It Could Happen Here - The Cordones Industriales and the Chilean Revolution Part 1

Episode Date: April 26, 2022

In part 1 of Mia's interview with Nicolas Scott about the Cordones Industriales, Chilean radical workers organizations during the revolution, we discuss the political and economic history that led to them.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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apart and then putting it back together again and today we are doing a historical things tried to go back together and then fell apart again episodes and with me i'm your host christopher wong and with me is uh nicholas scott who's. And with me is Nicholas Scott, who is a PhD candidate in Latin American history at UVA. Nicholas, welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, I'm excited to have you. And today we're going to be talking about something that we've mentioned before on a few other episodes that we've done about chile and about the allende period but i think

like well we definitely have not given enough attention and i think gets less attention in the sort of mainstream like left analysis of what happened to allende and what was going on in that period which is the cordones and nick has written about this a lot and is also writing more about this and is doing research. Actually, do you mind if I mention that you're in Chile doing research right now? No, totally. That's where I am. I'm here. Two years after the pandemic took me away, I've finally been able to come back and resume my research. Yeah. And so, Nicholas, I think in your work, the thing that I think is different about it than a lot of the stuff that you'll read about Allende and about the Cordonnes is the sort of historicization of it.

And so I was wondering if we can start back, I guess, in the 60s and talk a bit about the sort of political situation that gets you to this sort of revolutionary moment? Yeah, that's great. I mean, I think that it's important that we start at an earlier moment to really understand how the Cordones emerge as a specific culture, a specific urban space across the city of Santiago. space across the city of Santiago. You know, the English translation of the Cordones Industrialis would essentially just be industrial belts. So you can think of these as sort of sectors of the city where the majority of sort of heavy industry had been based. And these sectors themselves were sort of remnants of the 19th century, specifically the railroad lines that would sort of the main thoroughfares into the city of Santiago from the countryside. Over the course of the early 20th century, as you have the development of industry in Chile and in Santiago specifically, these are the same areas then where these

factories are being developed because you have pre-existing sort of transportation networks that they're able to take advantage of. The problem is that industrialization happens sort of in fits and starts in the history of Chile. And the other sort of problem is the problem of transportation itself. So for example, in the 1930s, there's an urban plan that gets developed for Santiago Centro, or the central part of Santiago. And they bring in an Austrian urban planner, Karl Brunner, to help with this. And while Karl Brunner essentially tries to do for Santiago what Haussmann did for France, right? Widen boulevards, make the city more accessible to new forms of transportation, right?

Ideally, the car, buses, things of that nature. The problem is, is that he limited his work and his studies, as I said, just to the center of Santiago itself. The other problem is, is that once Bruner leaves Santiago, the plan that's actually put into effect isn't necessarily all of his plan. It was sort of a patchwork that legislators sort of pick and choose from when they put this plan into effect. And so in between the 30s and the 1960s, you know, a lot is happening. Primarily, you have these sort of twin processes of industrialization, sort of rapid industrialization that's taking place. But you

also have this other process, which is rural migration, sort of internal migration. And this isn't a process that's limited to just Chile, right? This is a region-wide process that's happening all across Latin America. And you're having sort of two factors at play in this migration, right? You're having the push factor from the countryside, right? The lack of opportunity, lack of jobs, lack of secure employments from the countryside. And then you're also having the pull factor, which is these industries that are springing up in the city, as well as the sort of infrastructure

that a city would afford relative to the countryside. And these two processes sort of come to a head in the 1950s in Chile. And by the end of the 1950s, it's clear to a growing set of people, including Juan Parioquia, who is an architect, that something needs to be done. There needs to be a new urban plan for the city of Santiago. And this urban plan, what they try to do is it's the first time that there's a sort of intercommunal, which communal in the sense would be a rough translation to municipality in English. So it's really the first sort of inter-municipal urban plan that tries to link networks together. And this is actually the first time that this

word cordon industriel appears in like an official government document, right? That's the first time that urban planners themselves are thinking about zones of the city that are going to be specifically for industry. And so the idea is that they want to move a lot of the industry that has sprung up in those intervening years from the early 20th century that was located more in the center of the city. They want to move it out of the center of the city, you know, largely for things of pollution, safety, all of the things that go along with heavy industry. They want it further on the periphery. And so that's part of this urban plan that essentially tries to zone, basically zone these sectors. And so that's really where my dissertation starts.

That's where my research really sort of starts the stories in the late 1950s, early 1960s, when these urban plans are taking effect. And so what I'm interested in then is, you know, how did the creation of these specific sectors of the city as industrial zones, how did they then give rise to an urban culture that will then manifest itself in a very revolutionary moment once Allende comes to power? way to look at it because i think you know because the the the the process of sort of industry moving from the center of the urban core outwards is something that happens like really across the world although mostly after that period and that that was one of the one of the things that struck me about it that's interesting i want to ask you about which is so to what extent is this is this a different process than the kind of like, you know, the kind of suburbanization that you see of industry in the US, for example, in like the 1980s? Or is it closer to, well, you know, I've talked about this, I guess, on the show in the Chinese context too, where you have, I mean, mostly pollution stuff has seen like some industries sort of like, I mean, just literally getting pushed into rural areas. Is it like those same kind of impulses or is there a different kind of like relation?

I mean, like how far out of the city like is this stuff like getting pushed to? That's a great question. It's a wonderful question. And, you know, it is actually important. This is important to remember that at this time, the city of Santiago, you know, just outside the city of Santiago is still largely rural, right? Where the first cordon will emerge on the southwestern side of the city is still a largely rural part of the city itself. And so, it is very similar to the dynamics that you're describing in

that it is pushing, you know, away from where people are living, right, to more rural places where there is more land, both to build, right, so there is the availability of space. But there's also less people living in that space. So from the planners perspective, it's considered better because the sort of, you know, chemical and heavy metal runoffs from a lot of the metalworking factories, all of these things, and the pollution from smokestacks, etc., you know, are less harmful. The problem then becomes, however, as I mentioned, the rural migration and people that are migrating to the city, you know, there's not space in the center of the city for these people to live, right?

So they're moving into these same areas. So in some senses, the sort of historical dynamics of the region are undercutting the sort of success of the planners when it comes to making these zones away from the city itself. And I guess that would be something also that that's interesting about this which is that i think because like you know the sort of like decentralization of industry and the push into rural areas i think largely did not produce a kind of like radical working class culture but but it seems like you have this countervailing factor here which is that you have a bunch of people who are like,

who are coming into industrial work for the first time out of the countryside, which tends to be a very radical faction. Like, is that one of the things that gives you this sort of radical culture instead of the kind of like, total disintegration of the class that you see in the sort of later versions of this? This is such a beautiful question. And this question really lays at the heart of my research. So if we scope out just for a bit and think about this historiographically, in Chile, there is a vein of historiography that is very concerned with these rural migrants,

which once they arrive in the city are referred to as pobladores, right? Which we can roughly translate as sort of urban poor, right? And they're considered a sort of capital S social subject that is distinct from a worker or from a working class, from a sociological point of view, right? And the reason this is, is because a lot of them, while they are workers, you know, they are part of the working class functionally, their sort of social concern and the social movement that is bound up or known as the sort of poblador movement is a movement for housing, right? Because they are arriving at these sort of vacant parts of the city, they bring with them the sort of, as you

mentioned, their own histories of struggle from the countryside, of which the sort of main tactic is the toma or seizure, right? And so what they will do when they arrive in these places of land is that they will seize these lots and they will erect a structure on it. on it. In doing so, then they would use that to stake a claim as a claim of property rights, right? As a claim for their own proper home and everything that would go with it within a city infrastructure, right? Utilities, sewage, et cetera. That's what they would leverage then as a claim for that. And so my project is essentially trying to break down this analytic barrier that has separated the poblador from the worker in the historiography, specifically in the historiography of things like the Cordones and the popular unity years during Allende. Because as I mentioned, many of these people, once they're moving to the cities and moving into what would be referred to as either campamentos or poblaciones, and, you know, moving into what would be referred to as either campamentos or poblaciones,

you know, they're looking for work and they're finding work at a lot of these factories that are nearby where they're moving. Now, in doing so, however, they're coming into contact, they're sort of mixing with the older generation of migrants that migrated from the north of Chile, right, from the mining sector in the north of Chile, following the Great Depression, which is the sort of historical birth of the labor movement in Chile, the nitrate sector in the far north of Chile, which, you know, following the development

of sort of synthetic forms of explosives, nitrates are not, saltpeter specifically, is not as high in demand anymore. So you have a lot of people migrating to the city to begin working in industries there, right? So, those sort of older working class who also have their own sort of history of struggle, history of tactics, etc., and this newer form of worker, the poblador, right, are mixing, and they're sort of mixing in these areas in specific. And that, to me, is why it's so important to think about the Cordones as more than just

an organization that emerges in the early 1970s, and really think about them as a space, as a geographic space that developed their own unique forms of local culture, informed by these larger, more macro-historical processes. Yeah, that seems like a much more... I don't know if productive is the right word, although it is, but I think

that is a better way of thinking about it than what you usually see, because that kind of... The fact that you have multiple different essentially like so you have multiple different so it's like sociological classes mixing you have you have their tactics sort of fusing and that developing its own culture that's that's distinct i think from a lot of the...

This is a period of time, like the late 1960s, early 1970s, is like the golden age of the factory occupation. And I think you can draw similarities between that and between the Cordonnays, but I think... I don't know. I mean, Italy is a version of this that I know the best. And that one, I guess, sort of also has a similar dynamic. You have this mixing of sort of the old urban this how how much of that is something that you

think is like a a distinct product of like this exact configuration of of sort of social classes hitting each other and to what extent it's kind of like a process that we've that you you you find in other places where you have uh you have these sort of migrant worker, like first generation migrant worker bases hitting these sort of older industrial working classes. Yeah, no, I think that you're spot on. Right. I think that this is a larger global history, right? This is a moment in which you are having a lot of migration from countryside

into the city worldwide. You have a lot of French intellectuals at this moment thinking about sort of what does it mean that the city is perhaps becoming the new focus, the sort of new locus of social movements and social actions? What does it mean that the city is dominant over the countryside and things like that? What I think is different or not necessarily different, but perhaps unique in the Chilean case, is that this is a, you know, you have a culture in Chile that is known the world over for its political culture, right? Everyone at this moment was thinking and talking politically and talking

about big, you know, grand ideas of politics, not just, you know, sort of everyday politics, but how did everyday politics inform these larger sort of social struggles, right? This is still a moment when socialism is on the table, right? And so you have, you know, not that this is different than other places in the world. Clearly, as you mentioned, in Italy, socialism is very much still on the table. Communism is very much still on the table there as well. But in Chile, what is different is that there is this idea that one could perhaps legislate socialism, right, or that one could use the means of democracy to achieve socialism, right? Or that one could use the means of democracy to achieve socialism, right? That's what's going to make the Allende government so unique in this moment. But what also makes the cordonis unique is this sort of relationship between social space and physical space in the city. So, for example, the very first cordon that emerges in 1972, Sirius Maipu, as I mentioned earlier, on the southwest of the city. That one,

as I mentioned, because it had such close contact with the rural sector on that edge, had a lot more solidarity between rural laborers and factory laborers, such that by 1973, you have factory laborers going out of their factory and helping rural laborers seize their properties and hold their properties away from the landowners, essentially, right? And claiming sort of a redistributive, you know, land for those who work it type of strategy. This is, say, different from the cordon that my dissertation is focused on, which has, as I mentioned, a much larger segment of pobladores living nearby it, right? And so, you have a much larger solidarity between

the pobladores and between factory workers. And what makes that even more unique in this case is the role of the Catholic Church. And this is really one of the sort of new things that my dissertation is trying to do, is what is the role of the Catholic church here? So, for example, the Catholic church historically within the, and within the historiography as well, has always been associated with the Poblador movement, right? Because of this sort of connection to the countryside, because of the church's sort of, you know, missionary kind of work and going out into the poor populations, especially following Vatican II, in which they begin to sort of have more outreach into the poor sectors. But it's never really seen, or rather, very few scholars have thought about

or looked at, what does this mean then for those individuals who may have lived in a población, but who worked in a factory? In other words, what was the relationship between the sort of social pastoral message of the church and the sort of socialism of a factory worker? And in the case of Hakuna Mekena, there's actually very strong links here. And in the case of the Cuna Macena, there's actually very strong links here. So specifically the San Cayetano Parish, which is located just to the west of the Cordone proper, a series of different factories within its property. So it had a cotton plant, it had a nylon plant, a silk plant, and it had a polyester plant. And each of these different plants then each had their own unions. And in Chile, in the labor code in Chile from the 1930s there were two different types of unions per factory or per plant you had the industrial union which we could think of as the blue collar worker union and then you had empleados union which we can think of as a more white collar

union these would be the sort of professionals in the factory the sort of technicians the engineers right not so much the manual laborers but of professionals in the factory, the sort of technicians, the engineers, right? Not so much the manual laborers, but everyone else in the factory. And in the case of Sumar, specifically the cotton plant itself, in the late 1960s, when they're trying to found their union for the first time, they don't have anywhere to go to find it, to found it, right? Because they can't do it in the factory itself because management, the bosses will crack down on it. They don't have their own local yet because they haven't founded a union. And so what they ultimately do

is they reach out to the parish priest in San Cayetano who offers them help. And in doing so, offers them a space to hold their first union vote. And that's actually how the union of Sumar gets founded. And Sumar will go on to play a major role both in the cordones and then after the cordones during the dictatorship. It's a very, very important factory in this history. But it's often overlooked that, you know, the church played a very fundamental role in the sort of larger history of the working class formation of the Sumer workers.

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i mean it brings us to one of the things about this period that's i guess becoming to be better understood but i think if you're a person who has not spent time looking at this might look kind of weird, which is that, yeah, the Catholic church in this period in a, in a lot of Latin America, like takes,

I mean, especially after Vatican two, but like it, it takes this like very hard left turn that, yeah. I mean, it has all of these causes that like, you know, like you get like the the italian version of it is like you get a bunch of priests who are just like like like clergymen literally

doing kidnappings of like random government officials and i think yeah i i guess in in in in this context what what's interesting to me i guess is yeah like how how much okay so like what is the the you're talking you're talking about the sort of like the the sort of pastoralism of of this this sort of like social gospel message is is there is there like a divide between the way the church is working in the city and the way it's working in the countryside or is it just sort of like it's all shifting left but they're more the the the influence of the church is larger in among sort of rural and extramural people oh that's actually a really good question and this is actually where i'm in the midst of

sort of trying to figure this out specifically. For the past three weeks, I've actually been working in the church archives here in Santiago. And so, that's actually the documents that I'm sort of sifting through as we speak. And so, one thing I can say for certain as of now of what I've been able to sort of uncover is that, you know, the church was not homogenous, and it certainly wasn't monolithic, not in Latin America, and definitely not in Santiago. You know, in the region itself, following Vatican II, you have the Episcopal Conference of Latin America's second conference that takes place in the 1960s in Medellin. and that's where the idea of liberation theology is born. Following Medellin, then in Chile, the Episcopal Conference of Chile then is basically tasked with determining a way

to fit its own pastoralism, its own sort of pastoral plan within these new structures that they are a party to because they are part of this larger conference in Latin America itself. And so, you know, one thing that I have uncovered in the documents is that this is very much, you begin to see a divide amongst the bishops, amongst the church hierarchy here that are very, you know, interested in following this new plan of action, but they're also wary of some of the discourse that is surrounding this. So, one example that comes to mind here is the idea of liberation itself, right? We often talk about liberation theology, and we often talk about it as though it was just sort of accepted wholesale by the church in Latin America. Well, a lot of

the documents that I'm encountering here are there's great debate over the use of liberation specifically because the idea of liberation is so tied up with Marxism, right? And that is, you know, at this time, the Catholic church as a global institution and Marxism as a global ideology are seen as antithetical. And here, the idea that in the church's view, at least from these documents, the idea of Marxism that it's talking about when it's using Marxism is very much the Soviet Union, right? It's very much the sort of atheistic approach to the church, to religion that comes out of the early form of Marxism and Leninism from early 20th century. And so, there's a great debate on whether or not to use

liberation. And ultimately, you know, those supporting this discourse went out, and it is decided that liberation will be the words and the sort of discourse that the parish priests will use. But the other big thing that comes out of this, in addition to the sort of discourse that the parish priests will use. But the other big thing that comes out of this, in addition to the sort of discourse of liberation, is this new idea of Catholic-based communities, right? Is this whole new framework for sort of understanding a Christian community, right? Prior to this innovation of the base community, you know, a Christian community was defined by the hierarchy of the church, right? Prior to this innovation of the base community, you know,

a Christian community was defined by the hierarchy of the church, right? You have the sort of congregation, you have your parishes, you have the different sort of structural and bureaucratic designations that sort of link from a parish upward to the sort of church hierarchy itself. But the base community essentially is saying that, you know, wherever a few people gather and are studying the word of God or reading scripture or having theological debates, that that should be considered, you know, part of the church, should be considered that part of the church. And so in that sense,

we can look at say san caetano parish and the work that it's doing with workers and the sumar factory and sort of this has me thinking about you know what does it mean uh you know what do these base communities look like in practice is it possible for us to conceive of workers who are reaching out to their local priest for assistance as perhaps their own Christian-based community. Or furthermore, you know, at this time in Chile, in addition to the leftist political parties, the socialists and the communists, which is, you know, a majority of workers, the Christian Democrats are also a large force, right? In 1964, President Eduardo Frey is elected

as a Christian Democrat, and he's the sort of what will initiate a process that will culminate with Allende's election in 1970. And by that, I mean, he initiates what he refers to as a revolution in liberty, which is sort of a communitarian reformism that is essentially seen as perhaps forestalling a Marxist revolution, a socialist revolution from taking place. But it's incredibly popular amongst working class and workers. And the Christian Democrat Party itself was a very wide-ranging party that encompassed right-wing elements, but also left-wing elements. Can we talk a bit more about what the christian democrats are because this is a thing that like doesn't really exist anymore

but was i think like a very important player like i mean there's there's there's very powerful christian democratic parties in europe there's very powerful christian democratic parties like across latin america yeah can we talk a bit about like what that is and how that's different from like you know how that's different from just your generic socialist party and how it's different even from your, I don't know, your labor party social democrats? Yeah, no, I mean, this is a great question. And you're right, this isn't something that exists in the present moment, so it does seem very foreign to us. But really, what the sort of wager that the Christian Democrats make is that, you know, in theory,

they agree for the need for structural change, right? In theory, they get alleviation of poverty, a more just distribution of wealth, right? But their ideas of justice and this is where the Christianity part of the Christian Democrat comes in, right? Is that it is justice as understood in a Christian sense of justice, right? Not in a sort of more radical egalitarian sense of justice that say a socialist or a communist would believe in. You know, so for a socialist or a communist, the sort of motor of history is class struggle, for a socialist or a communist, the sort of motor of history is class struggle, right? For a Christian Democrat, the motor of history is God and his son, Jesus Christ, right? And that is the sort of, would be, I guess you could think of as the main

difference. And then how that plays out in practical terms would be in a, for a communist or a socialist, right? You want a sort of radical communism, dictatorship of the proletariat, these types of forms, a very stagest movement through history. For a Christian Democrat, however, it's much more of a communitarian ethic, right? It's much more of a harmonization

between say the bourgeoisie and the proletariat rather than an overthrowing and eradication of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, rather than an overthrowing and eradication of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat, as it would be for, say, a socialist or a communist. Yeah. And I guess that's something I want to move a bit to talking about Allende briefly, because I think that's an interesting... One of the things you're talking about earlier is Allende talking about okay well we can have a democratic path to socialism and what's very interesting to me about

both Allende and what's happening in the Cordones is that like that idea has been around for a very long time and there are a lot of people who take power who are like okay we're taking a democratic path to socialism and then you know

like why a lot of weimar like germany right is ruled by by the german social democratic party and it's like well you look at what they do and they're not really like socialisting they're most i mean you know they're they're they're doing things like like they're doing things like welfare reform but that's a very different thing well and you know and you can see like the labor party in britain in the uk for example well like okay well they'll nationalize industries right but you you don't see the kind of movement against like the the you don't see the kind of movement against property and the movement against sort of like like you don't see an actual attempt to like eliminate which was he as a class

in the same way that you do about chile and so i was wondering like what what makes like what was it about this moment that someone who claimed that actually comes into power and starts doing it and starts doing it in a way that's not just the sort of like you know when most like 90 percent of the time when someone nationalizes something right it's okay so instead instead of having a boss that is instead of having a boss whose job it is to like make money for the stock market you have a boss who works for the state and there's there's there's very little sort of like structural change in how in how the bureaucracy is run there's no change and like your your individual relation to your boss does not change he's still your boss and that isn't what happens in chile in in in the in the same yeah, I'm interested why this looks different here, I guess.

Yeah, no, I think this is a great question. And so to get to Allende, it is imperative that we start with Frey in 1964. And in some senses, we can start even in 1957, which was Allende's first attempt at running for president. 1957, which was Allende's first attempt at running for president. At this time, Allende is running as essentially the last gasp, you could say, of the popular front, which emerged in the 1930s and into the 1940s, and had successfully united a large swath of the political parties in Chile. And this is what led to that earlier moment of industrialization, largely through the sort of policy known as import substitution industrialization, in which, you know, the national industries would be built, they would be protected via tariffs, price controls and others that would stimulate local growth to produce products that would have otherwise been imported. has been imported. However, by the late 1950s, things have begun to bottleneck, right? Largely in the Chilean case, because a lot of the countryside is still under control of the Latin fundio, grand estate, right? Which means that productivity isn't necessarily where it

should be. But it also means that the labor force that's sort of stuck on the land as well isn't available then for the development of capital goods in industry, right? And the capital goods are what you need to really jump start industry wholesale. What Chile does really well is that sort of intermediary phase of making goods for individual consumption, right? Things of that nature. And so what Allende does in 1957 is essentially trying to first run on a platform of industrialization and to fix inflation, right? And he narrowly loses. He just barely loses the election in 1957. Who wins is Alessandri wins, and he will essentially adopt a very classical liberal approach. Free market reforms, repression of labor in some senses, freezing of any sort of gains of the labor movement, etc.

This ultimately does not work, right? And so in 1964, shocker, you have calls then for a more revolutionary approach. Well, also what's happening in 1964 is we're now in the wake of the Cuban Revolution, which has taken place, which has put the Americas as a hemispheric designation on notice that now it is possible to have sort of a revolution via insurrection, guerrilla warfare be successful right and not only be successful but be successful in defeating the hegemon of the hemisphere united states and so what the united states will then do is launch the alliance for progress which is essentially a way of funneling money into reformist minded governments as a way to appease these calls for revolution, but prevent a sort of Marxist revolution from taking place. So in the case of Chile,

the Alliance for Progress will funnel many, many amounts of dollars into the Frey administration. And Frey wins the 1964 election handily. Now, there's a great debate to be had on whether or not the, or rather the involvement of the CIA in a sort of scare tactic and fear-mongering campaign went on in the 1964 campaign. Unfortunately, we just don't have the documents yet for this period like we do for the 1970s and the lead up to the coup in the 1970s. You know, hopefully one day we'll have a better sense of really what went on that explains such a lopsided defeat of Allende in 1964.

So Frey will come to power in 1964. And actually, the agrarian reform in Chile will begin under the Christian Democrats, under Frey's administration, financed in large part by the Alliance for Progress. Also, the nationalization of copper, which will be fully nationalized under Allende in the 1970s. But it actually exists in a state of so-called negotiated nationalization under Frey, or what Frey would refer to as the Chileanization of copper, in which Chile would take a very small, of copper in which chile would take a very small right 51 you know percent controlling in the copper companies um but would still have large uh the american copper companies anaconda and kinnikot specifically would still be the ones responsible for running the operations themselves that's an interesting uh i guess, weird historical thing. There have been a lot of times where the CIA has supported land reform, which is very weird. They do it in Japan, for example. And it's seen as one of these things. It's like, okay, well, we have to do land reform in order to stop an actual revolution from happening. So we'll do a capitalist version of it. It's interesting to me that Chile does it, because I feel like that's not something that happens

in most of the other Latin American states where the CIA gets involved. Yeah, well, it's also, I mean, the Alliance for Progress is official government policy. You know, Kennedy will be the one that starts the alliance, and then it will continue into the LBJ administration following Kennedy's assassination. And so that is, and you're right that regionally, the Alliance for Progress is largely a failure. There are, however, a few successes, and Chile was at the time held up as one of the successes and has somewhat been borne out as one of the successes insofar as it is what initiates the agrarian reform in chile so so i guess so okay so what you're saying is that there are there's like there's there's a specific

group of parties at the u.s backs at this period who are trying to do this sort of who are trying to do some kind of reform um like who are trying to do this sort of like the the classic collaboration reform to save our revolution thing and then i guess the like later policy becomes just do the do kind of insurgency on behalf of the landowners yeah i mean the the way the fray you know as the Frey administration continues, it becomes clear that his sort of reformist approaches is simply not working. One is just not working on a macroeconomic level, right? Inflation is still happening, which has sort of been the, you know, enemy number one of the Chilean economy for most of the 20th century, right? Most of the 20th century in Chile is

presidential administrations and economic economists, economic advisors are all struggling to understand how to control inflation. And, you know, Frey thinks that they can figure it out via these sort of reforms, via the agrarian reform, via the sort of Chileanization of the great mining wealth of the country. In terms of factory or industry level, they essentially proposed this idea of sort of workers' enterprises that is somewhat modeled off the Yugoslavian model,

which was a much more communitarian approach, right? As you were saying earlier, the boss is still there. Workers do have a stake and control of the enterprise, but private property still exists, right? The boss is still there workers do have a stake and control of the enterprise um but private property still exists right the boss is still the boss like with that like how to what extent is like like if if you have this on a scale of like on the one hand on like the the extreme end you have there's like nothing or maybe workers can own a share of a company and on the other end is like i don't know like a 1930s like

like a 1937 like anarchist commune in spain like how how how much control do they actually like i don't know like is is this closer to something like the sort of like german co-determination system like how close to like yugoslavia is this sorry i'm trying to get a sense of like yeah because this is a lot of this no this is fascinating in fact one of my sort of dream projects or sort of dream archives to get into would ultimately be the yugoslavian archives or former yugoslavian archives because there is a lot of collaboration taking place between the yugoslavian left and chileans at this time um the problem is is that a lot of this never really gets off the ground in practice. It is a lot of sort of things that exist on paper reforms that are proposed, but reforms that never really get implemented, which then has the effect of heightening expectations, but not delivering on the goods, which pushes people further to the left.

Right. And pushes them to demand a more radical solution, which they find in the 1970 campaign of Salvador Allende. And this is what really gets us to Allende's victory, which is the sort of failures of the Frey administration to achieve the sort of revolution in liberty that he promises. Also, near the end of the Frey administration, there's a massacre that takes place in the south of Chile in Puerto Montt that really solidifies, or if you will, sort of the final push or loss of legitimacy for the Frey administration, as well as pushing the sort of more popular classes to be opposed to the Frey administration, be opposed to sort of the Christian democratic message of reformism and decides to sort of give revolution a chance. And it's into that moment that Salvador Allende reforms the coalition that,

you know, the original coalition that he runs on was referred to as the FRAP. He forms a sort of new coalition in the lead up to the 1970 election, which would be the Popular Unity Coalition. And it's a coalition of leftist parties, primarily the socialists, of which Allende is a member, and the communists. communists and here it's important to remember in the Chilean case that the socialists are actually to the left of the communists the communists are a much more reserved approach to revolution and and by which I mean they're very much going to sort of have the you know they're holding the party line right there behold into the common turn. But they are also very much in line with the Ayinde's view of legislating socialism. Welcome. I'm Danny Threl. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter. Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonorum. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America.

From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters, to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

That's, I guess, another interesting aspect of this is like, that's something I think also doesn't get discussed very much, which is this period where, like, a lot of the, like, that was the party discipline being imposed from Moscow for like a lot of this period, like, is explicitly telling them not to, like, explicitly saying don't do revolution, like, hold and stabilize the situation. Is that the case? Like, so I, okay, this is, this is is again going back to me knowing italy but i know um chile is is that is that something like how how long has that been policy from is that like an old is that old popular front like stuff from them or is this is it has it like because i know like like the u.s policy too like so it's just like the moscow line flips back and forth somewhat randomly depending on like what is going on you're totally right it flips a lot especially in that 1930 period and and you know once they established the idea of the popular front that sort of does become the line the big change is takes place in 1957 um there is a meeting of the Comintern in 1957. And that's when the idea

of individual national roads to socialism becomes the official party line of the Comintern. And that is what then authorizes communist parties across the world to seek their own routes to socialism, right? So, it no longer has to be a Leninist insurrectional model. It no longer has to be a Cuban revolutionary model. It can be its own so that when Allende proposes this pluralist way of reaching socialism, that's what the communists will link to. And really, that's what they'll hitch their wagon to and will tow that line throughout the three years, throughout the thousand days of the Allende government, which will then ultimately put them into in 1972 is this sort of growing factionalism, growing sectarianism within the ruling coalition of the popular unity. Yeah, and I guess this is already going a lot of, or some of the way to explaining why

this looks different than a lot of the other sort of like, or a lot of the other sort of like a lot of the other sort of socialist coalition governments you see around the world i mean probably yeah i mean partially just yeah the influence of yugoslavia is fascinating to me because i mean because that explains that explains so much right like that that explains why there's this sort of democratic component to it even in even in the sort of reformist periods and it explains why the expectation is that and not the sort of like even not even like like soviet style nationalization absolutely does not look like that yeah so you're right that you know that these these multi-faceted multi-layer influences globally as well as locally within chile as well as regionally

um produce something that is the first time that, so for example, Allende's victory in 1970 is the first time that an openly Marxist candidate will be elected president of a nation, elected democratically in a free and fair election that is not contested or anything like that. Now that said, he wins by plurality. He only wins by about in the 30% range. Now, historically in Chile,

a plurality victory is not a problem because you command it to the Congress and the Congress typically will just rubber stamp the victory. Allende, however, there's a lot of apprehension about what he means for the country, what he means for the sort of landed elites, what he means for the sort of oligarchs that control the grand monopolies in Chile. And so there is a lot of tension. Well, this is also then where the actions of the CIA backfire. So the work of the National Security Archive has done great work for uncovering the sort of two-track plan that Nixon and Kissinger have for subverting the

election of Allende and then ultimately preventing him from assuming power. And part of those tracks was to sort of foment some sort of crisis. And so the crisis that they attempt to foment involves General Rene Schneider. And the attempt is that they're going to kidnap him and hold him hostage and use that as a way to prevent Allende from coming to power. Well, the problem is that that goes horribly wrong. The people that are carrying out the kidnapping are clearly unprepared for what happens. Things go haywire and Schneider is assassinated. He's shot accidentally and later dies. And the problem then becomes, you know, the nation is horrified.

The Chilean nation is horrified that this took place. Chilean nation is horrified that this took place. And as a result, then ranks are closed around Allende and it is decided that they will approve his candidacy, his election, and that he will be affirmed as the president. And, you know, also what's happening in the background during the election and during the lead up to that vote is that the Popular Unity Coalition has its program, you know, what we would think of as a campaign sort of platform.

But part of the platform in the Popular Unity's case was what they referred to as the sort of basic agreement between the coalition and both the people of Chile, but also the political system, which in this basic agreement is sort of what we've been discussing this whole time, which is that Allende would not change fundamentally the political system, right? Any sort of nationalizations, any sort of economic restructuring that they would achieve or that they would try to achieve in Chile would be taken, would take place, would be used or won through the halls of Congress, taken would take place would be used or won through the halls of congress right everything would be legislated everything would still be remain um the sort of chilean uh government as normal right this is where you get allende's famous phrase that the revolution is going to be with empanadas and vino tinto right with meat pies and red wine um which means you know it's essentially not going to be a revolution of depri, it's essentially not going to be a revolution of deprivation, right? It's not going to be a revolution that fundamentally changes the structures of everyday life in

Chile. This has been It Could Happen Here. Join us tomorrow for part two of this interview, where we walk through the Chilean revolution, the Cordones, and their lasting impact on Chilean society. If you want to find more of Nicholas's work, he has an article coming out in the next week or so in the Made by History section of the Washington Post connecting the revolutionary period and the broader struggle for a dignified life to the modern inclusion of social rights in the proposed new post-uprising Chilean constitution.

You can find more of us at HappenHerePod on Twitter and Instagram, and we have two new podcasts coming out. Thank you. The first episode is out right now. You can find Ghost Church wherever fine podcasts are distributed. Second, on May Day, which is this Sunday, May 1st, the first episode of the great Margaret Killjoy's new podcast, Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, is dropping. It's about, well, what the title says. It's the coolest revolutionaries, desperados, and ordinary people in the right place and right time doing extremely cool stuff. And it's happening every Monday and Wednesday from here on out.

So go give it a listen when it drops on May Day. It is going to be great. And yeah, it is a great time to be podcasting. There are many podcasts. So go listen to them now after you're done with this one. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Leave your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of right. An anthology podcast of modern day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.