An Honourable Profession: Public Employees and Identity Construction in Chile, 1880–1920

This paper analyses how public employees at two Chilean government offices constructed their occupational identities. In contrast to the vast majority of previous work, which took the 1920s as its starting point, this study focuses on the period between 1880 and 1920. Additionally, the construction of identity is analysed in direct relation to performance in the workplace. The paper asserts that public criticism of their performance prompted public employees to develop an image of themselves based on the concept of their honourability as competent and honest workers.     

From ‘Green Laggard’ to Regional Leader: Explaining the Recent Development of Environmental Policy in Chile

Environmental policy in Chile has developed rapidly in recent years, and the country has become a regional leader in renewable energy, climate change policy, recycling, and nature conservation. This contrasts with the previous neglect of environmental issues in the country and its depiction as a ‘green laggard’ (Orihuela, 2014: 251) within Latin America. In this article the recent development of environmental policy in Chile is reviewed and five factors affecting this development are analysed: international influences, institutional legacies, a window of opportunity opened by environmental movements, policy entrepreneurship, and business power.     

Debates about Ethnicity,Class and Nation in Allende’s Chile (1970–1973)

In 1964, Salvador Allende signed the ‘Cautín Pact’ with leftist Mapuche organisations in Temuco in which they pledged to support Allende’s presidential campaign and he vowed to introduce important socio‐economic reforms to benefit Mapuche communities and to respect their culture and religion. As has been argued in previous studies, there were limitations to the implementation of these reforms in practice. This article suggests, however, that even so, an important space was opened up for – and by – Mapuche people within the government’s left‐wing nationalist project. This shift was also reflected in the works of intellectuals closely linked to the Unidad Popular.     

Globalisation, Peasant Agriculture and Reconversion

Abstract — The agrarian issue in Chile is largely defined by the problematic impact, particularly on the peasantry, of the country's continuing integration into the world market. This paper focuses on the shift from a market-led to a state-mediated process of 'reconversion' of agriculture's pattern of production and land use. Although the 'Concertación' governments have designed specific and novel policies aimed at enhancing the productive and transformative capacity of peasant farmers these have not yet been able to reduce the widening technological and economic disparity between capitalist and peasant farming. Thus the future of the peasant economy is far from being assured in an increasingly globalised and competitive environment.     

‘A Pioneer in the Struggle for Social Justice’: Manuel Larraín and Transnational Catholic Activism in Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s

This article explores the development of inter-American Catholicism during the 1950s and 1960s. It analyses the role of the Chilean Catholic bishop Manuel Larraín (1900–1966) in his efforts to disseminate his diagnosis of underdevelopment in Latin America and to establish links with the Catholic world in the United States. Based on a review of his writings, the American press and documentation from Catholic organisations, it is suggested that the Chilean bishop advocated the implementation of social reforms and American collaboration to prevent the advance of communism and strengthen Catholicism on the continent.     

El Mercurio Lies,and La Tercera Lies More. Political Bias in Newspaper Headlines in Chile, 1994–2010

In this article we examine the presence of bias in Chile's two main daily newspapers, El Mercurio and La Tercera, both of which have historically been associated with the political right. We analyse their principal headlines in the first 100 days of rule of presidents Eduardo Frei (1994–2000), Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006), Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010) and Sebastián Piñera (2010–2014). We find that La Tercera was more critical of all these presidents than El Mercurio. In La Tercera we also identify an ideological bias in favour of Piñera as compared to the centre‐left presidents, and in El Mercurio a greater bias against Bachelet than the other presidents.     

Staying Alive: 1970s Southern Cone Exiles in the UK

This article seeks to contribute to the study of the 1970s dictatorships in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay by looking at one specific aspect of those regimes: exile. It considers exile in the UK, a host country on which research is limited, and claims that the fundamental political ideas that had inspired these exiles did not vanish but were variously reshaped, depending on changing political circumstances, how the exiles interacted with local forms of solidarity, and how they lived through the personal challenges that they experienced during exile.     

Enacting motherhood: time and social change in Chile

Motherhood is changing. An increasing number of women are deciding to remain childless, having fewer children, postponing their transition to motherhood, and simultaneously pursuing careers. These changes are deeply embedded in a reconfiguration of the times of motherhood. Although the intersection of motherhood and time has been widely acknowledged by gender and feminist studies, less attention has been paid to how in the making of motherhood women reproduce, negotiate and subvert time mandates and norms. This article aims to underscore the importance of time and how it relates to the enactment of motherhood in contemporary societies by analysing the planning, timing, sequencing, and simultaneity of the transition to motherhood in Chile. Through the analysis of 15 life story interviews with urban women from Santiago de Chile, this article addresses the intersection between social change, motherhood and time by showing how in the making of the transitions to motherhood women reproduce, negotiate and subvert traditional and emergent cultural mandates and social norms on the times of motherhood.     

A cuarenta años del golpe militar en Chile. Reflexiones en torno a conmemoraciones y memorias

The commemoration of the Fortieth anniversary of the coup d'état in Chile in September 2013 was unexpectedly intense; even so that it forced a critical revision of the last four decades of Chilean history. Like never before in past commemorations, memory was, in many ways, the central theme of the cultural-political debate, which motivated society to make a conscience examination in order to face the individual, as well as the collective, responsibilities around the coup and the dictatorship that emerged from it. This text explores some of the reasons that guided said explosion of memory, marking a crucial turn in recent Chilean history.     

Linking Local Plants with Small Handicraft Enterprises among Indigenous Mapuche Communities: Towards a Combined Approach of Local Development and Enhancement of Ethnobotanical Knowledge?

There is a paucity of studies analysing the role of ethnobotanical knowledge for handicraft and local development. Thus, more work is required to expand the range of detailed case studies on which to draw. The objective of this article is to analyse an initiative promoted by a pioneering experience of its kind in the Araucaria region, Chile, which is centred on traditional knowledge of Mapuche communities. By identifying what lessons can be drawn from this experience, this study analyses the factors that can promote synergies between handicraft and conservation of local plants from which resources are derived for handicraft.