Commentary

Movimientos en diálogo

Authors: Mario Garcés Durán (Universidad de Santiago de Chile, Santiago, Chile) , Peter Winn (Universidad de Tufts en Boston, MA, USA)

Abstract

En esta entrevista, los historiadores Mario Garcés Durán y Peter Winn conversan sobre la irrupción del estallido social en Santiago de Chile en octubre de 2019, su crecimiento por todo el país y sus acontecimientos más importantes. Consideraron las conexiones con el pasado y el legado de la Unidad Popular (1970-73), periodo en el cual ambos fueron protagonistas.

Keywords: Chile, Unidad Popular, estallido social, Salvador Allende, Augusto Pinochet, revolución

How to Cite: Garcés Durán, M. & Winn, P. (2021) “Movimientos en diálogo”, Radical Americas. 6(1). doi: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ra.2021.v6.1.007.es

Author biographies

Mario Garcés Durán holds a PhD in History and teaches at the Universidad de Santiago de Chile. He is the author of Pan, trabajo, justicia y libertad: Las luchas de los pobladores en dictadura (1973-1990) (Santiago: LOM, 2019), Estallido social y una Nueva Constitución para Chile (Santiago: LOM, 2020) and La Unidad Popular y la revolución en Chile (Santiago: LOM, 2020). Garcés Durán is also Director of the NGO ECO (Educación y Comunicaciones). His work has long focused on issues of popular education, historical memory and analysis of social movements in Chile. Peter Winn is Professor Emeritus of Latin American History at Tufts University in Boston, USA. Among other books, Winn is the author of La revolución chilena (Santiago: LOM, 2013) and Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Declarations and conflict of interests

The authors declare no conflicts of interest with this work.

Notes

1. ECO ( Educación y Comunicaciones) is a Chilean NGO founded during the dictatorship. Staffed by professionals of the social sciences, education and communication, it was originally created in 1980 under the name, Centro de Cultura Popular (Centre for Popular Culture), as a ‘support institution’ for popular movements. Mario Garcés has worked at ECO for decades, and he is currently its director.
2. Garcés Durán, Estallido social y una Nueva Constitución.
3. The Pinochet dictatorship established SENAME in 1979 as part of a government reorganisation. Journalists have revealed that 1,313 children who were wards of the State died between 2005 and 2016, many of them as a result of abuse and neglect in homes administered by SENAME. Along with the recent reports about mistreatment and sexual abuse of children in the care of SENAME, public indignation has led some to denounce the Chilean State for systematic abuse of the human rights of children. Minors who are currently in the care of the SENAME network, as well as some who went through it, have participated in the protests that began in October of 2019, and they are among those who have been disproportionately arrested and mistreated by police. See also Sepúlveda and Guzmán, ‘El brutal informe de la PDI’; Albert and Urquieta Ch., ‘Menores del Sename’.
4. Founded in August 2019, Unidad Social (Social Unity) is a coalition of social organisations and movements. In the first months of the social explosion, it was the only organisation that attempted to include the demands of the movement, including the call to create town halls ( cabildos) in the whole country and, at the end of November of 2019, a general strike. For more information on Unidad Social, see Green-Rioja, ‘Collective trauma, feminism, and the threads of popular power’, also in this special issue, and her website: https://www.unidadsocial.cl/.
5. Founded in 1953 by Chilean labour activist Clotario Blest, the CUT, Central Única de Trabajadores, became the most powerful national labour organisation in Chile. It suffered repression after the military coup of 11 September 1973. Though founded anew in 1988 as the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores, the CUT never has recovered its prominence or its power to unite the workers largely due to the restrictive labour laws imposed by the military regime.
6. The Alianza Democrática (Democratic Alliance) was a political coalition that included opposition parties under military rule from 1983 until 1988. Later, it joined the Comando Nacional por el ‘No’ (National Committee for the ‘No’ Option) for the plebiscite of 1988.
7. Cofre, Campamento.
8. Carlos Prats was commander in chief of the Chilean Army, appointed by President Eduardo Frei in 1970 after the assassination of his predecessor, General René Schneider by paramilitary forces of the right. As part of the negotiation to put an end to the bosses’ strike in October 1972, President Allende appointed Prats as Minister of the Interior in November 1972. Later, Prats took on other assignments in the Allende government, including Minister of Defence and Vice-President of the Republic. His resignation in August 1973 opened the way for the appointment of Augusto Pinochet as commander-in-chief of the Army. After the coup in September of 1973, Prats went into exile in Argentina with his wife, Sofía Cuthbert. Both were assassinated by agents of the Direction of National Intelligence (DINA) in September 1974 in Buenos Aires.
9. On 5 August 1972, pobladores from an area known as Lo Hermida on the eastern edge of Santiago, confronted Carabineros (the Chilean police) and that conflict left one poblador dead and several injured.
10. MIR, Lo Hermida.
11. Winn, La revolución chilena.
12. Marx, ‘The eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’.