From the Barricades to the Ballot Box: Redemocratization and Political Realignment in the Chilean Left

Politics & Society

Volumn 23, Issue 4, 1995, Pages 495-519

  Roberts, Kenneth M ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84972769105     PISSN: 00323292     EISSN: 15527514     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0032329295023004005     Document Type: Article

References (54)

1. Joe Foweraker, Making Democracy in Spain: Grass-roots Struggle in the South, 1955–1975 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
2. This demobilization has been noted by Guillermo O'Donnell and Philippe C. Schmitter, who assert that the “popular upsurge” of early transitional contexts is “always ephemeral”; see their influential Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 55.
3. For an instructive case study of Chile, see Philip Oxhorn, “Where Did all the Protesters Go? Popular Mobilization and the Transition to Democracy in Chile,” Latin American Perspectives 21, no. 3 (summer 1994): 49–68.
4. See, for example, Eduardo Canel, “Democratization and the Decline of Urban Social Movements in Uruguay: A Political-Institutional Account,” in The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategy, and Democracy, edited by Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez (Boulder: Westview, 1992).
5. See Karen L. Remmer, “Political Demobilization in Chile, 1973–1978,” Comparative Politics 12, no. 3 (April 1980): 282.
6. The Socialist and Communist parties had participated in the Radical Party-led Popular Front coalition, which elected three consecutive governments in the late 1930s and 1940s. The Popular Front dissolved in the early Cold War period and the Communist Party was banned for ten years, but the Socialist-Communist alliance was reconstructed behind Allende's successive presidential campaigns in the 1950s and 1960s. Unlike the Popular Front, which had centrist leadership, Allende's Popular Unity coalition was dominated by the Socialists and Communists. A good historical overview can be found in Julio Faúndez, Marxism and Democracy in Chile: From 1932 to the Fall of Allende (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).
7. The best historical overviews of the Communist Party are Augusto Varas, ed., El Partido Comunista en Chile (Santiago: CESOC-FLACSO, 1988)
8. Carmelo Furci, The Chilean Communist Party and the Road to Socialism (London: ZED, 1984).
9. See the party declaration “Ultraizquierdismo, Caballo de Troya del Imperialismo,” Santiago, September 1975.
10. See, for example, the manifesto “Llamamiento al Pueblo de Chile a Formar un Frente Antifascista para Derrotar a la Dictadura,” Santiago, May 1974.
11. This shift in emphasis can be seen in Volodia Teitelboim, “Reflexiones Sobre los 1000 Días de Gobierno de la Unidad Popular,” Revista Internacional (1977): 32–7.
12. See the “Report to the Plenary Meeting of the Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party,” August 1977.
13. For example, one authoritative Soviet source said the Chilean coup demonstrated the “tremendous importance of being prepared to promptly change forms of struggle,” as well as the need to develop the “ability to repel the counter-revolutionary violence of the bourgeoisie with revolutionary violence.” See Boris Ponomaryov, “The World Situation and the Revolutionary Process,” World Marxist Review 17, no. 6 (June 1974): 10.
14. Interview by the author with José Antonio Leal, former Director of International Relations for the Chilean Communist Party, Santiago, 1 August 1990.
15. For an example of this interpretation, see Graco Darién, “Enseñanzas Teóricas de la Revolution Nicaraguense,” Araucaria de Chile 31 (1985): 59–72. The Communist Party generally equated the Chilean situation to that of Nicaragua because of the reality of personalist dictatorship, largely ignoring the profound differences in socioeconomic contexts, party systems, political traditions, and state-military capabilities.
16. Interview by the author with Augusto Samaniego, former member of the Central Committee of the Chilean Communist Party, Santiago, 25 June 1990.
17. Interview by the author with Communist Party President Volodia Teitelboim, Santiago, 7 July 1994.
18. Interview by the author with former Central Committee member Luís Guastavino, Santiago, 14 August 1990.
19. Among the few who openly opposed the new line were a group of dissident leaders from the party youth organization who had developed sympathies for Eurocommunism while in exile. Upon their return to Chile, however, the party's clandestine apparatus marginalized them from effective participation in internal affairs, and they subsequently abandoned the party. Interview by the author with former youth leader Hugo Rivas, Santiago, 19 August 1991.
20. Since its foundation through a merger of tiny socialist groups in 1933, the Socialist Party had been a catch-all meeting place for diverse leftists, including democratic socialists, Leninists, Trotskyists, and Guevarists. Under the influence of the Cuban Revolution, the party experienced a process of radicalization in the 1960s, when it embraced Leninism and made a doctrinal commitment to revolutionary armed struggle. These positions were highly contentious inside the party, however, and they sharpened the contradictions between formal doctrine and de facto practice, which involved the PSCh in parliamentary and trade union politics. See Ignacio Walker, Socialismo y Democracia: Chile en Perspectiva Comparada (Santiago: CIEPLAN-Hachette, 1990)
21. Benny Pollack and Hernan Rosenkranz, Revolutionary Social Democracy: The Chilean Socialist Party (London: Pinter, 1986).
22. The Internal Directorate was led by three members of the Central Committee who remained in Chile and avoided detention after the coup, at a time when Secretary General Carlos Altamirano escaped into exile. The initial leaders of the Internal Directorate were detained and disappeared on 25 June 1975; a second group suffered the same fate in December 1975, whereas a third presided over the painful reconstruction of the party after January 1976.
23. “Documento del Comite Central del Partido Socialista de Chile,” Santiago, March 1974, 43, better known as the “March Document.”
24. See, for example, the initial assessment of exiled Secretary General Carlos Altamirano in Dialéctica de Una Derrota (Mexico City: Siglo XXI Editores, 1977). A symbol of the party's radical wing since the 1960s, Altamirano changed dramatically during his years of exile in eastern Europe, when he became a major proponent of ideological renovation.
25. An example is Mañuel Antonio Garretón and Tomás Moulian, La Unidad Popular y el Conflicto Político en Chile (Santiago: Ediciones Minga, 1983).
26. For a collection of pathbreaking early essays posing these theoretical critiques, see Tomas Moulian, Democracia y Socialismo en Chile (Santiago: FLACSO, 1983).
27. See Manuel Antonio Garretón, “En Que Consistió la Renovación Socialista? Síntesis y Evaluatión de Sus Contenidos,” in La Renovación Socialista: Balance y Perspectivas de un Proceso Vigente (Santiago: Ediciones Valentín Letelier, 1987), 32–33.
28. In the Communist Party, six members of the central committee were killed during or immediately after the coup. Secretary General Corvalán was arrested the month after the coup, then sent into exile in 1976 as part of a prisoner exchange involving the Soviet Union. With Corvalán's imprisonment, Subsecretary General Victor Díaz directed the party's clandestine apparatus until he and ten other members of the central committee were detained and “disappeared” in May 1976. A third directorate led by Fernando Ortiz met the same fate in December 1976.
29. Interview by the author with Political Commission member Mañuel Cantero, Santiago, 25 July 1990.
30. The 1973 figure comes from Mañuel Barrera and J. Samuel Valenzuela, “The Development of Labor Movement Opposition to the Military Regime,” in Military Rule in Chile, edited by J. Samuel Valenzuela and Arturo Valenzuela (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 234.
31. The 1983 figure is taken from the statistical annex included in Economía y Trabajo en Chile 1993–94, 4th ed. (Santiago: Programa de Economía del Trabajo, 1994), 229.
32. See Philip Oxhorn, Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sector and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1995).
33. The role of the Communist Party in the protest movement of pobladores is discussed in Cathy Lisa Schneider, Shantytown Protest in Pinochet's Chile (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995).
34. See “Llamamiento a la Unidad y al Combate,” joint declaration of leaders from the Communist Party, the Almeyda Socialists, and six other leftist parties, May 1982.
35. Robinson Perez, “Tendencias de la Lucha Política en Chile,” Cuadernos de Orientación Socialista 9 (November 1981): 25–39.
36. According to Secretary General Clodomiro Almeyda, “We never thought…that our own military force was going to play a central role. We thought the party had to play the role of an agent of mobilization of the masses, to be an organizer of the masses and the protests.… The Communist Party, at least those within the FPMR, were thinking of a military confrontation, but we never thought of that.” Personal interview with the author, Santiago, 4 July 1990.
37. An influential summary of these concerns can be found in Ricardo Núñez, “Carta Abierta a los Dirigentes y Militantes de la Izquierda Chilena,” Santiago, 17 December 1986.
38. An early, influential argument along these lines can be found in a document for internal party discussion written by José Joaquín Brunner, “Notas para la Discución,” Santiago, 14 September 1986.
39. See “Propuesta del PC Es Aporte al Acuerdo, Sin Exclusiones,”; El Siglo, 16–31 March 1987, 5.
40. César N. Caviedes, Elections in Chile: The Road Toward Redemocratization (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1991), chap. 4.
41. See Carlos Huneeus, Los Chilenos y la Política: Cambio y Continuidad en el Autoritarismo (Santiago: CERC-ICEH, 1987), especially chap. 6.
42. For a discussion of the organizational changes associated with the socialist renovation, see Mañuel Antonio Garretón, “Partido y Sociedad en un Proyecto Socialista,” Opciones 7 (September-December 1985): 182–90.
43. See John Higley and Richard Gunther (eds.), Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin America and Southern Europe (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
44. For an analysis, see Oxhorn, “Where Did All the Protesters Go?”
45. See, for example, Luís Guastavino, Caen Las Catedrales (Santiago: Hachette, 1990)
46. “La Crisis del Partido Comunista: Una Reflexión Necesaria,” Segunda Reflexión (September 1990).
47. See Foweraker, Making Democracy in Spain, especially chap. 8 and chap. 11.
48. A discussion of catch-all parties can be found in Otto Kirchheimer, “The Transformation of the Western European Party Systems,” in Political Parties and Political Development, edited by Joseph LaPalombara and Myron Weiner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
49. The origins and evolution of the PT are detailed in Margaret E. Keck, The Workers’ Party and Democratization in Brazil (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
50. Adam Przeworski, Capitalist Development and Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), chap. 1.
51. See José María Maravall, “Politics and Policy: Economic Reforms in Southern Europe,” in Luíz Carlos Bresser Pereira, José María Maravall, and Adam Przeworski, Economic Reforms in New Democracies: A Social Democratic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
52. These conflicts are analyzed in Lynne Wozniak, “Industrial Modernization and Working-Class Protest in Socialist Spain,” Working Paper #165, Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies, University of Notre Dame, October 1991.
53. The percentage of the population living below the poverty line fell from 44.6 percent in 1987 to 40.1 percent in 1990 and 32.7 percent in 1992. However, the percentage of the national income earned by the lowest 40 percent of the population only increased from 13 percent in 1990 to 13.3 percent in 1992, whereas that of the wealthiest quintile stayed flat at 55.1 percent. See Jaime Ruíz-Tagle, “Tareas Pendientes: Reducción de la Pobreza y Distribución de los Ingresos en Chile,” Mensaje 425 (December 1993): 640–3.
54. Labor unionization rates grew sharply at the beginning of the regime transition, increasing from 11.5 percent in 1989 to 15.4 percent in 1991. However, the rate fell again to 13.7 percent in 1993—slightly more than one third the pre-coup level. See Economía y Trabajo en Chile 1993–1994, 229.