third issue dividing Chileans--social class--grew in importance
from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. Although both the
Conservatives and the Liberals represented the upper stratum, in the
nineteenth century the Radicals began to speak on behalf of many in the
middle class, and the Democrats built a base among urban artisans and
workers. In the twentieth century, the Socialists and Communists became
the leaders of organized labor. Along with the Christian Democratic
Party, these parties attracted adherents among impoverished people in
the countryside and the urban slums.
In the twentieth century, three other issues became salient, although
not as significant as divisions over social class, regionalism, or the
role of the church. One was the cleavage between city and country, which
was manifested politically by the leftist parties' relative success in
the urban areas and by the rightist groups in the countryside. Another
source of strife was ideology; most Chilean parties after World War I
sharply defined themselves in terms of programmatic and philosophical
differences, often imported from abroad, including liberalism, Marxism,
corporatism, and communitarianism. Gender also became a political issue
and divider. After women began voting for president in 1952, they were
more likely than men to cast ballots for rightist or centrist
candidates.
As Chile's political parties grew, they attracted followers not only
on the basis of ideology but also on the basis of patronclient
relationships between candidates and voters. These ties were
particularly important at the local level, where mediation with
government agencies, provision of public employment, and delivery of
public services were more crucial than ideological battles waged on the
national stage. Over generations, these bonds became tightly woven,
producing within the parties fervent and exclusive subcultures nurtured
in the family, the community, and the workplace. As a result, by the
mid-twentieth century the parties had politicized schools, unions,
professional associations, the media, and virtually all other components
of national life. The intense politicization of modern Chile has its
roots in events of the nineteenth century.
During the colonial period and most of the twentieth century, the
central state played an active role in the economy until many of its
functions were curtailed by the military government of General Pinochet.
State power was highly centralized from the 1830s to the 1970s, to the
ire of the outlying provinces.
Although normally governed by civilians, Chile has been militaristic
in its dealings with native people, workers, and neighboring states. In
the twentieth century, it has been a supporter of arbitration in
international disputes. In foreign policy, Chile has long sought to be
the strongest power on the Pacific Coast of South America, and it has
always shied away from diplomatic entanglements outside the Americas.
Chile - PRECOLUMBIAN CIVILIZATIONS
At the time the Spanish arrived, a variety of Amerindian societies
inhabited what is now Chile. No elaborate, centralized, sedentary
civilization reigned supreme, even though the Inca Empire had penetrated
the northern land of the future state. As the Spaniards would after
them, the Incas encountered fierce resistance from the indigenous
Araucanians, particularly the Mapuche tribe, and so did not exert
control in the south. During their attempts at conquest in 1460 and
1491, the Incas established forts in the Central Valley of Chile, but
they could not colonize the region. In the north, the Incas were able to
collect tribute from small groups of fishermen and oasis farmers but
were not able to establish a strong cultural presence.
The Araucanians, a fragmented society of hunters, gatherers, and
farmers, constituted the largest native American group in Chile. A
mobile people who engaged in trade and warfare with other indigenous
groups, they lived in scattered family clusters and small villages.
Although the Araucanians had no written language, they did use a common
language. Those in what became central Chile were more settled and more
likely to use irrigation. Those in the south combined slash-and-burn
agriculture with hunting.
The Araucanians, especially those in the south, became famous for
their staunch resistance to the seizure of their territory. Scholars
speculate that their total population may have numbered 1 million at
most when the Spaniards arrived in the 1530s; a century of European
conquest and disease reduced that number by at least half. During the
conquest, the Araucanians quickly added horses and European weaponry to
their arsenal of clubs and bows and arrows. They became adept at raiding
Spanish settlements and, albeit in declining numbers, managed to hold
off the Spaniards and their descendants until the late nineteenth
century.
The Araucanians' valor inspired the Chileans to mythologize them as
the nation's first national heroes, a status that did nothing, however,
to elevate the wretched living standard of their descendants. Of the
three Araucanian groups, the one that mounted the most resistance to the
Spanish was the Mapuche, meaning "people of the land."
Chile - CONQUEST AND COLONIZATION, 1535-1810
Politics and War in a Frontier Society
Chile's first known European discoverer, Ferdinand Magellan, stopped
there during his voyage on October 21, 1520. A concerted attempt at
colonization began when Diego de Almagro, a companion of conqueror
Francisco Pizarro, headed south from Peru in 1535. Disappointed at the
dearth of mineral wealth and deterred by the pugnacity of the native
population in Chile, Almagro returned to Peru in 1537, where he died in
the civil wars that took place among the conquistadors.
The second Spanish expedition from Peru to Chile was begun by Pedro
de Valdivia in 1540. Proving more persistent than Almagro, he founded
the capital city of Santiago on February 12, 1541. Valdivia managed to
subdue many northern Amerindians, forcing them to work in mines and
fields. He had far less success with the Araucanians of the south,
however.
Valdivia (1541-53) became the first governor of the captaincy general
of Chile, which was the colonial name until 1609. In that post, he
obeyed the viceroy of Peru and, through him, the king of Spain and his
bureaucracy. Responsible to the governor, town councils known as cabildos
administered local municipalities, the most important of which was
Santiago, which was the seat of a royal audiencia from 1609
until the end of colonial rule.
Seeking more precious metals and slave labor, Valdivia established
fortresses farther south. Being so scattered and small, however, they
proved difficult to defend against Araucanian attack. Although Valdivia
found small amounts of gold in the south, he realized that Chile would
have to be primarily an agricultural colony.
In December 1553, an Araucanian army of warriors, organized by the
legendary Mapuche chief Lautaro (Valdivia's former servant), assaulted
and destroyed the fort of Tucapel. Accompanied by only fifty soldiers,
Valdivia rushed to the aid of the fort, but all his men perished at the
hands of the Mapuche in the Battle of Tucapel. Valdivia himself fled but
was later tracked down, tortured, and killed by Lautaro. Although
Lautaro was killed by Spaniards in the Battle of Mataquito in 1557, his
chief, Caupolic�n, continued the fight until his capture by treachery
and his subsequent execution by the Spaniards in 1558. The uprising of
1553-58 became the most famous instance of Araucanian resistance;
Lautaro in later centuries became a revered figure among Chilean
nationalists. It took several more years to suppress the rebellion.
Thereafter, the Araucanians no longer threatened to drive the Spanish
out, but they did destroy small settlements from time to time. Most
important, the Mapuche held on to their remaining territory for another
three centuries.
Despite inefficiency and corruption in the political system,
Chileans, like most Spanish Americans, exhibited remarkable loyalty to
crown authority throughout nearly three centuries of colonial rule.
Chileans complained about certain policies or officials but never
challenged the regime. It was only when the king of Spain was overthrown
at the beginning of the nineteenth century that Chileans began to
consider self-government.
Chileans resented their reliance on Peru for governance, trade, and
subsidies, but not enough to defy crown authority. Many Chilean criollos
(creoles, or Spaniards born in the New World) also resented domination
by the peninsulares (Spaniards, usually officials, born in the
Old World and residing in an overseas colony), especially in the
sinecures of royal administration. However, local Chilean elites,
especially landowners, asserted themselves in politics well before any
movement for independence. Over time, these elites captured numerous
positions in the local governing apparatus, bought favors from the
bureaucracy, co-opted administrators from Spain, and came to exercise
informal authority in the countryside.
Society in Chile was sharply divided along ethnic, racial, and class
lines. Peninsulares and criollos dominated the tiny upper
class. Miscegenation between Europeans and the indigenous people
produced a mestizo population that quickly outnumbered the Spaniards.
Farther down the social ladder were a few African slaves and large
numbers of native Americans.
The Roman Catholic Church served as the main buttress of the
government and the primary instrument of social control. Compared with
its counterparts in Peru and Mexico, the church in Chile was not very
rich or powerful. On the frontier, missionaries were more important than
the Catholic hierarchy. Although usually it supported the status quo,
the church produced the most important defenders of the indigenous
population against Spanish atrocities. The most famous advocate of human
rights for the native Americans was a Jesuit, Luis de Valdivia (no
relation to Pedro de Valdivia), who struggled, mostly in vain, to
improve their lot in the period 1593-1619.
Cut off to the north by desert, to the south by the Araucanians, to
the east by the Andes Mountains, and to the west by the ocean, Chile
became one of the most centralized, homogeneous colonies in Spanish
America. Serving as a sort of frontier garrison, the colony found itself
with the mission of forestalling encroachment by Araucanians and by
Spain's European enemies, especially the British and the Dutch. In
addition to the Araucanians, buccaneers and English adventurers menaced
the colony, as was shown by Sir Francis Drake's 1578 raid on Valpara�so,
the principal port. Because Chile hosted one of the largest standing
armies in the Americas, it was one of the most militarized of the
Spanish possessions, as well as a drain on the treasury of Peru.
Throughout the colonial period, the Spaniards engaged in frontier
combat with the Araucanians, who controlled the territory south of the R�o
B�o-B�o (about 500 kilometers south of Santiago) and waged guerrilla
warfare against the invaders. During many of those years, the entire
southern region was impenetrable by Europeans. In the skirmishes, the
Spaniards took many of their defeated foes as slaves. Missionary
expeditions to Christianize the Araucanians proved risky and often
fruitless.
Most European relations with the native Americans were hostile,
resembling those later existing with nomadic tribes in the United
States. The Spaniards generally treated the Mapuche as an enemy nation
to be subjugated and even exterminated, in contrast to the way the
Aztecs and the Incas treated the Mapuche, as a pool of subservient
laborers. Nevertheless, the Spaniards did have some positive interaction
with the Mapuche. Along with warfare, there also occurred some
miscegenation, intermarriage, and acculturation between the colonists
and the indigenous people.
Chile - The Colonial Economy
The government played a significant role in the colonial economy. It
regulated and allocated labor, distributed land, granted monopolies, set
prices, licensed industries, conceded mining rights, created public
enterprises, authorized guilds, channeled exports, collected taxes, and
provided subsidies. Outside the capital city, however, colonists often
ignored or circumvented royal laws. In the countryside and on the
frontier, local landowners and military officers frequently established
and enforced their own rules.
The economy expanded under Spanish rule, but some criollos complained
about royal taxes and limitations on trade and production. Although the
crown required that most Chilean commerce be with Peru, smugglers
managed to sustain some illegal trade with other American colonies and
with Spain itself. Chile exported to Lima small amounts of gold, silver,
copper, wheat, tallow, hides, flour, wine, clothing, tools, ships, and
furniture. Merchants, manufacturers, and artisans became increasingly
important to the Chilean economy.
Mining was significant, although the volume of gold and silver
extracted in Chile was far less than the output of Peru or Mexico. The
conquerors appropriated mines and washings from the native people and
coerced them into extracting the precious metal for the new owners. The
crown claimed one-fifth of all the gold produced, but the miners
frequently cheated the treasury. By the seventeenth century, depleted
supplies and the conflict with the Araucanians reduced the quantity of
gold mined in Chile.
Because precious metals were scarce, most Chileans worked in
agriculture. Large landowners became the local elite, often maintaining
a second residence in the capital city. Traditionally, most historians
have considered these great estates (called haciendas or fundos)
inefficient and exploitive, but some scholars have claimed that they
were more productive and less cruel than is conventionally depicted.
The haciendas initially depended for their existence on the land and
labor of the indigenous people. As in the rest of Spanish America, crown
officials rewarded many conquerors according to the encomienda
system, by which a group of native Americans would be commended or
consigned temporarily to their care. The grantees, called encomenderos,
were supposed to Christianize their wards in return for small tribute
payments and service, but they usually took advantage of their charges
as laborers and servants. Many encomenderos also appropriated
native lands. Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the encomenderos
fended off attempts by the crown and the church to interfere with their
exploitation of the indigenous people.
The Chilean colony depended heavily on coerced labor, whether it was
legally slave labor or, like the wards of the encomenderos,
nominally free. Wage labor initially was rare in the colonial period; it
became much more common in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Because few native Americans or Africans were available, the mestizo
population became the main source of workers for the growing number of
latifundios, which were basically synonymous with haciendas.
Those workers attached to the estates as tenant farmers became known
as inquilinos. Many of them worked outside the cash economy,
dealing in land, labor, and barter. The countryside was also populated
by small landholders (minifundistas), migrant workers (afuerinos),
and a few Mapuche holding communal lands (usually under legal title).
Chile - Bourbon Reforms, 1759-96
Aristocratic Chileans began considering independence only when the
authority and legitimacy of the crown were cast in doubt by Napoleon
Bonaparte's invasion of Spain in 1807. Napoleon replaced the Spanish
king with his brother, Joseph Bonaparte. On the peninsula, Spanish
loyalists formed juntas that claimed they would govern both the
motherland and the colonies until the rightful king was restored. Thus,
Chileans, like other Spanish Americans, had to confront the dilemma of
who was in charge in the absence of the divine monarch: the French
pretender to the throne, the Spanish rebels, or local leaders. The
latter option was tried on September 18, 1810, a date whose anniversary
is celebrated as Chile's independence day. On that day, the criollo
leaders of Santiago, employing the town council as a junta, announced
their intention to govern the colony until the king was reinstated. They
swore loyalty to the ousted monarch, Ferdinand VII, but insisted that
they had as much right to rule in the meantime as did subjects of the
crown in Spain itself. They immediately opened the ports to all traders.
Chile's first experiment with self-government, the Old Fatherland
(Patria Vieja, 1810-14), was led by Jos� Miguel Carrera Verdugo
(president, 1812-13), an aristocrat in his mid-twenties. The
military-educated Carrera was a heavy-handed ruler who aroused
widespread opposition. One of the earliest advocates of full
independence, Bernardo O'Higgins Riquelme, captained a rival faction
that plunged the criollos into civil war. For him and for certain other
members of the Chilean elite, the initiative for temporary self-rule
quickly escalated into a campaign for permanent independence, although
other criollos remained loyal to Spain. Among those favoring
independence, conservatives fought with liberals over the degree to
which French revolutionary ideas would be incorporated into the
movement. After several efforts, Spanish troops from Peru took advantage
of the internecine strife to reconquer Chile in 1814, when they
reasserted control by winning the Battle of Rancagua on October 12.
O'Higgins and many of the Chilean rebels escaped to Argentina.
During the Reconquest (La Reconquista) of 1814-17, the harsh rule of
the Spanish loyalists, who punished suspected rebels, drove more
Chileans into the insurrectionary camp. More and more members of the
Chilean elite were becoming convinced of the necessity of full
independence, regardless of who sat on the throne of Spain. As the
leader of guerrilla raids against the Spaniards, Manuel Rodr�guez
became a national symbol of resistance.
When criollos sang the praises of equality and freedom, however, they
meant equal treatment for themselves in relation to the peninsulares
and liberation from Spanish rule, not equality or freedom for the masses
of Chileans. The criollos wanted to assume leadership positions
previously controlled by peninsulares without upsetting the
existing social and economic order. In that sense, the struggle for
independence was a war within the upper class, although the majority of
troops on both sides consisted of conscripted mestizos and native
Americans.
In exile in Argentina, O'Higgins joined forces with Jos� de San Mart�n,
whose army freed Chile with a daring assault over the Andes in 1817,
defeating the Spaniards at the Battle of Chacabuco on February 12. San
Mart�n considered the liberation of Chile a strategic stepping-stone to
the emancipation of Peru, which he saw as the key to hemispheric victory
over the Spanish. Chile won its formal independence when San Mart�n
defeated the last large Spanish force on Chilean soil at the Battle of
Maip� on April 5, 1818. San Mart�n then led his Argentine and Chilean
followers north to liberate Peru; and fighting continued in Chile's
southern provinces, the bastion of the royalists, until 1826.
Chile - CIVIL WARS, 1818-30
From 1817 to 1823, Bernardo O'Higgins ruled Chile as supreme director
(president). He won plaudits for defeating royalists and founding
schools, but civil strife continued. O'Higgins alienated liberals and
provincials with his authoritarianism, conservatives and the church with
his anticlericalism, and landowners with his proposed reforms of the
land tenure system. His attempt to devise a constitution in 1818 that
would legitimize his government failed, as did his effort to generate
stable funding for the new administration. O'Higgins's dictatorial
behavior aroused resistance in the provinces. This growing discontent
was reflected in the continuing opposition of partisans of Carrera, who
was executed by the Argentine regime in Mendoza in 1821, like his two
brothers were three years earlier.
Although opposed by many liberals, O'Higgins angered the Roman
Catholic Church with his liberal beliefs. He maintained Catholicism's
status as the official state religion but tried to curb the church's
political powers and to encourage religious tolerance as a means of
attracting Protestant immigrants and traders. Like the church, the
landed aristocracy felt threatened by O'Higgins, resenting his attempts
to eliminate noble titles and, more important, to eliminate entailed
estates.
O'Higgins's opponents also disapproved of his diversion of Chilean
resources to aid San Mart�n's liberation of Peru. O'Higgins insisted on
supporting that campaign because he realized that Chilean independence
would not be secure until the Spaniards were routed from the Andean core
of the empire. However, amid mounting discontent, troops from the
northern and southern provinces forced O'Higgins to resign. Embittered,
O'Higgins departed for Peru, where he died in 1842.
After O'Higgins went into exile in 1823, civil conflict continued,
focusing mainly on the issues of anticlericalism and regionalism.
Presidents and constitutions rose and fell quickly in the 1820s. The
civil struggle's harmful effects on the economy, and particularly on
exports, prompted conservatives to seize national control in 1830.
In the minds of most members of the Chilean elite, the bloodshed and
chaos of the late 1820s were attributable to the shortcomings of
liberalism and federalism, which had been dominant over conservatism for
most of the period. The abolition of slavery in 1823--long before most
other countries in the Americas--was considered one of the liberals' few
lasting achievements. One liberal leader from the south, Ram�n Freire
Serrano, rode in and out of the presidency several times (1823-27, 1828,
1829, 1830) but could not sustain his authority. From May 1827 to
September 1831, with the exception of brief interventions by Freire, the
presidency was occupied by Francisco Antonio Pinto D�az, Freire's
former vice president. In August 1828, Pinto's first year in office,
Chile abandoned its short-lived federalist system for a unitary form of
government, with separate legislative, executive, and judicial branches.
By adopting a moderately liberal constitution in 1828, Pinto alienated
both the federalists and the liberal factions. He also angered the old
aristocracy by abolishing estates inherited by primogeniture mayorazgo
and caused a public uproar with his anticlericalism. After the defeat of
his liberal army at the Battle of Lircay on April 17, 1830, Freire, like
O'Higgins, went into exile in Peru.
Chile - ARISTOCRATIC REPUBLICANISM, 1830-91
Although never president, Portales dominated Chilean politics from
the cabinet and behind the scenes from 1830 to 1837. He installed the
"autocratic republic," which centralized authority in the
national government. His political program enjoyed support from
merchants, large landowners, foreign capitalists, the church, and the
military. Political and economic stability reinforced each other, as
Portales encouraged economic growth through free trade and put
government finances in order.
Portales was an agnostic who said that he believed in the clergy but
not in God. He realized the importance of the Roman Catholic Church as a
bastion of loyalty, legitimacy, social control, and stability, as had
been the case in the colonial period. He repealed Liberal reforms that
had threatened church privileges and properties.
Portales brought the military under civilian control by rewarding
loyal generals, cashiering troublemakers, and promoting a victorious war
against the Peru-Bolivia Confederation (1836-39). After defeating Peru
and Bolivia, Chile dominated the Pacific Coast of South America. The
victory over its neighbors gave Chile and its new political system a
psychological boost. Chileans experienced a surge of national enthusiasm
and cohesion behind a regime accepted as legitimate and efficacious.
Portales also achieved his objectives by wielding dictatorial powers,
censoring the press, and manipulating elections. For the next forty
years, Chile's armed forces would be distracted from meddling in
politics by skirmishes and defensive operations on the southern
frontier, although some units got embroiled in domestic conflicts in
1851 and 1859. In later years, conservative Chileans canonized Portales
as a symbol of order and progress, exaggerating the importance of one
man in that achievement.
The "Portalian State" was institutionalized by the 1833
constitution. One of the most durable charters ever devised in Latin
America, the Portalian constitution lasted until 1925. The constitution
concentrated authority in the national government, more precisely, in
the hands of the president, who was elected by a tiny minority. The
chief executive could serve two consecutive five-year terms and then
pick a successor. Although the Congress had significant budgetary
powers, it was overshadowed by the president, who appointed provincial
officials. The constitution also created an independent judiciary,
guaranteed inheritance of estates by primogeniture, and installed
Catholicism as the state religion. In short, it established an
autocratic system under a republican veneer.
The first Portalian president was General Joaqu�n Prieto Vial, who
served two terms (1831-36, 1836-41). President Prieto had four main
accomplishments: implementation of the 1833 constitution, stabilization
of government finances, defeat of provincial challenges to central
authority, and victory over the Peru-Bolivia Confederation. During the
presidencies of Prieto and his two successors, Chile modernized through
the construction of ports, railroads, and telegraph lines, some built by
United States entrepreneur William Wheelwright. These innovations
facilitated the export-import trade as well as domestic commerce.
Prieto and his adviser, Portales, feared the efforts of Bolivian
general Andr�s de Santa Cruz y Calahumana to unite with Peru against
Chile. These qualms exacerbated animosities toward Peru dating from the
colonial period, now intensified by disputes over customs duties and
loans. Chile also wanted to become the dominant South American military
and commercial power along the Pacific. Portales got Congress to declare
war on Peru in 1836. When a Chilean colonel who opposed the war killed
Portales in 1837, this act and the suspicion that Peruvians were
involved in the assassination plot inspired an even greater war effort
by the government.
Chile - Two Conservative Presidencies, 1841-61
Chile defeated the Peruvian fleet at Casma on January 12, 1839, and
the Bolivian army at Yungay, Peru, on January 20. These Chilean
victories destroyed the Peru-Bolivia Confederation, made Chile lord of
the west coast, brought unity and patriotism to the Chilean elites, and
gave Chile's armed forces pride and purpose as a military with an
external mission. The successful war also helped convince the European
powers and the United States to respect Chile's coastal sphere of
influence. Subsequently, the country won additional respect from the
European powers and the United States by giving them economic access and
concessions, by treating their citizens well, and by generally playing
them off against each other.
Since its inception, the Portalian State has been criticized for its
authoritarianism. But it has also been praised for the stability,
prosperity, and international victories it brought to Chile, as well as
the gradual opening to increased democracy that it provided. At least in
comparison with most other regimes of the era, the Portalian State was
noteworthy for being dominated by constitutional civilian authorities.
Although Portales deserves some credit for launching the system, his
successors were the ones who truly implemented, institutionalized,
legitimized, and consolidated it. From 1831 to 1861, no other country in
Spanish America had such a regular and constitutional succession of
chief executives.
Manuel Bulnes Prieto (president, 1841-51), hero of the victories over
the Chilean Liberals at the Battle of Lircay in 1830, and over the
Bolivian army at Yungay in 1839, became president in 1841. As a
decorated general, he was the ideal choice to consolidate the Portalian
State and establish presidential control over the armed forces. He
reduced the size of the military and solidified its loyalty to the
central government in the face of provincial uprisings. As a southerner,
he was able to defuse regional resentment of the dominant Santiago area.
Although Bulnes staffed his two administrations mainly with
Conservatives, he conciliated his opponents by including a few Liberals.
He strengthened the new political institutions, especially Congress and
the judiciary, and gave legitimacy to the constitution by stepping down
at the end of his second term in office. Placing the national interest
above regional or military loyalties, he also helped snuff out a
southern rebellion against his successor.
Intellectual life blossomed under Bulnes, thanks in part to the many
exiles who came to Chile from less stable Spanish American republics.
They clustered around the University of Chile (founded in 1842), which
developed into one of the most prestigious educational institutions in
Latin America. Both foreigners and nationals formed the "Generation
of 1842," led mainly by liberal intellectuals and politicians such
as Francisco Bilbao Barguin and Jos� Victorino Lastarria Santander.
Through the Society of Equality, members of the group called for
expanded democracy and reduced church prerogatives. In particular, they
defended civil liberties and freedom of the press, seeking to constrain
the government's authoritarian powers.
Bulnes presided over continued prosperity, as production from the
farms and mines increased, both for external and for internal
consumption. In response to foreign demand, especially for wheat during
the California and Australia gold rushes, agricultural exports
increased. Instead of importing scarce and expensive modern capital and
technology, landowners expanded production. They did this primarily by
enlarging their estates and absorbing more peasants into their work
forces, especially in the central provinces, where the vast majority of
Chileans toiled in agriculture. This expansion fortified the hacienda
system and increased the numbers of people attached to it. The growth of
the great estates also increased the political power of the landed
elites, who succeeded in exercising a veto over agrarian reform for a
century.
In the mid-1800s, the rural labor force, mainly mestizos, was a cheap
and expanding source of labor. More and more of these laborers became
tenant farmers (inquilinos). For a century thereafter, many
workers would remain bound to the haciendas through tradition, lack of
alternatives, and landowner collusion and coercion. Itinerant rural
workers and even small landowners became increasingly dependent on the
great estates, whether through part-time or full-time work. The landed
elites also inhibited industrialization by their preference for free
trade and the low wages they paid their workers, which hindered rural
consumers from accumulating disposable income. For a century, the lack
of any significant challenge to this exploitive system was one of the
pillars of the social and political hierarchy.
Liberals and regionalists unsuccessfully took up arms against
Bulnes's conservative successor, Manuel Montt Torres (president,
1851-61). Thousands died in one of the few large civil wars in
nineteenth-century Chile. The rebels of 1851 denounced Montt's election
as a fraud perpetrated by the centralist forces in and around Santiago.
Some entrepreneurs in the outlying provinces also backed the rebellion
out of anger at the government's neglect of economic interests outside
the sphere of the central landowning elites. Montt put down the uprising
with help from British commercial ships.
From 1851 to 1861, Montt completed the construction of the durable
constitutional order begun by Portales and Bulnes. By reducing church
prerogatives, Montt eased the transition from a sequence of Conservative
chief executives to a series of Liberals. As a civilian head of state,
he was less harsh with his liberal adversaries. He also promoted
conciliation by including many northerners as well as southerners in the
government.
Benefiting from the sharp growth in exports and customs revenues in
the 1850s, Montt demonstrated the efficacy of the central government by
supporting the establishment of railroads, a telegraph system, and
banks. He created the first government-run railroad company in South
America, despite his belief in laissezfaire . He also initiated the
extension of government credit to propertied groups. Under President
Montt, school construction accelerated, laying the groundwork for Chile
to become one of the most literate nations in the hemisphere. Expanding
on the initiative started by Bulnes, Montt also pushed back the southern
frontier, in part by encouraging German immigration.
As the next presidential succession approached, a second rebellion
ensued in 1859. The rebels represented a diverse alliance, including
Liberals who opposed the right-wing government and its encroachments on
civil liberties, Conservatives who believed the president was
insufficiently proclerical, politicians who feared the selection of a
strongman as Montt's successor, and regionalists who chafed at the
concentration of power in Santiago. Once again, Montt prevailed in a
test of arms, but thereafter he conciliated his opponents by nominating
a successor acceptable to all sides, Jos� Joaqu�n P�rez Mascayano
(president, 1861-71).
Under Bulnes and Montt, economic elites had resisted paying direct
taxes, so the national government had become heavily dependent on
customs duties, particularly on mineral exports. Imports were also taxed
at a low level. The most important exports in the early years of
independence had been silver and copper, mined mainly in the northern
provinces, along with wheat, tallow, and other farm produce. The Chilean
elites eagerly welcomed European and North American ships and merchants.
Although these elites debated the issue of protectionism, they settled
on low tariffs for revenue. Despite some dissent and deviations, the
dominant policy in the nineteenth century was free trade--the exchange
of raw materials for manufactured items, although a few local industries
took root. Britain quickly became Chile's primary trading partner. The
British also invested, both directly and indirectly, in the Chilean
economy.
Chile - The Liberal Era, 1861-91
Following P�rez's peaceful ten-year administration, Chilean
presidents were prohibited from running for election to a second
consecutive term by an 1871 amendment to the constitution. P�rez was
succeeded as president by Federico Err�zuriz Za�artu (1871-76), An�bal
Pinto Garmendia (1876-81), and Domingo Santa Mar�a Gonz�lez (1881-86),
the latter two serving during the War of the Pacific (1879-83). All
formed coalition governments in which the president juggled a
complicated array of party components.
The Liberal Party (Partido Liberal--PL), the Conservative Party
(Partido Conservador--PC), and the National Party (Partido Nacional--PN)
were formed in 1857. Once the Liberal Party replaced the Conservative
Party as the dominant party, the Liberal Party was in turn challenged
from the left by the more fervent reformists of the Radical Party
(Partido Radical--PR). A spin-off from the Liberal Party, the Radical
Party was founded in 1861. Reformists of the Democrat Party (Partido Dem�crata),
which in turn splintered from the Radical Party in 1887, also challenged
the Liberal Party. The National Party also vied with the Conservatives
and Liberals to represent upper-class interests. Derived from the Montt
presidency, the National Party took a less proclerical, more centrist
position than that of the Conservatives. Party competition escalated
after the electoral reform of 1874 extended the franchise to all
literate adult males, effectively removing property qualifications.
Like Montt, most Liberal chief executives were centrists who
introduced change gradually. Their administrations continued to make
incremental cuts in church privileges but tried not to inflame that
issue. Secularization gradually gained ground in education, and Santa
Mar�a transferred from the church to the state the management birth,
marriage, and death records.
Even during internal and external conflicts, Chile continued to
prosper. When Spain attempted to reconquer Peru, Chile engaged in a
coastal war (1864-66) with the Spaniards, whose warships shelled Valpara�so.
Once again, Chile asserted its sway over the west coast of South
America. Farming, mining, and commerce grew steadily until the world
depression of the 1870s, when Chile again turned to a war against its
Andean neighbors.
Chile - War of the Pacific, 1879-83
Chile's borders were a matter of contention throughout the nineteenth
century. The War of the Pacific began on the heels of an international
economic recession that focused attention on resources in outlying
zones. Under an 1866 treaty, Chile and Bolivia divided the disputed area
encompassing the Atacama Desert at 24� south latitude (located just
south of the port of Antofagasta) in the understanding that the
nationals of both nations could freely exploit mineral deposits in the
region. Both nations, however, would share equally all the revenue
generated by mining activities in the region. But Bolivia soon
repudiated the treaty, and its subsequent levying of taxes on a Chilean
company operating in the area led to an arms race between Chile and its
northern neighbors of Bolivia and Peru.
Fighting broke out when Chilean entrepreneurs and mine-owners in
present-day Tarapac� Region and Antofagasta Region, then belonging to
Peru and Bolivia, respectively, resisted new taxes, the formation of
monopoly companies, and other impositions. In those provinces, most of
the deposits of nitrate--a valuable ingredient in fertilizers and
explosives--were owned and mined by Chileans and Europeans, in
particular the British. Chile wanted not only to acquire the nitrate
fields but also to weaken Peru and Bolivia in order to strengthen its
own strategic preeminence on the Pacific Coast. Hostilities were
exacerbated because of disagreements over boundary lines, which in the
desert had always been vague. Chile and Bolivia accused each other of
violating the 1866 treaty. Although Chile expanded northward as a result
of the War of the Pacific, its rights to the conquered territory
continued to be questioned by Peru, and especially by Bolivia,
throughout the twentieth century.
War began when Chilean troops crossed the northern frontier in 1879.
Although a mutual defense pact had allied Peru and Bolivia since 1873,
Chile's more professional, less politicized military overwhelmed the two
weaker countries on land and sea. The turning point of the war was the
occupation of Lima on January 17, 1881, a humiliation the Peruvians
never forgave. Chile sealed its victory with the
1883 Treaty of Anc�n, which also ended the Chilean occupation of Lima.
As a result of the war and the Treaty of Anc�n, Chile acquired two
northern provinces--Tarapac� from Peru and Antofagasta from Bolivia.
These territories encompassed most of the Atacama Desert and blocked off
Bolivia's outlet to the Pacific Ocean. The war gave Chile control over nitrate exports, which would
dominate the national economy until the 1920s, possession of copper
deposits that would eclipse nitrate exports by the 1930s, greatpower
status along the entire Pacific Coast of South America, and an enduring
symbol of patriotic pride in the person of naval hero Arturo Prat Chac�n.
The War of the Pacific also bestowed on the Chilean armed forces
enhanced respect, the prospect of steadily increasing force levels, and
a long-term external mission guarding the borders with Peru, Bolivia,
and Argentina. In 1885 a German military officer, Emil K�rner, was
contracted to upgrade and professionalize the armed forces along
Prussian lines. In subsequent years, better education produced not only
a more modern officer corps but also a military leadership capable of
questioning civilian management of national development.
After battling the Peruvians and Bolivians in the north, the military
turned to engaging the Araucanians in the south. The final defeat of the
Mapuche in 1882 opened up the southern third of the national territory
to wealthy Chileans who quickly carved out immense estates. No homestead
act or legion of family farmers stood in their way, although a few
middle-class and immigrant agriculturalists moved in. Some Mapuche fled
over the border to Argentina. The army herded those who remained onto
tribal reservations in 1884, where they would remain mired in poverty
for generations. Like the far north, these southern provinces would
become stalwarts of national reform movements, critical of the excessive
concentration of power and wealth in and around Santiago.
Soon controlled by British and then by United States investors, the
nitrate fields became a classic monocultural boom and bust. The boom
lasted four decades. Export taxes on nitrates often furnished over 50
percent of all state revenues, relieving the upper class of tax burdens.
The income of the Chilean treasury nearly quadrupled in the decade after
the war. The government used the funds to expand education and
transportation. The mining bonanza generated demand for agricultural
goods from the center and south and even for locally manufactured items,
spawning a new plutocracy. Even more notable was the emergence of a
class-conscious, nationalistic, ideological labor movement in the
northern mining camps and elsewhere.
Prosperity also attracted settlers from abroad. Although small in
number compared with those arriving in Argentina, European immigrants
became an important element of the new middle class; their numbers
included several future manufacturing tycoons. These arrivals came from
both northern and southern Europe. People also emigrated from the Middle
East, Peru, and Bolivia. Although most immigrants ended up in the cities
of Chile, a minority succeeded at farming, especially in the south. In
the early twentieth century, a few members of the Chilean elite tried to
blame the rise of leftist unions and parties on foreign agitators, but
the charge rang hollow in a country where less than 5 percent of the
population had been born abroad.
Chile - Downfall of a President, 1886-91
The controversial downfall of President Jos� Manuel Balmaceda Fern�ndez
(1886-91) represented the only occasion when power was transferred by
force between 1830 and 1924. This event resulted in the most important
alteration in the constitutional system between 1833 and 1925. In many
respects, the Balmaceda episode was the culmination of two trends: the
growing strength of Congress in relation to the president, and the
expanding influence of foreign capital in the mining zone. In essence,
the rebels opposed Balmaceda's plans to expand the role of the executive
branch in the political and economic systems.
Although scholars have debated whether the uprising against Balmaceda
was mainly a fight over political or economic privileges, the bulk of
research has supported the primacy of political over economic issues.
From the 1830s to the 1880s, Congress had gradually asserted more and
more authority over the budget and over cabinet ministers. Balmaceda
tried to circumvent that budgetary power and break the hold of
congressmen and local bosses on congressional elections.
Complaining about the heavy-handed rule of the president, and in
particular his interference in congressional elections, Congress led a
revolt against Balmaceda in 1891. Conservatives generally supported the
rebels; Liberals and Democrats backed the president. Along with some
renegade Liberals, the newly emergent Radical Party aligned with the
so-called congressionalists, not wishing to see legislative prerogatives
curtailed just as the party was gaining clients and strength. Those
provincials resentful of the growing centralization of political and
economic power in and around Santiago also backed the rebellion,
especially in the north. Initially, the navy, the armed service that
included the highest percentage of aristocrats, sided with the rebels;
the army sided with the president.
The rebellion also attracted British entrepreneurs worried by
Balmaceda's threat to encroach on the independence and revenues of the
foreign-owned nitrate mines. Although not opposed to foreign investment,
Balmaceda had proposed a greater role for the state and higher taxes in
the mining sector. Tension mounted because nitrate sales were in a
slump, a recurring problem because of the volatility of that commodity's
price on international markets. The most famous British mine owner was
John North, the "nitrate king," who was angry that his nitrate
railroad monopoly had been terminated by Balmaceda. Although not
directly involved, the United States supported Balmaceda as the legal
president.
The insurgents won the bloody but brief Civil War of 1891, when the
army decided not to fight the navy. As a result of the rebel victory,
Congress became dominant over the chief executive and the nitrate mines
increasingly fell into British and North American hands. Having gained
asylum in the Argentine embassy, Balmaceda waited until the end of his
legal presidential term and then committed suicide. As Portales became a
legendary hero to the right, so Balmaceda was later anointed by the left
as an economic nationalist who sacrificed his life in the struggle for
Chilean liberation.
Already tense as a result of the civil war over Balmaceda, United
States-Chilean relations deteriorated further as a result of the Baltimore
incident. In late 1891, sailors from the U.S.S. Baltimore
brawled with Chileans during shore leave in Valpara�so. To avert a war
with an angry United States, the Chilean government apologized and paid
reparations.
Chile - PARLIAMENTARY REPUBLIC, 1891-1925
The so-called Parliamentary Republic was not a true parliamentary
system, in which the chief executive is elected by the legislature. It
was, however, an unusual regime in presidentialist Latin America, for
Congress really did overshadow the rather ceremonial office of the
president and exerted authority over the chief executive's cabinet
appointees. In turn, Congress was dominated by the landed elites. This
was the heyday of classic political and economic liberalism.
For many decades thereafter, historians derided the Parliamentary
Republic as a quarrel-prone system that merely distributed spoils and
clung to its laissez-faire policy while national problems mounted. The
characterization is epitomized by an observation made by President Ram�n
Barros Luco (1910-15), reputedly made in reference to labor unrest:
"There are only two kinds of problems: those that solve themselves
and those that can't be solved." At the mercy of Congress, cabinets
came and went frequently, although there was more stability and
continuity in public administration than some historians have suggested.
Political authority ran from local electoral bosses in the provinces
through the congressional and executive branches, which reciprocated
with payoffs from taxes on nitrate sales. Congressmen often won election
by bribing voters in this clientelistic and corrupt system. Many
politicians relied on intimidated or loyal peasant voters in the
countryside, even though the population was becoming increasingly urban.
The lackluster presidents and ineffectual administrations of the
period did little to respond to the country's dependence on volatile
nitrate exports, spiraling inflation, and massive urbanization. They
also ignored what was called "the social question." This
euphemism referred mainly to the rise of the labor movement and its
demands for better treatment of the working class. Critics complained
that the upper class, which had given Chile such dynamic leadership
previously, had grown smug and lethargic thanks to the windfall of
nitrate wealth.
In recent years, however, particularly when the authoritarian regime
of Augusto Pinochet is taken into consideration, some scholars have
reevaluated the Parliamentary Republic of 1891-1925. Without denying its
shortcomings, they have lauded its democratic stability. They have also
hailed its control of the armed forces, it respect for civil liberties,
its expansion of suffrage and participation, and its gradual admission
of new contenders, especially reformers, to the political arena.
In particular, two young parties grew in importance--the Democrat
Party, with roots among artisans and urban workers, and the Radical
Party, representing urban middle sectors and provincial elites. By the
early twentieth century, both parties were winning increasing numbers of
seats in Congress. The more leftist members of the Democrat Party became
involved in the leadership of labor unions and broke off to launch the
Socialist Workers' Party (Partido Obrero Socialista--POS) in 1912. The
founder of the POS and its best-known leader, Luis Emilio Recabarren
Serrano, also founded the Communist Party of Chile (Partido Communista
de Chile-- PCCh), which was formed in 1922.
Chile - Urbanization
Beginning in the middle of the nineteenth century, Chile's cities
grew rapidly. They absorbed a trickle of immigrants from abroad and then
vast numbers of migrants from the Chilean countryside. Improved
transportation and communications in the second half of the nineteenth
century facilitated these population movements. Although Santiago led
the way, smaller cities such as Valpara�so and Concepci�n also swelled
in size.
The founding of the Industrial Development Association (Sociedad de
Fomento Fabril--Sofofa) in 1883 was another indication of urbanization.
It promoted industrialization long before the intense efforts of the
1930s to the 1960s. Manufacturing grew in importance in the latter
decades of the nineteenth century and the opening decades of the
twentieth. Most industry remained smallscale , with most of the labor
performed by artisans. Protected industrialization did not become the
vanguard of economic development until the period between the world
wars.
The urban middle class also grew in size and became more politically
assertive by the turn of the century. Whereas the economy and the
society became more urban and diversified, the political system lagged
behind, remaining mainly in the hands of the upper class. Nevertheless,
more members of the middle class began appearing in party leadership
positions, especially among the Democrats and Radicals. They were also
prominent in the Chilean Student Federation (Federaci�n de Estudiantes
de Chile--FECh), based at the University of Chile. Equally important was
their presence among the top commanders in the armed forces, who
increasingly identified primarily with middle-class interests.
In the closing years of the nineteenth century, labor organizations
gathered force, first as mutual aid societies and then increasingly as
trade unions. In the opening decades of the twentieth century, labor
organizing, unrest, and strikes reached new levels of intensity. In the
northern nitrate and copper mines, as well as in the ports and cities,
workers came together to press demands for better wages and working
conditions. Attracted strongly to anarchist, anarcho-syndicalist, and
socialist ideologies, they were harshly repressed during the
Parliamentary Republic. The government carried out several massacres of
miners in the nitrate camps; the most notorious took place in Iquique in
1907. Thus, a pattern of violent clashes between soldiers and workers
took shape.
Organizational efforts in the mines and cities culminated in the
creation of the first national labor confederation, the Workers'
Federation of Chile (Federaci�n Obrera de Chile--FOCh) in 1909. The
organization became more radical as it grew and affiliated with the PCCh
in 1922, under the leadership of Recabarren. Its greatest strength was
among miners, whereas urban workers were more attracted to independent
socialism or to anarchosyndicalism . The latter movement grew out of
resistance societies and evolved into the Industrial Workers of the
World (IWW). Unlike the FOCh, the IWW spurned ties with political
parties.
The emergence of working-class demands and movements spawned the
so-called social question. Intellectuals and writers began criticizing
the ruling class and the Parliamentary Republic for their neglect of
workers and of social ills. New census data and other studies at the
beginning of the twentieth century shocked the proud Chilean elite with
revelations about the extent of poverty, illiteracy, and poor health
among the vast majority of the population. Especially alarming were
infant mortality figures that far exceeded those of Western Europe.
Realization of the squalor and anger of the working class inspired new
reform efforts.
Chile - Arturo Alessandri's Reformist Presidency, 1920-25
President Arturo Alessandri Palma (1920-24, March-October 1925,
1932-38) appealed to those who believed the social question should be
addressed, to those worried by the decline in nitrate exports during
World War I, and to those weary of presidents dominated by Congress.
Promising "evolution to avoid revolution," he pioneered a new
campaign style of appealing directly to the masses with florid oratory
and charisma. After winning a seat in the Senate representing the mining
north in 1915, he earned the sobriquet "Lion of Tarapac�." As
a dissident Liberal running for the presidency, Alessandri attracted
support from the more reformist Radicals and Democrats and formed the
so-called Liberal Alliance. He received strong backing from the middle
and working classes as well as from the provincial elites. Students and
intellectuals also rallied to his banner. At the same time, he reassured
the landowners that social reforms would be limited to the cities.
Alessandri also spoke to discontent stemming from World War I.
Although Chile had been neutral, the war had disrupted the international
commerce that drove the economy. German development of artificial
nitrates was especially damaging, and thereafter copper would gradually
surpass nitrates as the leading export, taking over conclusively in the
1930s. Inflation and currency depreciation compounded the country's
economic woes.
During and after the war, the United States displaced Britain as
Chile's most important external economic partner, first in trade and
then in investments. American companies, led by Kennecott and Braden,
took control of the production of copper and nitrates. As corporate
investors, bankers, salesmen, advisers, and even entertainers, such as
actor and humorist Will Rogers, came to Chile, a few Chileans began to
worry about the extent of United States penetration.
As the candidate of the Liberal Alliance coalition, Alessandri barely
won the presidency in 1920 in what was dubbed "the revolt of the
electorate." Chilean historians consider the 1920 vote a benchmark
or watershed election, along with the contests of 1938, 1970, and 1988.
Like other reformers elected president in the twentieth century--Pedro
Aguirre Cerda (1938-41), Gabriel Gonz�lez Videla (1946-52), and
Salvador Allende Gossens (1970-73)-- Alessandri had to navigate
skillfully through treacherous waters from the day he was elected until
his inauguration, warding off attempts to deny him the fruits of
victory. Mass street demonstrations by his middle- and working-class
supporters convinced the conservative political elite in Congress to
ratify his narrow win.
After donning the presidential sash, Alessandri discovered that his
efforts to lead would be blocked by the conservative Congress. Like
Balmaceda, he infuriated the legislators by going over their heads to
appeal to the voters in the congressional elections of 1924. His reform
legislation was finally rammed through Congress under pressure from
younger military officers, who were sick of the neglect of the armed
forces, political infighting, social unrest, and galloping inflation.
In a double coup, first military right-wingers opposing Alessandri
seized power in September 1924, and then reformers in favor of the
ousted president took charge in January 1925. The latter group was led
by two colonels, Carlos Ib��ez del Campo and Marmaduke Grove Vallejo.
They returned Alessandri to the presidency that March and enacted his
promised reforms by decree. Many of these reforms were encapsulated in
the new constitution of 1925, which was ratified in a plebiscite.
Chile - MILITARY INTERVENTIONS, 1925-32
As in 1891 and 1973, the military intervened in national politics in
the 1920s partly because of economic distress, partly to break a
stalemate between the legislative and executive branches, and, above
all, to change the political system. Colonel Ib��ez (president,
1927-31, 1952-58), quickly promoted to general, became the dominant
power. He ruled, either behind or on the seat of power, until the
economic crisis caused by the Great Depression in 1931 prompted his
resignation.
The 1925 Constitution
The 1925 constitution was the second major charter in Chilean
history, lasting until 1973. It codified significant changes, including
the official separation of church and state, which culminated a century
of gradual erosion of the political and economic power of the Roman
Catholic Church. The constitution also provided legal recognition of
workers' right to organize, a promise to care for the social welfare of
all citizens, an assertion of the right of the state to infringe on
private property for the public good, and increased powers for the now
directly elected president in relation to the bicameral Congress, in
particular concerning the removal of cabinet ministers, which heretofore
had often been removed at the whim of the legislature.
Presidential and congressional elections were staggered so that a
chief executive could not bring a legislature in on his coattails. The
new constitution extended presidential terms from five to six years,
with immediate reelection prohibited. It established a system of
proportional representation for parties putting candidates up for
Congress. The government was divided into four branches, in descending
order of power: the president, the legislature, the judiciary, and the
comptroller general, the latter authorized to judge the
constitutionality of all laws requiring fiscal expenditures.
The Office of Comptroller General of the Republic (Oficina de la
Contralor�a General de la Rep�blica) was designed by a United States
economic adviser, Edwin Walter Kemmerer. In 1925 he also created the
Central Bank of Chile and the position of superintendent of banks, while
putting the country on the gold standard. His reforms helped attract
massive foreign investments from the United States, especially loans to
the government.
Although a labor code was not finalized until 1931, several labor and
social security laws enacted in 1924 would govern industrial relations
from the 1930s to the 1970s. The legislation legalized unions and
strikes but imposed government controls over unions. Union finances and
elections were subjected to government inspection. The laws also
restricted union activities and disallowed national confederations,
which therefore subsequently arose outside the legal framework. Only
factories with at least twenty-five workers could have an industrial
union, even though approximately two-thirds of the industrial
enterprises employed four or fewer workers, in effect artisans. Workers
in smaller shops could form professional unions with workers of the same
skill employed nearby. Agricultural unions remained virtually outlawed
or extremely difficult to organize until the 1960s. The code left unions
disadvantaged in their bargaining with employers and therefore reliant
on political parties as allies. Those allies were crucial because the
new code made the state the mediator in labormanagement disputes.
Chile - Carlos Ib��ez's First Presidency, 1927-31
Under the steady hand of the veteran Alessandri, reelected in
December 1932 with 55 percent of the vote, Chile rapidly reinstated its
interrupted democracy and revived its shattered economy. Although still
a centrist reformer at heart, Alessandri now became the paladin of the
right because the new socialist left had outflanked him. He put into
practice both the 1925 constitution and the 1931 labor code; reshuffled
military commands; supported a 50,000-member civilian paramilitary
force, the Republican Militia (Milicia Republicana) during 1932-36 to
keep the armed forces in the barracks and to threaten leftists; and cut
unemployment by promoting industry and public works.
In accordance with long-standing Chilean foreign policy principles,
Alessandri sought to avoid entanglement in European conflicts. He
cultivated good relations with both Britain and Germany, while remaining
friendly with the United States. He declared neutrality in the Spanish
Civil War, as the Chilean government had done during World War I.
The Socialists, Communists, and Radicals denounced Alessandri for
insufficient economic nationalism and inadequate attention to the needs
of working people. Heeding the new policy of the Comintern, adopted in 1935, the Chilean Communists backed away from
proletarian revolution, which they had advocated obediently from 1928 to
1934. Now they promoted broad, reformist electoral coalitions in the
name of antifascism. With slight deviations and emendations, the PCCh
sustained this accommodative approach from 1935 until 1980.
Prodded by the Communists, the Radicals and Socialists aligned in
1936 with the Confederation of Chilean Workers (Confederaci�n de
Trabajadores de Chile--CTCh), a by-product of union growth and
solidarity, to forge the Popular Front. The Popular Front was given
impetus by Alessandri's crushing of a railroad strike that year. The
coalition also included the old Democrat Party, which was gradually
supplanted by the Socialist Party until the former disappeared in the
early 1940s. Similar to multiparty alliances in Europe and to populist
coalitions in Latin America, the Popular Front galvanized the middle and
working classes on behalf of democracy, social welfare, and
industrialization. Its redistributive, populist slogan was "Bread,
Roof, and Overcoat," coined by the 1932 Socialist Republic.
The Popular Front barely beat Alessandri's would-be rightist
successor in the presidential contest of 1938 with 50.3 percent of the
vote. One key to the Popular Front's victory was its nomination of a
mild-mannered Radical, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, rather than the inflammatory
Socialist, Marmaduke Grove. The other key was a bizarre sequence of
events in which a group of Chilean fascists (members of the National
Socialist Movement), backing Ib��ez's independent bid for the
presidency, staged an unsuccessful putsch on the eve of the election.
The slaughter of the putschists by forces of the Alessandri government
prompted the fascists to throw their votes to the Popular Front.
Although not numerous, those ballots put the Popular Front over the top.
The incongruous alignment of Nazis behind the antifascist Popular
Front showed how far Chilean politicians would go to subordinate
ideology to electoral considerations. Thus, a coalition that included
Socialists and Communists captured the presidency quite early in
twentieth-century Chile. Future president Salvador Allende served
briefly as minister of health in this period.
Running under the slogan "To Govern Is to Educate," Aguirre
Cerda (president, 1938-41) won an electoral majority in 1938. However,
less than 5 percent of the national population actually voted for him.
Until the rapid expansion of the electorate in the 1950s, less than 10
percent of the national population voted for presidential candidates.
Only literate males over the age of twenty-one could vote in most
elections until the 1950s; of those eligible to vote, approximately 50
percent usually registered, and the vast majority of those registered
cast ballots. Women were allowed to exercise the franchise in
installments, first for municipal elections in 1935, then for
congressional contests in 1951, and finally for presidential races in
1952.
As had been the case with other Chilean electoral victories by
left-wing candidates, tense days passed between the counting of the
ballots and the ratification of the results by Congress. Opponents of
the left schemed to prevent the takeover by their nemeses or to extract
concessions before accepting defeat. Aguirre Cerda assured rightists of
his moderate intentions, and the Alessandri government presided over his
peaceful inauguration. The military quashed a single coup attempt in
1939.
Chile - Popular Front Rule, 1938-41
Led by the centrist Radical Party, the administration of the Popular
Front assimilated the Socialists and Communists into the established
bargaining system, making potentially revolutionary forces into
relatively moderate participants in legal institutions. Although the
official Popular Front ended in 1941, that bargaining system, with
Marxist parties usually backing reformist Radical presidents, lasted
until 1952.
Aguirre Cerda, like all Chilean presidents in the 1930s and 1940s,
essentially pursued a model of state capitalism in which government
collaborated with private enterprise in the construction of a mixed
economy. The Popular Front promoted simultaneous importsubstitution
industrialization and welfare measures for the urban middle and working
classes. As in the rest of Latin America, the Great Depression and then
the onset of World War II accelerated domestic production of
manufactured consumer items, widened the role of the state, and
augmented dependence on the United States. All these trends dissuaded
Marxists from demanding bold redistributive measures at the expense of
domestic and foreign capitalists.
Aiming to catch up with the more affluent West, Chile's Popular Front
mobilized the labor movement behind national industrial development more
than working-class social advances. Although workers received few
material benefits from the Popular Front, the number of legal unions
more than quadrupled from the early 1930s to the early 1940s. Still,
unions represented only about 10 percent of the work force.
Prior to his illness and death in November 1941, President Aguirre
Cerda labored to hold his coalition together, to overcome the implacable
opposition of the right-wing parties, and to fulfill his promises of
industrialization and urban social reform. The Socialists and Communists
quarreled incessantly, especially over the PCCh's support of the 1939
German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact between Hitler and Stalin. Early in
1941, the Socialist Party withdrew from the Popular Front coalition
because of its animosity toward the PCCh, its rival claimant to worker
loyalty and Marxist inspiration. Because the Conservatives and Liberals
blocked nearly all legislation in Congress, little social reform was
accomplished, except for improvements in housing and education. To
appease rightwingers , the president clamped down on rural unionization.
From the 1920s into the 1960s, this modus vivendi between urban
reformers and rural conservatives held fast. Progressives carried out
reforms in the cities for the middle and working classes, while denying
peasants union rights. Thus were preserved the availability of low-cost
foodstuffs for urban consumers, control of the countryside for latifundistas
(large landowners), and domination of the rural vote by right-wing
politicians. From time to time, Marxist organizers threatened to
mobilize the rural work force, and time and again they were restrained
by their centrist political allies, who needed to reassure the economic
and political right-wingers. When peasants protested this exploitation,
they were repressed by landowners or government troops.
The greatest achievement of the Popular Front was the creation in
1939 of the state Production Development Corporation (Corporaci�n de
Fomento de la Producci�n--Corfo) to supply credit to new enterprises,
especially in manufacturing. Partly with loans from the United States
Export-Import Bank, Corfo contributed greatly to import-substitution
industrialization, mainly for consumer items. The economically active
population working in industry grew from 15 percent in 1930 to 20
percent in 1952, where it hovered for two decades. From the end of the
1930s to the start of the 1950s, Corfo supplied almost one-fourth of
total domestic investments.
Chile - Juan Antonio R�os's Presidency, 1942-46
A Radical even more conservative than Aguirre Cerda, Juan Antonio R�os
Morales (president, 1942-46), won the 1942 presidential election with 56
percent of the vote. Although the formal Popular Front had been
terminated, the Socialists and Communists still gave their votes to R�os
to avoid a return of Ib��ez as the candidate of the Conservatives and
Liberals. Under the stringencies of wartime, the new president further
soft-pedaled social reform and emphasized industrial growth, under the
slogan, "To Govern Is to Produce." Although he made some
improvements in housing and health care, R�os concentrated on promoting
urban enterprises.
R�os continued his predecessor's policy of neutrality in World War
II. Although sympathetic to the Allies, many Chileans worried about the
vulnerability of their Pacific Coast. Because of a desire for closer
economic and security ties with the United States, R�os finally bowed
to pressure from Socialists, Communists, and other staunch antifascists,
severing relations with the Axis in January 1943.
Even after breaking relations, Chile was never satisfied with the
amount of aid and Lend-Lease military equipment it received from the
United States. The United States, in turn, was equally discontent with
languid Chilean action against Axis agents and firms. Nevertheless,
Chile subsidized the Allied cause by accepting an artificially low price
for its copper exports to the United States while paying increasingly
higher prices for its imports. The war boosted Chile's mineral exports
and foreign-exchange accumulation. At the same time, United States
trade, credits, and advisers facilitated state support for new
enterprises, including steel, oil, and fishing.
Not unlike Ib��ez in the 1920s, R�os hoped to develop the national
economy through external alignment with the "Colossus of the
North." After displacing Britain as Chile's most important economic
partner in the 1920s, the United States faced a period of German
competition in the 1930s and then reasserted its economic dominance in
the 1940s. That economic domination would last until the 1980s.
As R�os's health deteriorated in 1945, another Radical, Alfredo
Duhalde V�squez (president, June-August 1946), took over as interim
chief executive. Reacting against R�os's conservatism and Duhalde's
antilabor policies, progressive factions of the Radical Party joined
with the Communists to field a left-wing Radical, Gabriel Gonz�lez
Videla, for president in the 1946 election. Gonz�lez Videla also
received the backing of most Socialists.
Trying to revive the reformist spirit of 1938, Gonz�lez Videla eked
out a plurality of 40 percent against a field of rightist contenders.
Once again, the candidate of the left had to walk a tightrope from
election to inauguration because Congress had the right to pick either
of the two front-runners when no one polled an absolute majority. Gonz�lez
Videla ensured his congressional approval by granting landowners new
legal restrictions on peasant unionization, restrictions that lasted
from 1947 until 1967. He also appeased the right by including Liberals
in his cabinet along with Radicals and Communists, the most exotic
ministerial concoction Chileans had ever seen, again demonstrating the
politician's ability to cut deals transcending ideology.
Chile - Gabriel Gonz�lez Videla's Presidency, 1946-52
Chile quickly became enmeshed in the cold war, as Moscow and
especially Washington meddled in its affairs. That friction resulted in
the splitting of the CTCh in 1946 into Communist and Socialist branches
and then the outlawing of the PCCh. The Socialists were now opposed to
the Communists and aligned with the (American Federation of
Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations, the AFL-CIO), having grown
closer to United States labor interests during World War II.
Once in office, Gonz�lez Videla (president, 1946-52) rapidly turned
against his Communist allies. He expelled them from his cabinet and then
banned them completely under the 1948 Law for the Defense of Democracy.
The PCCh remained illegal until 1958. He also severed relations with the
Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia.
Controversy still swirls around the reasons for this aboutface .
According to Gonz�lez Videla and his sympathizers, the repression of
the Communists was necessary to thwart their plots against his
government, although no evidence has been found to substantiate that
claim. According to the Communists and other critics of Gonz�lez
Videla, he acted under pressure from the United States and out of a
desire to forge closer economic and military bonds with the dominant
superpower. Historians have established that the president wanted to
appease the United States, that the United States encouraged a crackdown
on Chilean Communists, and that the United States government appreciated
Gonz�lez Videla's actions and thereafter expanded the scope of its
loans, investments, and technical missions to Chile. The United States
and Chile also agreed to a military assistance pact while Gonz�lez
Videla was president. However, no conclusive evidence has come to light
that the United States directly pushed him to act.
Although Gonz�lez Videla feared Communist intentions and respected
the wishes of the United States government, he also turned against the
PCCh for other reasons. He hoped to mollify right-wing critics of his
government, especially landowners, to whom he guaranteed a continuing
moratorium on peasant unionization. He sought to remove any ideological
justification for a military coup. He also wanted to weaken the labor
movement in a time of economic uncertainties, slow growth, and rising
inflation, when the PCCh was promoting strikes. Gonz�lez Videla's
banning of the Communists coincided with his movement away from social
reform in favor of the promotion of industrial growth.
As the Radical years (1938-52) drew to a close, Popular Frontstyle
coalition politics reached a dead end. The Radicals had swerved to the
right, the Socialists had splintered and lost votes, and the Communists
had been forced underground. Although the middle and upper classes had
registered some gains in those fourteen years, most workers had seen
their real income stagnate or decline. Often a problem in the past,
inflation had become a permanent feature of the Chilean economy, fueled
by the deficit spending of a government that had grown enormously under
the Radical presidents. Progress had been made in industrialization, but
with little benefit to the majority of the population. Promoting urban
industries did not generate the growth, efficiency, employment, or
independence promised by the policy's advocates. World War II had left
the country more dependent than ever on the United States, which by then
had become the dominant economic power in Latin America.
Populist development strategies had proved viable during the 1930s
and 1940s. The protection and credit that went along with
import-substitution industrialization had kept manufacturers satisfied.
Although penalized and forced to accept low prices for their foods,
agriculturalists welcomed expanding urban markets, low taxes, and
controls over rural workers. The middle class and the armed forces had
applauded state growth and moderate nationalism. The more skilled and
organized urban workers had received consumer, welfare, and union
benefits superior to those offered to other lower-class groups.
These allocations postponed any showdown over limited resources, thus
enabling right and left to compromise. Political institutionalization
and accommodation prevailed, partly because the unorganized urban poor
and especially the rural poor suffered, in effect, from marginality.
Starting in the 1950s, however, social demands outpaced slow economic
growth, and the political arena became increasingly crowded and heated.
In addition, accelerated mobilization, polarization, and radicalization
by ideologically competing parties placed more and more stress on the
"compromise state" to reconcile incompatible demands and
projects.
By 1952 Chileans were alienated by multiparty politics that produced
reformist governments, which would veer to the right once in office.
Chileans were tired of politiquer�a (petty politics, political
chicanery, and pork-barrel politics). Citizens were also dismayed by
slow growth and spiraling inflation. They showed their displeasure by
turning to two symbols of the past, the 1920s dictator Ib��ez and the
son of former president Alessandri.
In an effort to "sweep the rascals out," the voters elected
the politically unaffiliated Ib��ez back to the presidency in 1952.
Brandishing his broom as a symbol, the "General of Victory"
ran against all the major parties and their clientelistic system of
government. He made his strongest attacks on the Radicals, accusing them
of mismanagement of the economy and subservience to the United States.
Along with the short-lived Agrarian Labor Party (1945-58), a few
Communists backed Ib��ez in hopes of relegalizing the PCCh; a few
Socialists also supported him in hopes of spawning a workers' movement
similar to Peronism in Argentina. Other leftists, however, endorsed the
first token presidential campaign of Salvador Allende in order to stake
out an independent Marxist strategy for future runs at the presidency.
Allende received only 5 percent of the vote, while Ib��ez won with a
plurality of 47 percent. As it always did when no candidate captured an
absolute majority, Congress ratified the top vote-getter as president.
Chile - Ib��ez's Second Presidency, 1952-58
Like the Radicals before him, Ib��ez entered office as a reformer
governing with a center-left coalition and ended his term as a
conservative surrounded by rightists. Along the way, he discarded his
promises of economic nationalism and social justice. Also like the
Radicals, he left festering problems for subsequent administrations.
Early in his administration, Ib��ez tried to live up to his billing
as a nationalistic reformer. He rewarded those who had voted for him in
the countryside by setting a minimum wage for rural laborers, although
real wages for farm workers continued to fall throughout the decade. He
also postured as a Latin American spokesman, hailing Juan Domingo Per�n
when the Argentine leader visited Chile.
After two years of expansionary fiscal policies in league with
reformers and a few leftists, Ib��ez converted to a conservative
program to stem inflation and to improve relations with the United
States copper companies. As the effort to move import-substitution
industrialization beyond the stage of replacing foreign consumer goods
bogged down, the economy became mired in stagflation. The rates of
industrialization, investment, and growth all slowed. Monetarist
policies proposed by a team of United States experts, known as the
Klein-Saks Mission, failed to bring inflation under control. Price
increases averaged 38 percent per year during the 1950s.
Persistent inflation stoked a debate among economists over causes and
cures. Emphasizing deep-rooted causes and long-term solutions, advocates
of structuralism blamed chronic inflation primarily on foreign trade
dependency, insufficient local production (especially in agriculture),
and political struggles over government spoils among entrenched vested
interests. Their opponents, avocates of monetarism, attributed rising prices principally to classic
financial causes such as currency expansion and deficit spending. Like
the Klein-Saks Mission, the monetarists recommended austerity measures
to curb inflation. The structuralists denounced such belt-tightening as
recessionary, inimical to growth, and socially regressive. The
monetarists replied that economic development would be delayed and
distorted until expansionary monetary and financial policies were
corrected.
Adopting a monetarist approach, in 1955 Ib��ez made concessions to
the United States copper companies, chiefly Anaconda and Kennecott, in
an effort to elicit more investment. These measure reduced the firms'
taxes and raised their profits but failed to attract much capital.
Discontent with this experience underlay subsequent campaigns to
nationalize the mines.
Ib��ez also enacted reforms to increase the integrity of the
electoral system. Under the new plan, the secret ballot system was
improved in 1958, and stiff fines for fraud were established. These
reforms reduced the sway of landowners and facilitated the growth of the
Christian Democrat and Marxist political movements among peasants.
Ib��ez's middle- and working-class support flowed over to the
Christian Democrats and the Marxists. The Christian Democratic Party
(Partido Dem�crata Cristiano--PDC) was founded in 1957 with the merger
of three conservative elements: the National Falange, founded in 1938;
the Social Christian Conservative Party; and the remnants of the
Agrarian Labor Party that had backed Ib��ez. The Christian Democrats
espoused reformist Catholic doctrines that promised a society based on
communitarianism. The new party appealed strongly to the middle class,
women, peasants, and ruralurban migrants. Its displacement of the
Radicals as the preeminent centrist party meant that a pragmatic
organization was replaced by an ideological group less amenable to
coalition and compromise. At the same time that the center was hardening
its position, the right and the left were also becoming more dogmatic
and sectarian.
Relegalized by Ib��ez in 1958, the PCCh formed an enduring
electoral alliance with the Socialists known as the Popular Action Front
(Frente de Acci�n Popular--FRAP). The Marxist parties embraced more
militant projects for the construction of socialism and disdained
alliances behind centrist parties. They replaced Popular Front politics
with "workers front" politics. The PCCh and the Socialist
Party became more exclusive and radical in their ideological commitments
and in their dedication to the proletariat. Of the two parties, the
Socialist Party posed as more revolutionary, especially after the 1959
Cuban Revolution.
As they had in the 1930s, the Marxist parties experienced success in
the 1950s in tandem with a unified national trade union movement.
Dismayed by runaway inflation, the major labor unions replaced the
fractionalized CTCh with the United Federation of Chilean Workers
(Central �nica de Trabajadores de Chile--CUTCh) in 1953. The Communists
and Socialists, with their enduring strength in older unions in mining,
construction, and manufacturing, took command of the new confederation.
As the 1958 election approached, the electorate divided into three
camps well-defined by their predominant class and ideology. The right
represented mainly Conservatives and Liberals, the upper class, rural
dwellers, the defenders of capitalism, and the status quo. In the
center, the Christian Democrats and Radicals spoke largely for the
middle class and the proponents of moderate social reforms to avoid
socialism. On the left, the Socialists and Communists championed the
working class, advocating a peaceful transition to socialism.
Rural-urban migrants and women had gained social and political
importance. The percentage of the population registered to vote in
presidential contests had risen from about 11 percent in the 1940s to
17.5 percent in 1952 and then to 21 percent in 1958. In the 1958
election, the right--Conservatives and Liberals--hoped to return to
power for the first time since 1938. Their standard-bearer was Jorge
Alessandri Rodr�guez, an engineering professor and the son of Chile's
most recent rightist president. He posed as an independent who was above
party politics, offering technocratic solutions to the nation's
problems. In the center, the Radicals, with candidate Luis Bossay Leyva,
and the Christian Democrats, who nominated Eduardo Frei Montalva, vied
for moderate votes. On the left, the reunited Socialists and Communists
backed Salvador Allende.
In a preview of the 1970 election, the 1958 vote split three ways: 31
percent for Alessandri, 29 percent for Allende, and 40 percent for the
rest, including a strong third-place showing by Frei with 21 percent. If
it had not been for the 3 percent of the votes snared by a populist
defrocked priest, the 15 percent won by the Radicals, and the low
percentage (22 percent) of women casting ballots for Allende, the
Marxists could easily have captured the presidency in 1958, several
months before the Cuban Revolution. As it was, they and the Christian
Democrats were highly encouraged to build their electoral forces toward
another face-off in 1964. An especially noteworthy shift was the
transfer of many peasant votes from the right to the columns of
Christian Democrat and Marxist politicians promising agrarian reform.
Chile - Jorge Alessandri's Rightist Term, 1958-64
Once again, Congress approved the front-runner as president.
Alessandri promised to restrain government intervention in the economy
and to promote the private sector, although he did not envision reliance
on the market to the extent that later would occur under Pinochet. With
a slender mandate, the opposition in control of the legislature, and a
modest program, the president accomplished little of great note.
Alessandri did, however, maintain political and economic stability.
He temporarily dampened inflation, mainly by placing a ceiling on wages.
This measure sparked mounting labor protests in the early 1960s. The
economy grew and unemployment shrank. He also passed mild land-reform
legislation, which would be implemented mostly by his successors. His
action was partly the result of prodding by the United States
government, which backed agrarian reform under the auspices of the Alliance
for Progress in hopes of blunting the appeal of the
Cuban Revolution. At the same time, Alessandri tried to attract foreign
investment, although he had no intention of throwing open the economy,
as would be done under Pinochet. By the end of Alessandri's term, the
country was burdened with a rising foreign debt.
In the 1964 presidential contest, the right abandoned its
standard-bearers and gave its support to Frei in order to avert an
Allende victory in the face of rising electoral support for the
leftists. The center-right alliance defeated the left, 56 percent to 39
percent. The reformist Frei enjoyed strong United States support, both
during and after the campaign. He also had the backing of the Roman
Catholic Church and European Christian Democrats. Frei ran particularly
well among women, the middle class, peasants, and residents of the
shantytowns (callampas or poblaciones). Allende was
most popular with men and bluecollar workers.
Although Frei and Allende were foes on the campaign trail, they
agreed on major national issues that needed to be addressed: greater
Chilean control over the United States-owned copper mines, agrarian
reform, better housing for the residents of the sprawling shantytowns,
more equitable income distribution, expanded educational opportunities,
and a more independent foreign policy. They both criticized capitalism
as a cause of underdevelopment and of the poverty that afflicted the
majority of Chile's population. To distinguish his more moderate program
from Allende's Marxism, Frei promised a "Revolution in
Liberty."
Chile - Eduardo Frei's Christian Democracy, 1964-70
After the 1965 elections gave them a majority of deputies in
Congress, the Christian Democrats enacted ambitious reforms on many
fronts. However, as a single-party government, they were often loath to
enter into bargains, compromises, or coalitions. Consequently, rightists
and leftists often opposed their congressional initiatives, especially
in the Senate.
One of the major achievements of Eduardo Frei Montalva (president,
1964-70) was the "Chileanization" of copper. The government
took 51 percent ownership of the mines controlled by United States
companies, principally those of Anaconda and Kennecott. Critics
complained that the companies received overly generous terms, invested
too little in Chile, and retained too much ownership. Nevertheless,
copper production rose, and Chile received a higher return from the
enterprises.
Frei believed that agrarian reform was necessary to raise the
standard of living of rural workers, to boost agricultural production,
to expand his party's electoral base, and to defuse revolutionary
potential in the countryside. Consequently, in 1967 his government
promoted the right of peasants to unionize and strike. The
administration also expropriated land with the intention of dividing it
between collective and family farms. However, actual redistribution of
land fell far short of promises and expectations. Conflict arose in the
countryside between peasants eager for land and landowners frightened of
losing their rights and their property.
During the tenure of the Christian Democrats, economic growth
remained sluggish and inflation stayed high. Nevertheless, Frei's
government improved income distribution and access to education, as
enrollments rose at all levels of schooling. Under the aegis of
"Popular Promotion," the Frei government organized many
squatter communities and helped them build houses. This aided the PDC in
its competition with the Marxists for political support in the
burgeoning callampas. At the same time, Frei enacted tax
reforms that made tax collection more efficient than ever before. The
Christian Democrats also pushed through constitutional changes to
strengthen the presidency; these changes later would be used to
advantage by Allende. The PDC also revised electoral regulations,
lowering the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen and giving the
franchise to people who could not read (about 10 percent of the
population was illiterate).
Although friendly to United States investors and government
officials, the Frei administration took an independent stance in foreign
affairs--more collegial with the developing nations and less hostile to
the Communist bloc nations. For instance, Frei restored diplomatic
relations with the Soviet Union and most of its allies. Chile also gave
strong backing to multilateral organizations, including the Latin
American Free Trade Association ( LAFTA), the Andean Group, the
Organization of American States ( OAS), and the United Nations.
Meanwhile, aid and investment from the United States multiplied. Under
Frei, Chile received more aid per capita from the United States than did
any other country in Latin America.
After the two governments that followed the Christian Democrats,
Chileans would look back with nostalgia on the Frei administration and
its accomplishments. At the time, however, it was hounded by the right
for being too reformist and by the left for being too conservative.
While some on the right began forming paramilitary units to defend their
property, some on the left began encouraging illegal seizures of farms,
housing plots, and factories. Among the masses, the Christian Democrats
raised expectations higher than they intended.
As the next presidential election approached, Frei remained
personally popular, but his party's strength ebbed. With no clear winner
apparent, the 1970 campaign shaped up as a rerun of 1958, with the
right, center, and left all fielding their own candidates. The right
hoped to recapture power and brake the pace of reform with former
president Jorge Alessandri as the candidate of the National Party
(Partido Nacional--PN), established in 1965 by Conservatives and
Liberals. In the center, the Christian Democrats promised to accelerate
reform with a progressive candidate, Radomiro Tomic Romero. The left
vowed to head down the road toward socialism with Salvador Allende as
its nominee for the fourth time.
Under the leadership of the Socialist Party and the PCCh, the leftist
coalition of 1970 called itself Popular Unity (Unidad Popular--UP).
Joining the alliance were four minor parties, including the shrunken
Radical Party and defectors from the Christian Democrats, most notably
the United Popular Action Movement (Movimiento de Acci�n Popular
Unitario--MAPU). The coalition was reminiscent of the Popular Front of
1936-41, except that it was led by the Marxist parties and a Marxist
candidate. Further to the left, the Movement of the Revolutionary Left
(Movimiento de la Izquierda Revolucionaria--MIR), a small organization
headed by radicalized students, scoffed at the electoral route, called
for armed struggle, and undertook direct assaults on the system, such as
bank robberies.
To the surprise of most pollsters and prognosticators, Allende nosed
out Alessandri 36.2 percent to 35 percent in the September 4, 1973,
elections; Tomic trailed with 27.8 percent of the vote. In the cold war
context of the times, the democratic election of a Marxist president
sent a shock wave around the globe. The seven weeks between the counting
of the ballots and the certification of the winner by Congress crackled
with tension. Attempts by the United States and by right-wing groups in
Chile to convince Congress to choose the runner-up Alessandri or to coax
the military into staging a coup d'�tat failed. A botched kidnapping
planned by right-wing military officers resulted in the assassination of
the army commander in chief, General Ren� Schneider Chereau, on October
22, 1970, the first major political killing in Chile since the death of
Portales in 1837. That plot backfired by ensuring the armed forces'
support of a constitutional assumption of power by Allende.
After extracting guarantees of adherence to democratic procedures
from Allende, the Christian Democrats in Congress followed tradition and
provided the votes to make the front-runner Chile's new president.
Although a minority president was not unusual, one with such a drastic
plan to revolutionize the nation was unique. Allende was inaugurated on
November 3, 1970.
Chile - Salvador Allende's Leftist Regime, 1970-73
The Allende experiment enjoyed a triumphant first year, followed by
two disastrous final years. According to the UP, Chile was being
exploited by parasitic foreign and domestic capitalists. The government
therefore moved quickly to socialize the economy, taking over the copper
mines, other foreign firms, oligopolistic industries, banks, and large
estates. By a unanimous vote of Congress in 1971, the government totally
nationalized the foreign copper firms, which were mainly owned by two
United States companies, Kennecott and Anaconda. The nationalization
measure was one of the few bills Allende ever got through the
opposition- controlled legislature, where the Christian Democrats
constituted the largest single party.
Socialization of the means of production spread rapidly and widely.
The government took over virtually all the great estates. It turned the
lands over to the resident workers, who benefited far more than the
owners of tiny plots or the numerous migrant laborers. By 1972 food
production had fallen and food imports had risen. Also during 1971-72,
the government dusted off emergency legislation from the 1932 Socialist
Republic to allow it to expropriate industries without congressional
approval. It turned many factories over to management by the workers and
the state.
In his first year, Allende also employed Keynesian measures to hike
salaries and wages, thus pumping up the purchasing power of the middle
and working classes. This "consumer revolution" benefited 95
percent of the population in the short run because prices were held down
and employment went up. Producers responded to rising demand by
employing previously underused capacity.
Politically, Allende faced problems holding his Popular Unity
coalition together, pacifying the more leftist elements inside and
outside Popular Unity and, above all, coping with the increasingly
implacable opposition. Within Popular Unity, the largest party was the
Socialist Party. Although composed of multiple factions, the Socialist
Party mainly pressed Allende to accelerate the transition toward
socialism. The second most important element was the PCCh, which favored
a more gradual, legalistic approach. Outside the Popular Unity, the most
significant left-wing organization was the MIR, a tiny but provocative
group that admired the Cuban Revolution and encouraged peasants and
workers to take property and the revolutionary process into their own
hands, much faster than Allende preferred.
The most important opposition party was the PDC. As it and the middle
sectors gradually shifted to the right, they came to form an
anti-Allende bloc in combination with the Natinal Party and the
propertied class. Even farther to the right were minuscule,
paramilitary, quasi-fascist groups like Fatherland and Liberty (Patria y
Libertad), determined to sabotage Popular Unity.
The Popular Unity government tried to maintain cordial relations with
the United States, even while staking out an independent position as a
champion of developing nations and socialist causes. It opened
diplomatic relations with Cuba, China, the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea (North Korea), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North
Vietnam), and Albania. It befriended the Soviet Union, which sent aid to
the Allende administration, although far less than Cuba received or than
Popular Unity had hoped for.
Meanwhile, the United States pursued a two-track policy toward
Allende's Chile. At the overt level, Washington was frosty, especially
after the nationalization of the copper mines; official relations were
unfriendly but not openly hostile. The government of President Richard
M. Nixon squeezed the Chilean economy by terminating financial
assistance and blocking loans from multilateral organizations, although
it increased aid to the military, a sector unenthusiastic toward the
Allende government. It was widely reported that at the covert level the
United States worked to destabilize Allende's Chile by funding
opposition political groups and media and by encouraging a military coup
d'�tat. Most scholars have concluded that these United States actions
contributed to the downfall of Allende, although no one has established
direct United States participation in the coup d'�tat and very few
would assign the United States the primary role in the destruction of
that government.
During the second and third years of the UP, demand outstripped
supply, the economy shrank, deficit spending snowballed, new investments
and foreign exchange became scarce, the value of copper sales dropped,
shortages appeared, and inflation skyrocketed, eroding the previous
gains for the working class. A thriving black market sprang up. The
government responded with direct distribution systems in working-class
neighborhoods. Worker participation in the management of enterprises
reached unprecedented proportions. The strapped government could not
keep the economy from going into free fall because it could not impose
austerity measures on its supporters in the working class, get new taxes
approved by Congress, or borrow enough money abroad to cover the
deficit.
Although the right was on the defensive in Allende's first year, it
moved on the offensive and forged an alliance with the center in the
next two years. In Congress this center-right coalition erected a
blockade against all Popular Unity initiatives, harassed Popular Unity
cabinet ministers, and denounced the administration as illegitimate and
unconstitutional, thus setting the stage for a military takeover. The
most acrimonious battle raged over the boundaries of Popular Unity's
"social property area" (�rea de propriedad social),
which would incorporate private holdings through government
intervention, requisition, or expropriation. The Supreme Court and the
comptroller general of the republic joined Congress in criticizing the
executive branch for overstepping its constitutional bounds.
Allende tried to stabilize the situation by organizing a succession
of cabinets, but none of them guaranteed order. His appointment of
military officers to cabinet posts in 1972 and 1973 also failed to
stifle the opposition. Instead, it helped politicize the armed services.
Outside the government, Allende's supporters continued direct takeovers
of land and businesses, further disrupting the economy and frightening
the propertied class.
The two sides reached a showdown in the March 1973 congressional
elections. The opposition expected the Allende coalition to suffer the
typical losses of Chilean governments in midterm elections, especially
with the economy in a tailspin. The National Party and PDC hoped to win
two-thirds of the seats, enough to impeach Allende. They netted 55
percent of the votes, not enough of a majority to end the stalemate.
Moreover, the Popular Unity's 43 percent share represented an increase
over the presidential tally of 36.2 percent and gave Allende's coalition
six additional congressional seats; therefore, many of his adherents
were encouraged to forge ahead.
In the aftermath of the indecisive 1973 congressional elections, both
sides escalated the confrontation and hurled threats of insurgency.
Street demonstrations became almost daily events and increasingly
violent. Right-wing groups, such as Fatherland and Liberty, and
left-wing groups, such as the MIR, brandished arms and called for a
cataclysmic solution. The most militant workers formed committees in
their neighborhoods and workplaces to press for accelerated social
change and to defend their gains. The opposition began openly knocking
on the doors of the barracks in hopes that the military would provide a
solution.
The regular armed forces halted an attempted coup by tank commanders
in June 1973, but that incident warned the nation that the military was
getting restless. Thereafter, the armed forces prepared for a massive
coup by stepping up raids to search for arms among Popular Unity's
supporters. Conditions worsened in June, July, and August, as middle-
and upper-class business proprietors and professionals launched another
wave of workplace shutdowns and lockouts, as they had in late 1972.
Their 1973 protests against the government coincided with strikes by the
trucking industry and by the left's erstwhile allies among the copper
workers. The Nationalists, the Christian Democrats, and conservative
students backed the increasingly subversive strikers. They called for
Allende's resignation or military intervention. Attempts by the Catholic
Church to get the PDC and Popular Unity to negotiate a compromise came
to naught. Meanwhile, inflation reached an annual rate of more than 500
percent. By mid-1973 the economy and the government were paralyzed.
In August 1973, the rightist and centrist representatives in the
Chamber of Deputies undermined the president's legitimacy by accusing
him of systematically violating the constitution and by urging the armed
forces to intervene. In early September, Allende was preparing to call
for a rare national plebiscite to resolve the impasse between Popular
Unity and the opposition. The military obviated that strategy by
launching its attack on civilian authority on the morning of September
11. Just prior to the assault, the commanders in chief, headed by the
newly appointed army commander, General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, had
purged officers sympathetic to the president or the constitution.
Allende committed suicide while defending (with an assault rifle) his
socialist government against the coup d'�tat. Although sporadic
resistance to the coup erupted, the military consolidated control much
more quickly than it had believed possible. Many Chileans had predicted
that a coup would unleash a civil war, but instead it ushered in a long
period of repression.
Debate continues over the reasons for Allende's downfall. Why did he
fail to preserve democracy or achieve socialism? Critics of the left
blamed Allende for going to extremes, destroying the economy, violating
the constitution, and undermining the spirit if not the letter of
democracy. Right-wing critics in particular accused the left of even
plotting an armed takeover, a charge that was never proved. Critics also
assailed the UP for being unclear about the limits of its reforms and
thus frightening the middle class into the arms of the opposition.
Critics of the right accused Popular Unity, in conjunction with the
United States, of ruining the economy and of calling out the armed
forces to protect its property and privileges. Observers in general
scolded the far left for its adventurous excesses. The far left retorted
that Popular Unity failed because it was too timid to arm the masses.
Critics of the Christian Democrats chastised them for refusing to
compromise, locking arms with the rightist opposition, and failing to
defend democracy.
Many analysts would concur that there was ample blame to go around.
In the view of many Chileans, groups at all points on the political
spectrum helped destroy the democratic order by being too ideological
and too intransigent. Many observers agree that a minority president
facing adamant domestic and foreign opposition was extremely unlikely to
be able to uphold democracy and create socialism at the same time. In
the late 1980s, polls also showed that most Chileans did not want to try
the Popular Unity experiment again, especially in light of its
aftermath.
Chile - MILITARY RULE, 1973-90
The armed forces justified the coup as necessary to stamp out
Marxism, avert class warfare, restore order, and salvage the economy.
They enshrined the National Security Doctrine, which defined their
primary task as the defeat of domestic enemies who had infiltrated
national institutions, including schools, churches, political parties,
unions, and the media. Although civilians filled prominent economic
posts, military officers took most government positions at the national
and local levels. Immediately on seizing power, the military
junta--composed of the commanders in chief of the army, navy, air force,
and national police--issued a barrage of decrees to restore order on its
own terms.
The first phase of the dictatorship (1973-75) was mainly destructive,
aimed at rapid demobilization, depoliticization, and stabilization. The
armed forces treated the members of the UP as an enemy to be
obliterated, not just as an errant political movement to be booted from
office. The military commanders closed Congress, censored the media,
purged the universities, burned books, declared political parties
outlawed if Marxist or in recess otherwise, and banned union activities.
The worst human rights abuses occurred in the first four years of the
junta, when thousands of civilians were murdered, jailed, tortured,
brutalized, or exiled, especially those linked with the Popular Unity
parties. The secret police, reporting to Pinochet through the National
Intelligence Directorate (Direcci�n Nacional de Inteligencia--DINA),
replaced in 1977 by the National Information Center (Centro Nacional de
Informaci�n--CNI), kept dissidents living in fear of arrest, torture,
murder, or "disappearance."
Throughout the second half of the 1970s, the Roman Catholic Church
and international organizations concerned with human rights denounced
the widespread violations of decency in Chile. Although officially
neutral, the Roman Catholic Church became the primary sanctuary for the
persecuted in Chile from 1975 to 1985 and so came into increasing
conflict with the junta.
The former members of Popular Unity went underground or into exile.
In the early years of the dictatorship, their main goal was simply to
survive. Although the Communists suffered brutal persecution, they
managed to preserve their organization fairly intact. The Socialists
splintered so badly that their party nearly disappeared by the end of
the 1970s. Draconian repression left the Marxists with no capacity to
resist or counterattack. They did, however, manage to rally world
opinion against the regime and keep it diplomatically isolated. By the
end of the 1970s, most Christian Democrats, after initially cooperating
with the junta, had also joined the opposition, although not in any
formal coalition with any coherent strategy for restoring democracy.
Pinochet soon emerged as the dominant figure and very shortly
afterward as president. After a brief flirtation with corporatist ideas,
the government evolved into a one-man dictatorship, with the rest of the
junta acting as a sort of legislature. In 1977 Pinochet dashed the hopes
of those Chileans still dreaming of an early return to democracy when he
announced his intention to institutionalize an authoritarian regime to
preside over a protracted return to civilian rule in a
"protected" democracy.
Pinochet established iron control over the armed forces as well as
the government, although insisting that they were separate entities. He
made himself not only the chief executive of the state but also the
commander in chief of the military. He shuffled commands to ensure that
loyalists controlled all the key posts. He appointed many new generals
and had others retire, so that by the 1980s all active-duty generals
owed their rank to Pinochet. He also improved the pay and benefits of
the services. The isolation of the armed forces from civil society had
been a virtue under the democracy, inhibiting their involvement in
political disputes; now that erstwhile virtue became an impediment to
redemocratization, as the military remained loyal to Pinochet and
resisted politicization by civilians.
Although aid and loans from the United States increased spectacularly
during the first three years of the regime, while presidents Nixon and
Gerald R. Ford were in office, relations soured after Jimmy Carter was
elected president in 1976 on a platform promising vigorous pursuit of
human rights as a major component of his foreign policy. During the
Carter administration, a significant source of contention was the 1976
assassination in Washington of the former Chilean ambassador to the
United States by agents of Pinochet's secret police. The victim, Orlando
Letelier, had served under Allende. In response to United States
criticism, General Pinochet held his first national plebiscite in 1978,
calling for a yes or no vote on his defense of Chile's sovereignty and
the institutionalization of his regime. The government claimed that more
than 75 percent of the voters in the tightly controlled referendum
endorsed Pinochet's rule.
Chile - Neoliberal Economics
By the mid-1970s, the dictatorship switched from destroying the old
order to constructing its version of a new Chile. The junta not only
overturned decades of democratic government but also decades of statist
economic policies, which had mainly protected industrialists and
organized workers. The new economic program was designed by civilian
technocrats known as the "Chicago boys" because many of them
had been trained or influenced by University of Chicago professors. The
government instituted a dramatic conversion to free-market economics in
1975.
After curbing inflation and returning a significant amount of
property to its former owners, the administration embarked on a radical
program of liberalization and privatization, slashing tariffs as well as
government welfare programs and deficits. As a result, the economy grew
rapidly from 1976 to 1981, a feat heralded as the "Chilean
miracle." That growth was fueled by the influx of private foreign
loans until the debt crisis of the early 1980s. Financial conglomerates
became the major beneficiaries of the open economy and the flood of
foreign bank loans. Exports of nontraditional commodities, especially
fruit, timber, and fish products, also grew impressively; the value of
new exportables came to equal that of copper sales. Despite high growth
in the late 1970s, income distribution became more regressive and
unemployment stayed in double digits. The underemployed informal sector
also mushroomed in size. The regime responded with a "minimum
employment" public works program.
In conjunction with the liberalization of the economy, the junta
implemented a series of social reforms to reduce the role of the central
government in social security, labor disputes, health care, and
education. These reforms fit with the desire to shrink the central
government, decentralize administration, and privatize previous state
functions. Critics charged that the welfare state was being dismantled
to leave citizens at the mercy of the marketplace. The regime retorted
that it was focusing its social assistance on the poorest of the poor to
meet basic needs, and it pointed with pride to improvement in such
indicators as infant mortality.
The most important of the government's so-called modernizations in
social policy was the 1979 Labor Plan. The regime had already outlawed
the CUTCh, Marxist union leaders, several Marxist unions, union
elections, strikes, and collective bargaining. Nevertheless, after
bearing the brunt of repression in 1973-74, unions gradually revived in
the late 1970s. Little by little, cooperation increased between Marxist
and Christian Democrat union leaders, the latter making gains because
the former were outlawed. Although a few unions supported the
government, most firmly opposed the regime and its economic program. The
Labor Plan sought to codify the dictatorship's antilabor policies. It
placed stringent limits on collective bargaining, strikes, and other
union activities, especially any participation in politics. Almost all
labor unions rejected the Labor Plan and aligned with the opposition.
Chile - The 1980 Constitution
