Reforming Chile

Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class

Patrick Barr-Melej

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9780807875612
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean History
• Index: History

Highlighting the crucial yet largely overlooked role played by society's middle layers in the historical development of Latin America, Patrick Barr-Melej provides the first comprehensive analysis of the rise of Chile's middle-class reform movement and its profound impact on that country's cultural and political landscapes. He shows how a diverse collection of middle-class intellectuals, writers, politicians, educators, and bureaucrats forged a "progressive" nationalism and advanced an ambitious cultural-political project between the 1890s and 1940s. Together, reformers challenged the power of elite groups and sought to quell working-class revolutionary activism as they endeavored to democratize culture and fortify liberal democracy. Using sources that range from archival documents and newspapers to short stories, novels, and school textbooks, Barr-Melej examines the reform movement's cultural ideas and their political applications, especially as they were articulated in the areas of literature and public education. In the process, he provides a new framework for understanding Chile's cultural and political evolution, as well as the complicated place of the middle class in a society experiencing the swift changes inherent in capitalist modernization.

1 A Troubled Belle Epoque

Un viento de revolución soplaba en el país.

ALBERTO EDWARDS, La fronda aristocrática, 1928

The Parliamentary Republic, like the deity Janus, bared more than one face. It was an era of long-term economic growth based on incipient industrialization and the geologic exploitation of northern Chile’s arid expanses. Party politics operated relatively unfettered when compared with other Latin American nations, and aristocrats sipped imported tea in salons while conversing about issues of the day and the latest Parisian publications. The wealthy enjoyed trips to the Old World, department stores showcased the latest European fashions for men and women, and, by the 1920s, the growing middle class began expanding its barrios in Santiago and other cities. It was not uncommon for the elite to boast about their fine country. One conservative newspaper, for example, claimed in 1908 that Chileans—especially affluent and demure women—were recognized throughout the world for their “morality” and elegant wardrobe.¹ But all was not well in the republic. The century’s early years saw bloody confrontations between workers and the state, abject squalor in working-class neighborhoods and mining communities, one of the world’s highest infant mortality rates, a ravaging plague of tuberculosis, short-term economic crises, and legislative, ministerial, and administrative inaction that hampered the development of initiatives to deal with profound socioeconomic and demographic transformations. A critic in the reformist newspaper La Lei captured the darker side of the Parliamentary Republic on Independence Day in 1903: “The decline of the nation is clear in politics, in administration, in wealth, and morality in general.”² Contrasting accounts of the period are littered throughout the press and other chronicles of public life. While the oligarchy praised itself for having created a criollo belle epoque, reformers of the mesocracy pointed to the upper class’s ineptitude and a pressing social question that, if left unaddressed, eventually would lead to revolution.

This chapter examines sociopolitical tensions associated with economic modernization as well as the Chilean elite’s cultural practices between the 1890s and the 1920s to establish a context for subsequent discussions of the reformist movement’s mission to displace oligarchic power and mitigate the social question through the democratization of culture and the propagation of an alternative nationalism. It does so in a general, schematic way by discussing the republic’s political environment; the rise of the Radical Party (PR) as a potent political player; the social question’s emergence in urban society; and the elite’s cultural tastes and habits. Throughout this chapter, a narrative fabric is woven that connects many lines of analysis, varying issues, and a diverse assortment of actors to offer a tapestry of political, social, and cultural patterns.

The Portalian Project, José Manuel Balmaceda, and Civil War

After achieving independence in 1818, Chileans experienced more than a decade of the intraelite political turmoil common to nearly every nascent Latin American republic. General Bernardo O’Higgins, the illegitimate son of an Irish-born bureaucrat who governed colonial Chile in the late eighteenth century, assumed the reigns of the new government after the cessation of hostilities. At first, the bulk of the elite accepted O’Higgins’s mix of liberal notions and authoritarian practices, but his ouster came in 1823 when supporters grew weary of his quasi-dictatorial demeanor. The presidencies of O’Higgins (1817–23), the genuinely liberal Ramón Freire (1823–27), and Francisco Antonio Pinto (1827–29)—a span during which the country had four constitutions—caused a great deal of frustration among conservatives. The early republic lacked the confidence of many members of the new republican political aristocracy and informed citizens who considered the infant state dysfunctional. News of civil war in Argentina, moreover, fed fears of chaos and anarchy in Chile. Using a dispute over the vice presidential elections of 1829 to their advantage, conservative interests (known collectively as the pelucones, or “big wigs”) headed by Valparaíso businessman Diego Portales launched a revolt that ended the liberal regime in April 1830, terminating the project initiated by O’Higgins. Portales’s hand-picked nominee for president, Joaquín Prieto, took power in 1831, thus beginning the so-called Portalian Republic. The constitution of 1833, which swept away the liberal constitution of 1828, was then promulgated.

Centralized executive authority formed the basis of the new constitution. Political might flowed from Santiago, and the executive possessed emergency powers to govern the nation whenever he deemed it necessary. However, it should not be inferred that executives of the Portalian period matched the brutality of Argentine caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas or other similar characters. Simon Collier explains that “Chile managed to put a stop to disorder without accepting a personal tyranny. By creating a strong but impersonal authority, the Chileans were able to pave the way for later constitutional government and the establishment of a genuinely democratic tradition.”³ While the power brokers of the Portalian system recurrently disregarded the political principles of liberalism (jailing opponents was not extraordinary), they oversaw a steady growth in foreign trade—an ingredient of economic liberalism—from the 1820s to the 1870s. The value of external trade in 1825, for example, stood at $7.5 million. The figure increased to $74 million by 1875. Led by the bustling and economically critical port of Valparaíso, Chile’s prolonged economic expansion would not have occurred without advances in infrastructure. The government and private Chilean investors, for instance, together financed the important Santiago–Valparaíso railroad line built by North American Henry Meiggs. Foreign investment, however, remained meager before the nitrate era.

Sturdy but adaptive, Portales’s constitutional system weathered the assassination of its master builder (Portales was shot in 1837), a protracted international conflict in the 1830s, and two civil wars in the 1850s but eventually succumbed to intraelite discord over the distribution of political power. By the late 1880s, as the spoils of victory in the War of the Pacific began paying their financial dividends to the treasury, conflict mounted between the Portalian system’s defenders and a section of the political hierarchy that wanted to limit presidential authority and expand legislative influence. After the hard-fought election of Chile’s first Liberal president in 1861, Liberal and Conservative notables maintained an arrangement regarding presidential succession that propelled members of each party to the presidential palace. This Liberal-Conservative amalgam contributed to political stability for much of the second half of the nineteenth century, though presidential elections did not go without heated political firefights. Tensions were especially acute during the presidency of José Manuel Balmaceda (1886–91), a Liberal and defender of the constitution’s stress on executive prerogative.

Nitrate production in the once Peruvian and Bolivian arid north spurred economic growth and government spending during the 1880s. Export taxes on the fertilizer yielded just over half of all government revenue in 1890, as nitrate mining enterprises, like those owned by the Englishman John Thomas North, earned huge profits. Between 1886 and 1890 alone, twenty-one British-owned operations were started in the nitrate zone.⁴ Accordingly, populations swelled in northern mining hubs such as Antofagasta, which saw its population climb from 5,384 in 1875 to 21,213 in 1885.⁵ The growth of urban centers in the north and the conglomeration of thousands of workers and their families in poor living conditions led to the proliferation of political movements and ideologies that, by the first decade of the twentieth century, prompted violent crackdowns that left hundreds dead and thousands more deeply resentful of the oligarchic establishment’s heavy-handed approach to the social question.

As Chilean demographic and economic patterns changed in the 1880s, the need for investment in vital public works and other infrastructure became apparent to many. Fifteen new railroads spanning more than 1,150 kilometers were constructed in the Norte Chico, the Central Valley, and southern provinces during the Balmaceda administration. Fifty-six new primary schools were constructed between 1886 and 1888, partially helping expand the total student population nationwide from 79,000 to 140,000. In addition, a new medical school, a hospital, and an art school were among the many major public projects in the capital that were sponsored by the Balmaceda administration.⁶ Although Balmaceda’s accomplishments looked good on paper, the manner in which he exercised power progressively crippled his ability to keep his political friends, including interests (such as the PR) that had supported his candidacy in 1886.

By the second year of the Balmaceda administration, deep resentment was evident among parlamentarios who complained of the executive branch’s meddling in elections, the president’s taste for decrees rather than legislative policy making, and his rhetoric regarding the possible expansion of the state’s role in nitrate production. On the first two counts, Alberto Edwards commented that the nineteenth century had seen a gradual democratization of the political system; Balmaceda, however, swam against this tide—a “law of history”—and, ultimately, was defeated in his attempt to continue the “monarchical tradition” of Spanish colonialism and Portales.⁷ There is much to Edwards’s observation. In the wake of Chile’s midcentury civil strife, an agreement was established in 1861 that loosened the executive branch’s grip on political power without eschewing its central role in government decision making. Electoral reforms, which included the expansion of suffrage to all males over twenty-five years of age, followed during the administrations of the 1870s and early 1880s. But Edwards, anti-Balmacedist to the last, displayed a flair for exaggeration when he fastened the badge of Hispanic monarchism on Balmaceda’s presidential sash.

The issue of nitrates, a major point of contention between Balmacedists and their enemies in the Congress, became paramount by 1887. When Balmaceda opened the new legislative session on June 1 of that year, he suggested that his government would adopt a new way of dealing with foreign interests involved in nitrate production: “Ideas are being entertained [within the administration] regarding means that would permit the nationalization [not state ownership but ownership by Chilean nationals], to the extent it would be practical, of Chilean industries that today bear fruit principally in the hands of foreigners.”⁸ Balmaceda’s detractors in the Congress harshly criticized the president’s inflammatory rhetoric in such newspapers as the conservative El Independiente and El Estandarte Católico, both of Santiago. Fearing the possible loss of their investment capital and their high earnings, British entrepreneurs (such as North) rallied support among parliamentarians in defense of laissez-faire. The growing rift within Chile’s political elite over nitrate capital and revenue capped a process that saw the Liberal-Conservative amalgam dissipate, for the time being.

The political and constitutional situation worsened in 1890, when the president looked to pick a successor to win the upcoming election of 1891—a Portalian custom. Liberal and affluent landowner Enrique Salvador Sanfuentes was Balmaceda’s man. In light of the fact that Sanfuentes had enemies within his own party, not to mention among conservatives, an open struggle ensued within the political hierarchy over presidential succession and the nature of supreme authority in general. Tired of the president’s tactics, a congressional majority agreed that Balmaceda was no longer fit to serve. Balmaceda’s reference to the legislative body as a “bastard parliamentary system” only inflamed the situation.⁹ To make matters worse for Balmaceda, heightened political tensions in Santiago were matched by growing unrest in the nitrate centers in 1890 when a cyclical downturn in the mining economy prompted large demonstrations in the northern region. When tensions within the political leadership reached an apex in late 1890 and early 1891, a civil war erupted.¹⁰ It lasted nine months, costing the lives of some ten thousand Chileans and marking the end of the Portalian system. The heyday of Chilean nitrates, in short, saw the most violent outbreak of civil hostilities since the 1850s.

As the guns fell silent and Balmaceda lay dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, such notable parliamentarians as Joaquín Walker Martínez, Isidoro Errázuriz Errázuriz, and Manuel José Yrarrázaval (also spelled Irarrázaval) began formulating a new parliament-centered system of governance under the authority of a provisional junta. Months later, naval captain Jorge Montt became the first post-Portalian president and later tabbed PR figure Enrique Mac-Iver, a Balmaceda supporter-turned-enemy, to head the Ministry of the Treasury (the highest appointment for a Radical to that date). In December 1891, the president openly discussed amnesty for all civil war combatants. After two amnesty laws were issued in 1893, the toned-down Balmacedists were soon involved in the workings of government once more via the Liberal-Democratic Party (Partido Liberal Democrático, or PLD), which became a significant player in parliamentary politics. Stability, it seems, had returned. Yet, as the new parliamentary order matured, other social and political actors, including the PR, rose to challenge it.

The New Republic

The period known as the Parliamentary Republic (the name derives from the legislative branch’s primacy in governmental affairs) began with the ouster of Balmaceda—the last “Portalian” executive—and ended with the promulgation of the constitution of 1925 and political intervention by the Chilean military. The executive, who enjoyed wide powers under the Portalian system, was stripped of supreme authority by the victors in the 1891 conflict, and most of the decision-making powers of the government shifted to the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate. But without clearly defined leadership emanating from the executive branch or a cloture rule in either legislative body, parliamentary debates seemed endless and useless.¹¹ Political parties (none with an outright majority in the Chamber or Senate) were, according to critics, often consumed by self-interest and scheming for the next election.¹² In mid-1893, only two years after the civil war, Radical deputy Francisco Puelma Tupper, appearing at a party assembly in Santiago, expressed growing rancor within the PR toward parliamentary politics by stating that he dreaded more the “dictatorship of the families Yrarrázaval or Walker Martínez” than the “dictatorship” of Balmaceda.¹³

Parliamentary stalemates caused by ratification procedures for ministerial appointments and repeated standoffs over the national budget translated into continual chaos within the executive branch. Some eighty-nine different cabinets were formed and dissolved over the course of seven presidential administrations between 1891 and 1925, and, without a powerful executive to serve as a political rudder, some sixty different ministries were formed between 1891 and 1915, each with an average life of only four months. Blake-more notes that “Chile experienced in these years neither dictatorial government nor military intervention, and these were part of a valuable historical tradition which the parliamentary period ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Reforming Chile
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1 A Troubled Belle Epoque
• 2 Nationalists
• 3 Rewriting Chile
• 4 Prose, Politics, and Patria from Alessandri to the Popular Front
• 5 For Culture and Country
• 6 Teaching the “Nation”
• 7 The Three Rs
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index