It Could Happen Here - The Cordones Industriales and the Chilean Revolution Part 2

Episode Date: April 27, 2022

In part 2 of Mia's' interview with Nicolas Scott we discuss the Chilean revolution itself, the role of the Cordones, and how they influenced Chilean politics beyond their destruction at the hands of Pinochet and into the present day.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadowbride. Join me, Danny Trejo, and step into the flames of fright. An anthology podcast of modern-day horror stories inspired by the most terrifying legends and lore of Latin America. Listen to Nocturnal on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast welcome to it could happen here a show that is once again today about the chilean revolution um here's part two of my interview with nich Scott I guess the next thing we should look at is How does he go in this opening phase? Yeah, exactly

Essentially by the end of Allende's first year Things are looking very promising So a few victories, more than a few victories But a few key victories take place in his first year in office in 1971. He submits his plan for the nationalization of the nation's mineral wealth, which is voted unanimously in Congress, which speaks to the level of broad support for Chile having its own national sovereignty over its own resources, right? And this also then connects with sort of the theme that we've been developing this whole time, which is the sort of trends and regional and global similarities between Chile and elsewhere, right? A lot of

the third world movement, a lot of countries in the so-called third world at that time are looking to nationalization as the way to extricate themselves from what they viewed as being in a relationship of dependency to circuits of global capitalism. You have this whole idea of dependency theory that comes out of Latin America in specific. And the solution then is seen to be able to control one's own natural resources and use that wealth to develop its own national industry. This would overcome those sort of bottlenecks in the import substitution model, as well as allowing for a more redistributive structure of wealth and or land within the individual countries themselves. So he gets his mineral wealth nationalization passed. The Popular Unity Coalition also wins a series of off-year or by-elections at the local level and wins them so successfully that they will eschew an alliance with the Christian Democrats

who are not part of the coalition, the Popular Unity Coalition, but they are also at this time not part of the opposition, which is largely controlled by the Nationalist Party. They're sort of somewhere in the middle, but they're also in the point in the middle in which they control a large share of the Congress as well as the courts themselves. So they will not, so the Popular Unity Coalition is sort of buoyed by what it sees as the courts themselves. So they will not, so the Popular Unity Coalition is sort of buoyed by what it sees as the success at the ballot box, and it sees its success as getting its plans passed.

And so they will issue an alliance with the Christian Democrats. And then the sort of other main thing that takes place in 1971 is that Allende is able to affect using macroeconomic policies that were functionally Keynesianism, right? And his economic minister, Pedro Vuskovic, will essentially allow for a redistribution of wealth in which workers received sort of what we can consider bonuses, right? But sort of automatic increases

that were affected from the top down in wages across. And the historian Peter Wynn, who published the sort of landmark study that really dominated the field of the history and historiography of the popular unity years, he published a book called Leavers of Revolution that looks at the Javar textile mill, which was the first mill that Allende nationalizes in 1971. And what Wynne found during his research is that Allende's policies in 1971 allowed a majority of Chileans to purchase bedsheets for the first time in many of their lives. Bedsheets were not something that a majority of Chileans used, despite the fact that a majority of Chileans worked in the textile industry. The textile industry was one of the most developed industries in Chile at this moment.

And so all of these things sort of come together, and by the end of 1971, signs are looking good. However, by the time sort of 1972 dawns, and as we're getting into 1972, cracks are beginning to appear. There's another series of by-elections in which the Popular Unity Coalition does not win, the Christian Democrats win. The election for the rector of the University of Chile is a shock defeat for the Popular Unity Coalition, the Christian Democrat wins that. As well as in 1972, there is, for the first time in the nation's history, the Central Workers Federation of Labor, the CUT, has for the first time its own open elections for its leadership. It was the first time the rank and file could elect the leadership of the National Labor Confederation.

And the communists win the largest majority, and the socialists come in second. But just below the socialists, and at the percentage level, it was functionally the same, were the Christian Democrats, so much so that basically, the Popular Unity Coalition sees that a quarter of the working class of Chile identifies as a Christian Democrat. Meanwhile, economically, things are beginning to stall out. Inflation is beginning to creep back up. Production is not necessarily at the levels that the government would want it to be at, right? So the idea of winning the battle of production becomes the sort of watchword or rallying cry in 1972. And if the successes of 1971 had somewhat papered over the sectarian differences that we were discussing earlier between, say, the communists

and socialists, by 1972, those sectarian differences are really spilling out into public view. in which he essentially calls for the party, for the coalition to sort of close ranks, to consolidate its gains, to reach out to the Christian Democrats, to make an alliance, and use that sort of consolidated alliance as the way to move forward in the revolutionary path. The socialists, however, specifically the left wing of the socialist party, which was sort of identified with Carlos Ultimorano at the time, takes the opposite approach and says that, no, the solution isn't to consolidate to advance. The solution is to advance and consolidate by advancing. In other words, we shouldn't try to make an alliance with the Christian Democrats because in their view, the Christian Democrats were just bourgeois, right?

Yeah. That we should essentially align ourselves with the popular classes, with the rural laborers that are leading charge of the agrarian reform that's picking up speed rapidly in the countryside at this time, right? Land seizures are taking place much more rapidly now. We should also place our alliances with the popular working classes, which at that moment, at the moment that this polemic is playing out in the press of Chile, is the very same moment that you have the first cordon industrial emerge in Sirius Maipu.

And it's into that sort of fractured moment that you have workers from a couple of plants that just happened to meet serendipitously on the steps of the labor ministry. One day in about May of 1972, they had both been on strike and had both been demanding their incorporation into what was referred to as the social property area, which this was Allende's vision for creating a socialist economy. And this was a plan that he had submitted to the Congress to restructure the Chilean economy into three parts. There'd have a social property area that would be owned and operated by the state. You'd have a mixed property area

that would be a sort of mixture 50-50 between the state and private industry. And you'd have a private property area, which would just be businesses usual private enterprise ultimately that plan had been stalled out because of opposition from the christian democrats that vetoed it and submitted their own alternative strategy which then allende vetoed became a constitutional crisis that got remanded to the Constitutional Tribunal in Chile, which ultimately languished there through the end of the Allende government through 1973 during the coup, has never really resolved. Nevertheless, workers saw the ability to be put into the social property area as the solution to what they perceived as a revolutionary socialism,

right, to be in a socialized economy. And I mentioned earlier, Peter Wynn's work on the Yarborough textile mill, that's exactly what the workers at Yarborough did, they decided to do. Now, that is in opposition to Allende and the Popular Unity's plan, which was to put these sort of grand monopolies in the social property area, not necessarily smaller industries such as the Yarrow textile mill in particular. There were other perhaps textile companies that had been slated for incorporation. But the problem is, is that the workers successfully petitioned and pressured Allende and won their incorporation. And that unleashed what Wynne

would refer to as a revolution from below. And that's what allowed the workers who seized the labor ministry that day in 1972 to demand their incorporation into the social property area, because there was a law on the books in Chile that stated that if there was an unresolved labor conflict at the factory, that the state could intervene and essentially make state control of that factory, which would be the first step to them being incorporated into the social property area.

And so it's out of that happenstance meeting on the doors to the labor ministry, when they seize it and take it over, shut it down, that then the workers of this industrial sector on the west of Santiago begin meeting and they begin collaborating, and they begin organizing themselves territorially. And I guess this is a good moment to apologize to our listeners that I never really gave a good definition as to what a cordon industriel was in practice. Essentially, the sort of wager of this organization was that you could organize yourself territorially rather than by trade or industry, right? Which would be the

traditional way that a union would be structured. Metal workers organized with metal workers, class workers organized with class workers, textile, et cetera, et cetera. And never the twain shall meet in practice, right? It's all through bureaucratic textile, et cetera, et cetera. And never the twain shall meet in practice, right? It's all through bureaucratic structures, labor leaders, et cetera. As I mentioned, it wasn't until 1972 that the rank and file is ever able to vote themselves for their own national leadership. And so the idea of these workers is that they're going to create their sort of new form of organization. And after, you know, deciding to do it, they seized the territory of Sotoyos Maipu and they shut down traffic.

And this road that they seize is one of the main roads into the city of Santiago from the West, which means that the government had to respond immediately as one worker, not worker, one government official put it at the time, the workers were in the streets, we had to respond, right? You're a government that claims to represent the working class. You're a government that claims to be putting yourself on the road to socialism. And the workers have now cut off transportation to the city and are demanding sort of you to fulfill your promise. And so they had to respond.

Ultimately, some of the workers that were striking at the time, specifically from the Perlac company, which was a canning company, they did win the incorporation into the social property area. And however, other workers from other factories in the area did not win their incorporation, which then produced a march into the city of Santiago in late June. And it also produced a platform of struggle by what was referred to as the Workers' Command of Cerritos Maipú. And that's really the first document we have that shows that there is this new structure that is demanding that the government fulfill its promise,

live up to its basic program. Now, following that moment, however, there's sort of a period of demobilization that takes place in sort of mid-1972. And it's really not until October 1972 that you have the flourishing of this new form of organization, of the Cordon Industriel, across the city of Santiago. And the reason that it takes place in October of 1972 is because that's the moment that the opposition launches its first concerted effort to try and topple the Allende government. It's referred to as the Bosa strike. And essentially what happens is there's a localized strike of truckers in the far south of Chile, and the sort of business elites of the country are successful in transforming what is a very localized strike in the far south into a global lockout on the part of business owners, right? So they'll shutter factories, they'll shutter distribution centers of foodstuffs, they'll completely shut down

transportation networks in the city of Santiago and other cities across the country. So you can understand why they would call it the boss's strike. And this is the moment then that you have workers in these industrial zones that we began our conversation with, using this model that emerged in the southwest of Santiago as this new model to seize their factories that they've been locked out of, to reorganize the production of their factories and to ensure distribution, you know, takes place of basic goods and services for local residents in their community.

It's really what allows the Allende government to weather the storm of the October strike and the October crisis, as it will also be known. Ultimately, you know, that will reach a truce in November. That includes a cabinet shakeup, also includes integrating the military into the cabinet, as well as Allende was able to deploy the military to sort of keep the peace in some senses. So there is a historiographical debate to be had between how much of it was the workers and the cordones saving the country and saving the government, and how much of it was the military remaining loyal to the government that allows them to sort of reach what is referred to as the truce of November. So I guess I want to back up for a second and talk about what is the internal organization of the career actually look like like are we talking about councils is this mass assemblies

um how how does this actually work on a sort of like day-to-day basis it's a great question and this is actually the question that has sort of uh dominated a lot of scholarship on the cordonists um frank good issued who is sort of the leading lot of the scholarship on the cordonists. Frank Godeschud, who is sort of the leading scholar of the cordonists, essentially used Marx's distinction of a class in itself and a class for itself to sort of unravel this question. So for Godeschud, the cordon in itself is the sort of territory, right, that we begin our conversation with. And then the cordon for itself is essentially the workers' council that is the governing body of the cordon itself, which was composed of already unionized workers, right? So it already is a tier of working class above, say,

just your general worker that worked on the factory floor. So it's already a unionized worker and someone that occupies a power or a position of authority within the union, i So it's already a unionized worker and someone that occupies a power or a position of authority within the union, i.e. already on the directorate or president, vice president, treasurer, or secretary. So that main council are elected within the sort of general assembly of the cordon itself. Below you have then different commissions, right? You have a sort of propaganda press commission, you have a cultural commission, you have then different commissions, right? You have a sort of propaganda press commission. You have a cultural commission. You have a sports commission.

You have a security commission, right? Because at this time you had far right shock troops that would spark street battles and that would harass workers. They would also attack factories that had been seized. So they had security commission, frontline defense commission. You also had distribution commissions uh and then you had other commissions that would essentially seek to coordinate all of this um that exists so you had a sort of coordinating board just below the sort of general council and then that's what was the mediation point between that sort of governing council and your different commissions how are the How are the people who are on these commissions selected?

Are they elected or is it just like whoever wants to be on this thing? So it's a mix of both, right? So your sort of main council itself is elected via General Assembly. In terms of the commissions, the smaller commissions, we sadly don't have great documentary evidence that, you know, lays out the process for that. So our best guess or our best understanding would be a mix of sort of volunteerism, as well as some sort of within the commission itself, some form of election, excuse me, that would take place to sort of a point ahead of that commission that would then coordinate with the general council itself. You know, really what this, you know, what this sort of cuts to the heart of is that

the history of the Cordones is a very effervescent history. It's really easy to see the Cordones in action, right, when they're doing things like seizing control of their territory and erecting barricades. But on that day-to-day level, it's a relatively opaque sort of structure. It's really hard for us as historians to get a view into that. You know, one reason that Goodishute is able to, you know, unpack as much as he has and uncover as much as he has is because he conducted a series of oral history interviews with many of the surviving workers. And that's really one of the foundational source bases we have. He published this in a book in which he published the full transcript of his interviews. So it's not just like an

interpretive essay, it's the full transcript. And so that in combination with some of these, And so that's that in combination with some of these, Cordona has had local presses that we have existing documentary evidence from that sort of would give, you know, your standard diagram of council commission, commission, commission lines, connecting them and things like that. But one of the other few documents that we have surviving documents we have is what's referred to as the manifesto of Cordna. And this is the document that my research really is at the heart of my research. Because while Vicuna McKenna is recognized as sort of one of

the most dynamic and strongest of the cordonists behind the original Insidios Maipu, we really don't have a lot, we don't know a lot about what was going on in there. In fact, my research was born out of a conversation the first time I was in Chile conducting research for my master's at Tufts with Godeshu himself, who told me that, like, we really don't know a lot about what was going on day-to-day in Facuna McKenna. It'd be really great if we could somehow find a way to do that. And, you know, that kind of stuck with me. That really wasn't my concern at the time. My concern at the time was trying to understand how the Cordones had shifted from their emergence to the coup itself, because what I was seeing in a lot of the literature was that people were using

sources from late 1973, once the Cordones are established and really showing up in press right they're showing up in the archive a lot more by 1973 and they're using documents from 1973 to describe their sort of founding in 1972 and the historian in me was kind of like you know yeah things change right and things change both over time and space and so my original concern was, you know, what made the sort of changes from the western side of the city to the eastern side of the city. But then when I got to UVA and began my doctoral work, I really wanted to zero in on Fukuna Makena. And really, I was, you know, that conversation with Frank was really ringing in my

head. And so, you know, I kind of at UVA had to do another master's essay as part of the program there, despite having, you know, already done a master's thesis when I was at Tufts. Oh, no. Double thesis curse. Exactly. The thesis curse. But, you know, what it did, what it allowed me to do was to, you know, kind of play with the sources in ways that I may not have had the ability to do otherwise. And so I really sat with this manifesto for a long period of time and really did a close reading of this document, which a lot of times this document has shown up in previous studies. It's shown up as a, this is a document that emerges during the October crisis. It's the document we know we have from this one core zone. Here it is, right?

But what I uncovered was that the document itself, the document that is headed as the manifesto is actually a reworked version of a document that had circulated previously during the October crisis that was produced by the revolutionary left uh movement the mere the far left uh party aren't they aren't they uh aren't they like guverists they are they very much are uh this is the very far left um party that is calling for a more insurrectionary model um it's also calling for a worker-peasant alliance, right? So it is this very much more traditional socialist revolutionary in that sense compared to the sort of Allendeist vision of socialism that is being handed down from above, right? And so during the October crisis,

there's this document that circulates by the opposition that's running the crisis that is essentially the um petition the pliego in spanish would be the word but essentially the petition of of chile um and the mir takes issue with the fact that the bosses issued a petition in the name of chile yeah And so they issue a counter document that is the people's petition, the Pliego del Pueblo. And it's a very long document. It's a very, it reads as a essentially a manifesto for a new revolution to take place, right?

Like how to transform the present crisis into a revolutionary breakthrough. And as you're saying, a Gouverneurist model. In the tail end of the October crisis, as Cordon de la Miquena is consolidating itself, right? It itself forms after a factory seizure at Alec Madel, which then unites these sort of two nodes that existed in the territory at the north end and the south end into one sort of communication and solidarity network that will then become known as the Cordone, that has its first general assembly in which it takes this document from the mirror and begins to rework it. And that's then what becomes the manifesto of Corrado and Vicuna McKenna. And so in my research and in my master's essay at the University of Virginia, what I did was I, you know, I really

compared these two documents and looked for where the difference is, you know, what's showing up here that's not showing up in the mirrors document. In other words, what glimpses can we get of the local culture of Hakuna Mekena itself? And one of the key differences that I find is there's an entire section that begins the manifesto that was the crime of the bosses, the crimes of the bosses. And that exists in the Mears document as well. But the crimes that are articulated are bare slight differences. But in the manifesto itself, the final crime that is articulated is that the manifesto reads that it's a crime that the basic few elite in Chile continue to use the country's wealth to support their privileges without giving a dignified life to a majority

of Chileans. And this doesn't appear anywhere in the Mears document. And it was something about this phrase of a dignified life that really just like cued my analytical senses that sort of raised the flags for me. And this is what then led me down the road that I'm on now, which is the road of looking at things like the church and the Popol Ador movement. Because the idea of dignity and the idea of a dignified life is a key discourse that's circulating in the church's pastoralism, right? Coming out, as we were speaking about earlier, the discourse of dignity is really present in the church's outreach efforts, but it's also present in this Populadora movement for housing. The idea of a dignified house as the end goal of their struggle is something that is, you know, rings out in the documents that we have access to and in the oral histories that we have. And so, that really, you know, made me think like,

the oral histories that we have. And so that really, you know, made me think like, what is it then about Vakuna Makena that is allowing this to appear here? And, you know, what can we then learn using this as our, you know, starting point and going out where? And so that's when I decided to sort of take the story back all the way to 1957 and look at things like the church, look at things like the Poblador movement, but then also extend the story past the 1973 period, which is when the coup takes place, which is, you know, in the historiography seen as this, you know, hard line, this break in Chilean history, that there's a before September 11th, 1973, and there's an after September 11th, 1973. And very few studies cross that line, especially studies with regards to the labor movement. Welcome, I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter?

Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. 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 iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast the specifically the the dignity thing is is is really really interesting to me too because

so i did an interview like oh god like a month ago sort of have lost track of time but i did an interview with with an amazon organizer and one of the things that was one of the things that was like one of the things that he brought up is that one of the things that like we are fighting for is dignity and and yeah and that's something specifically i've been thinking about more because like i i think we talked about this a bit in in the interview itself but like like dignity as a demand is a thing that you that you see all of the time in like in in in you know if you were talking to a bunch of people like on the street in the middle

of a movement you will hear people talk about dignity I mean I think if I'm remembering this correctly this is one of the big demands in like the modern Chilean protest movement like that was one of their huge sort of focuses but it's also something like i i have never

like at any i don't think i've ever seen like a communist party say the word dignity like like i think it happens i don't know every once in a while like maybe you see it if you get a document that's that's not produced by the sort of ideological engines, but it's produced by like just a bunch of workers in a factory. But yeah, yeah, that's fascinating to me because like, yeah, because that it I don't know, it seems like the struggle for dignity. very specific discourse from the church, but it's also something that shows up in a lot of movements where you're not dealing with the kind of like ideological rigidity that you get from, I mean, you know,

like the mirror, not the mirror is a, like that, that, you know, like that, that's, that's a very,

like, like this is a party. It has a line. It has a very sort of like, yeah. Yeah. And it, and it's fascinating to me that that yeah that you you can see these differences where even when they have influence the thing that gets agitated is dignity yeah i mean there is you know and i think that perhaps what has um pushed studies of leftism, socialism, and labor movement away from the idea of dignity as an analytic object, is there is tension here, right?

Dignity is a highly individualized concept. But the solution for a dignified life for all Chileans, as per this document, were collective structural changes. And so there's this tension between a collective solution and an individual gain, right? And so I think that that both explains why this hasn't necessarily been a focus of a lot of studies before, but it also, you know, it gets to the historiography itself, which was, you know, a large product of the history here. And so, things like the Christian Democrats and things like the church were seen as the enemy of the Popular Unity Coalition, given the way that the, you know, the coup takes place and things like that. And so, anything that maybe had a whiff

of Christian democracy or Christianity or things like that was seen as antithetical or incompatible with the study of the left. It also gets to the tension that you were doing a really great job of sort of unpacking, which is this tension between the national leadership of these parties and the national union leadership, and then everyday workers on the ground, right? And that's, I think, really where the strength, and this was really the argument that I advanced in my master's thesis at UVA, is that one of the central contradictions of the Allende period is there were competing ideas of socialism. So from the top down and from my yin-dei's view, socialism was the traditional Soviet Union-esque approach insofar as it was national economic planning, party hierarchies, things of that nature, right? Discipline at the base and upward and upward planning from the top down. But what I think the manifesto and the history of Aquino McKenna helps us understand

is that for everyday individuals, that their idea of socialism didn't have anything to do with state economic planning. It didn't have anything to do with expertise and technocrats and things of that nature. It had to do with the idea that like, I need sheets for my bed. I need food for my bed, I need food for my child, I need the ability to,

you know, have enough sleep to be able to get up and go to the factory the next day, right? I need to be able to live a dignified life to be able to then, you know, carry out my work, my obligation as a worker in the historical movement of socialism. And so I think that this is really what this tension is then what allows for the sort of destabilization to take place as the opposition consolidates and ultimately destabilizes the Allende government in 1973. Yeah, and I think this is a tension that like, I mean, I think there's different versions of it too that you see sort of across history. Like one of the ways that it manifests is this battle between people who think socialism is about like, is national, like state national corporation and people who think socialism is about like direct control at the point of production by the people who are doing the work. about like direct control at the point of production by the people who are doing the work but but i think also yeah the the the question of dignity is it's like it's this it's like dignity is this expression that's like maximally bad for um like if if you're like you know if

you're like a you're you're a material you're like a you know you're an historical materialist theoretician right it's it's it's the worst possible slogan because on the one hand it's like it's not materialist right like what is dignity there's no dignity has no class relation like what is that you know and it's it's simultaneously like it's not materialist enough it's too reformist because like oh well you can give people dignity by just buying them off or like increasing wages or you could have a class compromise and that can give you dignity but then simultaneously it's the thing that's too radical because the problem with dignity also is it like yeah i don't know like there's there's no guarantee that you're going to get dignity if like your factory is controlled by the state like exactly and yeah

and this is why like you see almost identical like the state is a boss just by a different name yeah and and yeah it's like it's why you see like the uprisings that happen um i mean really starting 1957 in hungary but yeah this is why like their uprising in czechoslovakia looks almost identical to like the uprising that happens in france it's because they're both like there's you know you're you're like you the factory worker in a factory in czechoslovakia and you the factory worker in the factory in france are dealing with essentially the same thing and so it's it's this kind of like i don't know it seems like it's it's this perfect sort of like cipher for all of these kind of political differences that that that that manifests this this this really old tension in what the

workers movement is going to be that's been being fought out since 1830s and that yeah but i think that like if we as scholars and if we as intellectuals are really serious about when we say that we're going to study things from below then i think that we have to take the workers at their word yeah right and so like for example i presented a version of my of my master's thesis at a i studied was it a program in bologna for a summer um and so i was presenting this and to the sort of you know and the italian leftists in the room um really came you know came down on this question of it sounds like what they're describing isn't socialism because they're much more interested in distribution and not interested in the point of production, which isn't socialist.

And all I could say and all I could respond to this is that's what my subjects are using in the archive. And for me, it's far more productive to look for those slippages and look for those spaces in the archive when they are saying something that may be different than what we understand it to be. And that's a lot more productive avenue for analysis. And that to me is really how we fulfill this obligation to study things from below, is we have to actually take them at their word and understand and try to understand what that actually meant for them right and what that meant on an everyday basis and i i think that there's a there's a sort of like practical like organizational like like you know if if if you today want to do something like this like i think i think there's

there's an imperative there too which is that like you actually do have to take seriously what people think and how that's different from the way that like you, the organizer are thinking about this, because those are things that don't overlap. And a lot of times that like, you know, and it's, it is not enough to just be like,

well, these people want diggity. What they actually want is socialism or like what they actually want is the abolition of the class system. You have to believe them when they say that they want something. And when you don't do that, and when you get these disjuncts between the party bureaucracy on the top and what people in the streets who are seizing factories want like yeah i think like things start to sort of come apart exactly and i you know i think that um that if we don't you know depart from the perspective of staying true to what

the archive gives us then there's only a risk that we're you know every historian every scholar is going to inject their own interpretation onto a document, right? But the best way to sort of safeguard that is to, you know, stay true to what it's saying. And that, you know, the same goes for an activist, an organizer, as for an intellectual, right? Like, if you don't depart from the perspective of what your constituents or what your group is saying you know what they're really saying the words that they're using to describe what they're demanding then you're only ever going to just be trying to sort of fit the you know the the square peg and the round hole

yeah and that can go really really really spectacularly wrong yeah exactly and you know and that is you know what then leads to you know in the case of the cordonis that will then lead to tensions that will really break out into the open in 1973 in early 1973 when the um orlando mias the same person that starts that polemic in 1972 by this this point becomes finance minister in the Allende administration and presents a plan to sort of devolve some of the factories that had been seized during the October crisis, right, back to their original owners. problem, huge tension between the base, between workers in these factories that had sort of sacrificed everything and put their lives, literally put their lives on the line to seize the factories in the first place. And so then you have another sort of moment of mobilization of the Cordones across the city of Santiago in early 1973, that's very much in opposition to the government now. Can can i ask a brief sort

of framing question about this which is that like okay so we talked about this in in in the interview we did with uh some modern chilean activists but like what what is the population of santiago relative to like the population of the entirety of chile at this point like how yeah that is a great question that i don't actually have statistics like that i can rattle off my head um but you know i mean there's there is uh it is a great you know santiago is the most populous region for sure or rather the most populous city uh and then sort of metropolitan region itself uh is very densely popular and is it still like a like a pretty significant like population of the entire

country or is it less it is a significant population of the whole country for sure um but there is tension in this and this is kind of the reason why i always try to steer somewhat away from these types of questions because I'm sure this came up in your conversation with Chilean activists is that, you know, there is the phrase that Santiago is not Chile. And so there is a, there is a tendency to rely on statistics of Santiago's population and the metropolitan region's population to say like, oh, this is where the majority of people live. So if it happened in Santiago, then that must be true for all of Chile. And that just isn't the case, right? Chile is a huge country.

It may be very narrow, but it's very long north to south. And it is very distinct across the many regions of Chile. And so I very much am on the side of those that argue that Santiago is not Chile. Unfortunately, in the case of the Cordonas, the majority of them do exist in Santiago. That said, in Concepcion, you know, another Chile further to the south of Santiago, there is one of the other cities that we know for sure actually did have Cordonas that were moderately successful as well.

In fact, there is is and now i'm completely forgetting her name um but there is a historian that has published a book about the cordones in concepcion that's the one of the few studies that uh sort of tries to look at cordones beyond santiago itself so it's that you know and a very well taken point um on your on my part here that like you know a lot of our discussion today has been about santiago and so it's very much limited to yeah this is a this is a problem that you get a lot with like large urban movements like i mean so i run into this with tiananmen all the time where it's like you know okay so tiananmen there's

there's there's the big thing in tiananmen but this happens in like cities all over china and there's just nothing there's like almost nothing that has ever sort of like been written or has gotten out of what happened everywhere else in the country and so you get this you get this very myopic view of like what was happening that i think loses a lot of the sort of like i mean a lot of the diversity and a lot of the sort of the you get a reality that is shaped by the specific experience of one place which is not the specific experience of every other place right exactly so like in the case of like santiago and cordonis right like the labor working class that's making up this

is factory labor, as we were saying, at the sort of level of consumer products, right? But say if you had a Cordon in say Valparaiso, the sort of coastal city, the port city, where you have a much different labor force, right? With dock workers, things like that, you're going to have a much different formation that's going to take place. And so as much as like my initial sort of attempt

to understand the differences within the geography of Santiago, you know, I think was important. I always have to remind myself that like, it's still just this one city yeah um which is very different from the experience of a vast majority of jordanians i mean this is definitely a moment in which uh you know there is still a very large rural population for sure and i guess like that that brings me so like yeah in in terms of sort of okay i guess there's two directions here one i guess is about what is the like what is the rural population doing like while this is going on and the second one well i guess i guess we can start there yeah i mean as we sort of mentioned earlier there is an agrarian reform that is happening right and you are having uh a labor movement that is picking up rapid steam

in the countryside right and you are having land seizures that is that are taking place and picking up steam um and so that's a lot of what's going on in the countryside is uh both uh an increase in land seizures uh an increasingly militant land seizures as that, but you're also having an increased unionization, right? So the labor code in Chile had a different set of regulations for rural labor than it did for urban or factory labor, right? And so one of the things that on the Allende period

that we see is a sort of flourishing of organized labor in the countryside. So you are having a lot of party militants going out into the countryside, as well as labor leaders locally in the countryside that are organizing rural laborers. So you are having mass union drives. Unfortunately, and I will be the first to admit that i am largely you know and this is again a consequence of like being an urban historian i am largely ignorant of the the inner dynamics what is happening on in the countryside um scholars like florencia malin or heidi tinsman have both produced uh outstanding works on this question in terms of the relationship between land seizures and gender and indigeneity that is taking place in the countryside.

So I guess, yeah. So, you know, okay. So we, yeah, we can't get into too much detail on this, but would it be broadly like accurate to say that it's not true that you're dealing with a situation where there's a huge sort of divide in the level of mobilization organization between the city and rural regions like that this this isn't like a sort of like like you're not dealing with like a like a vende peasant situation but you have this enormous sort of reactionary base in the countryside yeah

no you definitely don't yeah it's definitely not that um and you know there are attempts over the course of the ayanda years you know the mirror is one of the sort of fronts that this is playing out in. But even the Cordones themselves, right? So like one of the initial rallies and sort of mobilizations of the Servillos Maipu Cordon is for the jailing and imprisonment of a series of rural militants and rural laborers that in the area of Melipilla there are some activists and workers that are jailed and those the cordon actually marches into the city of Santiago into the downtown part of Santiago to demand their release and this is like a disparate geography here that we're talking about. And so this is an instance in which you're trying to see these sort of links

both be made and strengthened between factory labor in cities and rural labor in the countryside. And I guess that brings me to the second point, which is like, okay, so there is a right in Chile and it is not happy.

Very much, yeah. Yeah, and I guess one of the things I guess I wanted to talk about was, so my impression about a lot of what is happening in 1973 has to do with the fact that chile's like truckers movement is really right wing and that that has well okay so part of that part of that is the cia part of that is just this like a like part of it is the cia's ability to keep striking truckers afloat yeah and they're not working in on struck yeah part of it also

is a consequence from this moment in october right in which the national business elite and national economic elite in chile transform that trucker strike into the boss's strike right so you do have this alliance being formed and strengthened at that moment as well, which will, as you're referring to in 1973, there was another trucker strike that takes place that is even more crippling in some senses than the initial one. Yeah. And then also, also, as, as I will mention, literally every time, even though I, I don't know if I can say that on air but the part that i can say on air is um yeah i to their eternal ignominious non-glory the afl-cio is also heavily involved in that which is fun and good and uh yeah afl-cio please stop overthrowing governments and helping neoliberalism it's a

very it's a very the afl cio history in relation to chile is actually very fascinating because during the dictatorship they will actually be on the other side and actually helping labor get back on its feet um and as a key point of resistance so they're in the late 1970s organizing a boycott of chilean, which actually is a key point of pressure on the dictatorship to begin allowing for new, for a sort of new labor movement to begin emerging. Yeah. Which that at some point,

like I don't, I don't think it can happen here, but I just did the podcast name. Hey, but yeah, I don't think it can be this time, but like, yeah,

at some point I do want to take a deeper dive into sort of like what the afl-cio is doing through this period because they are like they're all over like yeah there's a fascinating history yeah yeah like i mean like you know like what my my my last afl-cio what are you doing thing for this episode is i so the afl-cio has a policy where like they don't like they don't associate with like like state union federations and they make one exception for it and it's the state union federation of the military dictatorship in south korea which is like it's like ah good job guys like oh doing great here this is going great yeah but but yeah i guess can we can we get into sort of the crises that like precipitate the end of Allende? Totally. Yeah. So by this point, you know, as I mentioned, by 1971, the opposition is largely disarticulated. articulated uh you have the national party you have the sort of far right organization um that

would be translated as uh fatherland and freedom patriotic liberty that or i translate it as fatherland and freedom because i think it has a better it conjures it better others will translate it as fatherland and liberty um but i'm a sucker for alliterative um forms and so that's the the translation that I use. I also think it conjures more of the sort of fascistic elements, which is very much was a fascist organization. Yeah. Bunch of neoliberals in it too.

Yes. No, I mean, a lot of, you know, Los Chicago boys will have ties to patria libertad. And so there have, you know,

rightist shock troops that are fomenting uh conflicts in the streets um that are also setting off bombs that are crippling the power grid um especially much later in 1973 um but following that moment in 1971 when the popular unity government eschews the alliance with the Christian Democrats, that pushes the Christian Democrats to begin forming an alliance with the national party. And what happens then is that the left wing of the Christian Democrats splits from that party to form its own party of left Christians. But then the consequence of that is that that means that the more rightist elements of the Christian Democrat party can consolidate their power and

strengthen their ties with the national power. So that by, you know, late 1972 and very much by the March, 1973 elections, which were sort of the key electoral moment that everyone was looking to at this moment, you have a, you have a solid alliance of the right.

Now, the Allende Coalition will win the March 1973 elections. And that is really the moment that scholars agree that the switch is sort of flipped for the opposition and that they realize that they can no longer defeat the popular unity coalition at the ballot box and that they now need to use extra constitutional means. Right. And so they begin developing sort of deploying the full force of those means. Here is a point where the role of gender is very important because a lot of what the right will do will be to mobilize the power and symbol of women protesting as a way to delegitimate the Allende government and to delegitimate key figures in the Allende administration. So earlier, there is a key protest that happens, which is the March of Angry Pots. And this is a, you know, a very traditional form of protest in Latin America, which the Casa Lazo, right, the sort of banging of pots and pans in protest. But the right organizes it to be largely carried out by women as a way to protest what is seen as a, you know, a lack of supply of basic food necessities for families in Chile, which, you know, we now know is a result of black market speculation and hoarding

on a lot of the part of the sort of distribution centers controlled by the right. Nevertheless, they essentially use this symbol of women heads of households marching in the streets in opposition to Allende. So that's one thing that happens. Later in 1973, they will sort of reuse this tactic and deploy women to protest in front of the houses of key military figures that are in the cabinet of Allende at this point. This will then force the resignation of some of these figures from the Allende cabinet. And then one of the key figures that has been replaced in the cabinet is none other than Augusto Pinochet, who will be welcomed into the cabinet and specifically will be welcomed into the cabinet because he is seen as a strict constitutionalist in the Chilean military and is not seen as any sort of threat

to what is going on. Meanwhile, in late June of 1973, there is an attempted coup that takes place in which you have a rogue regiment of the Chilean army deploying tanks in front of La Moneda, the presidential palace in Santiago. That is put down. It's also one of the last moments that the Cordones themselves will mobilize and all the Cordones in Santiago will seize their territories. their territories, erect barricades, cut off transportation to prevent any sort of large-scale coup from taking place, essentially to try and isolate that regiment just within front of La Mera to allow for the wings of the armed forces that are still loyal to the president at this point to put that down. So that is put down. And then in between late June 1973 and September 11th, 1973, is what scholars specifically Peter Wynn refer to as a creeping coup begins to take place. And the creeping coup has a multifaceted strategy. As I mentioned earlier, there's the bombing of electrical grids. So you have increasing black know, increasing blackouts, instability, things of

that nature, right? Fear mongering in very real sense, palpable senses. You also have a shakeup amongst different members of different branches of the armed forces, which those that are loyal to the constitution that are the constitutionalists are pushed out and as a result then you have the coup plotters that are um you know ready to essentially overthrow the government um achieve positions of authority in which that they can give orders and this is a key factor this may seem like a small factor but the chilean military had historically been trained in the Prussian model of military training, right? So it was a very strict regimented hierarchical structure in which historically had been very loyal within that hierarchy.

So it was important that the coup plotters would achieve positions of higher authority to be able to actually effectuate a coup, especially after the attempted coup fails in June. So on the morning of September 11th, 1973, you have Hawker Hunter jets that begin bombing the presidential palace, and you have a deployment of military forces throughout the city to put down any sort of armed force or any sort of resistance, right? Leading up to this moment, you had deployments of both the Chilean militarized police, the Carabineros, which are actually functionally militarized.

They're part of the armed forces in Chile. It's not just militarized in the sense of tactics and weaponry. To raid factories in the search of arms, right? Things of that nature. So you already had this sort of daily occurrence taking place and a consequence of that, right? Is that then these forces know the weak spots in these factories.

They know the capabilities of these factories and things like that. Cordone Vicuna McKenna will actually be the place that will witness some of the fiercest fighting of what would be referred to as the Battle of Santiago. You know, often when we talk about the Chilean coup, we talk about it strictly as September 11th, 1973. The Battle of Santiago actually rages for a few days after September 11th. It's not just a quick, you know, in and out mission.

There are forms of resistance that take place um and vacuna mckenna is one of the the places that this takes place there are two chilean historians mario garces and sebastian leva that published a a masterful wonderful book um that is all about it's um called the coup in la leg La Légois was a historic population that was just to the west of the Facuna McKenna factory. And the workers of factories in Facuna McKenna, specifically the Sumar textile mill that we mentioned earlier, will essentially lead a march gathering other workers, saving those that they can, and essentially holding their ground for as long as they can in the Poblacion of La Ligua. In fact, I have some testimonies of workers and documents that I've uncovered. One worker in particular described the battle that raged there as being like hell on earth. They had helicopters firing from the sky, They had tanks surrounding them. So they were under fire from both the land and the air. And so ultimately, then the government is overthrown, right? Allende, it's unclear to this day if Allende committed suicide, if he was killed. We just, we don't know. We do know that he refused to leave the presidential palace. We do know that he delivers one final address, very famous address, over the radio of Chile.

And then after that, we know that his corpse appears in a lot of the materials that the military will put out. Military takes control of communication networks. Many of the communication networks and press networks were already controlled by the right. So it was very easy for them to gain access to these methods to sort of spread their message. And this is where things, you know, historically speaking, get very interesting in the difference between our sort of conventional wisdom and what actually took place or takes place right the original structure of the military junta that takes command was designed as a tripartite structure that would rotate amongst different branches of the armed forces to prevent precisely what happens with the figure of Augusto Pinochet

taking power himself to prevent such a thing from happening, right? Ultimately, though, over the course of the 1970s, you have Pinochet consolidating power. In fact, if you've ever seen the image of him that's sitting cross-armed with the sunglasses on, it's like one of the most recognizable photos of him from this time that photo is actually the actual original version of the photo you have the full junta behind him taking a picture yeah yeah and it's not so much even he did it but it's that uh that photo just over time became so associated with him because of such a jarring image of him sitting there that it sort of functionally recreated the sort of purging that he takes that he'll carry out

essentially uh you know also what they will do immediately is that they will uh close um the congress they will dissolve the coot the national labor federation that we discussed earlier They will dissolve the CUT, the National Labor Federation that we discussed earlier, and they will essentially dissolve the conciliation councils that oversaw any sort of collective bargaining. labor leaders across both the national spectrum of labor leadership as well as you know through the course of 1974 and well into 1975 will be again purging factory level leaderships they will institutionalize torture they will institutionalize forced disappearance and all of these things constitute how they are essentially able to hold on to power in those early days. There's a state of siege that is declared, which means that all civil liberties have essentially been suspended. And all of this is in the name of national security. And that's really the key thing. And so everything from the labor movement is shut down.

And then it will begin to reemerge. And that's really like where I think my research and my dissertation, another key intervention that I'm trying to make is that, you know, 1973 wasn't the end of the story. Like, yes, it was the end of the Corazones Industriatis with a capital C and a capital I. But the idea of a territorial labor organization will reemerge in the late 1970s and into the 1980s when protests against the dictatorship begin to flourish.

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This is something that, I mean, I guess this is sort of projecting into the future, but this is something that I was i guess this is sort of projecting into the future but this is something that i i was i don't know i've been thinking about and i don't quite know how to think about which is the connection between like can we draw a line between the cradones the sort of the the pro-democracy movement that eventually, through Pinochet's incompetence and their skill, brings down the dictatorship. And the really vibrant, really for the last 20 years, incredibly vibrant student protests, but just leftist street movements in Chile. protest but i mean just just sort of like like leftist street movements in chile because i mean like i don't know like i i guess the the impression that i got when i was talking to like the chilean organizers was that like organized labor wasn't playing much of a role in this and so yeah i guess i'm wondering like how how do we think about sort of

this trajectory and i know this is like 50 years but no i mean i mean my dissertation is trying to to sort of branch this full trajectory and it's a beautiful wonderful question um and you're right you know the the activists that you spoke to um that is a very commonly held view. And it's a commonly held view for a couple of reasons. One is that what is seen as one of the main protagonists in the pro-democracy movements that take place in the 1980s are precisely those figures we talked about at the very beginning of our conversation, the pobladores. The pobladores are seen as the protagonists that protest the dictatorship, largely because they are, right? This is, I'm not trying to say that they were not by any means.

They clearly were. We have great studies of this. Kathy Schneider's book, Shantytown Protest in Pinochet's Chile, is just a wonderful study of this. They were protagonists and the geographic space, the site of the poblaciones, is where a lot of the protests are going down. But labor did play a part, and labor did play a key part, and this is part of my argument, is that not only does labor play a part, labor plays a key part in initiating the protests that begin in the early 1980s.

Now, by the late 1980s, people are certainly right that labor is no longer anything close to the power it was pre-1973 or even earlier in that decade by any means. pre-1973, or even earlier in that decade by any means. But in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, specifically in the space of Hakuna Maka'ina and workers that are coming out of that tradition play incredibly instrumental and key roles. So for example, there's a gentleman, Manuel Bustos. He's a member of the Christian Democratic Party. He's a worker at the

Sumar textile mill in the cotton plant specifically. He will, at the time, become president of Sumar's Cotton's Union. He will then go on to, along with other labor leaders, found the National Union Coordinator, or the CNS. He will become president of that, and he will become one of the key figures, along with other labor leaders, that will initiate and lead to the pro-democracy protests that begin in the early 1980s. So much so that he is at one point relegated, which this is a way, one of the tactics the military used would be to relegate perceived agitators or provocateurs to different parts of the country, right, out of, say, Santiago in the case of Bustos. So, at one point, he is relegated to the far north of the country. He's also exiled at a certain point. He's also jailed at a certain point. So even if we, you know,

even if we don't look at the archival record in terms of what Bustos is saying, what Bustos is doing, if we just look at what the military is doing to Bustos and to his colleagues in the CNS, then we, that should tell us that they perceive them as a legitimate threat and that they perceive them as a legitimate threat, and that they perceive labor as a legitimate threat. And this really, you know, explains why you have a shift in the dictatorship's policies with regard to labor between the early 1970s, the late 1970s, and 80s. So here, I'm drawing a lot on the work of Rodrigo Araya, who is a scholar here in Chile, who has done a great deal in showing that early in the dictatorship, you had a series of labor leaders who were opposed to Allende, who were still labor, still pro-labor, but anti-leftist and anti-Allende, who take control of some of the key labor federations, namely the Copper Federation, and begin to sort of designate themselves as the key figures of labor. And there's an attempt then by the dictatorship to essentially make a corporatist model of labor and integrate them and control them from the top down. of labor and integrate them and control them from the top down.

Ultimately that backfires because in doing so they, the military refuses to recognize some of these individuals and instill their own sort of puppets, if you will, their own labor leaders, which then causes resentment, which then pushes that group to an oppositional stance, which then allows for more connective tissue, more connections to be made between that group, which would be loosely referred to as the group of 10, and individuals such as Bustos and others

that are forming this national union coordinator. Those two groups will ultimately, in the early 1980s, form a new group, which is the National Workers' Command. And this actually group is formed at a point in which Bustos himself has been exiled out of the country. So, you know, there's a debate to be had whether or not the formation of the command was an attempt to consolidate control away from the union coordinator in Bustos, which was much more open to working with members of the left and the communists at the time, compared to, say, the group of 10, who, you know, were much more opposed to working with leftists. So that's really, you know, one of

the big differences between labor in a pre-1973 period and a post-1973 period is there's still a struggle for labor rights, protection of workers, and unionism, right to strike, right to collectively bargain. But what's missing in that post-1973 period, or rather what has been murdered, disappeared, tortured, executed by the dictatorship, is a theory of power for unions, right? The sort of leftist influence, you know, you could call it Marxism-Leninism, you can call it sort of a social democracy, but some theory of power that animated unionism and animated the labor movement in the pre-1973 period, That has essentially been purged over that course of the 1970s into the 1980s. But in addition to these sort of national level developments, which, you

know, for me, Bustos is the straight line that connects the territory of Vicuna McKenna to this national level. Within Vicuna McKenna itself, you have two groups that begin to emerge in the late 1970s, 1980s. The first would be the Solidarity Group, and then the second would be Union Unity. And both of these new organizations emerge in Vukunamakena and emerge specifically as territorial organizations of labor. So they are in opposition to what Bustos and others are trying to do, which is reform the sort of national labor hierarchy, bureaucratic, or, you know, the bureaucratic, excuse me, approach to labor. They're specifically opposed to that and are arguing that labor should be organized territorially because it allows a greater flexibility for the workers to respond to the new realities of a dictatorship.

And specifically to the new realities of the new constitution that the dictatorship puts in place in 1980, as well as the new labor plan that they put in place through a series of laws in the late 1970s and early 1980s that severely curtail labor's ability to both organize. So, for example, the closed shop is essentially done away with. They also will limit the ability to strike. You can strike. However, after 30 days, the management can begin hiring scab laborers, essentially, to break the strike. And if a strike lasted past 60 days, the management was allowed to fire all the striking workers because after 60 days, they were considered to have walked off the job and were no longer considered employees. Also, one of the key innovations that the sort of technocratic advisors to the dictatorship implements in the new labor code is the

individual labor contract, right? Which means that workers now are contracted individually, Right. Which means that workers now are contracted individually, which also then prevents any sort of national level union and we need to focus them territorially. And for me, that is a straight line between the legacy of the Cordonas and what we're seeing in the 1980s. And then the other sort of discursive straight line, like if that's the material connection, the discursive straight line is that these organizations are using the discourse of dignity and a dignified life in the extant source material that we have. That makes sense. And I think that also,

but that also, I guess partly explains why, like why organized labor like ceases after that point, because I guess it is just sort of like the, it's the sort of the, the, the neoliberal shifts in what's happening in terms of the actual law and then actually i don't know i guess i guess you should ask about this like is there also

a sort of like like do you also get a sort of like like another sort of geographic shift in in how factories are distributed like through the years totally you have essentially a de-industrialization a policy of de-industrialization and you have a total reversion to what we can think of as a 19th century economic export economy um for chile right so you have uh much more focus and investment into commodity exports be it um the fishing sector, the agricultural sector, things like that, right? So like, for example, if you go into your grocery store, and look at some of the fruits, specifically, say grapes, more often than not, they're going to come from Chile,

especially in off seasons, right? The benefit of Chile being in the southern hemisphere for, say, consumers in the United States is that then you have access to things that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. And so the dictatorship will prioritize this over the idea of industry. So you have a total reversion to importing goods and services that would have been produced nationally or locally. And so what this means then for a lot of the labor that happens in these zones, right, is you have mass layoffs. That's another innovation that the dictatorship and the Chicago Boys will introduce is the ability for management to fire at a mass level and have that be legal. to fire at a mass level and have that be legal.

And so you have skyrocketing unemployment amongst factory labor such that, yes, by the 1980s, you have a refounding of a National Labor Confederation, also the acronym being the COOT. The difference, however, is that it's under such a much different labor framework. It's also in a situation in which industrial labor is just not the main sector of labor. And in its founding statutes, if the COOT pre-1973 was identified as the only national labor confederation, the statutes post-1973 and in the late 80s when it's reformed allows for there to be other national confederations. And actually, this is one of the great debates that takes place

between those organizations at the base in Fukuna Mikaena and these national level organizations is whether or not there should be one labor confederation or whether or not there should be many different labor confederations organized along ideological lines, which is essentially a code word for anti-communism. The idea of the ideological labor central was a way to exclude the left from gaining control in organized labor like it had in the pre-1973 period. control in organized labor like it had in the pre-1973 period. And so by the dawn of 1990s, when democracy, or rather when democratic elections returned to Chile, you have labor in a much different position. And that's why you have this very weakening series or period under the concertación government, the rulingation government the ruling coalition the governing

coalition that takes power in 1990 with patricio aylwin winning the presidency um it's just much different uh and it's it's straightjacketed legally because the 1980 constitution is still in place right it's still in place to this day uh and that's actually, it's the period of concertación that is the period where you really have the most weakening of labor. It's also the period we have the most privatizations that are taking place of former state-owned companies. We could say that it's the period that is the most neoliberal period in Chile relative to the period of civilian military dictatorship. Yeah, and I guess that's the thing that I guess gets you to the last 20 years of student-led protests and ecological protests. I protests i mean i guess like the mapuche have always been like fighting but the the way that oh from from spanish colonial yeah

i mean it's the only indigenous group that was never conquered by the spanish yeah but i get but i guess like like the the the axis on which the left is sort of like built on like through that period just shifts and that's i guess where you get the modern like the sort of modern like configuration of the left that's been in the streets and last sort of like you do and this is this is the reason why i sort of draw a hard line ending my study in 2010 for two reasons. One is that it's the, uh, 2010 is the first is the election of, uh, Pinera to the presidency. Uh, Sebastian Pinera as his first term in 2010. And so that's the first moment that someone from the concertation is not elected as the president they had governed sent from 1990 to 2010. So that's really what Peter Wynn and other scholars have referred to as the

peanut chip period, which extends all the way from 1973 to that moment, is inclusive of the concertación government because of their adherence to the neoliberal economic model. That's when that period ends in 2010. Also a year later in 2011 is when the student protests. And that's when you have a new cycle in Chilean social movements

led by the students, right? Prior, you know, post the return of democracy, again, the return of democratic elections in 1990, I think this is a very important distinction between a return to democracy and a return of democratic elections, which seems to be a confusion between, not a confusion, but a slippage between the form of democracy, i.e. free and fair elections, and the content of democracy. And so a lot of people

refer to 1990 as the return of democracy. But I think that the past 30 years of governance in Chile shows us, especially the past two years of uprising and resistance against that model, show us that in the 1990s on, street protests were not seen as an effective measure, as the way to protest, right? They obviously were effective in the period of dictatorship. that there are no there there's a not not necessarily discrediting of sorts right but there's not the emphasis on them that there was during the dictatorship and certainly not that there was in the pre-1973 period it's not until the students take to the streets in 2011 that you have this revival of the street protest as a as a viable form um of resistance and protest in Chile. And, you know, and it's no surprise then that in October 2019, when the Estadio, the uprising, takes place, that it's students that were once again the vanguard of this. And, you know, when they're jumping turnstiles in the subways in protest of a proposed transportation hike

i was i was actually lucky enough to be living here in early 2020 pre-pandemic and a lot of people that i spoke to at protests and things like that were very quick to tell me that it was not 30 pesos it's 30 30 years that they were protesting. Yeah, and I guess that also... The left-wing forces that took over the state, it's the reason why a lot of that winds up being about the

Constitution. Because yeah, you still have this. You still have Pinochet's... Oh, exactly. The 1980 Constitution remains intact. yeah and god i i used to know the name of this i said in one of the other episodes i think i think like the guy who wrote it like was like an enormous hayek fanboy and called it like the constitution of liberty or something and it yeah it was it was a hands it was a hand-selected team um of very few

individuals that was hand-picked by the dictatorship to write the Constitution. There was a veneer of Democratic support insofar as the dictatorship in 1980 holds a referendum on whether or not to vote up, down, yes or no for the new Constitution. up down yes or no for the new constitution right um the yes vote won however there is uh many uh sources at the time as well as scholars that have claimed that that victory was not a valid victory um by any means um but you know right now, in the post 2019 period, um, a sort of effect of the uprising that took place is there is a constitutional convention that's taking place as we speak, uh, here in Santiago, um, that's headquartered in the former national Congress, uh, during the dictatorship, the, uh, Congress has moved to the port city of Alparazo, away from Santiago. But in the old National Congress building is where the new constitutional convention is taking place.

And actually two nights ago, there was a marathon voting session in which a series of social rights were adopted into the text of the new constitution. into the text of the new constitution. And these social rights included, among other things, the right to unionization, the right to strike, the right to collectively bargain, the right for workers via unions to have a say in the direction and business of an enterprise, of a business itself, to participate in management, essentially. But it also included things such as a right to healthcare, a publicly funded healthcare system, the right to social security publicly funded,

and it included a right to housing, which specifically included the phrase of a right to a dignified adequate home, as well as a right to the city that included the phrase that the right to the city is for the development of a dignified life. And so really, that is kind of the epilogue to the story that we've been talking about this whole time. Now, you know, we don't know if the constitution itself will be adopted. There's going to be an exit vote on september 4th of this year in which uh chileans under a it's a mandatory vote will vote up or down on whether or not to adopt the new constitution

so we can't say for certain if these rights will actually become rights of citizenship in chile but as of now those rights are included in the text that will be voted on in september yeah and i think i think that's a pretty good place to end it, unless you have anything else that you want to... No, I think that there's a really nice symmetry there. And I stayed up far too late the other night watching that vote. I think it went to like two in the morning. But it was an exciting thing to see.

And it is an exciting moment to see. Um, and you know, it is an exciting moment to, to be here in Chile. Um, especially after having to be away for two years during, during the pandemic. Yeah. Um, yeah, well thank, thank you so much for, thank you so much for talking with us. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a, it's been a real pleasure, uh, you know, and I hope that, um, my my ramblings are are sensible to your listeners um and um that they're able to take something from it because uh i do think there's an importance in this history especially you know this year is the 50-year anniversary of the cordonis emergence and so uh it's a great time to to sort of spread knowledge of this this moment in trillion history

yeah and i guess uh do you have anything like that you want to plug uh no i don't have anything specifically uh um yeah no still cranking away in the archives and working on my dissertation so sadly i don't have a book to plug or anything like that but you know give me a couple years uh and hopefully i'll have a book yeah i'll have you back on when it comes out yeah um yeah well in the meantime uh you too can form a large section of industrial democracy in your workplace that involves taking it over um yeah go go do that this this has been it could happen here you can find us on twitter and instagram at happen here pod actually by the time this is dropping we will be a few days away from margaret killjoy's new series cool people who did cool stuff uh which is rad you're gonna hear a lot

of cool people doing cool things it is dropping on mayday on may 1st and And after that, we have another show dropping, which is Ghost Church about ghost churchy things. It's going to be good. It's Jamie Loftus. It's Jamie Loftus doing Jamie Loftus things about a bunch of the sort of like American ghost churches

and people who talk to ghosts. So yeah, go listen to that. Have fun. Bye, everyone. 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 slash sources. Thanks for listening. You should probably keep your lights on for Nocturnal Tales from the Shadow. Join me, Danny Trails, and step into the flames of rife. 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.