Unidad Popular Research Articles

Mariana Callejas: Literature and Horror in Pinochet’s Chile

Mariana Callejas (1932–2016) was an award-winning Chilean writer, active during Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship. At the same time, she and her husband, the American Michael Townley, were agents of the DINA, the Chilean intelligence service dedicated to the repression of opponents to the dictatorship. The couple was involved in several political crimes in Chile and particularly abroad, including the murder of former Unidad Popular Minister Orlando Letelier in 1976 in Washington DC. In 1995, Callejas wrote her memoirs and, after that, several fictional or semi-fictional works were published that had leading characters inspired by her. This article focuses on her autobiographical book and three fictional pieces written by leading Chilean writers (Pedro Lemebel, Roberto Bolaño, and Carlos Iturra) with a dual purpose. On the one hand, it analyses how different authors (including Callejas herself) use characters inspired by Callejas to conceptualise the relationship between literature and horror during the years of Pinochet’s dictatorship. On the other hand, the article studies how these writings thematise the tension existing in Chilean society (particularly among certain intellectual circles) between knowing, not knowing, and not wanting to know what was going on under the Pinochet regime.

The Unidad Popular Process as Represented through Siglo XXI Publishers: Between Local Reception and the Construction of a Global Event

This article deals with the role played by books and publishing houses in the representations and circulation of ideas relating to the Chilean Unidad Popular process (1970–1973). Due to its transnational nature, Siglo XXI stands out as a privileged object of analysis. This publishing house was founded by Orfila Reynal in Mexico in 1965, and opened a branch in Buenos Aires in 1971. Amidst political and cultural radicalisation, Siglo XXI Argentina factored in the local reception of ideas about the Chilean road to socialism, and its shaping into a global event.

Monitor, Produce, Distribute: Chile’s Battle Against Inflation and Scarcity, 1932-1973

Objective/Context: This article reconstructs the struggle that consumers and the state waged to contain inflation and consumer scarcity in mid-twentieth-century Chile. Methodology: Drawing on records from Chile’s Ministry of Economy and print media, it first assesses how in the 1930s, mobilized consumers and Chile’s national price control office worked together to create an expectation that a strong interventionist state could prevent inflation and shortages by monitoring and regulating the speculative behavior of private merchants. Then, by examining the writings of leading economic thinkers of the postwar era, it details how the state’s understanding of rising prices and scarcity increasingly turned to structural matters of economic production and distribution, particularly in Chile’s rural economy. Originality: While most scholarship on inflation and scarcity in twentieth-century Latin America tends to either focus on the intellectual debate surrounding shortages and price volatility or on the grassroots political experience with these problems, I show how interactions between consumers and the state created a paradox. On the one hand, consumers came to expect that the state had an immediate duty and capacity to minimize short-term economic hardship. But on the other hand, by continuing to identify inflation and scarcity as problems driven by individual acts, many consumers, including some of the political left, lost faith in the state’s long-term planning capacity. Conclusions: The article concludes by showing how in the early 1970s, during a period of heightened class conflict, the state’s embrace of a longer-term, structural approach to inflation and scarcity drove a wedge between Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular (up) government and its political base.

Scientific Diplomacy in the Service of Socialism: the USSR and the Popular Unity in Chile

In Chilean history, the period of Unidad Popular (1970—1973) occupies a special place, becoming an event of world importance. The policy of the USSR in Chile in previous years and during the years of the rule of the left forces occupied an important place in the internal processes in this country. Since the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1964, relations between our countries have developed in an ascending line, culminating in the years of Unidad Popular. This article examines such a little-studied aspect of these relations as the use of “soft power”, namely scientific diplomacy for ideological and political influence on Chilean society. Scientific diplomacy on the part of Soviet scientists in Chile covered not only the natural and usual spheres of interaction in the field of scientific exchange and university cooperation, but also expressed itself in the field of social activity, in political actions and campaigns of commemoration of historical events important both for the Soviet policy and for the left, socialist forces in Chile. Soviet scientists were directly involved in political actions in Chile, both with their work and public activity sought to support local leftist forces, primarily the communists.

1973 — the dramatic collapse of the Chilean revolution. Viewed by the materials of the archive of the Central Committee of the CPSU

The Chilean Revolution is one of the most important events in the Latin American history of the XXth century. Its defeat, its dramatic circumstances, and the brutality of the military regime's repression turned it into a symbolic event that marked the collapse of the illusions of a peaceful, democratic transition to socialism. The course of the revolution itself, the "Chilean path to socialism", the actions of various actors have been studied in numerous historical studies. In addition to Chilean actors, parties, politicians, and representatives of society, external political forces took part in this drama, indirectly and directly. One of these was the Soviet Union, which closely observed and analyzed the Chilean events. With the opening of the Soviet archives, documents became available that reveal many little-known or hidden subjects of the short but intense history of Unidad Popular in Chile. In this text, the author relies on the documents of the Central Committee of the CPSU, reflecting the vision of the Soviet authorities of the events of the Chilean revolution in the most dramatic period of its development, in the last year of the government of Salvador Allende, in 1973.

From ‘we shall prevail’ to ‘weapon of struggle’: Populism, Chile'sUnidad Populargovernment andNueva Canción

AbstractThe Chileannueva canción(‘new song’) movement is one of Latin America's most enduring musical phenomena. Strongly associated with the rise of left-wing political forces in the 1960s, and then with anti-dictatorship protests in the 1970s and 1980s,nueva canciónis deeply embedded in Chilean political consciousness. This article provides a new perspective on the movement by exploring its populist elements and considering these in relation to Communist Party cultural policy. It focuses on a significant historical moment – the Chilean Communist Party's 1971 Assembly on the Chilean Revolution and the Problems of Culture – to ascertain how the political potential of ‘Chilean new song’ was viewed by this key partner in the Chilean coalition government. Through this examination, this article offers new insight into the political positioning of CNS, illustrating the movement's socio-political role in terms of the broader ideological principles and imperatives of thevía chilena(‘Chilean road’) to socialism.

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America

Beatriz Allende: A Revolutionary Life in Cold War Latin America

Between the Museum and the Street: Roberto Matta's Works in Chile during the Unidad Popular

This article seeks to contribute to the study of the work Roberto Matta made in Chile in the early 1970s by focusing on a series of painted arpilleras made at Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes and El primer gol del pueblo chileno, a mural created in collaboration with the muralist group Brigada Ramona Parra. I argue that this body of work was largely informed by the ideals of the Unidad Popular and that the artist's presence in the country might have contributed to the institutional validation of popular practices such as crafts and muralism in the local artistic scene.

The USSR and the Chilean Revolution: to help and how? Issues of economic interaction during the period of Unidad Popular (1970—1973)

The dramatic experience of the "Chilean path to socialism" half a century ago raised a lot of questions about the fate of the left, socialist project in a modern, pluralistic society, about the combination of national and international factors in the fate of the revolution. This work is devoted to the policy of the USSR in relation to the Chilean revolution in the economic sphere. On the basis of documents from the archives of the Central Committee of the CPSU, it is proposed to analyze the Soviet policy of helping Chile, the process of negotiations between both countries, decision-making and their motives. The work is limited to issues of economic cooperation, which, in the course of the development of the crisis in Chile, have become key to the survival of the Unidad Popular government. Insuperable for greater dynamism of economic relations between the USSR and Chile were not only objective circumstances, vast distances and limited resources, but also the political failure of the government of Popular Unity, which turned out to be incapable of either formulating long-term tasks for the development of international cooperation or putting into practice the agreements reached with the USSR. The Soviet side was not ready for full-scale integration and assistance to Chile, plunging the process into a viscous mire of bureaucracy and the usual illusory. This is a story of bilateral failure, for which both sides are to blame.

Assessment of the Cultural Project during the Unidad Popular: La Quinta Rueda and Cuadernos de la Realidad Nacional

The Unidad Popular is a period where there was a deep reflection on culture and its interdependence with the political-social changes. After a first moment, during the period of the electoral campaign and a year after starting the implementation of a national project on the road to socialism, the discussions on the role of culture in this process intensified and whose resonances went through positive balances to strong criticism, especially the danger of recognizing culture only as a means of disseminating something that is done elsewhere, of an instrumentalization of its practices. This paper aims to analyze this discussion in two political-cultural journals that opened their pages to their understanding. In effect, both La quinta rueda and Cuadernos de la Realidad Nacional (also known as Cuadernos del CEREN) constitute critical frameworks from which we can better observe the diverse and heterogeneous discourses that not only manifest the heterogeneity of voices that circulated, but also the theoretical and reflexive intensity of this era. 

“Un millón de chilenos”: Testimonios del exilio en la Revista Araucaria de Chile

One of the political consequences of the repression experienced during the years of the Chilean dictatorship established after the 1973 coup d'etat and led by the military Junta, was the phenomenon of exile. Through the study of the journals created by Chileans in exile in the most remote places of the planet, it is possible to recompose the cultural and political history of Chile. In particular, this article proposes cultural journals as fundamental spaces for recognizing how the common experience of a past of Unidad Popular is approached from exile, together with the horror of a present marked by the coup d'etat, persecution and exile. In this sense, the journal Araucaria de Chile (1978-1990) coined in its pages the writing of the outside, pierced by the modes of saying dependent to a great extent on the concrete experience of the social disarticulation of a previous identity and its ways of re-articulation. Focusing the work on the section Un millon de chilenos will allow us to identify three dimensions within the set of testimonial narratives that deal with the experience of exile defined as uprooting, guilt and possibility.

Towards a global history of the Unidad Popular

Our understanding of the international and transnational history of Chile during the Unidad Popular (UP) government has expanded considerably since the early 2010s. But what has new research contributed to our understanding of events in Chile and Chile’s significance in a global context? Examining the historiographical advances and questions that have driven scholarship in recent years, this article argues that international and transnational studies that focus attention on Chile and Chileans can offer new perspectives on the rise and fall of the UP. Rather than reducing international histories to an account of a select group of foreigners acting on an empty Chilean stage, these approaches foreground local actors and processes, exploring the extent to which Chileans were shaped by a multiplicity of interactions, invitations and inspirations across borders. Localising the global in this way can help us understand the reasons many within Chile conceptualised their goals, projects and actions as they did. It challenges the idea of Chilean exceptionalism. It also undermines right-wing actors’ claims to be acting solely within national frameworks by revealing their own entanglements in translational networks and intellectual imports. Suggesting that we have much still to learn, the article also highlights possible avenues for further research and reflects on the contemporary relevance of the global in Chilean political discourse today.

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

The election of Salvador Allende and the Unidad Popular (Popular Unity) in 1970 unleashed a radical and original revolutionary process, discernible not only in the depth of its redistributive measures and the expectations it generated, but also in the ferocity with which those who identified with the counter-revolutionary ideal responded to that project. The counter-revolution, initially confined to the conservative and reactionary sectors, in a matter of months became an immense mass mobilisation that would end up paving the way for the military coup. This article analyses that counter-revolutionary process, exploring its historic roots, the main actors involved and the innovations in political practices it developed at the time. The ‘counter-revolutionary bloc’ was formed by a diverse array of political and social actors – some of whom did not have previous experience in political mobilisations – who based their actions on the adoption and socialisation of a long-standing anti-Communist script, through which they could make sense of the period’s changing reality. That script – based on decades of taking in events from other parts of the world, elaborations and accusations against all those who identified as Communists – aimed to reduce the originality of the Unidad Popular’s political project to a remake of classic socialist experiences in Chilean territory and processed in a dystopian key. The counter-revolution’s power would be projected into the military dictatorship that began in 1973, when it became a sort of official state ideology, and it would become a foundational experience for Chilean conservative sectors with reverberations even in in the present.

La literatura en Quimantú: una revolución incómoda

Proponemos una reflexión sobre las colecciones literarias de la Editora Nacional Quimantú durante el gobierno de la Unidad Popular, entendiéndolas como parte de las tensiones existentes entre un imperativo revolucionario y otro económico. La valoración de la literatura y la conformación de un canon literario internacional se vinculan con el propósito democratizador propio de Quimantú, pero también con la configuración política del gobierno de la Unidad Popular y las divergencias del campo cultural en torno al rol que debían jugar los intelectuales en la creación de una nueva cultura. La utopía de una sociedad sin clases revela, al mismo tiempo, la atracción y la incomodidad de la clase intelectual frente al nuevo lector popular que emerge. El paratexto de los libros de literatura ofrece una escena para la expresión de distintas posturas en torno a la relación entre literatura y revolución, al mismo tiempo que se proponen al lector modos de lectura literaria afines a los cambios políticos, sociales y culturales promovidos por el gobierno.

Participação popular e mobilização política no Cone Sul dos anos 1970: os Comitês de Base da Frente Ampla uruguaia e os Comitês da Unidade Popular chilena em perspectiva comparada

Busca-se no presente artigo comparar a experiência dos Comitês de Base da Frente Ampla uruguaia e dos Comitês da Unidade Popular chilena no princípio dos anos 1970. Embora fossem coalizões eleitorais, tanto a FA quanto a UP se constituíram também como movimentos de massa, utilizando-se da estratégia da mobilização política através de Comitês que contavam com grande participação popular. Por se tratarem de alianças multipartidárias, os Comitês da Frente Ampla e da Unidade Popular eram frequentados por militantes e simpatizantes das diferentes forças, o que em determinadas ocasiões gerava atritos e polêmicas. Além disso, devido ao importante papel que desempenharam nas eleições, foi preciso debater internamente qual seria o lugar desses organismos na estrutura partidária, trazendo à tona diferentes posições no seio das esquerdas no Uruguai e no Chile. Como fontes primárias, analisou-se a imprensa e a documentação interna dos partidos, além de entrevistas com alguns de seus ex-integrantes.

La primera década de la Revista Chilena de Literatura: entre la Unidad Popular y la dictadura militar

This article reviews the first decade of Revista Chilena de Literatura (1970-1980), a period in which this publication shows notable changes from its foundational purposes. Through the reading of some articles about Chilean authors and their literary works, it has been possible to identify and interpret theoretical and methodological changes present in these articles, along the impact that both the Unidad Popular as well as the coup and the military dictatorship played in these changes. Taking into account these changes, the relation that the magazine had with its context and the strategies to re-position itself in the Chilean academic landscape in dictatorship are evaluated, thereby approaching formats likely to appear in fields related to scientific communication.

Entre Valparaíso y Marilyn Monroe. Una reflexión sobre la creación de una editorial universitaria

En el artículo se presenta el inicio del trabajo productivo de la editorial Ediciones Universitarias de Valparaíso en el período que comprende los años 1969 a 1973, tiempo en que esta se erigió como uno de referentes editoriales del país. Se muestra que durante esos años, la editorial compartió algunas de las características e ideales del máximo exponente editor de la época, Quimantú, que representaba a su vez el ideario y las políticas desarrolladas desde el Estado en el gobierno de la Unidad Popular. Desde su plataforma regional, Ediciones Universitarias de Valparaíso se planteaba como una iniciativa orientada a modificar y complementar la visión de la producción editorial de la época, al convertirse en un vehículo para la transmisión de los procesos internos de la universidad al ámbito de la comunidad local y nacional, incorporando en su producción expresiones populares y de la contingencia nacional.

Imágenes robadas a la represión chilena. Redes transnacionales de denuncia y cine contrainformacional durante la dictadura de Augusto Pinochet

En 1982, la película No olvidar —rodada por el cineasta chileno Ignacio Agüero denunciando la desaparición de quince pobladores de Isla de Maipo a pocos días del golpe de Estado que derrocó a la Unidad Popular— fue editada y difundida en Suiza. Por su parte, Miguel Littín —exiliado desde 1973— ingresó clandestinamente a su Chile natal en 1985 para filmar Acta General de Chile, estrenada en España en 1986. ¿Cómo, durante una dictadura tan represiva como la encabezada porel general Augusto Pinochet pudieron registrarse imágenes con una intención contrainformativa y difundirse en Europa? Reconstruyendo estas dos experiencias a partir de diversas fuentes históricas, el presente artículo demuestra la colaboración entre opositores al régimen de Pinochet que se encontraban en el país, exiliados y actores europeos, tanto en la producción como en la distribución de estos materiales. En este trabajo se analiza particularmente los modos en que participó la Association Internationale de Défense des Artistes victimes de la répression dans le monde (AIDA) en dichas redes transnacionales. El artículo postula que frente a la “maquinaria de la desimaginación” —como Georges Didi-Huberman conceptualizó a las políticas de invisibilización de la violencia del régimen nazi—, estos productos audiovisuales contribuyeron a la construcción de un discurso visual de denuncia que atravesó fronteras para sensibilizar la opinión pública transnacional y presionar a los Estados perpetradores de crímenes contra los derechos humanos.

Between Two Revolutions: Cultural Relations between Cuba and Chile during <em>Unidad Popular</em>

Between Two Revolutions: Cultural Relations between Cuba and Chile during <em>Unidad Popular</em>

La Candidatura de Unidad Popular (CUP): origen, estructura y modelo originario

Este artículo analiza los orígenes y la configuración de la Candidatura de Unidad Popular (CUP) como partido político a raíz de su configuración como tal a nivel supramunicipal. La CUP es un partido independentista de izquierda radical que en los últimos años ha cobrado especial relevancia en la política en Cataluña por constituir uno de los principales impulsores del proceso soberanista que se vive en esta comunidad,y además, por el hecho de haber venido siendo un actor político clave en la gobernabilidad de la misma. Para tal fin, y utilizando el modelo elaborado por Panebianco (2009) como principal referente teórico, se abordarán las fuerzas políticas previas de las que dicha organización política es heredera, su creación y estructuración como partido político unitario, así como los motivos que explican su consolidación y expansión durante el último tiempo.