The Cordones Industriales and the Chilean Revolution Part 2

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to it Happen here a show that is once
again today about the Chilean revolution. Um, here's part two
of my interview with Nicholas Scott. Yeah, I guess, I
guess the next thing you should look at is like
how how it's exactly you know, the essentially by the

(00:25):
end of ends first year, things are looking very promising.
So a few victories more than a few victories, but
a few key victories take place in his first year
in office. In one he submits his plan for the
nationalization of the nation's mineral wealth, which is voted unanimously
in Congress, which speaks to the level of broad support

(00:49):
for Chile having its own national sovereignty over its own resources. Right.
And this also then connects with sort of the theme
that we've been developing this whole time, which is the
sort of tree in regional and global similarities between Chile
and elsewhere. Right, A lot of the Third World movement,
a lot of countries in the so called Third World
at that time, are looking to nationalization as the way

(01:12):
to extricate themselves from what they viewed as being in
a relationship of dependency to circuits of global capitalism. Right,
you have this whole idea of dependency theory that comes
out of Latin America in specific UM and the solution
then is seen to be able to control one's own

(01:33):
natural resources uh and and use that wealth to develop
its own national industry. Right. This would overcome the sort
of bottlenext in the imports institution model UM, as well
as allowing for more redistributive UMM structure of wealth and
or land within the individual countries themselves, so he gets

(01:54):
his mineral wealth UM nationalization past. The Popular Unity Coalition
also wins a series of off fear or by elections
at the local level UM and wins them so successfully
that they will eschew a alliance with the Christian Democrats,
who are not part of the coalition the Popular unw coalition,

(02:16):
but they are also at this time not part of
the opposition, which is largely controlled by the Nationalist Party.
They're sort of in somewhere in the middle, but they're
also in the point in the middle in which they
control a large share of the Congress as well as
the courts themselves, so they will not so the popularly
UNI coalition is sort of buoyed by that. What it
sees is the success at the ballot box and it

(02:39):
sees its success is getting its plans passed, and so
they will issue an alliance with the Christian Democrats. And
then the sort of other main thing that takes place
in the nine is that is able to affect using
macroeconomic policies that were functionally Kansianism right UM in his
economic minister Pedro Fuskovic, UM will essentially allow for a

(03:02):
redistribution of wealth in which workers received sort of UM
what they could what we can consider bonuses, right, but
sort of automatic increases UM that were affected from the
top down in wages across UH. And the historian Peter
Wynn who published the sort of landmark study UM that

(03:22):
really dominated the field of the history and the historiography
of the Popular Unity years. He published a book called
The Leaverse of Revolution that looks at the Arbor Textile Mill,
which was the first mill that I in a nationalizes
UM in nine. And what when found during his research
is that you know, in these policies in nine allowed

(03:45):
a majority of Chileans to purchase bedsheets for the first
time in many of their lives. Bedsheets were not something
that a majority of Chileans used, despite the fact that
a majority of Chileans worked in the textile industry. Right
the textile industry was one of the most developed industries
in Chile at this moment, and so all of these
things sort of come together, and by the end of

(04:07):
the nineteen seventy one signs are looking good. However, by
the time sort of nineteen seventy two dawns and as
we're getting into the nineteen seventy two cracks are beginning
to appear. There's another series of by elections in which
the Popular Unity Coalition does not win, the Christian Democrats
win UH. The election for the Rector of the University

(04:29):
of Chile is a shock defeat for the Popular Unity
Coalition and the Christian Democrat wins that UM. As well.
As in nineteen seventy two, there is, for the first
time in the nation's history, the Central Workers Federation of
Labor the COOT has for the first time its own
um open elections for its leadership. Was the first time

(04:50):
the rank and file could elect the leadership of the
National Labor Confederation, and the Communists win the largest majority
and the Socialists come in second, but just below the Socialists,
and at the percentage level, it was functionally the same
where the Christian Democrats, so much so that basically a
court that the Popular Union Coalition sees that a quarter

(05:12):
of the working class of Chile identifies as a Christian Democrat. Meanwhile, economically,
things are beginning to stall out. Inflation is beginning to
creep back up. UM production is not necessarily at the
levels that um the government would want it to be at. Right,

(05:33):
so the idea of winning the battle of production begins
becomes the sort of watchword or rallying cry in nineteen
seventy two. Uh And if the successes of nineteen seventy
one had somewhat papered over the sectarian differences that we
were discussing earlier, between say, the Communists and socialists, by
nineteen seventy two those secretary differences are really spilling out

(05:55):
into public view. So in mid nineteen seventy two you
have the Communist Party, um member of the Communist Party
is also a member of the allen A government or
Orlando MEAs Pens and editorial in which he essentially calls
for the party for the coalition to sort of close ranks,

(06:16):
to consolidate its games, to reach out to the Christian
Democrats to make an alliance and use that sort of
consolidated alliance as the way to move forward on in
the revolutionary path. The Socialists, however, specifically the left wing
of the Socialist Party, which was sort of identified with
Carlo Carlos Ultimarano at the time, takes the opposite approach

(06:39):
and says that, know, the solution isn't to consolidate to advance. Uh,
the solution is to advance and consolidate by advancing. In
other words, we shouldn't try to make an alliance with
the Christian Democrats because in their view, the Christian Democrats
were just bourgeois right, that we should essentially align ourselves
with the popular classes, with the world laborers that are

(07:02):
meeting charge of the agrarian reform that's picking up speed
rapidly in the countryside at this time right see, land
seizures are taking place much more rapidly. Now, we should
also place our alliances with the popular working classes, which
at that moment, at the moment that this polemic is
playing out in the Press of Chile, is the very

(07:23):
same moment do you have the first cordoon industrial emerged
in city of s Maipo, uh. And it's into that
sort of fractured moment that you have workers from a
couple of plants that just happened to meet serendipitous lee
on the steps of the Labor Ministry one day in
Um about May of nineteen seventy two. They had both

(07:45):
been on strike and had both been demanding their incorporation
into what was referred to as the Social Property Area,
which this was ends vision for creating a socialist economy,
and this was a plan that he had submitted to
the Congress to rest ucture the Chilean economy into three parts.
There would have a social property area that would be
owned and operated by the state, You'd have a mixed

(08:07):
property area that would be a sort of mixture between
the state and private industry. And you'd have a private
property area which would just be business as usual, private enterprise. UM. Ultimately,
that plan had been stalled out because of opposition from
the Christian Democrats that vetoed it and submitted their own

(08:28):
alternative strategy, which then i end a vetoed the game
a constitutional crisis that got remanded to the Constitutional Tribunal
in Chile, which ultimately languished there through the end of
the Enda government through nineteen seventy three during the coup
has never really resolved. Nevertheless, workers saw the ability to

(08:49):
be in put into the social property area as the
solution to what they perceived as a revolutionary socialism right
to be in a socialized economy. And I mentioned earlier
Peter Win's work on the ardor textile mill. That's exactly
what the workers at yard or did they decided to do.
Now that is in opposition to all End and the

(09:09):
Popular Unity's plan, which was to put these sort of
grand monopolies in the social property area, not necessarily smaller
industries such as such as the yardor textile mill in particular. Um.
There were other perhaps textile companies that have inslated for incorporation.
But the problem is that the workers successfully petitioned UM

(09:31):
and pressured Ende and one there incorporation, and that unleashed
what Win would refer to as a revolution from below.
And that's what allowed the workers who sees the Labor
ministry that day in nine to demand their incorporation into
the social property area. Because there was a law on
the books in Chile that stated that if there was

(09:53):
an unresolved labor conflict of the factory that the state
could intervene and essentially make state control of that factory,
which would be the first step to them being incorporated
into the social property area. And so it's out of
that happenstance meeting on the doors to the labor ministry
when they seize it and take it over, shut it down.

(10:13):
Um that then the workers of this industrial sector on
the west of Santiago begin meeting, and they begin collaborating,
and they begin organizing themselves territorially. And I guess this
is a good moment to apologize to our listeners that
never really gave a good definition as to what a
cortone industryal was in practice. Essentially, the sort of wager

(10:34):
of this organization was that you could organize yourself territorially
rather than by trade or industry, right, which would be
the traditional way that a union would be structured. Um,
metal workers organized with metal workers, class workers organized with
the class workers, textile etcetera, etcetera. Um, and never the
twain shall meet in practice, right, It's all through bureaucratic structures,

(10:58):
labor leaders, etcetera. As I mentioned, it wasn't until nineteen
seventy two that the rank and file is ever able
to vote themselves for their own national leadership. And so
the idea of these workers is that they're going to
create their sort of new form of organization. And after
you know, deciding to do it, they seized the territory

(11:19):
of Si Smaipoo. They shut down traffic and this road
that they seize is one of the main roads into
the city of Santiago from the west, which means that
the government had to respond immediately. As one worker, uh
not worker one government official put it at the time,
the workers were in the streets. We had to respond, right,

(11:40):
you're you're a government that it claims to represent the
working class. You're a government that it claims to be
putting yourself on the road to socialism. And the workers
have now cut off transportation into the city UM and
demanding sort of you to fulfill your promise. And so
they had to respond um. Ultimately, some of the workers
that were striking at the time, specifically from the Purlack Company,

(12:01):
which was a canning company, UH, they did win the
incorporation into the Social Property Area UM. And however, other
workers UM from other factories in the area did not
win their incorporation, which then produced a march into the
city of Santiago in late June, and it also produced
a platform of struggle by what was referred to as

(12:23):
the Workers Command of crimp UH and that's really the
first document we have um that shows that there is
this new structure that is demanding that the government fulfill
its promise live up to its basic program um. Now
following that moment, however, there's sort of a period of
demobilization that takes place in sort of mid nineteen and

(12:46):
it's really not until October nineteen seventy two that you
have the flourishing of this new form of organization of
the Cortona industrial across the city of Santiago. And the
reason that it takes place in October nineteen seventy two
is to as that's the moment that the opposition launches
its first concerted effort to try and topple the illenda

(13:07):
government's referred to as the Boss's Strike. And essentially what
happens is there's a localized strike of truckers in the
far south of Chile and the sort of business the
elites of the country are successful in transforming what is
a very localized strike in the far South into a
global lockout on the part of business owners, right, So

(13:29):
they'll shutter factories, they'll shutter distribution centers of food stuffs,
they'll completely shut down transportation networks in the city of
Santiago and other cities across the country. UM. So you
can understand why they would call it the boss of strike. UM.
And this is the moment then that you have workers
in these industrial zones that we start began our conversation
with using this model that emerged in the southwest of

(13:52):
Santiago as this new model to seize their factories that
they've been locked out of, to reorganize the product oction
of their factories, and to ensure distribution you know, takes
place of basic goods and services for local residents in
their community. It's really what allows the end a government

(14:13):
to whether the storm of the October strike and the
October crisis as it will also be known UM. Ultimately
you know that will reach a truth in November that
includes a cabinet shake up, also includes integrating the military
and cabinet UM as well as Ada was able to
deploy the military to sort of keep the peace in

(14:34):
some senses. So there is a historiographical debate to be
had between you know, how much of it was the
workers and the cordonis saving the country and saving the government,
and how much of it was the military remaining loyal
to the government that allows them to sort of reach
was referred to as the truth of them. So I
guess I want to back up for a second and
talk about what is the intern organization of the criticize

(14:58):
actually look like? Like are we talking about souls? Is
this mass assemblies? Um? How how how does this actually
work on a sort of like day to day basis
the great question, and this is actually the question that
has sort of dominated a lot of the scholarship on
the Cordonists. Um, Frank go to shoot? Who is sort
of the leading scholar of the Cordonists, essentially used Marx's

(15:20):
distinction of a class in itself and a class for
itself to sort of unraveled this question. So for for
going to shoot, the Cordona in itself is the sort
of territory, right that we began our conversation with. And
then the Cordona for itself is essentially the workers Council
that is the governing body of the Cordona itself, which
was composed of already unionized workers, right, So it already

(15:45):
is a tier of working class above say just your
general worker that worked on the factory floor. So it's
already a unionized worker. And some of that occupies a
power or a position of authority within the union, i e.
Already a for on the directorate or president, vice president,
treasurer or secretary, so that main councils are elected within

(16:07):
the sort of general assembly of the court on itself.
Below you have then different commissions, right. You have a
sort of propaganda press commission, you have a cultural commission,
you have a sports commission. You have the security Commission,
right because at this time you had far right shock
troops that would uh spark street battles and that would
harass workers that would also have pack factories that had

(16:29):
been seized, so that they had um Security Commission, Frontline
Defense Commission. You also had distribution commissions, uh, and then
you had other commissions that would essentially seek to coordinate
all of this um that exists. So you had a
sort of coordinating board just below the sort of general council.
And then that's what was the mediation point between that

(16:50):
sort of governing Council and your different commissions. How how
are the people who are like who are on these
commissions selected? Are they like, are they elected? Or is
they just like whoever wants to be on this thing?
So it's a mix of both, right, so you you're
sort of main council itself is elected via general Assembly. Um.
In terms of the commissions, the smaller commissions, we sadly

(17:12):
don't have great documentary evidence that you know, lays out
the process for that. So our best guests or our
best understanding would be a mix of sort of volunteerism
as well as some sort of um, within the commission itself,
some form of election excuse me, that would take place
to sort of a point ahead of that commission that

(17:32):
would then coordinate with the general Council itself. Um. You know,
really what this you know what this sort of cuts
the heart of UM is that the history of the
Cordonates is a very evervescent history. Um. It's really easy
to see the Cordons in action, right when they're doing
things like seizing control of their territory and erecting barricades.

(17:53):
But on that day to day level, it's a relatively
opaque sort of structure. It's really hard for us as
historians to get a view into that. You know. One
reason the good Shoot is able to you know, unpack
as much as he has and uncover as much as
he has is because he conducted a series of oral
history interviews UM with many of the surviving workers UM.

(18:17):
And that's really one of the foundational source spaces we have.
He published this in a book in which he published
the full transcript of his interviews, so we don't it's
not just like an interpretive essay, it's the full transcript UM.
And so that's that in combination with some of these
Cordini has had local presses that we have existing UM

(18:38):
documentary evidence from that sort of would give you know,
your standard diagram of council commission, commission commission lines connecting
them and things like that. UM. Well, one of the
other few documents that we have surviving documents we have
is what's referred to as the Manifesto of Cordone Faquinimakina.
And this is the document that my research really is

(19:00):
at the heart of my research UM because while the
Unamacana is recognized as sort of one of the most
dynamic and strongest of the Cordonas behind the original and
studios my pou, we really don't have a lot, We
don't know a lot about what was going on in there.
In fact, my research was born out of a conversation
the first time I was in Chile conducting research for

(19:22):
my master's at toughs Um with go to Shoot himself,
who told me that, like, we really don't know a
lot about what was going on day to day in
Focuna Mcana, would be really great if we could somehow
find a way to do that. Uh, And you know,
that kind of stuck with me. That really wasn't my
concern at the time. My concerned at the time was
trying to understand how the cordonas had shifted from their

(19:43):
emergence to the coup itself, because what I was seeing
in a lot of the literature was that people were
using sources from late nineteen seventy three, once the cordinates
are established and really showing up and press right, They're
showing up in the archive a lot more by nineteen
seventy three, and are used in documents from nineteen seventy
three to describe they're sort of founding in nineteen seventy

(20:04):
two and the historian and me was kind of like, hmm,
you know, yeah, that's things change, right, and things change
both over time and space. And so my original concern was,
you know, what made the sort of changes from the
western side of the Sydney to the eastern side of
the city. But then when I got to u v
A and began my doctoral work, I really wanted to

(20:26):
zero in on Facunamachina. And really I was, you know
that that conversation with Frank was really ringing in my head.
And so you know, I kinda at u v A
had to do another master's essay as part of the
program there, despite having already done a master's thesis when
I was. It tough exactly exactly the thesis curse. But

(20:49):
you know what it did, what it allowed me to
do was two uh, you know, kind of play with
the sources in ways that I may not have had
the ability to do otherwise, right uh. And so I
really sat with this manifesto for a long period time
and really did a close reading of this document, which
you know, a lot of times this document has shown

(21:10):
up in previous studies. It's shown up as a this
is a document that emerges during the October crisis. It's
the document we know we have from this one cordone
here it is, right. But what I uncovered was that
the document itself, the document that is headed as the Manifesto,
is actually a reworked version of a document that had
circulated previously during the Occober Crisis, that was produced by

(21:33):
the revolutionary left movement, The Mirror, the far Left Party
and the aren't they ASTs They are? They very much are.
This is the very far left UM party that is
calling for a more insurrectionary model UM. It's also calling
for worker peasant alliance, right, So it is this very

(21:56):
much more traditional UM social revolutionary in that sense, compared
to the sort of Allendeist vision of socialism that is
being handed down from above. Right. And so during the
October crisis, there's this document that circulates by the opposition
that's running the crisis that is essentially the petition the

(22:20):
plago in Spanish would be the word, but essentially the
Petition of of Chile UM and the Mirror takes issue
with the fact that the bosses issued a petition in
the name of Chile, and so they issue a counter
document that is the People's Petition, the pliego del pueblo.

(22:42):
And it's a very long document, it's a very um
It reads as a essentially a manifesto for a new
revolution to take place, right like, how to transform the
present crisis into a revolutionary breakthrough. And as you're saying,
a war veriest model in the tail end of the
October crisis, as Cordonacamacana is consolidating itself right, itself forms

(23:08):
after a factory seizure at elec metal Um, which then
unites these sort of two nodes that existed in the
territory at the north end and the south end into
one sort of communication and solidarity network that will then
become known as the Cordon that has its first general
assembly in which it takes this document from the mirror

(23:28):
and begins to rework it. And that's then what becomes
the Manifesto of Cordinalcunamacana. And so in my research and
in my master's essay at the University of Virginia, what
I did was, you know, I really compared these two
documents and looked for where the differences, you know, what's
showing up here that's not showing up in the nearest document.

(23:50):
In other words, what glimpses can we get of the
local culture of Acunamacina itself. Um. And one of the
key differences that I find end is there's an entire
section that begins the manifesto that was the crime of
the bosses, the crimes of the bosses, and that exists
in the Mayor's document as well. But the crimes that

(24:12):
are articulated are there slight differences, but the in the
manifesto itself, the final crime that's articulated is that the
manifesto reads that it's a crime that the basic few
elite in Chile continue to use the country's wealth to
support their privileges without giving a dignified life to a

(24:35):
majority of Chileans. And this doesn't appear anywhere in the
Mirror's document. And it was something about this phrase of
a dignified life that really just like cued my analytical
census that sort of raised the flags for me. And
this is what then led me down the road that
I'm on now, which is the road of looking at

(24:55):
things like the church and the Pope lad Or movement,
because the idea of dignity and the idea of a
dignified life is a key discoorse that's circulating in the
church's pastoralism right coming out. As we were speaking about earlier,
the discourse of dignity is really present in the church's
outreach efforts, but it's also present in this Pope lad

(25:18):
Door movement for housing. The idea of a dignified house
as the end goal of their struggle is something that is,
you know, rings out in the documents that we have
access to and in the oral histories that we have,
and so that really, you know, made me think, like,
what is that then about the kunamakaina that is allowing

(25:39):
just to appear here? And you know what can we
then learn using this as our you know, starting point
and going out where? And so that's when I decided
to sort of take the story back all the way
in nineteen fifties seven and look at things like the church,
look at things like the Pope Late Door movement, but
then also extend the story passed the nineteen seventy three period,

(26:03):
which is when the coup takes place, which is you know,
in the historiography seen as this hard line in this
this break in in Sholyan history that there's a before
September eleventh nine seventy three, and there's an after September eleventh,
nineteen seventy three, and very few studies crossed that line,
especially studies with regards to the labor movement specifically the

(26:33):
dignity thing is is really be interesting to me too,
because so I didn't interview like, oh God, like a
month ago, sort of have lost track of time, but
I didn't interview with within with an Amazon organizer. And
one of the things that that was one of the
things that was like one of the things that he
brought up is that one of the things that like

(26:55):
we are fighting for his dignity, and yeah, that that
that's something specifically I've been thinking about more because like
I think we talked about this a bit in the
interview itself, but like, like dignity as a demand is
a thing that you that you see all of the
time in like in in in you know, if if

(27:15):
if if you're talking to a bunch of people, like
on the streets in the middle of a movement, you
will hear people talk about dignity. I mean, I think,
if if I'm remembering this correctly, this is this is
one of the this is one of the big things.
This is one of the big demands, and like the
modern Chilean protest movements like that was one of their
huge sort of focus. But it's but it's also something
like I have never like any I don't think I've

(27:37):
ever seen like a communist party say the word dignity
like like it I think it happens, I don't know
every once in a while, like maybe you see it
if you get a document that's that's not produced by
the sort of audiological engines, but it is produced by
like just a bunch of workers in a factory. But yeah, yeah,

(27:58):
that that that's fascinating to me because yeah, because that
I don't know, it's it's it seems like the structive
for dignity both yeah, has this thing as like a
very specific discourse from the church, but it's also something
that shows up in a lot of movements where you're

(28:18):
not dealing with the kind of like ideological rigidity that
you get from you know, like the mirror not the
mirror is a like that that you know, like that
that's that's a very like like this is a party.
It has a line, it has a very sort of
like zation. Yeah, yeah, and it's fascinating to me that that, Yeah,
that that you can see these differences where even when

(28:41):
they have influence, the thing that gets acted as dignity. Yeah,
I mean there is you know, I think that perhaps
what has UM pushed studies of leftism, socialism, and labor
movement away from the idea of dignity as an analytic
object is there is tension here. Right, Dignity is a

(29:04):
highly individualized concept, but the solution for a dignified life
for all Chileans, as per this document were collective structural changes,
and so there's this tension between a collective solution and
an individual game, right, And so I think that that

(29:25):
both um explains why this hasn't necessarily been a focus
of a lot of studies UM before. But it also,
you know, it gets to the historiography itself, which was
a large product of the history here. And so things
like the Christian Democrats and things like the Church were
seen as the enemy of the popular unity coalition, give

(29:45):
them the way that the you know, the coup takes
place and things like that, and so anything that maybe
had a whiff of Christian democracy or Christianity or things
like that was seen as as antithetical or incompatible the
study of the left. It also gets to the tension

(30:05):
that you were doing a really great job of sort
of unpacking, which is this tension between the national leadership
of these parties and the national union leadership and then
everyday workers on the ground right. And you know, that's
I think really where the strength. And this was really
the argument that I advanced in my master's thesis the
UVA is that one of the central contradictions of the

(30:27):
all end A period is they were competing ideas of socialism.
So from the top down and from my end day's view,
socialism was the traditional Soviet union esque approach and so
far as it was national economic planning, party hierarchies, things
of that nature, right discipline at the base and upward

(30:49):
and upward planning from the top down. But what I
think the manifesto and the history of the quin Mkana
helps us understand is that for everyday individuals that their
idea of socialism didn't have anything to do with state
economic planning. It didn't have anything to do with expertise
and technocrats and things of that nature. It had to
do with the idea that like I need sheets from

(31:13):
my bed, I need food for my child. I need
the ability to you know, have enough sleep to be
able to get up and go to the factory the
next day. Right, I need to be able to live
a dignified life, to be able to then you know,
carry out my work, my obligation as a worker in
the historical movement of socialism, and so I think that

(31:35):
this is really what um this tension is then what
allows for the sort of destabilization to take place um
as the opposition consolidates and ultimately destabilizes the identic government
in nine. Yeah, I think this is a tension that like,
I mean, I think there's there's different versions of it

(31:56):
too that you see sort of across the street. Like
one of the way that it manifests is this battle
between people who think socialism is about like is national
like state national incorporation that people who think socialism is
about like direct control at the point of production by
the people who are doing the work. But but I
think also, yeah, the question of dignity is it's like

(32:19):
it's this, It's like dignity is this expression that's like
maximally bad for UM. Like if you're like you know,
if you're like a you're you're you're a material you're like,
you know, you're a historical materialist theoretician, right, It's it's
it's the worst possible slogan because on the one hand,
it's like it's not materialist, right, like what is dignity?
There's no dignity has no class relation, like what is that?

(32:39):
You know, and it's it's it's simultaneously like it's not
with jerious enough. It's too reformist because like, oh, well,
you can give people dignity by just buying them off
for like increasing wages, or you can have a class compromise,
and that can give you dignity. But then simultaneously it's
the thing that's too radical because the problem with dignity
also is it like yeah, I don't know, like there's
there's no guarantee that you're going to get dignity if
like your factories controlled by the state, like exactly, and yeah,

(33:02):
and this is why like you see almost identically just
by a different name. Yeah, and and yeah, it's like
it's why you see like the uprisings that happen um,
I mean really starting Hungary, but yeah, this is why,
like that they're uprising in Czechoslovakia looks almost identical to
like the uprising that happens in France. It's because they're
both like there there's you know, you're you're like you

(33:26):
the factory worker in a factory in Czechoslovakia and you
the factory worker in the factory in France are dealing
with essentially the same thing. And so it's it's this
kind of like I don't know, it's it seems like
it's it's it's this perfect sort of like cipher for
all of these kind of political differences that that that
that manifests this this this really old tension in what

(33:49):
the worker's movement is going to be that's been being
fought out since eighteen thirties. And yeah, but I think
that like if we as scholars and if we as
intellectuals are really serious about when we say that we're
going to study things from below, then I think that
we have to take the workers at their word, right,

(34:12):
And so like, for example, I presented a version of
my of my master's thesis at a I studied, was
it a program in Bologna for a summer um And
so I was presenting this and to the you know,
and the Italian leftists in the room, um really came
you know, came down on this question of it sounds
like what they're describing isn't socialism because they're much more

(34:34):
interested in distribution and not interested in the point of production,
which isn't socialist. And you know, and all I could say,
and all I could respond to this is like, that's
what my subjects are using in the archive. And for me,
it's far more productive to look for those slippages and
look for those spaces and the archive when they are

(34:55):
saying something that may be different than what we understand
it to be, and that's a lot more productive avenue
for analysis. And that, to me is really how we
fulfill this obligation to study things from below, because we
have to actually take them at their word and understand
and try to understand what that actually meant for them, right,

(35:15):
and what that meant on an everyday basis. And I
think that there's a there's a sort of like practical
like organizational like like you know, if if if you
today want to do something like this, like I think,
I think there's there's an imperative there too, which is
that like you actually do have to take seriously what

(35:37):
people think and how that's different from the way that
like you the organizer are thinking about this, because those
are things that don't overlap, and a lot of times,
like you know, and it's it is not enough to
just be like, well, these people want dignity. What they
actually want is socialism or like what they actually want
to the abolition of the classes. It's like you have
to like believe them when they say that they want something,

(36:02):
and you know, and and when you don't do that,
and when you get these sort of disjuncts between like
when you get these distucts between the sort of the
sort of party bureaucracy on the top and what like
people in the streets who are season factories want like, yeah,
I think like things start to sort of came apart exactly.
And I know I think that, um that if we don't,

(36:24):
you know, depart from the perspective of staying true to
what the archive gives us, then there's only a risk
that we're you know, every historian, every scholar is going
to inject their own interpretation onto a document, right, But
the best way to sort of safeguard that is to,
you know, stay true to what it's saying and that
you know, the same goes for an activist, an organizer,

(36:47):
as for an intellectual right, Like, if you don't depart
from the perspective of what your constituents or what your
group is saying, you know, what they're really saying, the
words that they're using to describe their demanding, then you're
only ever going to just be trying to sort of
fit the you know, the square peg in the round hole. Yeah,

(37:09):
and and that can go really really really spectacularly broad. Yeah, exactly,
And you know, and that is you know what then
leads to you know, in the case of the cordonis
that will then lead to tensions that will really break
out into the open. In nineteen seventy three, in early
nineteen seventy three, when the um Orlando MEAs the same

(37:31):
person that starts that polemic in nineteen seventy two. By
this point it becomes Finance Minister Um in the end
administration and presents a plan to sort of devolve some
of the factories that have been seized during the October
crisis right back to their original owners. Uh. And then
this creates a huge problem, huge tension between the base

(37:53):
between workers and these factories that had sort of sacrificed
everything and put their lives, literally put their lives on
the line to seize the factories in the first place. Um,
and so then you have another sort of moment of
mobilization of the cordonies across the city of Santiago in
early V three. That's very much an opposition to the government. Now,

(38:14):
can I can I ask a brief sort of framing
question about this, which is that like, okay, so we
talked about this in in in the interview we did
with some with modern Challean activists, but like, what what
is the population of Santiago relative to like the population
of the entirety of Chile at this point? Like how
is it? Yeah, that is a great question that I

(38:35):
don't actually have statistics like that. I can rattle no
worries out in my head. Um, but you know, I
mean there's there is Uh. It is a great you know,
Santiago is the most populous region for sure, all right,
and so rather the most populous city and then sort
of metropolitan region itself is very densely popular. And is

(38:56):
it is it still like like a pretty significant like
population of the entire country or is it less it
is a significant population of the whole country? For sure, um,
but there is tension in this and then this is
kind of the reason why I always try to steer
somewhat away from these types of questions, because I'm sure
this came up in your conversation with Chilean activists, is

(39:17):
that you know, there is the phrase that Santiago is
not Chile, and so there is a there is a
tendency to rely on statistics of Santiago's population, of the
metropolitan region's population, to say like, oh, this is where
the majority of people live, so if it happened in Santiago,
then that must be true for all of Chile. Um.

(39:37):
And that just isn't the case, right. Chile is a
huge country. It may be very narrow, but it is
very long north to south. Uh and you know, it
is very distinct across the many regions of Chile, and
so very much on the side of those that argue
that Santiago is not Chile. Unfortunately, in the case the cordonists,

(39:58):
the majority of them do exist in Thiago. That said,
in concepion Um, you know another Chile. Further to the
south of Santiago, there is one of the other cities
that we know for sure actually did have Cordonias that
were moderately successful as well. In fact, there is and
now I'm completely forgetting her name, um, but there is

(40:20):
a historian that has published a book about the Cordonis
in Concepcion. This is one of the few studies that
sort of tries to look at cordona Is beyond Santiago itself,
you know, and a very well taken point, um on
my part here that like, you know, a lot of
our discussion today has been about Santiago, and so it's
very much limited to Yeah, this is a this is

(40:42):
a problem that you get a lot with like large
urban movements, Like I mean, so I run into Tianamen
all the time, where it's like, you know, okay, so Tianeman,
there's there's there's the big thing in Tianament. But this
happens like cities all over China, and there's just nothing.
There's like almost nothing that has ever sort of like
been written or has gotten out of what happened everywhere

(41:04):
else in the country. And so you get this, you
get this very myopic view of like what was happening
that I think loses a lot of the sort of
like I mean, a lot of the diversity and a
lot of the sort of you get a reality that
is shaped by the specific experience of one place, which

(41:25):
is not the safic experience of every other place, right exactly.
So like in the case of like Santiago and Cordona's right,
like the labor working class that's making up this is
factory labor, as we were saying, at the sort of
level of consumer products. Right. But say if you've had
a cordon and say about Craizo, uh, the sort of

(41:46):
coastal city of ports city, um, where you have a
much different labor force, right with doc workers things like that,
you're going to have a much different formation that's going
to take place. And so as much as like my
initial sort of attempt to understand the differences within the
geography of Santiago, um, you know, I think was important,

(42:08):
I always have to remind myself that, like, it's still
just this one city which is very different from the
experience of a vast majority of chual Ms. I mean,
it's definitely a moment in which you know, there is
still a very large rural population for sure, And I
guess like that that brings me to like, yeah, in

(42:31):
in terms of sort of okay, I guess there's two
directions here. One, I guess is about what is the like,
what is the rural population doing like while this is
going on. And the second one, well, I guess I
guess we could start there. Yeah, I mean, as we

(42:52):
sort of mentioned earlier, there isn't a growing reform that
is happening, right, And you are having a labor movement
that is picking up rapid steam in the countryside, right,
And you're having land seizures that is that are taking
place and picking up steam um. And so that's a
lot of what's going on in the countryside is UH
both UH an increase in land seizures UH and increasingly

(43:14):
militant land seizures. Is that, but you're also having UM
an increased unionization. Right. So the labor code in Chile
had a different set of regulations for rural labor than
it did for urban or factory labor, right. And so
one of the things that on the ill end a
period that we see is a sort of flourishing of

(43:36):
organized labor in the countryside. So you are having a
lot of party militants going out into the countryside as
well as UH labor leaders locally in the countryside. That
are organizing rural laborers. UM, so you are having mass
um union drives unfortunately. And I will be the first
admit that I am largely you know, and this is
a kind a consequence of like being an urban historian.

(43:59):
I am large really ignorance of the inner dynamics what
is happening on in the countryside. Um. Scholars like Florencia
Malon or Hydi Tinsman have both produced outstanding works on
this question, UM in terms of the relationship between land
seizures and gender and indigenosity. UM that is taking place

(44:22):
on the countryside. So I guess, yeah, so you know, okay,
so we yeah, we can't get to too much detail
on this, but I would would it be broadly like
accurate to say that it's not true that you're dealing
with a situation where there's a huge sort of divide
in the level of mobilization organization between the city and
rural regions like that. This this isn't like a sort

(44:42):
of like like you're not dealing with like like a
vonde peasant situation where you have this enormous sort of
reactionary base in the country. Right, Yeah, you know, you
definitely don't. Yeah, it's definitely not that UM. And you
know there are attempts over the course of the Idenda years.
You know, the Mirror is one of the sort of
fronts that this is playing out in. But he in
the cordonates themselves, right. So, like one of the initial

(45:03):
UM rallies and sort of mobilizations of the Studios Maipu
cordone is for UM the jailing and imprisonment of a
series of rural militants and rural labors that in the
area of Malipia. UM. There are some activists and workers

(45:23):
that are jailed UH and those the cordon actually marches
into the city of Santiago, into the downtown part of
Santiago to demand their release. UM. And this is like
a disparate geography here that we're talking about, and so
UM it is you know, this is an instance in
which he's trying to see these sort of links be
both be made and strengthened between UH factory labor in

(45:49):
cities and world labor in the countryside. And I guess
it brings me to the second point, which is like, Okay,
so there is a right in Chile and it is
not happy UM very much. Yeah, Yeah, And I guess
one of the things I guess I wanted to talk
about was so my my impression about a lot of

(46:10):
what is happening in three has to do with the
fact that Chile's like trucker's movement is really right wing,
and that that has well is a part of that.
Part of that is the CIA. Part of that is
just this like a like part of it is the
CIA's ability to keep striking truckers afloat and they're not

(46:33):
working on. Part of it also is a consequence from
this moment in October, right, in which the national business
elite and national economic elite in Chile transform that truckers
strike into the boss's strike. Right, So you do have
this alliance being formed and strengthened at that moment as well,

(46:53):
which will, as you're referring to invente, there is another
truck or strike that takes place that has even ben
more crippling in some senses than the initial one. Yeah.
And then also also, as I will mention literally every time,
even though I I don't know if I can say
that on air, but the part that I can say
on air is um, yeah, to their eternal, ignominious non glory.

(47:18):
The a f l c I O is also heavily
involved in that, which is fun and good and uh
yeah A f l c I Oh, please stop overthrowing governments,
helping deals. It's a very it's a very cio history
in relationship is actually very fascinating because during the dictatorship

(47:39):
they will actually be on the other side and actually
helping labor get back on its feet um and as
a key point of resistance, so they're UM in the
late nineties of these organizing a boycott of Chilant products,
which actually is a key point of pressure on the
dictatorship to begin allowing for new um for a sort
of new labor movement to begin emerging. Yeah, which that

(48:03):
at some point, like I don't I don't think it
can happen here, but I just did the podcast name
but yeah, I don't don't think. I don't think it
can be this time. But like, yeahs at some point
I do want to take a deeper dive into sort
of like what the a f l c I O
was doing through this period, because they are like they're
all over like yeah, there's a fascinating history. Yeah, Like

(48:23):
I mean like you know, like my, my, my, my
last a fl C, what are you doing things for
this episode? Is so that the fl C has the
policy where like they don't like they don't associate with
like like state union federations, and they make one exception
for it, and it's state Union Federation of the military
died katorship in South Korea, which is like it like
a good job, guys, like doing great here, this is

(48:48):
going great. Yeah, but yeah, I guess can we can
we get into sort of the the crisis is that
like are the crisis is that like precipitate the end
of and day? Totally? Yeah. So by this point, you know,
as I mentioned by nine, the opposition is largely um disarticulated.

(49:11):
You have the National Party, you have the sort of
far right organization UM. That would be translated as fatherland
and Freedom Pot three. I delivered that, or I translated
as father land and freedom because I think it has
a better, it conjures it better. Others will translated as
fatherland and liberty, um. But I'm a sucker for a

(49:31):
literative forms, and so that's the translation that I use.
I also think it conjures more of the sort of
fascistic elements which this very much was a fascist organization. UM. Yes, no,
I mean a lot of you know lost Chicago boys
will have ties to pot threeliver to that. Um. And

(49:53):
so there have you know, rightist shock troops that are
fomenting conflicts in the streets, that are also setting off
bombs that are crippling the power grid, especially much later
in nineteen seventy three. Um. But following that moment in
nineteen seventy one, when the Populunity government has choose the

(50:14):
alliance with the Christian Democrats, the Christian that pushes the
Christian Democrats to begin forming an alliance with the National Party.
And what happens then is that the left wing of
the Christian Democrats splits from that party to form its
own party of Left Christians. But then the consequence of
that is that that means that the more rightest elements

(50:35):
of the Christian Democrat party can consolidate their power and
stream their ties with the National power. So that by
you know, late nineteen seventy two, and very much by
the March nineteen seventy three elections, which were sort of
the key electoral moment that everyone was looking to. UM.
At this moment, um, you have a you have a

(50:55):
solid alliance of the right UM. Now the end a
coalition will win the march elections UM. And that is
really the moment that scholars agree that the switches sort
of flipped for the opposition and they realize that they
can no longer defeat the popular UNI coalition at the

(51:18):
ballot box and that they now need to use extra
constitutional means right and so they begin developing sort of
deploying the full force of those means UM. And here
is a point where the role of gender is very important,
because a lot of what the right will do will
be to mobilize the power of the power and symbol

(51:39):
of women protesting UM as a way to de legitimate
the end government and to de legitimate key figures UH
in the end administration. So earlier there is a key
protest that happens, which is the March of angry pots UM.
And this is a you know, a very traditional form
of protests in Latin America which the castle Laza right,

(52:02):
the sort of banging of pots and pans and protest UM.
But the right organizes it to be largely carried out
by women as a way to protest what is seen
as a m you know, a lack of supply of
basic food necessities for UM families in Chile, which you know,
we now know is a result of black market speculation

(52:25):
in hoarding on a lot of the part of the
sort of distribution centers controlled by the right. Nevertheless, they
essentially use this symbol of women heads of households marching
in the streets in opposition to END. So that's one
thing that happens later in nineteen three, they will sort
of reuse this tactic and deploy women to protest in

(52:48):
front of UM the houses of key military figures UM
that are in the cabinet of end At this point,
this will enforce the resignation of some of these figures
from the Allende cabinet. And then one of the key
figures that has then replaced in the cabinet is none
other than a coost okin at Chat. It will be

(53:10):
welcomed into the cabinet, and specifically will be welcomed into
the cabinet because he's seen as a strict constitutionalist in
the Chilean military UH and is not seen as any
sort of threat to what is going on. Meanwhile, in
late June of nineteen seventy three, there is an attempted
coup that takes place in whence you have a rogue

(53:31):
regiment of the Chilean Army UM deploying tanks in front
of Lamlada of the presidential Palace in Santiago. UH, that
is large that is put down. It's also one of
the last moments that the cord donates themselves will mobilize
and that all the Coredonats in Santiago will seize their territories,

(53:51):
erect barricade, it's cut off transportation to prevent any sort
of large scale coup from taking place. Essentially to try
and isolate that regiment just within front of La Meta
to allow for the wings of the armed forces that
are still loyal to the president at this point to
put that down. So that has put down. And then

(54:13):
in between late in June nine seventy three and September
seventy three is what scholars, specifically Peter Winn for two,
is a creeping coup begins to take place. And the
creeping coup has you know, a multi fastest strategy. As
I mentioned earlier, there is the bombing of electrical grids,
so you have you know, increasing blackouts, instability, things of

(54:35):
that nature, right, fearmongering in very real sense palpable senses. UM.
You also have a shake up amongst different members of
different branches of the armed forces, which those that are
loyal to the constitution, that are the constitutionalists, are pushed out,
and as a result, then you have the coup plotters

(54:57):
that are ready to essentially overthrow the government. UM achieved
positions of authority in which that they can give orders,
and this is a key factor. This may seem like
a small factor, but the Chilean military had historically been
trained in the Prussian model of military training, rights was
a very strict regimented hierarchical structure in which historically had

(55:21):
been very loyal within that hierarchy. So it was important
that the coup plotters would achieve positions of higher authority
to be able to actually effectuate a coup, especially after
the attempted coup fails in June. So on the morning
of September eleven nine, UM, you have hawker hunter jets

(55:42):
that again bombing the presidential palace UH, and you have
a deployment of UM military forces throughout the city to
put down any sort of armed force or any sort
of resistance. Right leading up to this moment you had
deployments of both the Chilean militarized Police, the Kada Bows,

(56:03):
which are actually functionally militaries. They're part of the armed
forces in Chile. It's not just militarized in the sense
of tactics and weaponry to raid factories in the search
of arms, right, things of that nature. So you already
had UM this sort of daily occurrence taking place. In
a consequence of that, right, is that then these forces
know the weak spots in these factories, they know the

(56:26):
capabilities of these factories and things like that. Uh. Cordleon
Vacuna Mcano will actually be the place that will witness
some of the fiercest fighting of what would be referred
to as the Battle of Santiago. You know, often when
we talk about the Chilean coup, we talked about strictly
a September eleventh, ninety three. UM. The Battle of Santiago
actually rages for a few days after September eleventh. It's

(56:49):
not just a quick um you know, in and out
mission there is there is there are forms of resistance
that take place. UM and the Kunamacina is one of
the places that this takes place. There are two Chilean
historians Mario Garcet's and Sebastian Laba that published a masterful,
wonderful book UM that is all about as UM called

(57:11):
the kun La Laga and Laga was a historic poplacion
that was just to the west of the Pocuna Macina
factory and the workers of factories in Pecuna Macana, specifically
the Sumar textile mill that we mentioned earlier. UM will
essentially lead UM a march gathering other workers, saving those
that they can, and essentially holding their ground for as

(57:33):
long as they can in the Popla la lagoa. Uh.
In fact, I have some testimonies of workers and documents
that I've uncovered. UM. One worker in particular described the
battle that raged there is as being like hell on earth. UM.
That they had helicopters firing from the sky, they had
tanks surrounding them. UM. So they were under fire from

(57:56):
both the land and the air, and ultimately then the
government is overthrown, right UM I end. It's unclear to
this day if I end a committed suicide, if he
was killed, we just we don't know. We do know
that he refused to leave the presidential palace. We do
know that he delivers one final address, very famous address

(58:19):
UM over the radio of Chile. UM. And then after
that week we know that that his corpse UM appears
in a lot of the materials that the military will
put out. Military takes control of communication networks. Many of
the communication networks and press networks were already controlled by
the right UM, so it's very easy for them to

(58:41):
gain access to these methods UM to sort of spread
their message UM. And this is where things, you know,
historically speaking, get very interesting in the difference between our
sort of UM conventional wisdom and what actually took place
or takes place. Right. The original structure of the military

(59:02):
junta that takes command was designed as a tripartite structure
that would rotate amongst different branches of the armed forces
to prevent precisely what happens with the figure of Gusto
Pinochet taking power himself to prevent such a thing from happening. Right. Uh. Ultimately, though,
over the course of the nine seventies, you have Pinot

(59:25):
Chick consolidating power. Uh. In fact, if you've ever seen
the image of him that's sitting cross armed with the
sunglasses on, it's like one of the most recognizable photos
of him from this time. That photo is actually the
actual original version of the photo. You have the full
junta behind him taking a picture. Yeah. Yeah, And it's

(59:46):
not so much even he did it, but it's that
that photo just over time became so associated with him
because of such a jarring image of him sitting there.
UM that it it's sort of functionally recreated the sort
of per ching that Heat takes that he'll carry out essentially.
You know. Also, what they will do immediately is that

(01:00:06):
they will close the Congress, They will dissolve the COOT,
the National Labor Federation that we discussed earlier, uh, and
they will essentially dissolve the um conciliation councils that oversawing
sort of collective bargaining. They will freeze any sort of
petitions pleegos from factory labors, and they will begin to

(01:00:29):
purge labor leaders across both the national spectrum of labor
leadership as well as you know, through the course of
nine and well into ninety five, will be begin purging
factory level leaderships. UM. They will institutionalized torture, UM, they
will institutionalized forced disappearance, and all of these things UM

(01:00:55):
constitute how they're essentially able to hold onto power. In
those early days, there's a state of see has declared,
which means that all civil liberties um have essentially been suspended.
And all of this is in the name of national security,
and that's really the key thing UM. And so everything
from the labor movement is shut down, um, and then

(01:01:17):
it will begin to re emerge. And that's really like
where I think my research and my dissertation. Another key
intervention that that I'm trying to make is that you know,
three wasn't the end of the story, Like, yes, it
was the end of the Corsons induced to gods with
a capital C and a capital I. But the idea
of the territorial labor organization will re emerge in the

(01:01:38):
late nineteen seventies and in the nineteen eighties when protests
against the dictatorship began to flourish. And this is something
that I mean, I guess this is start projecting into
the future. But it's something that I was I don't

(01:01:58):
know the taking button I don't quite know how to
think about, which is the connection between like can we
draw a line between the Cardonis the sort of the
pro democracy movement that eventually, like through Pinochet's incompetence and
their skill like brings down the dictatorship and the stain

(01:02:20):
the the really vibrant like me really for the last
like twenty years, like incredibly vibrant sort of like student protests,
but I mean just just sort of like like leftist
street movements in Chile, because I mean, like I don't know,
like I guess the impression that I got when I
was talking to like the Chilean organizers was that like

(01:02:47):
organized labor wasn't playing much of a role in this,
and so yeah, I guess I was just wondering, like
how how how do we think about sort of this trajectory.
And I know this is like fifty years, but no,
I mean, I mean my dissertation is trying to to
the sort of branch this full trajectory and is a beautiful,
wonderful question. Um, And you're right, you know, the the

(01:03:09):
activists that you spoke to. Um, that is a very
common um, commonly held view. And it's a commonly held
view for a couple of reasons. One is that one
of the what is seen is one of the main
protagonists in the pro democracy movements that take place in
the nineteen eighties are precisely those figures we talked about

(01:03:29):
at the very beginning of our conversation. The Popolodorus. The
Poplodorus are seen as the protagonists that protests the dictatorship,
largely because they are right. This is I'm not trying
to say that they were not by any means, They
clearly were. Um. We have great studies of this. Kathy
Schneider's book Shantytown Protests and Pa Chile is just a

(01:03:50):
wonderful study of this. Um, they were protagonists, and the
geographic space, the site of the Pope lacon Is is
where a lot of the protests are going down. Um.
But labor did play a part, and labor did play
a key part. And this is part of my argument

(01:04:11):
is that not only does labor play a part, labor
plays a key part in initiating the protests that begin
in the early nineteen eighties. Now, by the late nineteen eighties,
the there people are certainly right that labor is no
longer anything close to the power it was pre nineteen
seventy three or even earlier in that decade by any means.

(01:04:34):
But in the late nineteen seventies and the early nineteen eighties,
specifically in the space of a kunamakina, and workers that
are coming out of that tradition play incredibly instrumental and
key roles. So, for example, there's a gentleman Manuel boost Dots.
It's a member of the Christian Democratic Party. He's a
worker at the Sumar Textile mill in the cotton plants. Specifically,

(01:04:58):
he will UM at the time become president of Sumars
Cotton's Union. He will then go on to along with
other labor leaders, found the National Union Coordinator where the
c N s you will become president of that, and
he will become one of the key figures along with
other labor leaders that will initiate and lead to the

(01:05:22):
pro democracy protests that begin in the early nineteen eighties,
so much so that he is UM at one point relegated,
which this is a way one of the tactics the
military used UM would be to relegate uh perceived agitators
or provocateurs two different parts of the country right out

(01:05:43):
of Stay Santiago. In the case of Bustos So at
one point he is relegated to the far north of
the country. He's also exiled at a certain point. He's
also jailed at a certain point. Um. So even if
we you know, even if we don't look at the
archival record in terms of what Bustos saying, what Bustos
is doing, if we just look at what the military

(01:06:03):
is doing to Bustos and to his colleagues in the CNS,
then we that should tell us that they perceived them
as a legitimate threat, and that they perceive labor as
a legitimate threat. And this really, you know, explains why
you have a shift in um, the dictatorship's policies with

(01:06:24):
regard to labor between the early nineteen seventies the late
nineteen seventies and eighties. So here I'm drawing a lot
on the work of Rodriro Araya, who is a scholar
here in Chile who has done a great deal in
showing that early in the dictatorship you had a series
of labor leaders who were opposed to Allende, who were

(01:06:45):
still labor right, still pro labor, but anti Laftist and
anti Allende, who take control of some of the key
labor federations, namely the Copper Federation, and begin to sort
of insignate themselves as the key figures of labor. Um
and there's an attempt then by the dictatorship to essentially

(01:07:08):
make a corporatist model of labor and integrate them and
control them from the top down. UM. Ultimately that backfires
because in doing so, they the military refuses to recognize
some of these individuals and instill their own um sort
of puppets, if you will, their own labor leaders, which
then causes resentment, which then pushes that group to an

(01:07:31):
oppositional stance UM, which then allows for more connective tissue,
more connections to be made between that group, which would
be loosely referred to as the Group of ten UH
and individuals such as Bustos and others that are forming
this National Union Coordinator. Those two groups will ultimately, in
the early nineteen eighties form a new group, which is

(01:07:54):
the National Workers Command UM. And this actually group is
formed at a point in which Bustos himself has been
exiled out of the country. UM. So you know, there's
a debate to be had whether or not the formation
of the command was an attempt to consolidate control away
from the Union Coordinator and Bustos, which was much more

(01:08:15):
open to working with members of the left and the communists.
At the time compared to the say of the Group
of ten who you know, we're much more opposed to
working with leftists. Um. So that's really you know, one
of the big differences between labor and a pre nineteen
seventy three period and a post nineteen seventy three period
is there's still a struggle for labor rights, protection of

(01:08:40):
workers in unionism, right to strike, right to collectively bargain.
But what's missing in that post nineteen seventy three period,
or rather what has been murdered, disappeared, tortured executed by
the dictatorship, is a theory of power for unions right
the sort of leftist influence. You know, you could call

(01:09:00):
it Marxism, Leninism, you can call it sort of a
social democracy, but some theory of power that animated unionism
and animated the labor movement in the pre nineteen seventy
three period, that is is essentially been purged over that
course of the nineteen seventies into the nineteen eighties. Um.

(01:09:21):
But in addition to these sort of national level developments,
which you know, for me boostos is the straight line
that connects the territory of Kuna mccana to this national
level within Vucuna Mcina itself. You have two groups that
begin to emerge in the late nineteen seventies nineteen eighties.
The first would be the solidarity group UH, and then

(01:09:42):
the second would be Union Unity. And both of these
new organizations emerging of Kunamericana and emerged specifically as territorial
organizations of labor. So they are in opposition too what
Boostos and others are trying to do, which is reform
the sort of national labor hierarchy, hierarchy bureaucratic or the

(01:10:06):
bureaucratic excuse me approach to labor. They're specifically a post
to that and are arguing that labor should be organized
territorially because it allows a greater flexibility for the workers
to respond to the new realities of a dictatorship and
specifically to the new realities of the new constitution that

(01:10:27):
the dictatorship puts in place in as well as the
new labor plan that they put in place through a
series of laws in the late nineteen seventies in early
nineteen eighties that severely curtail labor's ability to both organize. So,
for example, the closed shop is essentially done away with
UH they also UM will limit the ability to strike.

(01:10:52):
You can you can strike. However, after thirty days, UM
the management and begin hiring scab labors essentially to break
the strike. And if a strike lasted past sixty days,
that the management was allowed to fire all of striking
workers because after sixty days they were considered to have

(01:11:13):
walked off the job and we're no longer considered employees. Also,
one of the key you know innovations that the sort
of technocratic advisors to the dictatorship as UM implements in
the new Labor Code is the individual labor contract right,
which means that workers now are contracted individually, which also

(01:11:36):
then prevents any sort of national level union from bargaining
on behalf of a sector wide or an industry wide contract.
That is no longer allowed. And so it's for all
of those reasons that you have these two groups begin
to emerge and saying no, we need to focus our
efforts on the base, we need to focus them territorially.

(01:11:56):
And for me, that is a straight line between the
legacy of the cordonists and what we're seeing in the
and then the other sort of discursive straight line, like
if that's the material connection. The discursive straight line is
that these organizations are using the discourse of dignity and
dignified life in the extant source material that we have.

(01:12:16):
That makes sense, and I think that also, But that also,
I guess partly explains why, like why organized labor like
ceases after that point, because I guess it is just
sort of like the it's the sort of the annilable
shifts in what's happening in terms of the actual law.
And then actually, I don't know, I guess I just

(01:12:38):
should ask about this, like is there also a sort
of like that, do you also get a sort of
like like another sort of geographic shift in in how
factories are distributed? Like through the use totally you have
essentially a d industrialization, a policy of the industrialization, and

(01:12:58):
you have a total reversion to what we can think
of as a nineteenth century economic export economy UM for Chile. Right,
so you have much more focus and investment into commodity
exports be it UM, the fishing sector, the agricultural sector,
things like that. Right, So, like for example, if you
go into your grocery store, uh and look at some

(01:13:21):
of the fruits specifically, say grapes, more often than not,
they're going to come from Chile, especially in off seasons. Right.
The benefit of Chile being in the southern hemisphere, for say,
consumers in the United States is that then you have
access to things that you wouldn't have access to otherwise. UH.
And so the dictatorship will prioritize this UM over the

(01:13:42):
idea of industry. So you have a total reversion to
UM importing goods and services that would have been produced
nationally or locally UM. And so what this means then
for a lot of the labor that happens in these zones,
right as you have mass layoffs, that's another innovation UM

(01:14:04):
that the dictatorship and the Chicago Boys will introduce as
the ability for management to fire UM at a mass
level and have that be legal UM. And so you
have high you have skyrocketing unemployment amongst factory label labor,
such that like yes, by the nineteen eighties have a

(01:14:26):
refounding of a national labor confederation, also the acronym being
the COOT. The difference, however, is that it's under such
a much different labor framework. It's also in a situation
in which industrial labor is just not the main sector
of labor uh. And in its founding statutes, if the
coup pre nineteen seventy three was identified as the only

(01:14:49):
national labor confederation, the statutes poste and in the late
eighties when it's reformed, allows for there to be other
national confederations. Um. And Actually, this is one of the
great debates that takes place between those organizations at the
base Infocuamkina and these national level organizations is whether or

(01:15:10):
not there should be one labor confederation, or whether or
not there should be many different labor confederations organized all
on ideological lines, which is essentially a code word for
anti communism. Right. The the idea of the ideological labor
central was a way to exclude the left from gaining
control in organized labor like it had in the pre

(01:15:32):
nineties period. And so by the dawn of nineteen nineties,
when democracy, or rather when democratic elections returned to Chile,
you have labor in a much different position. Uh. And
that's why you have this very weakening um series or
period under the Concerts government, the ruling coalition, the governing

(01:15:55):
coalition that takes power in Patricia Apo and winning the
president and see um, it's just much different and it's
it's strait jacket illegally because the ninety eight constitution is
still in place, right, it's still in place to this day. Uh.
And that's actually been it's the period of concert test
That is the period where you really have the most

(01:16:17):
weakening of um labor. It's also the period we have
the most privatizations that are taking place of former state
blewned companies. It's we could say that it's the period
that is the most neoliberal period uh in Chile relative
to the civilian the period of civilian military dictatorship. Yeah.

(01:16:41):
And I guess that's sort of like that that that's
the thing that it just gets you to, well, the
last sort of twenty years of like of student led
protests and of sort of ecological protests. I mean, I
guess you like thempuche have always been like fighting, but
the way that oh from from Spanish clone the only

(01:17:03):
indigenous group that was never conquered by the Spanish. Yeah,
but I guess, but I guess like like the axis
on which the left is sort of like built on
like through that period just shifts, and that's I guess
where you get the modern Like that the sort of
modern like configuration of the left that's been in the
streets and last sort of like you do. And this

(01:17:26):
is a This is the reason why I sort of
draw a hard line ending my study in for two reasons.
One is that it's the is. The first is the
election of Pinetta to the presidency, Sebastian Pinietta as his
first term in and so that's the first moment that
someone from the concert cast n is not elected as

(01:17:49):
the president they had governed sent from so um. That's
really the what Peter Win and other scholars have referred
to as the pinotch Chick period, which extends all the
way from nineteen seventy three to that moment, is inclusive
of the Concerts government because of fair um adherence to

(01:18:10):
the neoliberal economic model. Um. That's when that period ends.
In Also a year later in eleven is when the
student protests, and that's when you have a new cycle
in Chilean social movements led by the students. Right prior,
you know, post the return of democracy again, the return

(01:18:31):
of democratic elections in nineteen ninety. I think this is
a very important distinction between a return to democracy and
a return of democratic elections, which seems to be a
confusion between not a confusion but a flippage between the
form of democracy, a free and fair elections, and the
content of democracy. UM. And so a lot of people

(01:18:52):
referred to nineteen nine the return to democracy. But I
think that the past thirty years of governments in Chile
shows us, especially the past two years of uprising and
resistance against that model, show us that democracy has yet
to fully return. Um. But in that period, you know,
in the nine nineties on street protests were not seeing

(01:19:17):
as an affected effective measure um as a as as
the way to protest. Right. They obviously were effective in
the period of dictatorship um. But after that there's no
there there's a nut not necessarily discrediting of sorts, right,
but there's not the emphasis on them that there was

(01:19:38):
during the dictatorship, and certainly not that there was in
the pre nineteen seven three period. It's not until the
students take to the streets inven that you have this
revival of the street protest as a as a viable
form um of resistance and protests in Chile. And you know,
and it's no surprise then that in October twenty nineteen,

(01:19:59):
when the s E though the uprising takes place that
it's students where once again the vanguard of this UM
and you know when they're jumping turnstiles in the subways too,
in protest of proposed transportation hike. UM I was. I
was actually luckily enough to be living here in early

(01:20:20):
pandemic UM and a lot of people that I spoke
to UM at protests and things like that, were very
quick to tell me that it was not thirty pos
it's thirty years that they were protesting. Yeah, and you know,
and I guess that also, like the left wing forces
that took over the state, like it's it's it's the

(01:20:42):
reason why a lot of that wounds up sort of
being about the Constitution because yeah, you know, you still
have this, you still have Pinochet's like exactly, and constition
remains in fact. Yeah, yeah, and how can I I
used to know him of this and of the other episodes.
I think, I think like the guy who wrote it

(01:21:02):
like it was like an enormous hyak fanboy and called
it like the Constitution of liberty or something. Yeah, it was.
It was a hand It was a hand selected team
of very few individuals that was handpicked by the dictatorship
to write the constitution. Um. You know, there was the
there was a veneer of democratic support insofar as the

(01:21:24):
dictatorship in nineteen eighty holds a referendum on whether or
not to vote up, down, yes or no for the
new Constitution. Right um, the yes vote one. However, there
is many sources at the time as well as scholars
that have claimed that that victory was not a valid

(01:21:47):
victory um by any means. UM. But you know, right now,
in the post twenty nineteen period, um a sort of
effect the uprising that took places, there is a constitutional
convention that's taking place as we speak here in Santiago, UM.

(01:22:07):
That's headquartered in the former National Congress. During the dictatorship,
the h Congress has moved to the ports city of
the Appraiso away from Santiago, but in the old National
Congress building is where the New Constitution convention has taken place.
And actually two nights ago there was a marathon voting
session in which a series of social rights were adopted

(01:22:30):
into the cost into the text of the new Constitution.
And these social rights included, among other things, the right
to unionization, the right to strike, the right to collectively bargain,
the right for workers via unions, to have a say
in the direction and business of an enterprise, of a
business itself, to participate in management essentially. But it also

(01:22:54):
included things such as a right to healthcare publicly funded
healthcare system, the right to social security publicly funded and
it included a right to housing, which specifically included the
phrase of a right to a dignified, adequate home, as
well as a right to the city that included the
phrase that the right to the city is for the

(01:23:17):
development of a dignified life. Uh. And so really that
is kind of the epilogue, um to to the story
that we've been talking about this whole time. Now, you know,
we don't know if the constitution itself will be adopted.
Um there's going to be an exit vote on September
four of this year in which Chileans, under it's a
mandatory vote, will vote up or down on whether or

(01:23:39):
not to adopt a new constitution. So we can't say
for certain if these rights will actually become rights of
citizenship in Chile. But as of now, those rights are
included in the text that will be voted on in September,
and I think I think that's a pretty good place
to end it, unless you have anything else that you
want to know. I think that that's a really you know,

(01:24:00):
there's a really nice symmetry there. Um. And you know,
I stayed up far too late the other night watching
that vote. I think it went to like two in
the morning. Um, but it was you know, it was
an exciting thing to see. Um. And you know, it
is an exciting moment to be here in Chile, especially
after having to be away for two years during during
the pandemic. Yeah. Um, yeah, well, thank thank you so

(01:24:23):
much for thank you so much for talking with us. Oh,
thank you, thank you so much for having me. It's
been a it's been a real pleasure, you know. And
I hope that um my ramblings are are sensible to
your listeners, um, and um, that they're able to take
something from it, because I do think there's an importance
in this history especially you know, this year is the

(01:24:44):
fifty year anniversary of the Cordonous emergence, and so it's
a great time to to sort of spread knowledge of
this this moment in tile in history. Yeah. And I
guess do you have anything like that you want to plug? Uh? No,
I I don't have anything specifically. Um, yeah, no, still
cranking away in the archives and working on my dissertation.

(01:25:06):
So sadly I don't have a book to plug or
anything like that. But you know, give me a couple
of years, uh and I a book I have you
back on when it comes out. Yeah. Yeah, Well, in
the meantime, you two can form a large section of
fidustial democracy in your workplace that involves taking it over.

(01:25:30):
Oh yeah, go go do that. This this has been
It could happen here. You can find us on Twitter
and as to grab it happen here pod. Actually, by
the time this is dropping, we will be a few
days away from Merket Killdoy's new series Cool People Who
Did Cool Stuff, which is rad. You're gonna hear a
lot of cool people doing cool things. That is dropping
on May Day, on May one, and after that we

(01:25:53):
have we we we have another show dropping, which is
which is which is a ghost Church about ghost church
eat things. It's it's gonna be good. It's it's Jamie Loftus.
It's jam loft Is doing J. B. Loftus things about
a bunch of a bunch of the sort of like
American ghost churches and people who talk to ghosts. So yeah,
go listen to that. Have fun by everyone. It Could

(01:26:17):
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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Cordones Industriales and the Chilean Revolution Part 2