The

CHILE
Reader
History, C ulture, Poli t i cs

Elizabeth Quay Hutchison,

Thomas Miller Klubock,
Nara B. Milanich,
and Peter Winn, editors
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The
Chile
R ea der
H istory , C ulture , P olitics

Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Thomas Miller Klubock,

Nara B. Milanich, and Peter Winn, editors

Duke U niversity P ress  Durham and London  2014

© 2014 Duke University Press
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ∞
Typeset in Monotype Dante by BW&A Books, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Chile reader : history, culture, politics /
Elizabeth Quay Hutchison, Thomas Miller Klubock, Nara B. Milanich,
and Peter Winn, eds.
pages cm — (Latin America readers)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8223-5346-1 (cloth : alk. paper)
isbn 978-0-8223-5360-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Chile—History.  2. Chile—Civilization. 
3. Chile—Politics and government. 
I. Hutchison, Elizabeth Q. (Elizabeth Quay) 
II. Klubock, Thomas Miller. 
III. Milanich, Nara B., 1972– 
IV. Winn, Peter. 
V. Series: Latin America readers.
f 3081.c 485 2013
983—dc23 
2013020980
Contents

Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1

I  Environment and History 9

“No Better Land,” Pedro de Valdivia 17
The Poetry of Place: “My Country,” Gabriela Mistral 21
Crazy Geography, Benjamín Subercaseaux 25
Catastrophe and National Character, Rolando Mellafe 30
Deforestation in Chile: An Early Report, Claudio Gay 36
“Catastrophe in Sewell,” Pablo Neruda 42
A Call to Conservation, Rafael Elizalde Mac-Clure 45
In Defense of the Forests, Ricardo Carrere 48
Pollution and Politics in Greater Santiago, Saar Van Hauwermeiren 52

II 
Chile before Chile: Indigenous Peoples, Conquest,
and Colonial Society 59
A Paleolithic Footprint  67
Chinchorro: The World’s Oldest Mummies  68
Diaguita Ceramics  70
Mapuche Textiles: Culture and Commerce  72
The Inca Meet the Mapuche, Garcilaso de la Vega 74
A Conquistador Pleads His Case to the King, Pedro de Valdivia 80
Exalting the Noble Savage, Alonso de Ercilla 85
Debating Indian Slavery, Melchor Calderón and Diego de Rosales 92
“To Sell, Give, Donate, Trade, or Exchange”: Certification of Indian
Enslavement 98
Portrait of Late Colonial Santiago, Vicente Carvallo y Goyeneche 102
From War to Diplomacy: The Summit of Tapihue  109
“The Insolence of Peons,” Mine Owners of Copiapó 117
viii  Contents

III The Honorable Exception: The New Chilean Nation

in the Nineteenth Century 121
A Revolutionary Journalist: “Fundamental Notions of the Rights of
Peoples,” Camilo Henríquez 129
An Englishwoman Observes the New Nation, Maria Graham 133
The Authoritarian Republic, Diego Portales 139
A Political Catechism, Francisco Bilbao 143
A Literature of Its Own: Martín Rivas, Alberto Blest Gana 147
The University and the Nation, Andrés Bello 153
A Polish Scientist among the Mapuche, Ignacio Domeyko 157
German Immigrants in the South, Vicente Pérez Rosales 163
The Beagle Diary: “A Peculiar Race of Men,” Charles Darwin 167
How to Run an Hacienda, Manuel José Balmaceda 172
A Franco-Chilean in the California Gold Rush, Pedro Isidoro Combet 178
“The Worst Misery”: Letters to the Santiago Orphanage  183
“A Race of Vagabonds,” Augusto Orrego Luco 186

IV 
Building a Modern Nation: Politics and the Social Question
in the Nitrate Era 193
“Audacious and Cruel Spoilations”: The War of the Pacific, Alejandro
Fierro 199
A Mapuche Chieftain Remembers “Pacification,” Pascual Coña 205
Chile and Its “Others”  210
Race, Nation, and the “Roto Chileno,” Nicolás Palacios 213
Nitrates, Nationalism, and the End of the Autocratic Republic, José Manuel
Balmaceda, Arturo Alessandri, and a popular poet 217
A Manifesto to the Chilean People, Democratic Party 224
“God Distributes His Gifts Unequally”: An Archbishop Defends Social
Inequality, Mariano Casanova 227
Workers’ Movements and the Birth of the Chilean Left, Luis Emilio
Recabarren 233
Nitrate Workers and State Violence: The Massacre at Escuela Santa María
de Iquique, Elías Lafertte 238
Women, Work, and Labor Politics, Esther Valdés de Díaz 245
The Lion of Tarapacá, Arturo Alessandri 251
Autocrats versus Aristocrats: The Decay of Chile’s Parliamentary Republic,
Alberto Edwards 256
Rescuing the Body Politic: Manifesto of a Military Coup  259
The Poet as Creator of Worlds: Altazor, Vicente Huidobro 262
 Contents ix
“Mother of Chile”? “Women’s Suffrage” and “Valle de Elqui,” Gabriela
Mistral 267

V  Depression, Development, and the Politics of Compromise 273

“Their Work Has Laid the Foundation for Greatness”: Chile’s Arab
Industrialists 279
Is Chile a Catholic Country? Alberto Hurtado  284
“I Told Myself I Must Find Work, I Cannot Continue Here”:
Interview with a Household Worker  289
Fundamental Theoretical Principles of the Socialist Party, Julio César
Jobet 293
Public Health Crisis, Salvador Allende 297
“Progress for All Social Classes”: Campaigning for the Popular Front,
Pedro Aguirre Cerda 301
Rural Workers, Landowners, and the Politics of Compromise, The League of
Poor Campesinos of Las Cabras and the National Society of Agriculture 305
A Case of Frustrated Development, Aníbal Pinto 309
The Movement for the Emancipation of Chilean Women: Interview with
Elena Caffarena  315
Poetry and Politics: Memoirs and “The Heights of Macchu Picchu,” Pablo
Neruda 320
Miners’ Strikes and the Demise of the Popular Front: U.S. State
Department Cables  327
States of Exception, Elena Caffarena 331
The Birth of a Shantytown, Juan Lemuñir 334
Klein-Saks: Chile’s First Experiment with Neoliberalism  340

VI  The Chilean Road to Socialism: Reform and Revolution 343

Between Capitalism and Communism: Social Christianity as a Third Way,
Eduardo Frei 353
Property and Production: A Pamphlet Promoting Christian Democracy’s
Agrarian Reform  356
The Christian Left and Communitarian Socialism, Jacques Chonchol and
Julio Silva Solar 362
The New Song Movement: An Interview with Inti-Illimani 366
Lyrics of the New Song Movement, Violeta Parra and Victor Jara 371
The Election of 1970  376
x  Contents
The Election of Salvador Allende: Declassified U.S. Government
Documents 380
The Mapuche Land Takeover at Rucalán: Interviews with Peasants and
Landowners 386
Revolution in the Factory: Interviews with Workers at the
Yarur Cotton Mill  393
The Chilean Revolution One Year In, Salvador Allende Gossens 400
Women Lead the Opposition to Allende: Interview with Carmen
Saenz 406
“So That Chile Can Renew Its March Forward,” Chilean Business and
Professional Associations 410
The Demands of the People, Movement of the Revolutionary Left 415
“A Treasonous History,” A Group of Retired Generals and Admirals 420
United States Policy and Covert Action against Allende, The Church
Committee 422
“Everyone Knows What Is Going to Happen,” Radomiro Tomíc to
General Carlos Prats 426
“These Are My Final Words,” Salvador Allende Gossens 428

VII 
The Pinochet Dictatorship: Military Rule and
Neoliberal Economics 433
Diary of a Coup, Peter Winn 443
“In the Eyes of God and History,” Government Junta of the Armed Forces
and Carabineros of Chile 450
Pinochet’s Caravan of Death, Patricia Verdugo 454
Women and Torture, National Commission on Political Detention and
Torture 459
Operation Condor and the Transnationalization of Terror, U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation 465
Protected Democracy and the 1980 Constitution, Jaime Guzmán 468
Shantytown Protest: Interviews with Pobladores  474
“There Is No Feminism without Democracy,” Julieta Kirkwood 482
The Kids of Barrio Alto, Alberto Fuguet 487
Sexuality and Soccer, Pedro Lemebel 493
Competing Perspectives on Dictatorship as Revolution, Joaquín Lavín
and Ernesto Tironi 498
The Whole World Was Watching: The 1988 Plebiscite, The Observer Group
of the Latin American Studies Association 512
 Contents xi

VIII  Returning to Democracy: Transition and Continuity 521

Justice “To the Degree Possible”: The Rettig Report, Patricio Aylwin
Azócar 527
Surveillance Within and Without: The Custody of the Eyes, Diamela
Eltit 534
Legislating Gender Equality? Voices from Congress and Civil Society  538
Gender and Sexuality in Transition  544
The Credit-Card Citizen, Tomás Moulián 547
“Chile’s Greatest Addition to the Spanish Language”: Huevón, John Brennan
and Alvaro Taboada 553
“I Never Looked for Power,” Augusto Pinochet Ugarte 555
Historians Critique Pinochet’s “Anti-History,” Eleven Chilean
Historians 560
The Mapuche Nation and the Chilean Nation, Elicura Chihuailaf 568
Growth with Equity, Alejandro Foxley 575
So Conservative and Yet So Modern? The Politics of Concertación,
Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt 581
The Catholic Church Today, Antonio Delfau, S. J. 585
“To Never Again Live It, To Never Again Deny It”: The Valech Report on
Torture, Ricardo Lagos 588
The Chilean Army after Pinochet, Juan Emilio Cheyre Espinosa 592
La Señora Presidenta, Michelle Bachelet 595
The Bicentennial Generation  601

Selected Readings  605

Acknowledgment of Copyrights and Sources  613
Index 623
Acknowledgments

A work of this size and complexity requires that a great many people share
the editors’ pain—as well as their success—in bringing the project to frui-
tion. The editors would like to start by expressing our gratitude to each
other for persevering in this project over the last decade. Although finishing
this book has been a shared enterprise, many of our most important debts
are individual. Liz Hutchison would therefore like to thank Regina, Dante,
Pasqual, Tita, Beth, Justin, Miguel, Kymm, Jason, Sam, Heidi, Ericka, Sole,
and Nara for their unwavering support. Tom Klubock would like to thank
Ishan, Kiran, and Sandhya. Nara Milanich thanks Nicola, Giacomo, and
Luca. Peter Winn would like to thank Ethan, Sasha, and Sue for their pa-
tience and support.
This book would not have been possible without the support and gener-
osity of our many colleagues and friends, on whose specialized advice we
have relied to identify and obtain many of the texts and images that make
up this book. This long list includes many of those named elsewhere in
these acknowledgments, as well as Marjorie Agosín, Margarita Alvarado,
Lisa Baldez, Merike Blofield, Brenda Elsey, Mario Garcés, Alfredo Jocelyn-
Holt, Katherine Hite, Mala Htun, María Angélica Illanes, Jadwiga Pieper,
Julio Pinto, Ericka Verba, Angela Vergara, and Soledad Zárate. Although
the Selected Readings indicate some of the vast bibliography we have re-
lied on for the book’s scholarly apparatus, we are particularly indebted to
Brian Loveman for his enduring work, Chile: The Legacy of Hispanic Capi-
talism, without which many more errors of fact and interpretation would
have surely crept into our manuscript. We extend special thanks to col-
leagues who gave us access to their archival materials, Ericka Beckman
and Leonardo Leon, and to those who shared their original interview tran-
scripts, namely Lisa Baldez, Ricardo Balladares and Alison Bruey, Florencia
Mallon, and Margaret Power. For permission to reprint excerpts of their
published interviews, we thank Luis Cifuentes and Pilar Molina. We are
deeply indebted to colleagues who have authored major published collec-
tions of historical documents, including Peter Kornbluh, author of The
Pinochet File; Sof ía Correa, Consuelo Figueroa, Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt, Clau-

xiii
xiv  Acknowledgments
dio Rolle, and Manuel Vicuña, editors of Documentos del siglo XX chileno;
Sergio Grez, editor of La cuestión social en Chile: Ideas y debates precursores,
1804–1902; and to the curators and scholarly contributors to the Chilean
National Library’s remarkable digital archive, Memoria chilena (www
.memoriachilena.cl).
Almost all of the selections in The Chile Reader are from primary sources,
but Elicura Chihuailaf, Jacques Chonchol and Julio Silva Solar, Alejandro
Foxley, Sergio Grez and Gabriel Salazar, Joaquín Lavín, and Tomás Moulián
did grant us permission to publish translated excerpts of their longer works.
Most of the remaining texts selected for the book required permissions
granted by authors’ agents and publishers, including the Sociedad Chilena
de Derechos de Autor, lom Ediciones, and Editorial Universitaria. Other
permissions were granted directly by the authors’ families or estates, such
as the Orden Franciscana de Chile, the family of Radomiro Tomic, and the
Victor Jara, Pablo Neruda, Salvador Allende, and Jaime Guzmán founda-
tions. We particularly wish to thank Angel Parra for the rights to publish his
mother’s work, as well as assistance with the English-language lyrics, and
Juan Flores for his generosity in granting rights to republish the translation
by his father, Angel Flores, of Benjamin Subercaseaux’s Crazy Geography.
The guts of this book—its historical documents—were made possible by
a crew of translators who worked tirelessly to render them in English: we
thank Justin Delacour, Enrique Garguín, Ryan Judge, Timothy Lorek, Jane
Losaw, Melissa Mann, Trevor Martenson, Carson Morris, David Schreiner,
Carolyn Watson, and John H. White for their translations of this material.
We are particularly grateful to Rachel Stein for her masterful work with
challenging colonial texts, to Bea Rodríguez-Balanta for expert translations
of literary materials, and to Ericka Verba and Gloria Alvarez for rendering
poetry and song in beautiful English. Kristina Cordero, Karin Rosemblatt,
Eliot Weinberger, and Enrique Zapata also generously granted us the rights
to their excellent published translations of Chilean texts. These translations,
as well as the reproduction and permissions costs, were funded by generous
financial support from unm ’s Latin American and Iberian Institute and the
Department of History, Duke University Press, and Columbia University’s
Institute of Latin American Studies. The editors particularly wish to thank
Esteban Andrade at Columbia University’s ilas , for processing permission
payments, and Karen Poniachik and Paula Pacheco at Columbia’s Global
Center in Santiago, for their assistance in bringing The Chile Reader to a
broader audience.
Turning The Chile Reader into a book that would provide readers with
visual as well as textual sources required tremendous cooperation from
 Acknowledgments xv
dozens of artists, photographers, and activists, as well as the agents, archi-
vists, and family members who often manage their work. Alejandro Bar-
ruel, Juan Carlos Cáceres, Tom Dillehay, Marcos González Valdéz, Alvaro
Hoppe, Hugo Infante, Fernando Maldonado Roi, Marcelo Montecino, Vic-
tor Hugo Robles, John Spooner, David Tryse, Spencer Tunick, and Guido
Vargas gave us permission to publish their original photographs, while José
Balmes, Guillo Bastias, and Ricardo Morales allowed us to reproduce their
graphic art. Many others gave permission to publish images belonging to
their families and/or organizations, including Lidia Casas and Adriana Gó-
mez Muñoz of the Corporación Foro Red de Salud y Derechos Sexuales y
Reproductivos; the widow of Nemesio Antuñez for her late husband’s work;
Horacio Salinas (and Augusto and Malena Samaniego, who put us in touch
with him) for photos of Inti-Illimani; Mario Aguirre Maldonado for his fa-
ther’s historic photos of Sewell (www.imagenesdesewell.cl); Fernanda Ru-
bio for her father’s photos of Plaza Yungay and Minister Allende; Elizabeth
Lira and Viviana Diaz for assistance with arpilleras; and Sebastián Ríos O.,
for use of his grandfather’s Klein-Saks poster. We received extraordinary
help in securing reproductions and rights from Carolina Suaznabar of the
Museo Histórico Nacional, Jimena Rosenkranz of the Biblioteca Nacional,
Alena Zamora of CreaImagen, Marlena Penna of the Archivo del Arzobiz-
pado de Santiago, and Father Samuel Fernández of the Centro de Estudios y
Documentación Padre Hurtado. Suzanne Schadl graciously provided access
to the Sam Slick Collection of Latin American Political Posters at the Uni-
versity of New Mexico, while Ivan Boserup of the Danish National Library,
Katie Mishler of the Artists’ Rights Society, and Gerben van der Meulen of
the International Institute of Social History provided other reproductions.
The editors particularly want to thank Marjorie Agosín for generously al-
lowing us to place Irma Muller’s remarkable arpillera on the book’s cover, as
well as photographer Addison Doty and curator Tey Mariana Nunn of the
National Hispanic Cultural Center for providing the reproduction for our
use.
During the long gestation of The Chile Reader, busy colleagues have in-
vested their time in reading our proposals, drafts, chapters, and manuscript.
We deeply appreciate the support and feedback we have received from John
Dinges, Paul Drake, Brian Loveman, Caterina Pizzigoni, and Fernando Pur-
cell; Heidi Tinsman has spent so much time with this book that she knows
it better than some of the editors! We thank Bill Nelson for creating his
fine maps of the “long narrow country,” and at the University of New Mex-
ico, Liz Hutchison wishes to thank Kellie Baker, Patricia Kent, and Alicia
Romero for their tireless work to obtain authors’ permissions; Dana Ellison,
xvi  Acknowledgments
Yolanda Martínez, and Barbara Wafer for a variety of rescue operations; and
Shawn Austin for his arduous labor on the index. For their help in obtaining
and processing copyright permissions at Duke we thank Vanessa Doriott
Anderson, Elena Feinstein, Mitch Fraas, China Medel, Tom Robinson, Isa-
bel Rios-Torres, Megan Williams, and particularly Lorien Olive, who gave
so much time and heart to make this book turn out well. Miriam Angress
has patiently shepherded this project through multiple editorial stages over
many years, and Liz Smith and Chris Crochetière have supported our work
at the production stage. Martha Ramsey was a dedicated and sympathetic
copy editor. Above all, we warmly thank Valerie Millholland, senior editor
and creator of the Readers’ series, for her patience and heartfelt devotion to
The Chile Reader. We hope that our whole community of colleagues, friends,
family, translators, contributors, and publishers finds satisfaction and rec-
ompense in what we have created together.
Introduction

In September 2010, after making world headlines with a major earthquake,

the inauguration of a new conservative president, and the ongoing drama
of thirty-three miners trapped underground, Chile marked its bicentenary
with an outpouring of public celebrations. For weeks before and after the
September 18 national holiday, Chilean media brimmed with reflections
on the country’s 200 years of national life. In concerts and performances,
lectures, and parades, and in the pages of the press, Chileans examined,
celebrated, and critiqued every aspect of their history and identity as a na-
tion. Major public events, such as the inauguration in Santiago’s Santa Lucía
Park—site of the first Spanish settlement—of a commemorative statue dedi-
cated to Chile’s indigenous peoples and symbolically “returning” to them
the park’s main plaza, also foregrounded significant events and themes in
the national memory. Especially noteworthy was the diversity of perspec-
tives represented; alongside the rosters of “official” festivities a plethora of
“alternative” events proliferated whose organizers promised a less conven-
tional, more critical vision of the nation.
The bicentennial reflections on—and competing arguments about—the
past were by no means a unique occurrence. After the arrest of the ex-
dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998 and again during a wave of 2011 student
protests, Chileans engaged in passionate debates about their society that
were simultaneously debates about the country’s past. The Chile Reader
takes its cue from this impulse to think about the meanings of national his-
tory and the relationship of Chile’s past and present.
For much of its history, Chile has embraced the mantle of exceptional-
ism—the notion that Chile is somehow different from its Latin American
neighbors. In recent years both inside and outside Chile, in Latin America
and beyond, this sliver of a country has been touted for its economic per-
formance, political stability, and modernity. In fact, this aura of historical
exceptionalism itself has a long history. During the colonial period, Chile’s
distinct character derived from its status as a remote backwater of the
Spanish Empire, a colony plagued by a perpetual war with an unusually
resistant indigenous population. In the early nineteenth century, observ-

1
2  Introduction
ers inside and outside the newly independent republic observed that Chile
had avoided the violence and political chaos that characterized most of the
hemisphere’s new nations, adopting a stable and centralized, if authoritar-
ian, political system.
In the mid-twentieth century Chilean exceptionalism reached its peak.
Chile enjoyed a reputation as a “model country,” a participatory democracy
that boasted peaceful electoral politics in a hemisphere plagued by military
interventions in political life. During the Cold War, Chile became one of the
world’s key ideological battlegrounds, bringing Salvador Allende to power
as the first democratically elected Marxist president in the world. This back-
drop also helps explain the global impact of the coup of 1973, when that sto-
ried democratic tradition met a brutal end at the hands of the dictatorship
of Augusto Pinochet. Then again during seventeen years of military rule,
Chile was touted as a model by both critics and defenders of the dictator-
ship: a disturbing emblem of the violent political repression that swept the
region at the height of the Cold War, Chile was also seen as a success story
of neoliberal market reform in Latin America. The transition to civilian
democracy in the 1990s—which presented the remarkable case of a brutal,
long-running dictatorship terminated through a nonviolent plebiscite—has
further strengthened notions of Chilean exceptionalism, as has the “Chilean
economic miracle,” more than a decade of high growth with low inflation
and a dramatic drop in poverty. Today, for many in Chile and beyond, the
country enjoys an enviable status as a stable, modern, capitalist democracy
without peer in the region.
The Chile Reader probes this distinctive character, seeking to explain how
and why, in the present as at key moments in the past, Chile has followed a
path that appears so different from that of its Latin American neighbors. But
it also probes exceptionalism as myth, that is, how particular ideas about
Chile’s exceptional character have been central to national identity and have
both emerged from and helped shape Chile’s historical development. One
goal of this volume is to help readers recognize these “myths,” the history
on which they are built, and how they have served nationalist, class, and
ideological agendas. Travelers and students of contemporary Chile who are
fluent in the stories Chileans tell about themselves—and that others tell
about them—will be better able to navigate the political and cultural terrain
of “the model country” in the twenty-first century.
The Chile Reader is composed of primary documents, including both writ-
ten texts and illustrations, spanning more than 500 years of Chilean his-
tory. Most of these works are by Chilean authors, and many of these are
published here in English for the first time. Brief introductions accompany
 Introduction 3
each document, providing historical context and explaining its significance.
While this significance is in some cases obvious—as in an 1812 proclamation
calling for independence from Spain or President Salvador Allende’s final
radio address to the nation—we also present materials that reflect unofficial
expressions and points of view. The Reader makes available interviews, liter-
ature, artwork, cartoons, correspondence, manifestos, ethnographies, and
photographs that reflect the perspectives of a wide variety of people, dis-
senting views, and contested memories of the past. Thus we hear from Ma-
puche Indians and Spanish colonists, peasants and aristocrats, feminists and
military strongmen, entrepreneurs and workers, priests and poets. These
documentary selections also provide points of departure for readers to ex-
amine themes of gender, class, and ethnic relations in Chile across time. In
the end, this selection is neither comprehensive nor exhaustive: rather, the
editors have chosen emblematic texts and images that speak to themes such
as democracy, social inequality, economic development, the environment,
and ethnicity that are particularly relevant in today’s Chile.
The Reader is organized around a series of recurring tensions linked to
the persistent narrative of Chilean exceptionalism. One of the most endur-
ing of these narratives has been the discussion of economic modernization
—and its recurring nemesis, socioeconomic inequality—throughout Chile’s
national period. Chileans have been debating what it means to be modern
and how to achieve economic development since the birth of the nation.
This debate runs through early nineteenth-century struggles over the leg-
acy of Spanish rule, over foreign economic influence, and over the shape
that the state should take. By the end of the nineteenth century, Chile had
embraced a surface modernization through an economy based on exports
of primary commodities to world markets (notably copper and nitrates). Yet
even as the early twentieth century brought such apparent signs of moder-
nity as the growth of cities, the founding of factories, and a broadening
political sphere, it also spurred critical voices who condemned unregulated
capitalist development’s other face, including social inequality, deepening
poverty for many Chileans, and sharpening class divisions. Conflicts over
these very different visions of how to produce economic modernization es-
calated throughout the 1960s and 1970s, as Chile passed through reformist
and revolutionary socialist attempts to generate development while also in-
creasing social equality and political participation, experiments that ended
abruptly with the U.S.-supported military intervention of 1973. A defining
event of Chile’s national history, the coup brought to power a military dic-
tatorship that pursued a neoliberal free-market model for economic growth,
which was largely maintained by the democratically elected coalition gov-
4  Introduction
ernments that ruled Chile for two decades after the end of military rule in
1990. In 2010, Chile became the first South American member of the Organi-
zation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the elite club of thirty-
four developed nations. But recent studies show it has the worst income
inequality and most socioeconomically segregated educational system of
any nation in that club. The Reader gives readers access to texts and images
that document the enduring tensions between economic modernization
and social inequality that have plagued Chilean development and marked
its political discourse.
A second and related tension evident in even a cursory reading of Chile’s
national history is the competing pressure between authoritarian and dem-
ocratic forms of governance. From the conservative constitution of the
early republic to the geographically and administratively centralized force
of twentieth-century statehood, Chilean political elites and historians alike
have lauded the relative success of their increasingly stable, democratic, and
centralized state. The powerful myth of Chilean democratic rule is seem-
ingly confirmed by its two periods of dictatorship (1927–1931 and 1973–1990),
which are viewed as “exceptional”; the myth also elides the delay of univer-
sal suffrage to all its citizens (universal male suffrage 1887, female suffrage
1949). On closer examination of the state and party formation that under-
girds Chilean democracy, moreover, historians have noted the systematic
exclusion of particular groups—such as the peasantry—even in periods of
civilian rule. Chilean politics in the twentieth century also evidenced the
concentration of power in the hands of a small political and economic elite,
even as popular political participation expanded under populist and revolu-
tionary governments. Finally, although Pinochet’s regime institutionalized
authoritarian practices, this “state of exception” was in some ways unex-
ceptional, as Chile was ruled through states of exception or siege for much
of its history. In addition, the military exercised subtle forms of influence
on the political and economic life of the nation both before and after the
dictatorship. Tellingly, the rendition of Chile’s national history produced for
the bicentennial celebrations by the new conservative government ended
before Allende’s socialist government, the military coup, and the seventeen-
year dictatorship, ignoring one of the most symbolically powerful moments
in Chilean history: the bombing of the presidential palace, La Moneda, a
symbol of Chilean democracy, by the military on September 11, 1973.
One of the least examined of the overarching tensions informing na-
tional history is the assertion that Chile—in contradistinction to some of its
closest neighbors—is composed of an ethnically homogeneous population.
In fact, this national attribute has long been invoked to explain its political,
 Introduction 5
economic, and military achievements. Relegating indigenous populations
and their histories either to the past as conquered peoples or marginaliz-
ing their significance in the present, Chilean nation-building has typically
homogenized ethnic difference and left Mapuches and other native and
African-descended groups out of the national narrative. This tendency was
most clearly expressed by some turn-of-the-twentieth-century intellectuals,
who advocated Europeanization and viewed Chile’s indigenous population
as an impediment to “progress,” while others celebrated Chile’s Indian war-
rior roots and vaunted the mestizo population as the basis of the nation’s
military triumphs and potential economic success. Even in the latter view,
however, the glories of the Mapuche were relegated to a distant past and na-
tionalist writers looked forward to the biological and cultural absorption of
Mapuches into a national, ethnically mestizo citizenry. The exclusion of the
Mapuche, who compose 10 percent of the Chilean population, from both
the country’s democracy and from the fruits of economic modernization
was again evident in the country’s bicentennial celebrations. Even as the
Chilean state “returned” the Santa Lucía hill to the Mapuche, almost every
major leader of the government, including the president himself, were en-
joying a more conventional bicentennial celebration in the city of Valparaíso
where the Congress is located, demonstrating the minimal importance they
attributed both to Mapuche history and Mapuches’ current condition as a
marginalized ethnic minority.
By contrast, Chile’s immigrant populations, though smaller than those
of some of its neighbors, have received greater recognition. A place has been
made in the national imaginary for immigrant communities (from German
farmers in the south to Palestinian manufacturers in Santiago and British
mining entrepreneurs in the north). The cultural and racial contributions of
North Americans and Europeans to national progress have been celebrated.
The Chile Reader addresses the historical roots, as well as demographic and
cultural effects, of this ethnic diversity, a part of Chile’s history that reveals
a variety of distinct cultural and regional identities and informs episodes of
territorial, economic, and religious conflict. By examining the varied his-
tory of ethnic communities in the Chilean nation and illustrating how racial
hierarchies and ethnic differences have structured Chilean notions of class
and nation, the Reader prepares readers to engage thoughtfully with the
ways Chileans have—and have not—confronted the politics of ethnic dif-
ference in the past and the present.
In apparent contrast to current scholarly trends that emphasize global
and transnational frames of analysis, The Chile Reader, like all the readers
in the Duke series, is organized around a nation. This contrast, which we
 Political Map of Contemporary Chile
PERU
ARICA
Arica
BOLIVIA BRAZIL
TARAPACÁ
Iquique

Tocopilla Calama PARAGUAY

N
ANTOFAGASTA
Antofagasta

Copiapó
ATACAMA
La Serena
Coquimbo
PACIFIC Ovalle ARGENTINA
COQUIMBO
OCEAN VALPARAÍSO URUGUAY
Viña del Mar METROPOLITAN
Quilpué
Valparaíso REGION
Santiago (Santiago)
San Bernardo
O’HIGGINS Rancagua
Linares Talca MAULE Curicó
Talcahuano
Concepción Chillán
Los Angeles
BÍOBÍO
LA ARAUCANÍA Temuco
Valdivia LOS RÍOS
Osorno LOS LAGOS
Puerto Montt

Chiloé

ANTÁRTICA
CHILENA Coihaique AT L A N T I C
AISÉN OCEAN
l

ANTARCTICA

Punta Arenas 0 200 mi

MAGALLANES
0 300 km

Political Map of Contemporary Chile.

 Introduction 7
suggest is also apparent, points to yet another tension that has marked Chile
throughout its history, that between isolation and global insertion. Since
colonial times Chile’s geographic isolation has been frequently highlighted;
the territory has often been described as a long, thin sliver enveloped be-
tween the formidable peaks of the Andes and the vast expanse of the Pacific,
cut off to the north by the hostile Atacama Desert, the world’s driest, and
to the south by the remote and forbidding lands and waters of Patagonia,
Tierra del Fuego, and Antarctica. This peculiar geography served as the ba-
sis for the region’s administrative isolation under Iberian rule and later as
the template for territorial claims made by the Chilean nation-state against
neighboring Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. But such isolation masks a his-
torical reality of vital global connections between Chile and the rest of the
world, connections that long predate late twentieth-century “globalization,”
although they have multiplied greatly in recent decades. Claims to isola-
tion (and by implication, exceptionalism) are belied by evidence of regional
trade networks, trans-Andean indigenous communities in the south, mi-
gration and territorial expansion in the north, and oceanic shipping net-
works that connected Valparaíso to ports in North and South America,
Europe, Australia, and East Asia. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,
Chile’s economy relied on substantial foreign investment and trade, link-
ages that have shaped everything from the nation’s ethnic communities to
its social and political movements. During the nineteenth century, British
merchants, who would come to compose some of Chile’s leading families,
played a central role in the economy and society, dominating trade and exer-
cising considerable influence in banking, railroads, and even nitrate produc-
tion, while during the twentieth century U.S.-owned copper mines in the
Andes and Atacama desert produced the country’s major source of foreign
revenue. The tension between national isolationism and global integration
was particularly evident during the military regime, whose violent excesses
drove a diplomatic wedge between Chile and the international community
and whose rigid censorship isolated Chile culturally, even as the regime
embraced a model of neoliberal economic integration. Since the return to
democracy in 1990, this integration with regional and global markets has
only increased. A Reader dedicated to a “national” history remains relevant
in an increasingly global and transnational world: the story of Chile’s emer-
gence as a nation illustrates how deeply the story of nations is predicated on
international flows of people, ideas, and capital. This national history also il-
luminates important comparative and regional dimensions in the country’s
national development, revealing dynamics and relations that demonstrate
8  Introduction
Chile’s similarity with, as much as exception from, broader regional and
world historical developments.
Although The Chile Reader is a substantial tome, we hope that it will serve
students and travelers new to Chile as a faithful and useful companion in
their journeys, both actual and imagined. The Reader is therefore both a
tool and a point of entry that can be approached in multiple ways: read from
cover to cover, digested in documentary selections on a particular theme,
or explored through a single chronological chapter about an era of particu-
lar interest. Whatever one’s approach, chapter and document introductions
will orient one to the key events, actors, and moments in Chilean history
and society. All notes, other than those indicated as written by a text’s author
or translator, are by the editors of this volume. We also hope this Reader will
be of interest to experienced teachers and specialists—even if they take is-
sue with certain selections and interpretations. Finally, The Reader benefits
enormously from the extensive corpus of scholarly work on which it draws.
Readers are encouraged to consult the selected readings to access the rich
and informative scholarship on Chile that will enable them to delve deeper
into its history and explore new themes and other perspectives.
By adopting a historical perspective and employing primary sources, The
Chile Reader presents Chile’s many voices and allows readers to make deci-
sions for themselves about the complex realities behind Chile’s career as a
model for Latin America and to judge for themselves the debates over its
past and present. The authors, historians from the United States with long
experience in research, scholarship, and teaching about Chile and Latin
America, have learned from and contributed to Chileans’ ongoing efforts
to understand and interpret that country’s past. They have sought through
their writing and teaching to deepen U.S. understandings of the region and
the U.S. role in its history. Those efforts—like this book—have contributed
to the critical remembering of Chile’s past, both within Chile and for U.S.
audiences accustomed to narratives of U.S. exceptionalism and Latin Ameri-
can inferiority, violence, and victimization. The history of Chile, like many
other national histories south of the Rio Grande, provides an important
vantage point from which U.S. readers may not only learn about this long,
thin country, but also think critically about their own country—and its own
claims to exceptionalism. As our Chilean colleagues have expressed so well,
“history is projection. It is the social construction of future reality.” 1

Note
1. Sergio Grez and Gabriel Salazar, Mannifiesto de historiadores (Santiago: lom , 1999), 19.