Barr-Melej P. Reforming Chile: Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class (ENG)

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62 Nationalists

who pronounced the nobility of his race with words that have been heard by

the entire world?’’ He also noted that ‘‘the work of Dr. Palacios, in whatever

areas of human and national activity, is so broad and beautiful that analysis

becomes difﬁcult when attempting to make an orderly explanation of it.’’

≤Ω

Palacios’s racial ideology was exactly what many Chileans tired of the oli-

garchic establishment and fearful of revolutionary politics wanted to hear. It

indicated that the race, if united, could overcome the problems vexing it,

including class conﬂict. Indeed, by questioning the assumption that immi-

gration was a valuable chisel in the sculpting of society, he pointed out that

racial (and thus national) improvement needed to come from within rather

than from without. He also suggested that the elite did not hold a monopoly

on who constituted the nation; aristocrats and oligarchs were simply mem-

bers of a larger community—deﬁned by genotype—which should be proud

to be mestizo and criollo. As we shall see, the idea of ‘‘raza chilena’’ became a

mainstream locution interchangeable with ‘‘nation’’ during the Parliamen-

tary Republic, and reformist intellectuals, educators, bureaucrats, and pol-

iticians of the mesocracy regularly expressed a racial identity in their politi-

cal and cultural discourses.

≥≠

Parameters of ‘‘Progressive Nationalism’’

Palacios’s considerable inﬂuence in Chile’s intellectual milieu became espe-

cially visible as the centennial of the country’s independence drew nearer.

The 1910 celebration, organized with precision by the oligarchy, was a gala of

remarkable opulence and affectation. Aristocrats put on an ornate show for

both themselves and foreign dignitaries who wished to bask in the glory of

the belle epoque. In essence, the fanfare marked the one hundredth anniver-

sary of the Chilean elite and the nation they created. But all did not share in

the euphoria. In fact, the years around 1910 witnessed a ﬂurry of criticism by

intellectuals opposed to the Parliamentary Republic’s leadership and the

elite’s power. Two intellectuals of this movement were Tancredo Pinochet

Le-Brun (1879–1957) and Alejandro Venegas (1871–1922), both public school-

teachers. Articulating a nationalist discourse with progressive overtones and

demonstrating the lasting inﬂuence of Palacios, they touched on issues such

as parliamentary politics, the oligarchy’s attitude toward national develop-

ment, and the elite’s frail sense of nationality.

In 1909, Pinochet published La conquista de Chile en el siglo XX, which pro-

duced shock waves within intellectual and political circles. In it, the author

Nationalists 63

questioned parlamentarismo’s economic and social pillars, while blaming

oligarchs for a weak state of nationalism that had turned Chile into a nation

dominated by extranjeros. The patria, he strongly suggests, had been led as-

tray by Europhiles looking to hide their Chilean origin. These aristocrats

sought to consume their way to modernity, Pinochet contends, and desired

to make Chile less Chilean, to move it away from its natural pathology as a

community with singularities worthy of preservation and perpetuation.

‘‘Our government, our educational institutions and almost all our upper

class in general seem to manifest a deep obligation to the downfall and ruin

of national interests and of all the national ideals in order to be replaced by

foreign interests and ideals,’’ he wrote. ‘‘It is not only a question of lacking

the nationalist egoism inherent to all of the well-established nations; it is a

question of our contempt for our race and that we Chileans ﬁnd ourselves

outside of our patria.’’

≥∞

Demonstrating the inﬂuence of Palacios on his

ideological formation, Pinochet later states, ‘‘There is already in the soul of

our race a contempt for what is our nation [lo nacional]. One hears all the

time that we’re off to Europe to look for a patria deserving of our spirit and

many Chilean students become dual citizens in Paris for that reason. . . . [In

France] they do not feel a nostalgia for their distant patria that has entrusted

to them the mission to contribute and make us better and more digniﬁed.’’

≥≤

The elite, he explains, were guilty of perpetuating a national amnesia toward

things Chilean: ‘‘Every day we go on losing more respect and love for what is

national, whether they are men, customs, traditions, our language, the land

or ﬂag.’’

≥≥

Pinochet, in short, argues that Chilean aristocrats had knowingly

facilitated another European ‘‘conquest’’ of Chile—an economic and cul-

tural one—during the Parliamentary Republic.

Pinochet also expressed a strong economic nationalism by calling for pro-

tectionism and the ‘‘Chileanization’’ of foreign-controlled industries. In a

language that would later be identiﬁed with the sociopolitical conﬂicts of

the 1960s and early 1970s, Pinochet argues in La conquista de Chile en el siglo XX,

‘‘It is necessary that we soon adopt a politics of Chileanization of our riches

because we do not want to convert the Chilean race into an inferior one, into

a slave race, in the service of other races that have in their possession our

ground and our riches.’’

≥∂

He goes on to blame the elite’s consumption

patterns for underdevelopment. It is here that Pinochet overtly expresses a

rather poor opinion of the aristocracy. To those of high society, Pinochet

states, all material goods must come from foreign lands from birth to death,

from the ‘‘bronze cradle [that] is sold by Buquets, Seckel, Lumsden’’ to the

tombstones fabricated by Ceppi or Botinelli ‘‘with the Latin inscription

64 Nationalists

Requestad in pace.’’ He explains, ‘‘All that they spend, from the cradle to the

grave, goes to the foreigner; all what they earn comes from the Chilean who,

tied to the land, has his bronzed arms drenched by the blazing sun.’’

≥∑

The

Chilean lower class, in essence, pays the price for aristocratic indulgence.

When assessing La conquista de Chile en el siglo XX, it would be unfair to

characterize Pinochet as a rampant nativist bent on the extirpation of all

foreign elements in Chilean society. Rather, he proposed a scheme of selec-

tive acculturation. Pinochet thought that Chile was being made stronger by

a foreign ‘‘civilizing’’ presence but that an unchecked proliferation of lo

europeo, or what is European, endangered the nation’s unique hybrid charac-

ter. In a revealing statement, Pinochet states, ‘‘We, then, need to civilize

ourselves, that is to say we need to Europeanize; we need to assimilate all the

knowledge of European civilization, all of its virtues, all of its aptitudes that

are not strange and are necessary to live. . . . We should not end up being a

colony for Europe, we should not bring European bosses who would com-

mand us for the good of their civilization. . . . We should continue being

Chileans, respecting all of the Chilean virtues and assimilating European

virtues, [while] resisting its [Europe’s] vices.’’

≥∏

In essence, Pinochet was not

anti-European. He surely savored French wine, wore ﬁne English textiles,

and enjoyed other imports of his day. What Pinochet envisioned was a na-

tion in which inherent qualities and sovereignty were not eclipsed by cosmo-

politanism and foreigners.

In the spirit of Pinochet’s La conquista de Chile en el siglo XX, Alejandro

Venegas (also known as Dr. Julio Valdés Cange), one of the most recognized

and outspoken intellectuals of the period, also expressed disgust with the

oligarchy’s regime. If one publication best relates the frustration that beset

many intellectuals of the Parliamentary Republic, it is Venegas’s Sinceridad:

Chile íntimo en 1910. The book is a compilation of letters Venegas wrote to

President Ramón Barros Luco, a traditionalist Liberal, in response to the

euphoria felt by oligarchs as the centennial anniversary of independence

neared. Each piece is a bitter indictment of parlamentarismo and expresses the

need for a nationalism that is more substantive and democratic than the

superﬁcial patriotism demonstrated by aristocrats. Such a shallow patrio-

tism was visible during the centennial celebrations, which, in Venegas’s eyes,

were absurd and ironic: Chilean independence—in the twentieth century—

was the furthest thing from the minds of the republic’s leaders. Sincerity

about Chile’s problems, the longtime educator believed, was a true sign of

nationalism and a sparse commodity in the parliamentary system. The an-

thology opens with a preface that boldly states his intentions: ‘‘I want to take

Nationalists 65

a sincere offering to the altars of the patria, which perhaps will be the only

one seen.’’

≥π

Liberal historian Domingo Amunátegui Solar noted that can-

dor was absent in Chile ‘‘since the time of Francisco Bilbao and Santiago

Arcos [both founders of Chilean Radicalism]’’ and that ‘‘no one preached

with the same frankness’’ as did Venegas.

≥∫

Venegas directs one of his ﬁrst salvos at members of the oligarchic estab-

lishment who ‘‘do not view us down below and believe that they are not seen

by us, but fortunate for the patria, there is no reciprocity in this; the people

see with admirable clarity the greed, the degenerate ambitions, all of the

crimes and all of the vices of those up above.’’

≥Ω

High society, Venegas later

states, is primarily driven in all aspects of life by the private acquisition of

wealth, not by the creation of a prosperous nation. It is for this reason, he

contends, that Chile has only two classes: the exploiters and the exploited.

Venegas, in an interesting twist, states that no discernible ‘‘middle class’’

exists in Chile—the center portion of society is composed of people ‘‘in

transit’’ from the exploited class to the exploiting one. Society, then, is

simply based on the shallow need of aristocrats and social climbers to ac-

cumulate wealth, and this mentality is anathema to national unity: ‘‘The

Chilean aristocracy is based almost exclusively on wealth; money is nobility,

and from this major drawbacks are born. All of the means of gaining wealth

are held in esteem, almost without any limitation; and society looks with

disdain at one of its members that has gone to jail for a swindle or a dishon-

est act; it’s not the fault of his morality but his clumsiness. They respect and

consider talent, scientiﬁc and literary knowledge, university degrees, only if

it is to pave the way to acquiring a fortune. But pure science, the love of art

for art’s sake, are currency that are not tender in this blessed land of Chile.’’

∂≠

The purveyors of ‘‘degenerate ambition’’ are the same oligarchs who, when

peering out over their nation, only recognize a selected few as their com-

patriots, as fellow Chileans, and forget the majority.

∂∞

What is lacking is a

democratized national consciousness, he suggests. It is not surprising, then,

that Venegas, who like Palacios supported the monttista option in 1906 but

soon was angered by the regime’s inertia,

∂≤

joined the author of Raza chilena

and Pinochet by promoting a positive vision of the ‘‘race’’ that undermined

the aristocracy’s hegemony and expressed a certain hope and conﬁdence

intrinsic to progressive nationalism. ‘‘I have faith in the lively forces of our

young race, I have faith in that there are many damaged elements that can be

regenerated,’’ Venegas writes.

∂≥

Venegas’s sense of frustration is quite reasonable. Chile’s centennial inde-

pendence in Santiago, an occasion for the celebration of all things Chilean,

66 Nationalists

was, in fact, rather cosmopolitan in nature. The elite gave foreign guests,

such as the Uruguayan intellectual José Rodó, a proponent of Latin Ameri-

canism, a great deal of attention, while the state dinner at La Moneda fea-

tured the ﬁnest in French cuisine.

∂∂

Although an array of patriotic festivities

were organized (including homage to Bernardo O’Higgins, military parades,

and inaugurations of monuments), there was something oddly foreign

about the very Chilean holiday. Reﬂecting on the observances, Venegas la-

mented, ‘‘We ﬁnished celebrating our centennial and we are left satisﬁed,

very complacent with ourselves. We have not expected for our visitors to

return to their own countries and give their opinions.’’

∂∑

He hints that such

opinions would not be overwhelmingly positive.

The nationalist criticisms articulated by Palacios, Pinochet, and Venegas—

intellectuals who preferred to refrain from joining political parties—re-

ﬂected an antioligarchic conviction that was prevalent within the mesocracy

during the Parliamentary Republic, especially among Radicals and dissident

Liberals. Encina (1874–1965), who borrowed much from Pinochet, also be-

came a leading voice of Chilean nationalism during the same period. As we

shall see, however, Encina’s nationalism and politics took an unambiguously

conservative turn as the presidential election of 1920 drew closer and Chilean

intellectuals and voters chose sides in a bifurcated political environment.

Tried-and-true traditionalists may have found some of Encina’s ideas unap-

petizing, but the species of nationalism he professed—one born amid the

political struggles of the 1910s—developed into a rhetorical and ideological

pillar of the oligarchic establishment during the eventful 1920s and 1930s. As

this transpired, the progressive nature of Pinochet’s, Venegas’s, and middle-

class reformism’s nationalist discourse became unmistakable.

The Roots of ‘‘Conservative Nationalism’’

The economic structure of the Parliamentary Republic, like the elite’s cul-

tural sensibility, was cosmopolitan, that is to say, open to relatively free

contact with the modern world and its increasingly global marketplace. The

nitrate-driven export economy propelled Chile’s ﬁrst phase of moderniza-

tion, as foreign capital, in the form of investment in the northern oﬁcinas,

railroads, and communication technology, increased during the latter years

of the nineteenth century and under parlamentarismo. Important intellec-

tuals grew concerned with such factors as the backwardness of domestic

industry and the country’s reliance on overseas capital. Encina, a conserva-

Nationalists 67

tive landowner who later became a prominent historian, was a leading critic

of the oligarchy’s acceptance of classical liberalism’s ‘‘invisible hand.’’

Perhaps the Parliamentary Republic’s most recognized critic of national

life, Encina published Nuestra inferioridad económica in 1911, a book that paints

a pessimistic portrait of a Chilean economy and society dominated by ‘‘supe-

rior’’ foreign civilizations that retarded the development of domestic indus-

tries and nationalism. In this foundational work of economic nationalism,

the native of Talca (a provincial capital of the Central Valley) asserts that

‘‘our economic development has manifested in recent years symptoms that

show a real pathological state’’ and that ‘‘foreign penetration, realized by

way of books and, to a lesser extent, travelers’’ had negatively impacted ‘‘the

spirit of nationhood.’’

∂∏

Encina, who owned a fundo (a hacienda or sizable

plot) near the town of Buin and was a member of the protectionist National

Agricultural Society (Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura, or SNA), goes on to

state that ‘‘among the determined causes [for a debilitated nationalism dur-

ing the Parliamentary Republic] should be included the intense penetration

of stronger civilizations into our national spirit’’ and that ‘‘the will of the

inferior weakens and becomes subordinate to the superior. Not only does

admiration for the science, arts, institutions and the civilization in general

develop [among the inferiors], but he [the inferior] also shares the same vital

interests that pertain to the superior.’’

∂π

Recognizing the government’s fail-

ure to create the proper environment for domestic economic development,

Encina essentially called for economic nationalism to end Chile’s subordina-

tion to the ‘‘superior.’’ Yet ‘‘superior’’ peoples were not the sole cause of the

nation’s inferiority.

A native, psychological component to Chile’s underdevelopment is clearly

identiﬁed in Nuestra inferioridad económica. Encina, especially in his later writ-

ings (such as the multivolume Historia de Chile), tended to demonstrate a

certain low opinion of lower-class Chileans and suggested that the elite, a

predominantly Basque aristocracy, was the standard-bearer of civilization

and the civilizing project. Nuestra inferioridad económica calls attention to the

rural and urban worker whose psychological traits supposedly include the

incapacity for methodical labor, a weak spirit of cooperation and association

(an ironic observation when one considers the rise of unionization during

this era), and a talent for wasting time. Encina concludes that such traits,

coupled with an ineffective education system and a government that gazes

toward foreign lands for inspiration in matters of economy, society, and

culture, have led to the ‘‘loss of the position we held in South America.’’

∂∫

therefore paradoxically suggests that Chileans should become more ‘‘Euro-

68 Nationalists

pean’’ (i.e., industrialized, civilized, modern, motivated) by being less eco-

nomically cosmopolitan.

∂Ω

Compounding Chile’s problems were ‘‘sociological and socialist doc-

trines’’ that directly endangered the ‘‘spirit of nationality,’’ Encina con-

tends.

∑≠

In an uncompromising tone, he dismisses ideas of international

solidarity proposed by such nineteenth-century thinkers as the Frenchman

G. L. Duprat, who came to view ‘‘society’’ as a transnational entity. While

doing so, Encina links the Chilean aristocracy’s cosmopolitanism to Euro-

pean notions of a global community, which, he insists, produce damaging

results. Moreover, he indicates that socialism lacks tremendous support in

Chile but remains lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce at a moment’s

notice. According to Encina, the labor unrest of the Parliamentary Republic

is a manifestation of working-class anger, which is a direct consequence of

underdevelopment. He was not exaggerating the relative absence of orga-

nized socialism at the end of the century’s ﬁrst decade, though his negation

of ideology as a guiding element of the working-class movement is un-

founded. Thus, while the Radicals were embracing Valentín Letelier’s notion

of socialism—their socialismo de Estado—during the ﬁrst decade of the cen-

tury, Encina remained a fervent opponent of collectivist notions that, in his

words, were detrimental to the ‘‘sentiment of nationality.’’

∑∞

Letelier, as we

shall see in a subsequent chapter, believed that a socialismo de Estado would, in

fact, reinforce national bonds.

In 1913, Encina moved to apply his ideas in electoral politics by forming

the UNA, which eventually changed its name to the Nationalist Party (Par-

tido Nacionalista). Along with such allies as diplomat Alberto Edwards,

Germán Riesco, and educator Luis Galdames, Encina and Guillermo Suber-

caseaux, a conservative congressional deputy and professor of economics at

the University of Chile, chartered the organization devoted to ‘‘nationaliz-

ing’’ the industrializing economy and implementing reforms to spur domes-

tic economic development. Economic nationalism, above all else, stood at

the center of the party’s conservative nationalist agenda (well before protec-

tionism became widely popular during and after the Great Depression of the

1930s). Yet Encina, like Balmaceda, did not envision the state as the owner of

industry but instead believed that ‘‘Chilean’’ industries should be owned by

Chilean entrepreneurs.

In a 1916 manifesto, the UNA, a body that attempted to incorporate as-

pects of traditionalist liberalism and conservatism under the banner of na-

tionalism, displayed nostalgia for the Portalian years, blaming the par-

liamentary system for, among other things, ‘‘ministerial crisis’’ and ‘‘the

Nationalists 69

impotence of the state to carry forward reforms for national progress.’’ Such

mismanagement, the UNA claimed, allowed for the power of foreign capital-

ists to expand with remarkable speed on Chilean soil at the expense of

national producers. Thus, the UNA called for the ‘‘broadening of executive

power [and] the restoration of the principle of authority without throwing

out individual liberties and the political rights that we have managed to

conquer with the blood of our fathers and brothers.’’ Overall, the UNA

platform consisted of twelve major planks: the separation of religion and

politics; the protection of domestic industry; the nationalization of in-

dustry; state action to improve the condition of the working class; the de-

velopment and expansion of domestic commerce; the strengthening of

commercial ties with Chile’s neighbors; monetary reform (an obsession of

Subercaseaux); tax reform; the establishment of obligatory primary educa-

tion; the expansion of vocational or ‘‘technical’’ education; a commitment

by the University of Chile to investigate objectively and report the nation’s

problems; and, last, the ampliﬁcation of executive authority within the

government.

∑≤

The language used by UNA members often took on an antiliberal inﬂec-

tion, though the party’s program was quite liberal in some ways. Suber-

caseaux, for example, stated in 1913 that liberalism and individualism fos-

tered by the Parliamentary regime were good and necessary for progress but

had gone too far: ‘‘the absolutism of liberalism’s individualist principle has

produced . . . an alarming weakening of the nationalist spirit.’’

∑≥

Liberals

were uncomfortable with such rhetoric and dismissed the suggestion that

liberalism was antinationalist. One Liberal Party (PL) organization argued

in El Mercurio that ‘‘nationalist ideas ﬁgure in the programs of today’s par-

ties.’’

∑∂

In the same edition, another Liberal argued that the UNA did not

demonstrate convincingly a commitment to secularism and that no good-

hearted liberal would join it. The UNA responded to such attacks by declar-

ing, ‘‘The country . . . looks with terror at the abyss to which it is being taken

by our politics, which is corrupted by everything; and the birth of the Na-

tionalist Union is nothing but a waking up of a healthy and patriotic opin-

ion.’’

∑∑

In 1916, after the UNA published its ﬁrst substantive platform, tradi-

tionalist Liberals struck a more conciliatory tone regarding the new party, to

which some in their cohort, including former president Riesco, gravitated. El

Mercurio observed that the UNA ‘‘will be heard and will ﬁnd strong sympa-

thies in the country.’’

∑∏

The conservative El Diario Ilustrado expressed strong support for the UNA.

One contributor found the group’s nationalism refreshing. In the short

70 Nationalists

series ‘‘Rumbos Nacionalistas,’’ Eliodoro Astorquiza wrote in June 1913 that

nationalism ‘‘tells us now to set aside the books and press of Europe, to

observe the Chilean reality and ﬁx our laws and institutions to conform to

it.’’ The nationalism conveyed by the UNA, which Astorquiza praised for its

‘‘conservative tendency,’’ was unlike that of France, where it was reduced to

the hatred of Germans or scorn toward Jews, or that of England, where it was

manifested as imperialism, he argued. Encina and other like-minded na-

tionalists, Astorquiza explained, scientiﬁcally identiﬁed the Chilean mental-

ity and the country’s ills, whereas others never adopted ‘‘a Chilean point of

view to judge national problems.’’

∑π

Praise for the organization continued in

the columns of El Diario Ilustrado in 1915, when the newspaper explained that

UNA members were ‘‘patriotically inspired’’ and that ‘‘we already have many

parties and now another one is born. Yet, even though the multiplication of

parties is a bad thing, we will celebrate if this new party becomes organized

and grows. . . . It talks to us about many problems closely tied to the nation’s

progress.’’

∑∫

Much was changing in Chile and in the warring world in 1915,

and the conservative newspaper’s warm reception of Encina’s and the UNA’s

criticism reveals that the oligarchic establishment was undergoing some-

what of a discursive overhaul. Nationalism was in style.

The UNA became a consequential, if minor, player in the political fray

largely owing to the personal success of Guillermo Subercaseaux, the mater-

nal grandson of nineteenth-century president José Joaquín Pérez. After serv-

ing as a ﬁnance minister in 1908 during the Montt administration, he once

again assumed that post during the Sanfuentes government (the highest

government position given to a member of the UNA, which never gained

representation in the Congress). In 1920, the trained engineer served on the

so-called Tribunal of Honor, a council convened to decide the ﬁnal outcome

of that year’s presidential election in light of the very slim electoral margin

between the candidates. Although the UNA (which by now called itself the

Nationalist Party, or PN) emerged as an organization critical of the Parlia-

mentary elite, it ultimately demonstrated its support for the ancien régime

by allying with Luis Barros Borgoño and the UN in the election.

∑Ω

Yet, in a

surprising turn of events, Subercaseaux gave his support to Alessandri—the

eventual president—in the Tribunal of Honor. In response, the UNA/PN

summarily canceled Subercaseaux’s membership. In 1923, a grateful Ales-

sandri handed a cabinet post (ﬁnance minister) to Subercaseaux, who also

became a member of the PL (and presumably an ally of its dissident, ales-

sandrista sect). Subercaseaux, it seems, sensed the political limitations of the

conservative-oriented UNA/PN, recognized the growing power of alessan-

Nationalists 71

drismo, and saw that nationalism was a welcomed sensibility among Chilean

liberals.

While the UNA/PN, which disappeared from the political scene in the

early 1920s, moved toward the oligarchic establishment during the San-

fuentes administration, progressive nationalists continued their attacks

on the Parliamentary Republic’s traditionalists. In 1917, Pinochet, who re-

spected Encina and drew much from the landowner’s ideas, contributed to

this ongoing chorus of discontent by publishing a sequel to his renown La

conquista de Chile en el siglo XX. Pinochet’s antioligarchism, though easily

inferred from La conquista de Chile en el siglo XX, is substantially ampliﬁed in

his Oligarquía y democracia. The book, which opens with a prologue by Dr.

Carlos Fernández Peña, president of the National Education Association

(Asociación de Educación Nacional, or AEN), expresses progressive national-

ist sentiments that later pervaded Arturo Alessandri Palma’s 1920 presiden-

tial campaign.

In a stinging indictment of aristocratic rule, rigid social divisions, and

socioeconomic injustice in Chilean society, Pinochet asserts, ‘‘The separa-

tion of castes in Chile is well deﬁned, and the government strives to main-

tain and develop it. We are accustomed to not think of the poorer classes as

Chileans.’’

∏≠

Members of the working class, he argues, are not lackadaisical

and uncooperative, as Encina portrayed them in Nuestra inferioridad econó-

mica. Without naming speciﬁc culprits, Pinochet explains that high society

believes ‘‘the factory worker is lazy. The inquilino of the hacienda is lazy. Any

foreign worker produces more. The Chilean laborer hates work.’’ Refuting

the idea that working-class Chileans are predisposed to such unproductive

tendencies, he contends that ‘‘the exploited Chilean worker, with a salary

that is not sufﬁcient to live, the farm hand paid around sixty cents per day,

gives only the minimum of his effort for the minimum salary he is paid. . . .

He loves work when he obtains value from it. . . . The Chilean race is not one

of loafers, it is not one of lazy people.’’

∏∞

Given that Pinochet was a teacher

and a member of the AEN, it is not surprising that he promoted education as

means through which disadvantaged Chileans could better their socio-

economic and cultural standings.

Pinochet found oligarchic power, with its social, economic, and political

pillars, simply abhorrent. As the title of his book demonstrates, the educator

was convinced that a struggle between the forces of oligarchism and democ-

racy was at hand, but it was not necessarily a ﬁght to the death. In a manner

that reﬂected ideas of evolution and peaceful progress espoused by many

reformist mesocrats of that era, Pinochet went about his indictment with-