Options
Research article

La contrarrevolución chilena. Raíces, dinámicas y legados de la movilización de masas contra la Unidad Popular

Author
  • Marcelo Casals orcid logo (Radical Americas)

Abstract

La elección de Salvador Allende y la Unidad Popular en 1970 desató un radical y original proceso revolucionario, cuestión apreciable no sólo en la profundidad de las medidas redistributivas y las expectativas generadas, sino también en la ferocidad con que ese proyecto fue respondido por quienes se identificaron con un ideal contrarrevolucionario. Esa contrarrevolución inicialmente reducida a sectores conservadores y reaccionarios se transformó en cuestión de meses en una inmensa movilización de masas, que terminaría por pavimentar el camino hacia el golpe militar. Este ensayo analiza ese proceso contrarrevolucionario, explorando sus raíces históricas, los principales actores involucrados y la innovaciones en las prácticas políticas desarrolladas entonces. El “bloque contrarrevolucionario” formado por una diversidad de actores políticos y sociales -algunos de los cuales no tenían experiencia de movilización política previa- fundamentó su accionar en la adopción y socialización de un “guión” anticomunista de larga data, con el cual pudieron hacer sentido a la cambiante realidad de entonces. Ese “guión”, basado en décadas de recepciones de eventos de otras latitudes, elaboraciones y acusaciones contra todos aquellos identificados como comunistas, aspiró a reducir la originalidad del proyecto político de la Unidad Popular a una reedición en territorio chileno de las experiencias socialistas clásicas procesadas en clave distópica. La potencia de la contrarrevolución se proyectaría en la dictadura militariniciada en 1973 al convertirse en una suerte de ideología oficial de Estado, y se convertiría en una experiencia fundante de los sectores conservadores chilenos, con reverberaciones incluso en nuestros días.

Keywords: Contrarrevolución, Chile, Unidad Popular, Golpe de Estado, Derechas, Anticomunismo

How to Cite: Casals, M. (2021). La contrarrevolución chilena. Raíces, dinámicas y legados de la movilización de masas contra la Unidad Popular. Radical Americas, 6(1). https://doi.org/10.14324/111.444.ra.2021.v6.1.013.es

Rights: © 2021, Marcelo Casals.

Downloads:
Download PDF
View PDF
Download XML

921 Views

644 Downloads

Published on
31 May 2021
Peer Reviewed
License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0

Funding

This article received support from Chile’s National Agency of Research and Development (ANID) through the FONDECYT Project number 11180155.

Declarations and conflict of interests

The author declares no conflicts of interest with this work.

Notes

  1. The dissertation that resulted from his stay was entitled ‘The roots and dynamics of revolution and counterrevolution in Chile’. The two episodes are related in Bello, Counterrevolution, 39–41.
  2. See Valdivia Ortiz de Zárate, Nacionales y gremialistas; Amorós, Entre la araña y la flecha; and Díaz Nieva, Patria y Libertad.
  3. A significant part of this section is based on my previous work on anti-Communism in Chile. For a synthetic view of this phenomenon, see Casals, ‘Anticommunism in 20th-century Chile’.
  4. Patto Sá Motta, Em guarda contra o perigo vermelho, 15–46.
  5. There is a voluminous literature that gives an account of the Chilean Left’s political integration from the 1930s onwards and its role as an intermediary between the state and popular demands. See, among many others, Pavilack, Mining for the Nation; Drake, Socialism and Populism in Chile, 1932–1952; Klubock, Contested Communities; Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises; and Arrate and Rojas, Memoria de la izquierda chilena.
  6. To contrast the Chilean case with the Argentine and Brazilian cases, see Finchelstein, The Ideological Origins of the Dirty War; Cowan, Securing Sex; Correa, Con las riendas del poder; and, in comparative perspective, Deutsch, Las Derechas. Chilean nationalist groups have been studied in detail by Valdivia Ortiz de Zárate in El nacionalismo chileno, among other works.
  7. The literature on these aspects is extensive. See, among others, Cid and Fernández, ‘De “ridículo sainete filosófico” a “doctrina santa y elevada”’, 45–72; and Grez Toso, De la ‘regeneración del pueblo’ a la huelga general.
  8. On this subject, see González Miranda, El dios cautivo; and Deutsch, Las Derechas.
  9. Weld, ‘The Spanish Civil War’, 77–115.
  10. Bethell and Roxborough, ‘Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War’, 167–89.
  11. The episode is described in Huneeus, La guerra fría chilena.
  12. I have studied the point in Casals, ‘Chilean! Is this how you want to see your daughter?’ See also Power, ‘The engendering of anticommunism and fear’.
  13. On those processes, see Valdivia Ortiz de Zárate, Nacionales y gremialistas.
  14. This approach to counter-revolution is based on the works of Mayer, Furies; Mayer, Dynamics of Counterrevolution; Bello, Counterrevolution; Grandin, ‘Living in revolutionary times’; and Robin, The Reactionary Mind, among others.
  15. Pinto Vallejos, ‘Hacer la revolución en Chile’. For a critical view of these particular characteristics of the Chilean Left’s political project, see Fermandois, La revolución inconclusa, 239 and following pages.
  16. Carter, ‘Violence, ideology and counterrevolution’, 109–35. For a long-term perspective on the social, political and racial conflicts in Araucanía, see Mallon, Courage Tastes of Blood.
  17. Corrêa De Oliveira, Revolución y contra-revolución.
  18. On Guzmán and the gremialistas, see Cristi, El pensamiento político de Jaime Guzmán, chapter 3.
  19. At the founding ceremony of the Frente Nacionalista Patria y Libertad on 1 April 1971, its leader Pablo Rodríguez made clear the organisation’s level of attachment to a radical and reductionist version of the anti-Communist script: ‘We are anti-Marxists because it is an indisputable fact that at this moment the Unidad Popular is entirely dominated by the Communist Party, which is gradually leading us to tyranny, to the dictatorship of the proletariat. It is a matter of destroying social classes, the men who have been able to create wealth, progressive industry, commerce; in the end, it is a matter of imposing that phenomenon that is foreign to us, which is the dictatorship of the proletariat without the proletariat.’ Cited in Díaz Nieva, Patria y Libertad, 77.
  20. On the economic assumptions of the Unidad Popular programme, see Bitar, Transición, socialismo y democracia.
  21. Bello, ‘The roots and dynamics of revolution and counterrevolution in Chile’, 412.
  22. Varas, La dinámica política de la oposición, 57 and following pages; and Valdivia Ortiz de Zárate, Nacionales y gremialistas, 287–98.
  23. At the time, the leftist press floated the idea that the VOP was really an organisation created by the political Right and United States intelligence agencies. Even today there are researchers who do not rule out that possibility. See Winn, ‘The furies of the Andes’, 254.
  24. Palieraki, ‘Las manifestaciones callejeras’, 10–12.
  25. The march and conservative women’s anti-Allende participation have been studied in detail by Power, Right-Wing Women in Chile.
  26. Campero, Los gremios, 59.
  27. However, as Tanya Harmer has shown, Washington was aware of the popularity of Allende’s Third Worldist demands, so its policy was much more hesitant than commonly believed, at least while it could not convincingly justify its onslaught against the Chilean experiment. Harmer, Allende’s Chile, chapter 4.
  28. Winn formulated these categories in his classic study of the Yarur textile-industry workers, Weavers of Revolution; and years later, he would refine them in La revolución chilena, recognising the multiple interactions between the two dimensions.
  29. Consumption was a key battle ground in the political conflict under the Unidad Popular, however, a detailed treatment of it is beyond the scope of this article. On this point, see recent research such as Frens-String, ‘Communists, commissars, and consumers; and Espinosa Muñoz, ‘La batalla de la merluza’, 31–54.
  30. Amorós, Entre la araña y la flecha, 183.
  31. Díaz Nieva, Patria y Libertad, chapter 3.
  32. Alan Angell, ‘Social class and popular mobilisation’, 22 and following pages.
  33. On the press (including the left-wing press) as a polarising factor in political conflict, see Dooner, Periodismo y política.
  34. The nature and scope of ‘popular power’ was one of the great debates on the Left. A general approach to this topic can be found in Gaudichaud, Chile, 1970–1973. On the radical changes in the use of public space during the October strike: Trumper, Ephemeral Histories, chapter 3.
  35. Jaime Guzmán, the leader of Universidad Católica’s gremialista movement, was the one who elaborated this line of interpretation most systematically. In line with his anti-Marxist and anti-liberal corporatism, he saw the mobilisation of gremios as the emergence of a new mode of state organisation, now based on ‘intermediate bodies’ where true social participation would be located, displacing politics with issues of state administration. Thus, it avoided what he understood to be political parties’ disruptive activity, which had opened the doors of state power to ‘Marxism’, among other things. On this point, see Valdivia Ortiz de Zárate, Nacionales y gremialistas, 348–52.
  36. Harmer, Allende’s Chile, 182–3.
  37. According to Tanya Harmer’s research, there is evidence that the Brazilian regime supported Allende’s most radical opposition – among them, Patria y Libertad – with money and weapons, while keeping in permanent contact with Chilean military officers in preparation for a coup d’état. For counter-revolutionary Chileans, the ‘Brazilian solution’ grew increasingly attractive, and at the end of 1972 and even more forcefully in 1973 calls for military intervention started to be made directly, based on the understanding that Chile was in imminent danger of becoming a Communist dictatorship. Harmer, ‘Brazil’s Cold War in the Southern Cone’.
  38. Bevins, The Jakarta Method, chapter 9.
  39. Rojas Flores, ‘Los estudiantes secundarios’.
  40. Winn, La revolución chilena, 117–18.
  41. Roxborough, Roddick and O’Brien, Chile: The State and Revolution, 210.
  42. Campero, Los gremios, 77.
  43. Stern, Remembering Pinochet’s Chile, chapters 1 and 4.
  44. For a critical perspective on the transition, see Huneeus, La democracia semisoberana.

References

Amorós, Mario. (2020).  Entre la araña y la flecha. La trama civil contra la Unidad Popular. Santiago: Ediciones B.

Angell, Alan. (2010).  ‘Social class and popular mobilisation in Chile: 1970–1973’.  A Contracorriente: Revista de Historia Social y Literatura en América Latina 7 (no. 2) : 1–51.

Bello, Walden. (2019).  Counterrevolution: The Global Rise of the Far Right. Rugby: Practical Action Publishing.

Bello, Walden F.. (1975).  ‘The roots and dynamics of revolution and counterrevolution in Chile’.  PhD thesis, Princeton University:

Bethell, Leslie; Roxborough, Ian. (1988).  ‘Latin America between the Second World War and the Cold War: Some reflections on the 1945–8 conjuncture’.  Journal of Latin American Studies 20 (no. 1) : 167–89, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X00002522

Bevins, Vincent. (2020).  The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade and the Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World. New York: PublicAffairs.

Bitar, Sergio. (1979).  Transición, socialismo y democracia: La experiencia chilena. Mexico City: Siglo Veintiuno Editores.

Campero, Guillermo. (1984).  Los gremios empresariales en el período 1970–1983: Comportamiento sociopolítico y orientaciones ideológicas. 1st edn. Santiago: ILET.

Carter, Daniel. (2019).  ‘Violence, ideology and counterrevolution: Landowners and agrarian reform in Cautín province, Chile, 1967–1973’.  Journal of Latin American Studies February 2019 51 (no. 1) : 109–35, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022216X18000652

Casals, Marcelo. (2019).  ‘Anticommunism in 20th-century Chile: From the “social question” to the military dictatorship’.  Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Latin American History, March 2019 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199366439.013.666

Casals, Marcelo. (2020).  ‘“Chilean! Is this how you want to see your daughter?”: The Cuban revolution and representations of gender and family during Chile’s 1964 anticommunist “Campaign of Terror”’.  Radical History Review 136 : 111–27, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/01636545-7857295

Cid, Gabriel; Fernández, Camilo. (2020).  ‘De “ridículo sainete filosófico” a “doctrina santa y elevada”: Los conceptos de socialismo y comunismo en el debate público chileno del siglo XIX’.  Historia June 2020 53 (no. 1) : 45–72, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0717-71942020000100045

Cristi, Renato. (2011).  El pensamiento político de Jaime Guzmán: Una biografía intelectual. Santiago: LOM Ediciones.

De Oliveira, Plinio Corrêa. (1964).  Revolución y contra-revolución. Santiago: Paulinas.

Deutsch, Sandra McGee. (1999).  Las Derechas: The Extreme Right in Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, 1890–1939. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Díaz Nieva, José. (2019).  Patria y Libertad. El nacionalismo frente a la Unidad Popular. Santiago: Centro de Estudios Bicentenario.

Dooner, Patricio. (1989).  Periodismo y política: La prensa política en Chile, 1970–1973. Santiago: Andante.

Espinosa, Francisca Muñoz. (2018).  ‘“La batalla de la merluza”: Política y consumo alimenticio en el Chile de la Unidad Popular (1970–1973)’.  Historia July 2018 51 (no. 1) : 31–54, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/s0717-71942018000100031

Fermandois, Joaquín. (2013).  La revolución inconclusa: La izquierda chilena y el gobierno de la Unidad Popular. Santiago: Centro de Estudios Públicos.

Frens-String, Joshua. (2018).  ‘Communists, commissars, and consumers: The politics of food on the Chilean road to socialism’.  Hispanic American Historical Review August 2018 98 (no. 3) : 471–501, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00182168-6933567

Gaudichaud, Franck. (2016).  Chile, 1970–1973. Mil días que estremecieron al mundo. Poder popular, cordones industriales y socialismo durante el gobierno de Salvador Allende. Santiago: LOM Ediciones.

Grandin, Greg. (2010).  ‘Living in revolutionary times: Coming to terms with the violence of Latin America’s long Cold War’.  A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War. Grandin, Greg, Joseph, Gilbert M. Gilbert M. (eds.),   Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 1–42.

Grez Toso, Sergio. (1997).  De la ‘regeneración del pueblo’ a la huelga general: Génesis y evolución histórica del movimiento popular en Chile (1810–1890). Santiago: Dirección de Bibliotecas, Archivos y Museos.

Harmer, Tanya. (2011).  Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Harmer, Tanya. (2012).  ‘Brazil’s Cold War in the Southern Cone, 1970–1975’.  Cold War History November 2012 12 (no. 4) : 659–81, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14682745.2011.641953

Huneeus, Carlos. (2014).  La democracia semisoberana: Chile después de Pinochet. Santiago: Taurus.

Huneeus, Carlos. (2009).  La guerra fría chilena: Gabriel González Videla y la Ley Maldita. Santiago: Random House Mondadori S.A..

Mallon, Florencia E.. (2005).  Courage Tastes of Blood: The Mapuche Community of Nicolaś Ailío and the Chilean State, 1906–2001. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Mayer, Arno J.. (1971).  Dynamics of Counterrevolution in Europe, 1870–1956: An Analytic Framework. New York: Harper & Row.

Mayer, Arno J.. (2013).  Furies: Violence and Terror in the French and Russian Revolutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Palieraki, Eugenia. (2003).  ‘Las manifestaciones callejeras y la experiencia de la Unidad Popular (1970–1973)’.  Pensamiento Crítico. Revista electrónica de Historia 3 : 1–28.

Pinto Vallejos, Julio. (2005).  ‘Hacer la revolución en Chile’.  Cuando hicimos historia: Las experiencias de la Unidad Popular. Julio Pinto, Vallejos (ed.),   Santiago: LOM Ediciones, pp. 9–14.

Power, Margaret. (2008).  ‘The engendering of anticommunism and fear in Chile’s 1964 presidential election’.  Diplomatic History 32 (no. 5) : 931–53, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7709.2008.00735.x

Power, Margaret. (2002).  Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964–1973. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.

Robin, Corey. (2011).  The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin. New York: Oxford University Press.

Rojas Flores, Jorge. (2009).  ‘Los estudiantes secundarios durante la Unidad Popular, 1970–1973’.  Historia 42 (no. 2) : 471–503, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4067/S0717-71942009000200005

Roxborough, Ian; Roddick, Jacqueline; O’Brien, Philip J.. (1977).  Chile: The State and Revolution. London: Macmillan Press.

Sá Motta, Rodrigo Patto. (2002).  Em guarda contra o perigo vermelho: O anticomunismo no Brasil, 1917–1964. São Paulo: Editora Perspectiva/FAPESP.

Stern, Steve J.. (2004).  Remembering Pinochet’s Chile: On the Eve of London, 1998. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Trumper, Camilo D.. (2017).  Ephemeral Histories: Public Art, Politics, and the Struggle for the Streets in Chile. Oakland: University of California Press.

Valdivia Ortiz de Zárate, Verónica. (2008).  Nacionales y gremialistas: El ‘parto’ de la nueva derecha política chilena, 1964–1973. Santiago: LOM Ediciones.

Valdivia Ortiz de Zárate, Verónica. (1995).  El Nacionalismo chileno en los años del Frente Popular, 1938–1952. Santiago: Universidad Católica Blas Cañas.

Varas, Augusto. (1977).  ‘La dinámica política de la oposición durante el gobierno de la Unidad Popular’. (Working paper). Santiago: FLACSO.

Weld, Kirsten. (2018).  ‘The Spanish Civil War and the construction of a reactionary historical consciousness in Augusto Pinochet’s Chile’.  Hispanic American Historical Review February 2018 98 (no. 1) : 77–115, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/00182168-4294468

Winn, Peter. (2014).  La revolución chilena. Santiago: LOM Ediciones.

Winn, Peter. (2010).  ‘The furies of the Andes. Violence and terror in the Chilean revolution and counterrevolution’.  A Century of Revolution: Insurgent and Counterinsurgent Violence during Latin America’s Long Cold War. Grandin, Greg, Joseph, Gilbert M. Gilbert M. (eds.),   Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 239–75.

Winn, Peter. (1986).  Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism. New York: Oxford University Press.