• Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

    Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50


The last decade—from the 2008 financial crisis to the electoral bids of politicians like Bernie Sanders in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK—has witnessed a resurgence of public interest and debate about democratic socialism in Europe, the United States, and beyond. Yet much of what we now associate with the term democratic socialism first emerged in Latin America. This special issue explores the idea and practice of democratic socialism as it was understood in Chile, which became the first country to pursue socialist transformation at the national level through democratic means during the government of Salvador Allende (1970-73).

In few places and at few moments have past democratic socialist horizons been more strikingly reanimated than in Chile when, in October 2019, high school students engaged in civil disobedience by jumping subway turnstiles to protest subway fare increases. The government of Sebastian Piñera responded by imposing a state of emergency and calling the military into the streets. In the weeks that followed, massive and sustained protests erupted across the country in what has been termed the estallido social. The slogan, “It’s not about 30 pesos, but about 30 years,” captured the simmering discontent with neoliberal policies imposed under dictatorship and the failure by political elites to dismantle Pinochet’s economic and political system in the three decades since the return of democracy. As they seek to envision alternatives to neoliberalism, students, indigenous groups, and feminist activists, among others, have reclaimed cultural images and political practices from Chile’s early short-lived socialist experiment.

Taking the 50th anniversary of Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) government (1970-73) and the country’s recent wave of social unrest as its two points of departure, this special issue of Radical Americas sets out to reassess the meaning of the democratic socialist experience of Salvador Allende. Through contributions from scholars based in the US, the UK, and Chile, it seeks, on the one hand, to explore the meanings, successes, and shortcomings of Chile’s 1000-day revolutionary experiment. And on the other hand, in the wake of the estallido social, the issue offers reflections from leading scholars on the lessons from past revolutionary experiences for contemporary social mobilizations against Chile’s neoliberal order.

Publication date: 01 June 2021. 



Guest Editors

Dr Joshua Frens-StringDepartment of History, College of Liberal Arts, The University of Texas at Austin, USA.
Dr Tanya HarmerDepartment of International History, The London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Dr Marian SchlotterbeckDepartment of History, University of California, Davis, USA.



Article list 


Editorial


Fifty years after Popular Unity: Chile’s estallido social in historical context

Joshua Frens-String, Tanya Harmer and Marian Schlotterbeck

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Commentary


The politics of the street: Street art, public writing and the history of political contest in Chile

Camilo Trumper

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Movements in dialogue

Mario Garcés Durán and Peter Winn

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

‘To work more, produce more and defend the revolution’: Copper workers from socialism to neoliberalism

Georgia Whitaker and Ángela Vergara

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Concluding reflections

Steven S. Volk

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Women in Chile 50 years after the UP: ‘The revolution will be feminist or nothing at all …’

Karen Alfaro Monsalve

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Mujeres en Chile a 50 años de la UP: “La revolución será feminista o no será…”

Karen Alfaro Monsalve

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Research article


Protest and the persistence of the past

Alison J. Bruey

2021-01-20 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Collective trauma, feminism and the threads of popular power: A personal and political account of Chile’s 2019 social awakening

Romina A. Green Rioja

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Towards a global history of the Unidad Popular

Tanya Harmer

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Scholarship on the Popular Unity in Chile since 2000. Are historians lagging behind?

José Del Pozo Artigas, Danny Monsálvez Araneda and Mario Valdés Urrutia

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

Los estudios sobre la Unidad Popular en Chile en el nuevo milenio. ¿Están en deuda los historiadores?

José Del Pozo Artigas, Danny Monsálvez Araneda and Mario Valdés Urrutia

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

A ‘popular option’ for development? Reconsidering the rise and fall of Chile’s political economy of socialism

Joshua Frens-String

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

‘A new power structure will be built from the grassroots’: The challenge of radical democracy in Allende’s Chile

Marian Schlotterbeck

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

The permanent rebellion: An interpretation of Mapuche uprisings under Chilean colonialism

Fernando Pairican and Marie Juliette Urrutia

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

La rebelión permanente: una interpretación de levantamientos mapuche bajo el colonialismo chileno

Fernando Pairican and Marie Juliette Urrutia

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

The Chilean counter-revolution: Roots, dynamics and legacies of mass mobilisation against the Unidad Popular

Marcelo Casals

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

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

Marcelo Casals

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

The presence of left-wing militant women within projects of poder popular during the Popular Unity years in Concepción and Santiago de Chile, 1970–3

Gina Inostroza Retamal

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50

“Presencia de mujeres militantes de izquierda en los proyectos y experiencias de poder popular durante la Unidad Popular: Estudio de casos Concepción y Santiago de Chile (1970-1973)”

Gina Inostroza Retamal

2021-06-01 Volume 6 • Issue 1 • 2021

Also a part of:

Collection: Chile’s Popular Unity (UP) Experiment at 50