Abstract
Historically, the Chilean economic elites have been characterized by their involvement in the electoral arena through political parties (Garretón in Conservative Parties, the Right, and Democracy in Latin America. The John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2000; Gil in The Political System of Chile. Houghton Mifflin, New York, p. 56, 1966; Scully in Rethinking the Center. Party Politics in Nineteenth & Twentieth Century Chile. Standford University Press, Standford, p. 210, 1992). Chile’s richest sectors have consistently pursued political action and the defense of their interests via conservative parties, defined as organizations oriented toward electoral competition, whose core constituency is formed by individuals who belong to the highest economic strata of society (Gibson in Class and Conservative Parties: Argentina in Comparative Perspective. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, p. 7, 1996).
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Notes
- 1.
The encomienda, like the mita, constituted one of the oldest and most widespread forms by which indigenous labor was exploited by Latin America’s colonizers. Basically, the relevant military or administrative authorities handed over a group of people and families—which could total thousands of individuals—to a private individual. This person acquired the right to receive the tribute that the indigenous population was held to owe to the Crown, by virtue of their status as vassals (Halperín Donghi 1988, 19). The encomienda lasted for a maximum of two generations, and those to whom the right had been granted had obligations. These supposedly included to care for and evangelize the indigenous people assigned to them, as well as to populate and defend Crown territory. In practice the encomienda was a system of brutal exploitation that reduced millions of indigenous people to the most abject living and working conditions, contributing to the decimation of indigenous populations in various regions of Latin America (Sagredo Baeza 2014, 59–60).
- 2.
Chacras were productive units that came about as a result of subdivision, donation by municipal authorities, and the dividing up of large estates via inheritance. They played an important part in supplying food to population centers, and some also produced for export. As haciendas became the central focus of rural life, the economic importance of chacras decreased (Collier and Sater 1996, 11).
- 3.
The first published analyses of both inquilinaje and arriendo appear in the geographical and political studies carried out in the first half of the C19th by Claudio Gay (1854).
- 4.
Diego Portales (1793–1837) was a prominent member of the economic elite and a highly influential politician. He is considered the architect of the political regime established in 1830. His ideas of order and subordination of civil society to state authority were embodied in the 1833 constitution.
- 5.
In correspondence with Joaquín Tocornal, dated July 16, 1832.
- 6.
The exception that confirms the rule appears to have been a small contingent of guerrilla fighters led by Manuel Rodríguez and others during resistance to the reconquista. In fact, some authors observe that the apparently most spontaneous examples of political activation of popular sector groups appear to have happened on the side loyal to Spain (León 2002).
- 7.
A contemporaneous account recalls the episode in ironic tones: the constitution of a new political authority led to Santiago filling up with officers attired in the most elegant uniforms, “which merited that someone posted a pamphlet on the doors of the palace, with a caricature showing an infinitely large officer corps, all in luxury, and behind them one single sorry-looking soldier” (Pinto and Valdivia 2009, 30).
- 8.
Name given to a period of liberal ascendancy during the early C19th.
- 9.
For being based on the ideas of Diego Portales.
- 10.
Bengoa (1988) claims that the hacienda established two basic models of social and political subordination, differentiated by the type of contractual relationship. “Ascetic” subordination—the type that he attributes to inquilinos—is notable for its hard work, discipline, submission, and respect for the patriarchal figure of the estate owner. It is based on the promise of mid- and long-term reward. What Bengoa calls “sensual” subordination, on the other hand, was the lot of afuerinos, especially a subtype referred to as “rotos” (literally, “broken ones”): undisciplined, refractory individuals, exhibiting scant respect for authority or private property, but unable to effectively stand up to the power of the landowner due to being given over to pleasure, gambling, and alcohol.
- 11.
Some historians date a process of renovation of the families who made up the landowning elite, to the second half of the C19th. This phenomenon is attributed to the effects of financial ruin suffered by some owners in the aftermath of agrarian crises between 1858 and 1873, and to laws that eliminated the institution of entailment (inheritance by primogeniture), forcing some large latifundios to be broken up (Stabili 2003, 222).
- 12.
The economic value of latifundios derived in large part from their use as a means to access credit (Bauer 1994, 135–137).
- 13.
This would provide yet another motive for families who had made their money in mining, banking, or commerce to seek to establish societies and kinship links with the landowning elite as a way of gaining entry into the political elite (Bengoa 1988).
- 14.
There is significant debate among scholars as to what interests these parties represented. For some, they were the political expression of cleavages between different sectors of the economic elite (Zeitlin 1984). Others however see them as the political expression of conflict between economic elites who had lost control of the state apparatus, and a professional political class that fought to retain its privileges and relative autonomy (Valenzuela and Valenzuela 1983; Valenzuela 1985).
- 15.
The exercise of the presidency was limited to a single five-year term; Senate seats were to be filled by popular vote, and the veto power of the executive branch was reduced (Valenzuela and Valenzuela 1983, 12).
- 16.
The causes and consequences of this decision have been exhaustively debated by Chilean social science. For a good summary of the debate, see Pinto Santa Cruz (Pinto Santa Cruz 1996, 78–84).
- 17.
Two main factors prevented the decline from being even steeper: increases in land productivity, achieved firstly by German immigrants who settled in the south, and secondly by foreign investors who reinvested part of the profits from mining in the acquisition of latifundios which they subsequently managed with the incorporation of new technology (Meller 1998, 56; Pinto Santa Cruz 1996, 74).
- 18.
The Democratic Party, founded in 1857, is considered the first Chilean workers’ party (Valenzuela 1998).
- 19.
Arturo Alessandri Palma (1868–1950) is considered the most important Chilean politician of the first half of the C20th. He was President of the Republic between 1920–1925 and 1932–1938.
- 20.
According to Alberto Edwards: “No-one was more truly oligarchic [than Alessandri] when cocooned in the atmosphere of the salones of Lazcano and of Fernández Concha; but no-one was more ‘of the people’ (pueblo), either, than he when […] he found himself surrounded by men of the Left, in the heart of a provincial middle class that was impatient to be free of the yoke, rapturously applauded by the workers of nitrate country” (“Nadie fue más sinceramente oligarca [que Alessandri] mientras lo envolvió la atmósfera de los salones de Lazcano y Fernández Concha, nadie fue tampoco más ‘pueblo’ que él mismo, cuando […] se encontró rodeado por hombres de izquierda, en el seno de una clase media provinciana impaciente por sacudir el yugo, fervorosamente aplaudido por los obreros del país del salitre”) (Edwards 1987, 213).
- 21.
Alessandri appeared to have lost the popular vote by a margin of over 1,000, but an electoral tribunal awarded him the victory. Many analysts believe that terror of the likely popular reaction if Alessandri was defeated, was determinant in persuading the Conservative Party and moderate Liberals to acknowledge him as the victor (Millar 1981; Gil 1966).
- 22.
The highest vote share taken by all right-wing parties added together was 46.7%, in the municipal elections of 1935. The lowest was 33.6%, in the 1947 municipal elections. The electoral decline of both parties of the right, while real, was extremely gradual (Scully 1992, 127).
- 23.
Due to its own internal contradictions as well as the essentially moderating role of the Radical Party as the coalition’s dominant partner.
- 24.
This was to be the fate of initiatives seeking to modify the electoral system in a way that limited its over-representation of rural areas, or projects that sought to allow rural workers to unionize.
- 25.
Popularly known as the “Ley Maldita”, loosely translatable as Accursed Law. As well as banning the Communist Party, the law stripped its members of their political rights. Many were imprisoned or forced into exile.
- 26.
Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez (1896–1986) was the son of Arturo Alessandri Palma. His political career was combined with a prominent role in business and leadership of the major economic pressure groups.
- 27.
It is interesting that historiography that has collected testimonies from members of economic elite families shows a widespread and strong sentiment of rejection of the Christian Democrat Party, seen as responsible for the beginnings of the crisis that led to the 1970 victory of Salvador Allende. Many members of the elite seem to see the reformism of 1964–1970 as even more deserving of condemnation as the socialism of the Popular Unity era, given that the former was promoted by political leaders who shared their own elevated social station (Stabili 2003, 47).
- 28.
A right-wing movement founded by Guzmán in the Law School of Santiago’s Catholic University in 1967. According to Valdivia (2008, 13–14), gremialismo differed from the traditional Chilean right in opposing liberal ideas at the same time as defending capitalism and “anti-statist corporativism inspired by traditional Catholicism”.
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Monestier, F. (2023). Chile: Economic Elites with Their Own Parties. In: Economic Elites, Political Parties and the Electoral Arena. Latin American Political Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-46165-1_3
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