Eurocommunism and the Concertación: Reflections on Chilean European Exile 1973–1989

Abstract

Of the 200,000 exiles who fled Chile after the coup, between one third and one half went to Eastern and Western Europe. They arrived in the midst of some of the most turbulent years in Europe since the Second World War, manifest in both street violence and radical intellectual currents. The European milieu, especially through the more moderate political programs offered by Eurocommunism, attracted many of the refugees, traumatized as they were by state violence in their own country, and already questioning the ideals they had held so strongly. We argue that these moderate programs of social reform that the returning exiles brought back with them were highly influential in forming the coalition of centrist partners which supported the center-left Concertación government, and helped maintain a stable and reasonably popular government in Chile for a further 20 years.