Donoso, Sofía & Vonbülow, Marisa (Eds.) (2016) - Social Movements in Chile. Organization, Trajectories and Political Consequences PDF

organization,
trajectories
& political
consequences
edited by
Sofia Donoso &
Marisa von Blow
Social Movements in Chile
Sofia Donoso Marisa vonBlow
Editors
Social Movements
in Chile
Organization, Trajectories, and Political
Consequences
Editors
Sofia Donoso Marisa vonBlow
Universidad de Chile and Pontificia Department of Political Science
Universidad Catlica de Chile Political Science Institute
Santiago, Chile Universidade de Braslia
Braslia, Brazil
ISBN 978-1-349-95091-1ISBN 978-1-137-60013-4(eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956816
The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

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Preface
The idea for this book emerged when we organized a panel on social
movements in post-transition Chile, for the 2013 Latin American Studies
Association (LASA) annual conference. The objective was to bring together
ongoing and empirically rich research on the fate of social movements after
the return of democracy in 1990. While acknowledging that there was a
renewed interest in the study of collective action in Chile, especially after
the massive protests of 2011, we lacked a more systematic analysis of the
possibilities and constraints faced by social movements when mobilizing for
long-dormant policy reforms in a country that has been widely acclaimed
for its economic prosperity and political stability. This debate continued in
a second panel at the 2014 LASA meeting, in which we explored the inter-
twined relationships between social movements and institutional actors in
contemporary Chile and in other Latin American countries. This book is
the result of these discussions. It contributes to a better understanding of
the role of social movements in democratization in Chile and elsewhere.
As we were preparing to send this books proposal to potential presses,
we heard that Rodrigo Avils, a member of Marisas research team and an
activist in the student movement, had suffered severe injuries after being
hit at close range by a police water cannon while participating in a rally
in Valparaso, and was in critical condition. All through the process of
signing the contract, contacting authors, writing chapters, and sending
the manuscript, we followed Rodrigos difficult but thankfully impressive
path to recovery. He is a reminder that, even in democracies such as the
Chilean one, participating in social movements can be a dangerous act. We
dedicate this book to Rodrigo and to our students.
v
vi Preface
The editors at Palgrave-Macmillan believed from the start in the

potential of this book. We thank them for their unwavering support and
patience. We also thank Nikolai Stieglitz for his revision of the English
language of the book.
Finally, we thank the authors of the chapters for their dedication. We
sought and found the best research on social movements in Chile, as well
as the most insightful comparative research. This book will be useful not
only to those interested in the specific case of Chile, but to those who
wish to better understand contentious politics and the blurred boundaries
between institutionalized and noninstitutionalized politics.
Santiago and Brasilia Sofia Donoso and Marisa von Blow

November of 2016
List of Contributors
Marisavon Blow is Professor of Political Science at the Universidade

de Braslia and a Researcher at the Pontificia Universidad Catlica de
Chile. She is the author of various books, among them Building transna-
tional networks: Civil society and the politics of trade in the Americas
(Cambridge University Press 2010), and Social Movement Dynamics: new
perspectives on theory and research from Latin America (with Federico
Rossi, Ashgate, 2015). She has also published several articles on social
movements in Mobilization, Latin American Politics and Society, among
other journals.
SofiaDonoso holds an MPhil and a PhD in Development Studies from
the University of Oxford. She is a Research Fellow at the Centre for
Conflict and Social Cohesion Studies (COES) associated to the Universidad
de Chile and the Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile. Her research
has been published in the Journal of Latin American Studies, Research in
Social Movements, Conflict and Change, as well as in several book chapters
in edited volumes.
NicoleForstenzer holds a PhD in Sociology from University Paris 1 La
Sorbonne and is currently an associate researcher at the UMR 201
Dveloppement & Socits in France. Her research focuses on feminism
and gender politics in post-transition Chile. Her book, Politiques de genre
et fminisme dans le Chili de la post-dictature, 19902010 (LHarmattan)
was published in 2012, and her research has appeared in Revue interna-
tional de politique compare, Lien social et Politique, and LHomme et la
Socit.
vii
viii List of Contributors
FranciscaGutirrez received her PhD in Sociology from the School for

Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS). She is a Lecturer in
Sociology of Labor at the Universidad Alberto Hurtado, an adjunct
researcher at the COES, and an associated researcher at the Center of
Social Intervention and Analyze (CADIS) at EHESS in France. Her
research centers on industrial relations, labor conditions, social move-
ments and organizations. She is currently working on the judicialization of
labor disputes in Chile.
RodrigoMedel is a PhD candidate in Political Science at the Pontificia
Universidad Catlica de Chile, and an associate researcher at the
Observatory of Labor Strikes of the COES.His main research interests are
the sociology of labor relations and the study of social movements, with a
particular focus on the determinants of labor strikes, social movement tac-
tics, and the relationship between collective action and institutional
reform. His studies have been published in Poltica y gobierno,
Psicoperspectivas, and Revista Calidad en la Educacin, among others.
Germn Bidegain Ponteholds a PhD in Political Science from the
Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile. His PhD thesis examines the
relationship among social movements, political parties, and the state, with
a focus on post-transitional Chile. He holds an MA degree in Political
Theory from Sciences Po Paris. He has several publications on social
movements, and on the relationship between social movements and politi-
cal parties.
KennethM.Roberts is Richard J. Schwartz Professor of Government at
Cornell University. He is the author of Changing course in Latin America:
Party systems in the neoliberal era and the co-editor (together with Rebecca
Given and Sarah Soule) of The diffusion of social movements, both with
Cambridge University Press. He also published Deepening democracy? The
modern Left and social movements in Chile and Peru (Stanford University
Press 1998), and co-edited with Steven Levitsky The Resurgence of the
Latin American Left (Johns Hopkins University Press). His research on
the social bases of political representation in Latin America has been pub-
lished in a number of scholarly journals, including American Political
Science Review, World Politics, Annual Review of Political Science,
Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Studies in
Comparative International Development, Politics and Society, and Latin
American Politics and Society, among others.
List of Contributors ix
Colombina Schaeffer is a sociologist with a PhD in Government and

International Relations from the University of Sydney. Her thesis explored
the controversy around the construction of a mega hydroelectric project
(HidroAysn) in Chilean Patagonia (Aysn Region), focusing on the
Patagonia Without Dams campaign, From 2015 to 2016, Colombina
worked for the Chilean NGO Programa Chile Sustentable, focusing on
the areas of energy, environmental policies, and public participation. Since
2015, she works as a consultant for the Latin American Network of Waste
Pickers (Red LACRE).
Eduardo Silva holds the Friezo Family Foundation Chair in Political
Science at Tulane University. His books include Transnational activism
and national movements in Latin America: Bridging the divide (Routledge
2013) and Challenging neoliberalism in Latin America (Cambridge
University Press 2009), among others. His articles have appeared in the
European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, World Politics,
Comparative Politics, Development and Change, Global Environmental
Politics, Latin American Politics and Society, Latin American Research
Review, and Latin American Perspectives, among others.
NicolsM.Somma is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the Pontificia
Universidad Catlica de Chile and a research fellow at the Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES). His areas of expertise
include social movement theory and political sociology. His research has
appeared in The Sociological Quarterly, Sociological Perspectives, Latin
American Politics and Society, Party Politics, Journal of Historical Sociology,
and Acta Sociologica, among others.
Contents
Part I Social Movements in Chile1
1 Introduction: Social Movements inContemporary Chile3

Marisavon Blow andSofiaDonoso
2 Shifting Relationships Between Social Movements

andInstitutional Politics29
NicolsM.Somma andRodrigoMedel
Part II Case Studies63
3 Outsider andInsider Strategies: Chiles

Student Movement, 1990201465
SofiaDonoso
4 From Cooperation toConfrontation: TheMapuche

Movement andIts Political Impact, 1990201499
GermnBidegain
xi
xii Contents
5 Democratizing theFlows ofDemocracy: Patagonia Sin

Represas intheAwakening ofChiles Civil Society131
ColombinaSchaeffer
6 Feminism andGender Policies inPost-Dictatorship

Chile (19902010)161
NicoleForstenzer
7 Coping withNeoliberalism Through Legal Mobilization:

TheChilean Labor Movements New Tactics andAllies191
FranciscaGutirrezCrocco
Part III Chile in Comparative Perspective219
8 Chilean Social Movements andParty Politics

inComparative Perspective: Conceptualizing Latin
Americas Third Generation ofAnti-Neoliberal Protest221
KennethM.Roberts
9 Post-Transition Social Movements inChile

inComparative Perspective249
EduardoSilva
Index281
List of Figures
Graph 2.1 Evolution of the number of protest events

in Chile by demand type 35
Graph 2.2 Evolution of the estimated number of participants
in protest events in Chile by demand type 36
Graph 4.1 Mapuche protest events (20002012) 111
Graph 4.2 Geographical location of the Mapuche
population and protest 112
Graph 4.3 FTAI budget evolution as part of the
public budget (19952014) 116
Fig. 5.1 Map showing the Aysn Region and the Baker (two
proposed dams) and Pascua River (three proposed dams) 140
Graph 7.1 Evolution of the number of inspections and the percentage
of inspections that result in a fine (There is no public data
on fines for the period 20012003) 205
xiii
List of Tables
Table 2.1 Provinces where student and Mapuche protests took place
(Chile, 20002012) 51
Table 2.2 Distribution of tactics by social movement (%)
(Chile, 20002012) 52
Table 3.1 Summary of the Student Movements strategizing during
its main protest waves, 20012011 82
Table 4.1 Number of imprisoned Mapuche activists
(condemned or in preventive detention) 115
Table 8.1 Three generations of anti-neoliberal protest in Latin America 233
xv
PART I
Social Movements in Chile

CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Social Movements

inContemporary Chile
Marisavon Blow andSofiaDonoso
In 2011 and the years that followed, old and new forms of mobilization
emerged in various parts of the world. From the Middle East to Europe,
and from North to South America, we witnessed the revolts of Quebecois
students against tuition hikes and market-driven austerity, Mexicos Yo soy
132 pro-democracy student movement, the rise and fall of the Egyptian
revolution, Spains Indignados movement, Occupy Wall Street in the
United States, and the massive 2013 Brazilian protests, among many other
episodes of mobilization. Social movement scholars are still struggling to
The authors contributed equally to this chapter and to the organization of the
book. We thank Germn Bidegain and Rebecca Abers for useful comments to
an earlier version of this chapter. Support for this research was received from
CONICYT/FONDAP/15130009, CONICYT/FONDECYT/Regular/1130897,
and CONICYT/FONDECYT Regular/1160308. Marisa von Blow also thanks
the support of Milenio Project RS130002, Iniciativa Cientfica Milenio of the
Ministerio de Economa, Fomento y Turismo, Chile.
M. von Blow (*)

Universidade de Brasilia, Brasilia, Brasil
S. Donoso
Universidad de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 3

S. Donoso, M. von Blow (eds.), Social Movements in Chile,
DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_1
4 M. VON BLOW AND S. DONOSO
understand the meanings of this new era of protest, which is at the same
time global and deeply rooted in specific political and economic contexts.
In this book, we focus on a less studied country, which nonetheless has
become a key reference in this recent wave of protests: Chile. This coun-
try had, until recently, been characterized by its conspicuous absence of
contentious politics.1 To the surprise of scholars and the political estab-
lishment alike, in the past few years, Chile has become the stage for wide-
spread demonstrations, on a scale that had not been seen since the protests
against the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet during the 1980s.
In 2011, environmentalists staged protests against a five-dam hydropower
project in Patagonia, miners went on strike, the Mapuches intensified their
historical grievances against the Chilean state, feminist groups mobilized
around old and new demands, protests were organized against the rise of
gas prices in remote regions, and, most visibly, high school and university
students led massive rallies across the country.
The protest wave initiated in 2011 has had a profound impact in
Chilean politics. By questioning the institutional legacy of the military
regime, pointing out many of the shortcomings of the governments
since the reinstatement of democratic rule, and criticizing key pub-
lic policies, these social movements have repoliticized many aspects of
Chiles development path, and forced a debate on pending political
reforms. While mobilizations abated after 2011, in the 2013 general
elections the Nueva Mayora, the center-left coalition that backed the
presidential candidacy of Socialist Michelle Bachelet, was elected on a
platform that included some of the key demands of social movements.
It proposed an overhauling of the education model, a more progres-
sive tax system, and a new, more democratic Constitution. Whereas it
is still early to pass judgment on these promises, a new tax reform bill
was approved six months after the elections.2 Moreover, some of the
leaders who spearheaded the protests in 2011 gained parliamentary
representation. So, whether the political impact of social movements
is understood as the adoption of a policy which is inspired by their
demands,3 or increased representation,4 it is clear that the political sce-
nario changed after 2011.5
This book offers an analysis of the upswing of contentious politics in
Chile, which will be of interest to a wide audience: scholars who study
Latin American politics and contentious politics in general, as well as those
INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL MOVEMENTS INCONTEMPORARY CHILE 5
who study public policies and political parties. It presents a fine-grained

analysis of five key social movements, as well as contributions that situate
these cases both in terms of the general trends in protest in Chile, and in
comparison with other countries in the region.
The case studies present rich empirical analysis of the most important
movements in the countrys post-transition era: the student movement,
the Mapuche movement, the labor movement, the feminist movement,
and the environmental movement. The analyses illuminate the processes
that led to their emergence, and how actors developed new strategies (or
revisited old ones) to influence the political arena. Investigating the orga-
nizational development, trajectories, and political influence of the most
visible movements since 1990, the book fills an important research gap in
the study of collective action in Chile.
Special emphasis is given, throughout the book, to various facets of
the debate about the relationship between institutional and non-
institutional politics. In fact, the chapters go beyond this simple dichot-
omy to tackle a set of instigating research problems: why movements
engage in more collaborative or more confrontational tactics, the chang-
ing role of political parties in protest events, the ability of movements to
mobilize specific institutional arenas in their favor, and, more broadly, the
impacts of the political context and of the political system on movements
capacity to bring about change.
We argue that only a framework centered on the interactions between
social movements and institutional actors can help us understand the shift
to contentious politics that Chile is experiencing, and its impacts. This is
not, as we argue below, an entirely new research agenda, but one that has
deep roots in Latin American history and in the social movement schol-
arship. This book contributes to this research agenda by offering new
insights based on the Chilean experience.
The Intertwined Relations AmongSocial

Movements, States, andPolitical Parties inLatin
America
In Latin America, the history of social movements has always been one of
simultaneously close and contentious interactions with state officials and
political parties. During the 20th century, social movements and scholars
alike continuously debated the key issues of autonomy and cooptation in

the interactions with the state and political parties, and how (and whether)
to institutionalize these interactions. While these have never been ignored,
however, there has been significant controversy over their meanings and
on how to study them.
Going back to the period between 1920 and 1970, the experience
of state corporatism in countries such as Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and
Venezuela put front and center the issue of autonomy in the relationship
among state, political parties, and social movement organizations. The
institutionalized structure of intermediation created in these countries
brought class-based organizations inside the state, and, in cases such as
the Mexican one, affiliated rural workers organizations and labor unions
to the political party in power, thus blurring the boundaries among politi-
cal parties, the state, and associations.6
The democratic breakdown in many Latin American countries from
the late 1960s onwards, and the repression experienced thereafter by
movement leaders, changed the state corporatist arrangements in place
and, more generally, closed the doors to political participation across the
region. In this authoritarian context, much of the literature produced in
the region emphasized the autonomous character of new social move-
ments, which turned their backs to the state.7 Even in this period,
though, social movements that organized around specific demands, such
as housing, land, or employment, engaged with state authorities in try-
ing to influence public policies.8 Furthermore, numerous pro-democracy
movements emerged and progressively gained strength in the 1970s and
1980s. Formed by broad coalitions of social and political actors in coun-
tries such as Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, they led massive protests against
military dictatorships, and paved the way to transitions to democracy.
The reinstatement of democracy brought about new possibilities for
more (and more plural) citizen participation in debates about public poli-
cies and development, and integrated historically excluded as well as new
civil society actors.9 The reintroduction of rule of law, in turn, contributed
to improving the checks and balances of the political system, and increased
social movements possibilities to influence public policy. As democracies
were consolidated across the region, social movements played key roles in
pushing for reform through a broad repertoire of action that has included
traditional contentious tactics, such as street protests and strikes, as well as
participation in political parties, electoral politics, and taking seats in state
councils.
Of particular relevance is the creation of new political parties with a

strong base in social movements. Examples include Brazils Workers Party
(PT), Colombias Democratic Alliance M-19 (ADM-19), and Mexicos
Party of the Democratic Revolution (PRD). Movement-sponsored indig-
enous parties also emerged and had a crucial impact in the reorganization
of political party systems, especially in the Andean region. Importantly, as
Van Cott asserts, [i]n no case were ethnic parties perceived as an alter-
native to indigenous social movements and extra-systemic mobilizations.
Rather, they are repeatedly referred to as an additional tool or a new arena
for the pursuit of movement goals [].10
Social movements have also constituted an active democratizing force
in other ways. For instance, in the case of Mexico, one of the few coun-
tries in the region that did not experience a military regime, but where
the quality of democracy was considerably diminished from the perma-
nence of the PRI (Partido Revolucionario Institucional) as the hegemonic
party for 71 years, social mobilization against electoral fraud was a funda-
mental democratizing force.11 In Brazil, a plurality of social movements,
civic associations, and a renewed labor unionism mobilized strongly to
influence the contents of the democratic Constitution approved in 1988,
which included the formal creation of various participation fora within
state institutions.12
Shifts in the intertwined relations between state arenas and social
movements also included changes in the relationship with the judiciary
power. The consolidation of democracy allowed for the introduction of
legal claims by social movements, through which state institutions were
forced to intervene in political and social contentions that the authori-
ties previously ignored or avoided. In Argentina, for example, where the
human rights movement pioneered the discovery of the law as a poten-
tially empowering instrument,13 judiciary-executive relations have been
increasingly politicized. As a result, a growing number of conflicts are
being resolved in the courts, and judges have acquired a more central
political role solving the disputes that marginalized groups initiate.14 By
judicializing politics, then, civil society actors have sought to increase the
responsiveness of state institutions.15
The turn to the left in many Latin American governments,16 in the
past two decades, has further blurred the boundaries between insti-
tutional and non-institutional politics. As some of the parties
mentioned above came to power, social movement activists occupied
important bureaucratic positions, and social movement organizations

were able to play more relevant roles in debates about public policies.
This turn of events has led to renewed efforts by social movement schol-
ars to develop theories that allow us to better understand state-social
movement interactions and their impacts on electoral results, mobiliza-
tion efforts, and policymaking.
As this cursory examination of Latin Americas history shows, there are
abundant examples of the intertwined relations among the state, social
movements, and political parties.17 Albeit with important variations across
countries and political regimes, in the last three decades (coinciding with
processes of democratization), there has been an important reconfigura-
tion of the relationships between institutionalized and noninstitutionalized
politics. The simultaneity of contentious and collaborative repertoires, or
what some call insider and outsider strategies, has become increas-
ingly visible. However, understanding how actors combine these strategies
and implement them remains an important challenge for social movement
scholars.
Theoretical Challenges andaResearch Agenda

Scholarship on social movements has long recognized the importance of
the political system to understand both the emergence and the impacts
of collective action. A particularly influential approach stems from Tillys
polity model.18 In this framework, social movements are understood as
sustained challenges to the political authorities that seek to forge social and
political alliances in order to advance their demands. The emphasis on the
institutional terrain in the work of Tilly, and in later publications by other
proponents of what became known as the political process model,19 was
in part a reaction to the structural-functionalist paradigm, which consid-
ered social movements to be a side-effect of the high speed of social trans-
formation.20 Political process authors argued instead that what facilitates
the emergence of social movements are the changes in the structure of
political opportunities, and the shifts in power relations between challeng-
ers and authorities that this involves.21 The analysis of the political oppor-
tunity structure faced by social movements, then, emphasized dimensions
such as the new incentives to citizen participation, the evidence of political
alignment within the polity, emerging splits within the elite, the appear-
ance of influential allies, and the increase or decline of the states capacity
or will to repress dissent. By underscoring the institutional embeddedness

of social movements, this approach thus contributed to redefining social
movement research.
However, the political process model has been widely criticized in
the past decade. A key point of contention has been the use of a lan-
guage of insiders versus outsiders of the polity when referring
to institutional actors and social movements, respectively.22 In an
important contribution to this discussion, Banaszak23 argued for a more
nuanced view concerning the relationship between social movements and
the state. Rather than in and out of the political sphere, the status of
social movements vis--vis the state should be conceptualized as a contin-
uum. Also, the underpinning idea of the political process model, namely,
that once social movements gain access to the political system, they tend
to fade away, has been challenged.24 Instead, scholarship has highlighted
the continuous shaping of political institutions by social movements.25
In sum, as stressed by Tarrow,26 whose scholarly contribution largely has
drawn on the political process model, it is necessary to overcome a move-
ment-centered approach and track how social movements interact over
time with other elements of the polity.
The recent Latin American literature on social movements has contrib-
uted to advancing this research agenda by highlighting three interrelated
challenges, which shake some of the foundations of mainstream theories:
to broaden our understanding of what social movements actually do, by
reviewing concepts such as repertoire of contention and strategies;
to include in our research agenda the roles played by activists within the
state bureaucracy; and to rethink the concept of social movements itself.
We present below a few important examples, without, however, intending
to survey the whole field.
Typically, scholarship on social movements emphasizes the conten-
tious, disruptive tactics undertaken by activists as the mainif not the
soletype of collective action specific of social movements. If there are
no street protests, hunger strikes, or civil disobedience actions, we can
hardly talk about social movements at all. While it has always been clear
that social movement actors do much more than that, the focus of the
literature has been on the more contentious and more visible actions,
which are often the only ones available to excluded groups that wish
to stand up to powerholders.27 One of the challenges, then, has been
to rethink the way in which scholars talk about what social movement
actors do, going beyond the emphasis on contentious politics in detri-

ment of more routine, conventional, or insider strategies.
For instance, based on his analysis of the recent piqueteros mobilization
in Argentina, Rossi28 proposes to complement the concept of repertoire
of contention with the broader concept of repertoire of strategies, to
bridge the artificial distinction between contentious and routine poli-
tics. While the first focuses on roadblocks, marches, and encampments,
which constitute the most well-known facet of that social movement, the
second includes the former but also a myriad of other actions, such as
informal meetings with politicians, audiences with presidents, and so on.
As in Tillys definition of repertoire of contention, the repertoire of
strategies is also a historically constrained set of available options, but
it is neither solely contentious nor always public.29 Such a broadening of
the conceptual toolkit used to understand strategies allows us to analyze
the internal complexity of a social movement such as the piqueteros, with
its numerous internal factions, and the various ways in which these groups
attempt to reach their goals.
Similarly to Rossi, Abers, Serafim, and Tatagiba30 also propose to go
beyond Tillys original concept of repertoire of contention to be able
to analyze more collaborative, or insider strategies, and their impacts
on public policy. In their analysis of the interaction between social move-
ments and the Brazilian state in three policy areas, the authors build upon
the concept of repertoire of contention to discuss what they call the rep-
ertoire of interaction between social movements and the state. They
argue that the variation in the impacts of social movements across issue
areas depends not only on their ability to occupy positions within the state
but also on the different historical traditions of interaction that character-
ized each public policy sector. For instance, while labor organizations and
homeless movements showed a greater ability to influence public policy
during President Lulas government (20032011), adapting more con-
tentious or collaborative tactics to changes in the political context, in the
case of public security policies, this impact was less pronounced. In the
absence of a history of strong social movement organization pushing for
reforms on this issue, the opening of participatory spaces for civil society
depended more on the roles played by allies within the state than in the
other two public policy arenas.
While focusing on the interactions across arenas and the variety of social
movement strategies, the authors mentioned above agree that differences
between contentious episodes and collaborative strategies should not be

ignored. Rather, as Goldstone31 notes, the point is that the normal function-
ing of courts, legislatures, executives, or parties cannot be understood with-
out referring to their intimate and ongoing shaping by social movements.
To better understand these intimate ties, a second challenge
undertaken by the recent literature has been to systematically study the
impacts of the ties that link actors situated in various organizational
arenas. The literature on the institutional activism of actors within
the state32 has gone beyond the correct but ultimately simple idea that
state-social movement frontiers are fuzzy,33 to show how different
kinds of social networks across boundaries are created, and how these
may impact public policy. As Abers and von Blow34 argued, in the
debate about social movements, the unit of analysis should not apri-
oristically exclude actors within the state. In other words, how actors
mobilize the state35 from inside and outside at the same time is an
important research question. This debate builds on the basic idea that,
far from being a unified actor, states are constituted by specific organi-
zations, ideologies, factions, and individuals.36 From this perspective,
the analysis of the institutional arena involves elucidating the ways in
which societal and state actors are constituted, how they develop their
capacity to influence the policy-making process, and the extent into
which they cooperate and compete across the public-private divide to
drive social change.37
Again, the case of Brazil during the Workers Party administrations has
provided a rich context to study the abovementioned dimensions. For
instance, empirical research has shown that activist bureaucrats in the
AIDS policy sector mobilize civil society to successfully implement public
policy.38 In a context of reduced regulatory power, national-level bureaucrats
compensate partly by mobilizing political allies in civil society. More specifi-
cally, they provided financial resources to fund organizations and activities
and AIDS groups and opened new channels for policy collaboration.
Abers and Tatagiba studied what they call institutional activists in the
Womens Health Area of the Ministry of Health: bureaucrats committed
to social movement goals and with close professional connections to social
movement networks. They argue that these bureaucrats employ a kind of
artisanal activism, defined as the daily balancing of pressures from allies
and foes alike, in order to promote an agenda on contentious topics, such
as womens reproductive rights.39
Silva and Oliveira40 contribute to this debate by analyzing the important

mediating role of the Workers Party in the networks created between
social movement and bureaucracies. They studied the case of the move-
ment of solidarity economy41 in the southern state of Rio Grande do
Sul, when it was governed by the Workers Party. Based on an empirical
analysis of trajectories of social movement activists, the authors show how
these trajectories often cross social movement-political party boundaries,
and that the probability that social movement activists will come to occupy
bureaucratic posts is enhanced by their party activism.
For at least part of this recent literature, the third and broader con-
ceptual challenge that derives from the processes analyzed is to rethink
the definition of social movements. More specifically, to question the
emphasis on the contentious roles of disempowered social movement
actors as outsider challengers of authorities. Whether or not social move-
ments will prioritize collaborative or contentious strategies becomes an
important empirical question, outside of the definition of social move-
ments. In this sense, social movements are best understood as complex
networks, as has been argued by Melucci and Diani,42 among others. The
boundaries of these networks are dynamic and may, sometimes, include
actors within state arenas and political parties.
The efforts to better understand the interactions among states, political
parties, and social movements have entailed a broadening of the field of
study and a refocusing of research questions, such as the ones mentioned
above. They have also contributed to a much neededbut still severely
underdevelopeddialogue between social movement scholars and politi-
cal scientists that study political party systems, political regimes, and politi-
cal participation.
The contributions in this book further advance these debates. They do
not offer a unique vision on how to move forward, but present various
analytical and empirical lenses from which we can build a more relational
view of the roles and impacts of social movements.
Shifting Relationships BetweenSocial Movements

andtheInstitutional Terrain inChile
To introduce our analysis of the rise of protest politics in Chile, it is nec-

essary to first offer a brief overview of how the interactions among social
movements, states, and political parties have shifted in the countrys recent
history. During the decade of increased mobilization that swept many

countries in South America, Chile seemed to stand aside as a major excep-
tion.43 In the first years of the 2000s, for example, while campaigns such
as the one against the Free Trade Area of the Americas mobilized hetero-
geneous coalitions of civil society actors in neighboring Brazil, Argentina,
and Bolivia, Chilean social movements were unable to organize similar
challenges to the political economy of free trade.44 In general, the litera-
ture coincided in characterizing Chile as one of the most stable countries
in the region, which partly was explained by the political systems capacity
to contain social conflict.45
As Bidegain46 has pointed out, however, such a harmonious picture
was an incomplete one. Throughout these years, the Mapuche movement
had kept up with organizational and mobilization efforts, in a process of
radicalization that helped pave the way to what was to come. The analyses
of the feminist, labor, student, and environmental movements presented
in this book also show how organizations survived during this period of
demobilization, formulating new strategies to cope with a negative envi-
ronment. Thus, while it is certainly true that protest activity remained
low for a long period, social movement organizations survived and kept
mobilization efforts alive.
Chile shares the historical trajectory of authoritarian rule and reinstate-
ment of democracy of most of the region. Yet, the institutional context
and the evolvement of social movements in the post-transition era dif-
fer significantly. The relationship between the two cannot be understood
without making reference to the traumatic experience of the 1973 demo-
cratic breakdown, and the longer-term process of political polarization
that preceded it.
Chiles party system before the military coup resembled that of many
European countries.47 There was a clear division between a leftist, a cen-
trist, and rightist option, which each received approximately a third of the
popular vote.48 In 1958, the left, spearheaded by Socialist leader Salvador
Allende, lost the presidential elections to the Christian Democrats by only
a small margin. Convinced that it was not necessary to join the parties of
the political center to reach government, leftist leaders actively fostered
social mobilization to construct the necessary social forces to attain power
on its own.49
The electoral success of Socialist Salvador Allende in the 1970 presi-

dential election only intensified political polarization. Inspired by social
democratic values of universalism and solidarity, the agenda of the Allende
administration comprised a wide-ranging reform scheme that included
a unified social security regime based on a tax-financed system,50 a new
agrarian reform, and a complete nationalization of the copper industry,
among other issues.51
The Unidad Popular, the left-wing coalition that backed Allende, faced
great opposition, not only from the business community but also from
sectors of organized labor who were pressing for greater concessions from
the government.52 This was accompanied by a loss of the crucial support
of the Christian Democrats, who traditionally had mediated compromis-
ing positions between the left and the right.53 The international context of
the time, marked by the Cold War, also contributed to increased polariza-
tion. Allendes explicit aim of initiating a peaceful road to Socialism was
considered a threat to US geopolitical interests and its economic invest-
ments in Chile.
Political polarization in addition to international pressure undermined
the stability of Chiles political system, which in previous decades had
been hailed as a democratic example in the region.54 The difficulties in
overcoming the political and economic deadlock precipitated the military
coup dtat on September 11, 1973. During its 17 years in power, the
military would radically change Chiles political, economic, and social fate
for decades to come. As the chapters in this book show, current protests
question the basis of the economic model inherited from the dictatorship.
The military take-over led by General Pinochet had a high human cost.
Repression of political leaders, party rank-and-file and civil society actors
who had supported the Allende government followed the democratic
breakdown. Any protest was rapidly suppressed. The years after the coup
dtat saw the detention of more than 100,000 civiliansmany of whom
were torturedand thousands disappeared and were executed.55
Nevertheless, the military regime was not able to contain the massive
protest wave that followed the economic crisis of 19811983the worst
in the country since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Between 1983
and 1985, monthly protests, which began as a reaction to the economic
crisis, rapidly grew into a protest movement that sought to put an end
to authoritarian rule. The call for democratization was joined by people
from both middle- and upper-class sectors, who banged their pans and
honked their car horns to show their rejection of the military regime.56
The demand for democracy was also expressed by students, shantytown
dwellers and other social actors.57
Crucially, the initiation of this protest cycle also reactivated Chiles
opposition parties, some of which later would form the Concertacin de
Partidos por la Democracia (henceforth, Concertacin), the center-left,
four-party coalition that spearheaded the countrys reinstatement of dem-
ocratic rule, and that won the presidential elections in 1989.
While social movements played a key role in enabling the transition
from authoritarian rule, once the democratic transition had been com-
pleted and electoral democracy installed, social mobilization tended to
wane.58 The intricate ties between political parties (some new, some inher-
ited from the authoritarian period) and social movements explain part of
this process of demobilization. The restoration of party politics and elite-
level compromises frequently came at the expense of social movements
demands.59
The path of gradual demobilization of social movements after the
reinstatement of democracy was also largely molded by the experience of
polarization and political deadlock that had preceded the military coup in
1973. The assessment of the democratic breakdown made by prominent
Concertacin leaders was that an excessive pressure from popular sectors
had contributed to the military coup. This reinforced the Concertacins
aversion toward popular mobilization.60 In general terms, the political
parties of both the left and the center no longer sought to base their con-
stituency on political mobilization.61 Paradoxically, if one characteristic of
the political system before the democratic breakdown in 1973 was that the
predominant mode of political action was based on the organization of a
social base in order to link it to a party structureand, through this, exert
pressure over or take control of the state62the transition to democracy
paved the way for the opposite route.
It would take some time for social movements to rearticulate their
demands, and build the sufficient organizational capacity to challenge this
path. This book presents a long-term approach to the analysis of these
changes, which allows us to move beyond simplistic characterizations of
the Chilean civil society as mobilized or demobilized.
Structure andContents oftheBook
The book is divided into three parts. Part I is composed of Chaps. 1 and2.
The latter is written by Nicols Somma and Rodrigo Medel, and provides
an overview of the changes in the relations between social movements
and institutional politics in contemporary Chile. Drawing from the analy-
sis of an original protest event database and extensive interview material,
Somma and Medel seek to explain how an increasing level of protest
during the last decades has impacted the political arena in spite of greater
autonomy of social movements from institutional actors. With a focus
on the student, indigenous, and environmental movements, the chapter
shows that the increase in collective protest during the last decade par-
tially results from an ongoing process of detachment of movements from
institutional politics that can be traced back to the democratic transition
in 1990. Furthermore, by comparing the impacts of the Student and
the Mapuche movements, Somma and Medel argue that movements are
more likely to shape political outcomes if they can launch massive pro-
test campaigns in visible locations with a predominance of disruptive yet
pacific tactics.
Part II of this book is comprised of five case studies that are based on
extensive and original field research. Chapter 3, by Sofia Donoso, traces
the unfolding of the student movement since 1990, with a particular focus
on how its strategy-making has evolved as a result of its interaction with
the institutional terrain. Bringing to the fore the interactions and inten-
tions that activists attribute to their actions, strategy-making is analyzed
as a relational process. Furthermore, the chapter stresses how historical
and political constraints shape the strategic options that social move-
ments undertake. Donoso argues that the accumulation of experiences
from various protest waves since 1990 has enthused the employment of
both outsider and insider strategies. While in tension, these types of
strategies complement each other in the pursuit of education and political
reforms. Furthermore, Donoso shows that the strategic choice to also pur-
sue insider strategies is a consequence of the gradual distancing between
the center-left political parties and the student movement organizations.
This is what ultimately motivated the strategic decision of engaging in
electoral competition and mobilizing the state from within with the aim
of pushing for reforms.
In Chap. 4, Germn Bidegain examines the Mapuche movement case.

He shows how the relation between this movement and the governmen-
tal authorities switched, from deep cooperation in the early nineties, to
harsh confrontation by the end of that decade, a situation that lasts until
nowadays. He shows that while important institutional changes took place
during the cooperative phase, the movements most far-reaching demands
were not attended by the democratic governments. Moreover, the limita-
tions of the new institutional frame to protect indigenous rights became
evident in a number of specific conflicts that opposed Mapuche com-
munities to private investment projects. As a result, an autonomous and
more radical stream progressively overshadowed the cooperative sectors.
Bidegain argues that two factors are capital to understand the difficulty
of the movement to obtain a significant impact regarding its most impor-
tant demands. On the one hand, high profile demands, such as collec-
tive rights recognition, affect the Chilean development model, which is
supported by all major political parties. On the other hand, the low levels
of internal and external resources of the movement hinder its capacity to
exert pressure on the political system.
In Chap. 5, Colombina Schaeffer analyzes the process of building of an
issue-based campaign against a mega-dam complex in Chilean Patagonia,
which in May 2011 garnered more than 45,000 protesters across the
country. The chapter explains how, in spite of the internal fragmentation
of the environmental movement, it was possible to build a new and suc-
cessful coalition. The argument is that a previous period of organizational
and political learning enabled organizations and activists to find the com-
mon ground needed to work together. These elements, combined with a
new political and social context in the country, help us to understand the
stopping of HidroAysn, one of Chilean environmental movements most
important achievements.
Nicole Forstenzer analyzes the fate of the Chilean feminist move-
ment since 1990in Chap. 6. Specifically, Forstenzer discusses the con-
flicts arising from the institutionalization of gender policies, and the
professionalization of feminism. As second-wave feminism unfolded
against the backdrop of military dictatorships in the Southern Cone of
Latin America in the 1980s, in Chile feminist and womens organiza-
tions were at the forefront of the struggles to oust Pinochet. When
formal democracy was reinstated, one of the transition governments
responses was the creation of a national agency for womens rights, the
Servicio Nacional de la Mujer (SERNAM). The Chilean states gender

policies were designed and implemented by the center-left coalition in
power from 1990 to 2010in a context of marked political and institu-
tional constraints. During this period, the feminist movement under-
went serious divisions, which ultimately led to a radically new, albeit
more subdued, feminist landscape. The chapter highlights the conflicts
arising from this interaction, as well as the framing of acceptable ver-
sus unacceptable feminist claims, and the rise of social mobilization
organizations that challenge the dominant discourses of institutional
and autonomous feminists.
The coping strategies employed by the Chilean labor movement post
1990 is the subject of Chap. 7, written by Francisca Gutirrez Crocco.
She shows that while organized labor played a key role in the opposition
movement that helped the country to reinstate democracy in 1990, dem-
ocratic rule did not bring about the expected improvements for Chiles
labor movement. The chapter offers an analysis of the movements
fate in the post-transition era by examining not only the difficulties
that it has faced but also the different strategies that it has developed
to adapt and surpass existing obstacles. More specifically, it shows how
labor organizations profited from mobilizing the judicial system and spe-
cialized labor institutions. In doing so, the chapter goes beyond current
scholarly accounts that either focus on the decline of trade unions after
1990, or refer to the revitalization of the labor movement as a single
actor. Gutirrez argues that these approaches have diverted the attention
from crucial changes in trade union practices that explain why union-
ism has been able to cope in an unfavorable institutional and political
context.
Part III analyzes Chiles experience of increased social mobilization
from a comparative perspective. In Chap. 8, Kenneth M.Roberts offers
a classification of social protest since the reinstatement of democratic rule
in Latin America. He conceptualizes Chiles contemporary student move-
ment as a paradigmatic case of Polanyian resistance to market insecurities
and inequalities, and the lead edge of a third wave of anti-neoliberal
social protest in Latin America. This wave, Roberts argues, was preceded
by another two: first, the so-called IMF riots during initial periods of
structural adjustment (i.e., the Venezuelan Caracazo), and, second, the
post-adjustment, pre-left turn social rebellions against democratic regimes
and party systems that offered no institutionalized outlets for dissent from
neoliberal orthodoxy (i.e., Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia at the turn of

the century). The third wave, on the other hand, corresponds to post-left
turn social pressures to push governments to do even more to strengthen
public services, expand social citizenship rights, and challenge the social
pillars of the neoliberal model. In this way, the aforementioned waves of
protest differ not only in their timing vis--vis the process of structural
adjustment, but also in their leading social actors, the nature and targets
of their claims, and their implications for democratic governance and
accountability.
In Chap. 9, Eduardo Silva compares post-transition social move-
ments in Chile to the cycles of anti-neoliberal contestation that shook
Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Venezuela in the late 1990s and early
2000s. The chapter discusses the extent to which mobilization in Chile
can be considered a Polanyian backlash to the consolidation of a neo-
liberal economic, social, and political model as occurred in other Latin
American cases. Silva also sets out to explain the lag in antimarket mobi-
lization from 1990 to 2010in the case of Chile, and the main similarities
and differences between Chile and other cases of social mobilization in
Latin America. He argues that this lag can be explained by institutional
and policy factors that retarded mobilization and changes in the structure
of political opportunity and threats after 2010.
Throughout these analyses, the book shows that, when faced with a
common set of political opportunities, there are key similarities as well
as important differences across the social movements analyzed. In every
case, the authors observe a mounting distrust of political authorities in
general, and of political parties in particular. This has led to a weaken-
ing of the ability of political parties to influence social movements from
within. This is particularly clear in the cases of parties that formed the
Concertacin, as well as those that are part of the governing coalition
Nueva Mayora. However, while in some cases this mistrust of old party
actors has been channeled to the creation of new party alternativesthe
most important example being the creation of Revolucin Democrtica
by a group of former student leadersin others it has led to radicaliza-
tion and further distancing from the political party systemfor instance,
in the case of a few Mapuche groups as well as other student groups.
These different modes of interaction with political parties are observed
not only across the cases but also within cases.
A second similarity worth noting in this introduction is that all are

cases in which social movement organizations struggled to survive.
Through a long period of two decades, from the transition to democ-
racy in 1990 to 2010, they faced great difficulties in mobilizing their
constituents (but with the important exception of the student protests
in 2006). However, during this period they also developed various cop-
ing strategies. Labor unions, for instance, sought allies within the state
to advance their causes when they could not get the legislative reforms
they demanded. Environmental organizations became part of wider
coalitions, in which a broad range of actors come together in specific
campaigns. Student organizations redesigned their strategies and started
to question the political authorities. The Mapuche movement radical-
ized. The feminist movement created new social movement organiza-
tions that disputed the institutional and autonomous feminists space in
the debates on womens issues.
By focusing on the trajectories of various social movements and their
strategies since the 1990s, and comparing them with other cases in the
region, the book thus fills an important gap in the Chilean literature and
contributes to the broader debates about democracy, political parties and
the role of the state in Latin America.
Notes
1. Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America, 258.
2. This tax reform is the most substantial one since the reinstatement of
democracy in 1990. It aims to gradually increase tax collection until it
reaches approximately 3 % of the gross domestic product by 2018
(which is the equivalent of approximately 8000 USD million per year).
Information retrieved from http://reformatributaria.gob.cl/noticias/
el-mapa-de-la-reforma-tributaria-la.html [accessed on February 9,
2016].
3. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest, 34.
4. Cress and Snow, The Outcome of Homeless Mobilization. The Influence
of Organization, Disruption, Political Mediation and Framing.
5. For overviews of the theoretical and empirical literatures on social move-
ments political outcomes, see Amenta and Caren, The Legislative,
Organizational, and Beneficiary Consequences of State- oriented
Challengers, and Amenta et al., The Political Consequences of Social

Movements.
6. It goes beyond the goals of this introduction to present a detailed overview
of the large literature on corporatism and neocorporatism. But see, for
example, Murillo, Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions and Market Reforms
in Latin America; Cook, The Politics of Labor Reform in Latin America:
Between Flexibility and Rights; Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political
Arena. Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in
Latin America.
7. The slogan with our backs to the state, and away from Parliament, which
gave the title to a well known article published by Evers in 1983, simbolizes
this approach. Evers, De Costas para o Estado, Longe do Parlamento.
8. See, for example, the analysis of new urban movements in Brazil, in Doimo,
A Vez e a Voz do Popular: Movimentos Sociais e Participao Poltica no
Brasil ps-70.
9. For an overview of the changes in civil society and the processes of democ-
ratization in the region, see, for example, Panfichi, Sociedad Civil, Esfera
Pblica y Democratizacin en Amrica Latina: Andes y Cono Sur, Evelina,
Olvera and Panfichi, La Disputa por la Construccin Democrtica en
Amrica Latina, and Avritzer, Sociedade Civil e Democratizao.
10. Van Cott, From Movements to Parties in Latin America. The Evolution of
Ethnic Politics, 213.
11. Olvera, Social Accountability in Mexico: The Civil Alliance Experience;
Cadena-Roa, State Pacts, Elites, and Social Movements in Mexicos
Transition to Democracy.
12. See, for example, Avritzer, Sociedade Civil e Democratizao. For a com-
parative analysis between Brazil and Mexico, see Lavalle and Vera, La
Innovacin Democrtica en Amrica Latina: Tramas y Nudos de la
Representacin, la Participacin y el Control Social.
13. Smulowitz, quoted in Domingo, Judicialization of Politics or Politicization
of the Judiciary? Recent Trends in Latin America, 116.
14. Sieder, Schjolden and Angell, The Judicialization of Politics in Latin

America, 1.
15. See, for example, Domingo, Judicialization of Politics or Politicization of
the Judiciary? Recent Trends in Latin America; Sieder, Schjolden and
Angell, The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America; Peruzzotti and
Smulovitz, Enforcing the Rule of Law: Social Accountability in the New
Latin American Democracies.
16. The turn to the left, or pink tide, refers to the coming into power of
the following left-of-center governments: Argentina (2003, 2007, 2011),
Brazil (2002, 2006, 2010), Bolivia (2005, 2009, 2014), Chile (2000,
2006, 2014), Ecuador (2006, 2009), El Salvador (2009, 2014), Nicaragua

(2006, 2011), Paraguay (2008), Uruguay (2004, 2010, 2015), and
Venezuela (1998, 2000, 2006). There is a considerable literature on Latin
Americas turn to the left that seeks to explain both the country-specific
differences and its impact on democratization. For an overview, see
Panizza, Unarmed Utopia Revisited: The Resurgence of Left-of-center
Politics in Latin America, and Levitsky and Roberts, eds. The Resurgence
of the Latin American Left.
17. As argued recently by Rossi and von Blow, Introduction: Theory-

building Beyond Borders.
18. Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution.
19. E.g. McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency;
Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and
Politics; Jenkins and Klandermans, The Politics of Social Protest.
20. Smelser, Theory of Collective Behavior.
21. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements, Collective Action and
Politics, Chap. 5.
22. See, for example, Goldstone, Introduction. Bridging Institutionalized
and Noninstitutionalized Politics.
23. Banaszak, Inside and Outside the State: Movement Insider Status,

Tactics, and Public Policy Achievements; Banaszak, The Womens
Movement Inside and Outside the State.
24.
Goldstone, Introduction. Bridging Institutionalized and
Noninstitutionalized Politics, 2.
25.
26. Tarrow, Strangers at the Gates: Movements and States in Contentious
Politics, 22.
27. This argument has been presented, for example, by Giugni and Passy,
Contentious Politics in Complex Societies: New Social Movements
Between Conflict and Cooperation, 82.
28. Rossi, Conceptualizing Strategy Making in a Historical and Collective
Perspective, 38.
29. Rossi, Conceptualizing Strategy Making in a Historical and Collective
Perspective, 22.
30. Abers, Serafim and Tatagiba, Repertrios de Interao Estado-sociedade
em um Estado Heterogneo: A Experincia na Era Lula.
31.
32. E.g. Pettinicchio, Institutional Activism: Reconsidering the InsiderOutsider

Dichotomy; Rich, Grassroots Bureaucracy: Intergovernmental Relations
and Popular Mobilization in Brazils AIDS Sector; Abers and Tatagiba,
Institutional Activism: Mobilizing for Womens Health from Inside the
Brazilian Bureaucracy.
33. Goldstone, Introduction. Bridging Institutionalized and Non
institutionalized Politics.
34. Abers and von Blow, Movimentos Sociais na Teoria e na Prtica: Como
Estudar o Ativismo Atravs da Fronteira entre Estado e Sociedade?
35. Abers and Keck, Practical Authority: Agency and Institutional Change in
Brazilian Water Politics.
36. Whittier, Meaning and Structure in Social Movements, 289.
37. Houtzager, Introduction. From Polycentrism to the Polity, 2.
38. Rich, Grassroots Bureaucracy: Intergovernmental Relations and Popular
Mobilization in Brazils AIDS Sector.
39. Abers and Tatagiba, Institutional Activism: Mobilizing for Womens

Health from Inside the Brazilian Bureaucracy.
40. Silva and Oliveira, A Face Oculta(da) dos Movimentos Sociais: Trnsito
Institutional e Interseco Estado-movimentoUma Anlise do
Movimento de Economia Solidria no Rio Grande do Sul.
41. This social movement defends alternative ways of organizing the produc-
tion, based on worker cooperatives and the democratic administration of
firms. The term solidarity economy originated in the 1990s. Silva and
Oliveira, A face Oculta(da) dos Movimentos Sociais: Trnsito Institutional
e Interseco Estado- movimentoUma anlise do Movimento de
Economia Solidria no Rio Grande do Sul, 99100.
42. Melucci, Challenging Codes: Collective Action in the Information Age,
113115; Diani, Introduction: social movements, contentious actions,
and social networks: from metaphor to substance? 1.
43. Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America; Delamaza, Enhancing
Democracy.
44. von Blow, Building Transnational Networks: civil society and the politics of
trade in the Americas.
45. Caldern Gutirrez, La Protesta Social en Amrica Latina; Silva,
Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America; Rice, The New Politics of
Protest. Indigenous Moblization in Latin Americas Neoliberal Era.
46. Bidegain, Autonomizacin de los movimientos sociales e intensificacin
de la protesta: estudiantes y mapuches en Chile (1990-2013).
47. Roberts, Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in
Chile and Peru.
Chile and Peru, 86.
Chile and Peru, 89.
50. Huber and Stephens, Democracy and the Left: Social Policy and Inequality
in Latin America, 91.
51. Borzutsky, Vital Connections. Politics, Social Security, and Inequality in
Chile, 124125.
52. Posner, Local Democracy and the Transformation of Popular Participation
in Chile, 62.
53. Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes: Chile, 7377.
54. Oxhorn, Organizing Civil Society, 59.
55. Schneider, Radical Opposition Parties and Squatters Movements in

Pinochets Chile, 60.
56. Hipsher, Democratic Transitions as Protest Cycles: Social Movement

Dynamics in Democratizing Latin America, 159.
57. Garretn, Transicin Hacia la Democracia en Chile e Influencia Externa:
Dilemas y Perspectivas, 3.
58. Roberts, Deepening Democracy? The Modern left and Social Movements in
Chile and Peru, 1998, 85.
59. Almeida, Defensive Mobilization: Popular Movements Against Economic
Adjustment Policies in Latin America; Hipsher, Democratic Transitions
as Protest Cycles: Social Movement Dynamics in Democratizing Latin
America; Roberts, Deepening Democracy? The Modern left and Social
Movements in Chile and Peru.
60. Huber, Pribble and Stephens, The Chilean Left in Power, 80.
61. Huber, Pribble and Stephens, The Chilean Left in Power, 80; Posner,
The Chilean Left in Power, 59.
62. Garretn, Transicin hacia la democracia en Chile e influencia externa:
Dilemas y perspectivas, 12.
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CHAPTER 2
Shifting Relationships Between Social

Movements andInstitutional Politics
NicolsM.Somma andRodrigoMedel
Introduction
Why has collective protest boomed in Chile in the last decade? In this
chapter, we argue that this happens due, among other factors, to the
progressive detachment between social movements and political institu-
tional actorsa process beginning just after democratic restoration two
and a half decades ago. Such detachment is puzzling: Chile has histori-
cally shown a pattern of consistent alignment between social and politi-
cal forces.1 Even the long and harsh dictatorship of General Augusto
Pinochet (19731990) could not wash away this tradition. Thus, when
We thank Sofa Donoso and Marisa von Blow for their helpful and detailed
comments. We also thank Tania Manrquez and Daniela Paz Jacob for superb
research assistance with the interviews. We appreciate the support of three grants
from CONICYT Chile: CONICYT/FONDECYT/Iniciacin/11121147;
the Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES) CONICYT/
FONDAP/15130009; and the Center for Intercultural and Indigenous Research
(CIIR) (CONICYT-FONDAP 15110006).
N.M. Somma (*) R. Medel

Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile, Santiago, Chile

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_2
30 N.M. SOMMA AND R. MEDEL
Chile transitioned to democracy in 1990, there were strong ties between

political parties and organized civil society actors in terms of goals, orga-
nizational resources, and membership.
During the transition, the social and political forces supporting
Pinochet coalesced around a new political partythe Independent
Democratic Union (UDI), founded in 1983. UDI was supported by the
Movimiento Gremialoriginally a university movement born in the law
and economics departments at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
It was also supported by business organizations and the upper classes in
general. Those who opposed the dictatorship, in turn, forged a power-
ful coalition composed of popular movementsespecially squatters, stu-
dent and labor organizationsand by political parties from the center
(Christian Democrats) and the left (Socialist Party, Party for Democracy,
Radical Party, and Humanist Party, among others). Brought together by
their common opposition to the dictatorship, this heterogeneous coalition
generated the demonstrations in the streets and the ballots that forced the
transition.2 The political party side of the coalitionthe Concertacin de
Partidos por la Democraciaachieved power in 1990 and governed until
2010. In 2014, it won the national elections again in alliance with the
Communist Party and other leftist forces under the Nueva Mayora label.
Yet the social and the political sides of this broad center-left
alliance shattered as democracy consolidated.3 Early in the 1990s, the
Concertacin political elites severed their ties with social activists under
the belief that too much mobilization could endanger the newly restored
democracy and motivate a military coup.4 And, with the passage of time, it
became evident that the Concertacin governments could not or did not
want to engage in the structural reforms that post-transition movements
demanded in areas such as labor markets, education, indigenous rights,
the electoral system, and the environment, among others. As the case
studies of this edited book show, social movement activists thus became
increasingly disenchanted with and disaffected from institutional actors.
We focus on the progressive distancing between social movements on the
one hand, and center and leftist political parties and political elites on the
otherthose parties and elites that controlled the national government
for most of the period since 1990.
Combined with the atomizing effect of a market society imposed dur-
ing the dictatorship,5 this demobilization from above led to the frag-
mentation of collective action. During the first decade and a half after
the transition, protest remained relatively low in Chile. But, as we show
SHIFTING RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS... 31
in this chapter, by the mid-2000s, collective protest had boomed. While

Mapuche protest had a peak as early as the late 1990s, it was the 2006
Pingino movement, composed of secondary school students, which pio-
neered large public demonstrations. In the years that followed, protest
continued and expanded to other, hitherto passive social groups and con-
stituencies. The period of demobilization seemed to be over. Why?
This chapter argues that protest boomed, in part, due to the increas-
ing detachment between social movements and polity members such as
parties, governments, and political elites.6 This detachment involved both
the fact that political parties gradually lost their capacity to incorporate
social demands into their agendas and the fact that they no longer could
contain resulting discontent. Against this background, and once the shock
of disappointment with political elites waned, movements rearticulated
and shifted their goals, frames, and tactics away from institutional politics.
They secured their own strategies for mobilizing resources, relying little on
the largesse of parties, governments, and politicians. Increasingly detached
from institutional actors, social movements saw collective protest as the
most important way to press for change. However, not all movements
were capable of translating growing mobilization into political influence.
A comparison of the student movement and the Mapuche movement sug-
gests that, in the Chilean context, movements are influential as long as
they can launch massive protest campaigns in visible locations with a pre-
dominance of disruptive yet peaceful tactics.
Our chapter attempts to contribute to the lasting and ongoing inter-
national debatereviewed belowabout the relationship between social
movements and institutional politics. The Chilean case is interesting
in that respect because it shows that movement activity can boom and
noticeably influence the political process even under conditions of severely
strained relationships between political parties and movements. This chal-
lenges a widely accepted notion in the literaturethat movements are
more likely to flourish when they establish meaningful ties and alliances
with parties. Additionally, our analysis suggests that the limitations that
sometimes accompany newly restored democracies (i.e. scarcely propor-
tional electoral systems, encapsulated political parties, and authoritarian
enclaves) can drive a wedge between institutional politics and organized
social actors. This raises a question about whether this is an inexorable
outcome of newly restored democracies or rather depends on specific con-
ditions such as those in Chile, thus inviting comparative inquiries.
We focus on the student, Mapuche, andin the first part of the chap-
terenvironmental movements. We select these cases because they have
staged some of the most massive and/or notorious protest campaigns and
because, despite their differences in goals, tactics, and social composition,
they all illustrate how detachment from institutional actors shapes col-
lective protest. We also present analyses of protest patterns with general
population surveys that are consistent with our argument. This does not
mean that the argument applies to every movement. Rather, we seek to
foster the development of a future research agenda. Our timeframe starts
with the transition to democracy in 1990, but we pay more attention to
the last decade. We combine secondary research produced by social sci-
entists, general population survey data, and a unique dataset which covers
thousands of protest events across the country between 2000 and 2012.
We also take advantage of 36 semi-structured interviews with leaders of
student, environmental, and Mapuche organizations. The interviews12
for each of the three groupswere carried out in 2014 in the cities of
Santiago and Temuco.
Examining the relationship between social movements and pol-
ity members, we follow Tilly, who coined that concept for referring to
contenders for political power that have low-cost access to governmental
resources on a routine basis.7 We consider the main polity members in
contemporary Chilepolitical parties, the congress, and the national gov-
ernment. Of course, not all polity members are equal. For instance, during
the period under study, the Communist Party may be considered a polity
member, but it certainly had less access to governmental resources than
the Christian Democratic Party under President Eduardo Frei or than the
Socialist Party under Ricardo Lagos or Michelle Bachelet. Additionally,
other polity memberssuch as the judicial system or the policemay be
consequential for protest but they are not part of our story. Also, we focus
on center and leftist parties because their changing relationships with
social movements are more relevant for understanding protest than those
between movements and rightist partieswhose relationships were always
very weak during this period. By institutional politics, we refer to the
structures, rules, and interactions in which polity members are embedded.
The structure of the chapter is as follows. The next section presents
two theoretical views about how relations between movements and pol-
ity members shape collective protestnamely, the closeness thesis and the
detachment thesis. After this, we document the growth of collective protest
in Chile during the last decade. Then we present our assessment of the
increasing detachment of social movements from institutional actors. But
protest and impact are different things. Based on a comparison between
the student and the Mapuche movement, we argue that in order to shape
political outcomes, movements need to be able to utilize massive, visible,
and disruptive tacticssmall and isolated protests, even if frequent and
violent, are less impactful. The last section summarizes and concludes.
Two Theses ontheRelations Between Social

Movements andPolity Members: Closeness
andDetachment
How does the interaction between polity members and social movements
affect the emergence and intensity of collective protest? The literature
on this subject is vast and complex and it has not reached a consensus.
However, even at the cost of some simplification, we derive two theses
that are useful for addressing our research question: the closeness and the
detachment theses.
The closeness thesis can be derived from a considerable part of the
literature on the political process approach.8 In democratic settings, rela-
tions between social movements and polity members are not static. When
movements and polity members get close to each other, social movement
activity increaseswith collective protest being one form such activity may
take.9 Closeness means, for instance, that movements and polity members
build alliances and share goals, tactics, and organizational structures. It
may also mean that polity members support (or at least are sympathetic
to) policies that favor movement demands, that they certify the moral
stature or intentions of movements,10 or that movements explicitly adhere
to the agendas of polity members and endorse certain candidates during
electoral times. All these aspects may change across time.
When movements get close to polity members, they may be aware that
they have powerful allies they can rely on. They become less vulnerable to
stigmatization by the media and to harsh and arbitrary repression by police
forces. Movement leaders and constituencies feel more optimistic and
empowered. Hence, they mobilize moreone way of doing so is through
collective protest. Examples of this thesis abound. Part of the increased col-
lective mobilization and activity of the American Civil Rights Movement dur-
ing the 1960s has been attributed to the sympathetic Democrat authorities
of the time.11 And the increase of protest demonstrations in the Soviet Union
in the late 1980s was clearly linked to Gorbachevs openness to reform and
citizen participation.12
Of course, the political process theory is very broad, and it encompasses
important dimensions that go beyond the distance between movements
and polity members. Some of these dimensions refer to electoral systems,
state strength, forms of government, and prevailing strategies toward chal-
lengers.13 But these dimensions tend to vary little across timein general,
and in particular in Chile during our timeframe. Thus, they are less useful
for making sense of the sudden increase of collective protest in Chile than
the shifting relationships between movements and polity members.
The detachment thesis makes a different prediction: protest booms
when movements and polity members are detached from each other.
Detachment often goes hand in hand with disillusionment toward polity
members. After considerable spans of time, polity members may eventu-
ally fail to channel long-standing social demands and redress collective
grievances. Aggrieved groups thus support less and less the policies and
platforms of political elites and their electoral candidacies. Citizen confi-
dence in political institutions declines and representation weakens.14 In
this context, protest is seen as the most effective way to press for change.
We built the detachment thesis inductively from the Chilean case, but
it might also be useful for understanding protests in Bolivia in the early
2000s.15 It is also consistent with Arces Latin American cross-national
analysis, which shows that protest increases as the quality of democratic
representationembodied in political partiesdecreases.16
Below we explore the usefulness of both theses for understanding the
recent increase of collective protest in Chile. As said before, these two theses
do not capturenor aim to do sothe complexity of the literature on the
subject (which often considers nonlinear hypotheses, see e.g. Eisinger 1973).
However, they provide a straightforward way of addressing our empirical
puzzle of booming protest in Chilea puzzle we describe in the next section.
Growing Collective Protest inChile

Researchers generally agree that protest has boomed in Chile in the last
few years, but they rarely provide systematic evidence to support this
claim.17 We contribute to filling this gap by presenting our dataset of 2342
protest events taking place throughout Chile between January 1, 2000,
and August 31, 2012.18
Graph 2.1 plots the evolution of the number of protest events in Chile,
both for all the claims raised by protestors and for five main claims that
account for most protest activityeducational, environmental, labor, indig-
enous, and regionalist claims.19 The main finding is that protest has been
growing steadily from 2003 to 2004 onwards. This remains true when
considering all types of claims as well as when considering each of the main
issue claimsalthough the increase is more moderate for labor claims.
But does this increase also mean that more people became involved in
collective protest? Graph 2.2, which plots the estimated number of par-
ticipants in protest events,20 shows that the answer is positive. Since 2003,
not only have more protest events taken place but more people have also
become involved in protests related to each of the claims considered as
well as in general. It is outside the scope of this chapter to explain varia-
tions across the slopes of the different claims.
All Educational Environmental

100 200 300 400
Number of protest events
0
Indigenous Labor Regionalist

100 200 300 400
0
2000 2004 2008 2012 2000 2004 2008 2012 2000 2004 2008 2012
year
Graph 2.1 Evolution of the number of protest events in Chile by demand type.
Source: Protest events dataset based on Chronologies of Protest produced by the
Latin American Center of Social Sciences (CLACSO)s chronologies of protest.
Figures for 2012 were estimated extrapolating data available from January to August
All Educational Environmental

Estimated number of participants in protest (log)
500 1000 1500 2000
0
Indigenous Labor Regionalist

500 1000 1500 2000
0
2000 2004 2008 2012 2000 2004 2008 2012 2000 2004 2008 2012
year
Graph 2.2 Evolution of the estimated number of participants in protest events

in Chile by demand type. Source: Protest events dataset based on CLACSOs
chronologies of protest. Figures for 2012 were estimated extrapolating data avail-
able from January to August
Detached Social Movements

The flourishing of protest in the last decade raises the question about the
role polity members may have played in this change. The closeness thesis
would expect this increase to result from the strengthening of the ties
between movements and polity members. The detachment thesis, in turn,
suggests that the change should result from a growing distance between
them. Below we show that the gulf between movements and institutional
actors has grown since redemocratization in 1990.
Protestors Are Increasingly Disengaged fromInstitutional

Politics21
To explore the relationships between movements and polity members, and
the ways they changed across time, we start by considering what happened
at the mass levelthen we look at organizations and their interactions. To
what extent are those who participate in collective protest in Chile engaged
with institutional politics? How has this changed across time? We follow
Verba etal.s notion of political engagement, which refers to psychological
predispositions toward political objects as reflected in measures of interest in
politics, political efficacy, and trust in political institutions among others.22
The closeness thesis would imply not only that those who protest are
more engaged with institutional politics than the rest but also that these
associations increased across time. This would indicate comparatively
stronger ties between movements and polity members, which should
explain the increase in protest. The detachment thesis would imply that
such associations, even if positive, decrease across time, reflecting the
growing distance between movements and polity members. Jumping
ahead, that is what we find.
To address these questions, we use the World Values Survey (WVS),
which was applied to representative samples of the Chilean adult popula-
tion in 1990, 1996, 2000, 2006, and 2012. The WVS of 1990, which cap-
tures the democratic transition period, reports relatively strong and positive
associations between several pairs of variablespairs in which one variable
relates to protest and the other refers to political institutional engagement.
Protest measures include participation in demonstrations, boycotts and
strikes, occupying buildings, and signing petitions. Institutional political
engagement measures include political interest, political discussions, impor-
tance of politics, trust in political parties, and vote propensity.23 Average
polychoric correlations are 0.37 and in many cases well above 0.50.24 That
is, those who by 1990 used to engage in a wide array of protest tactics also
used to trust more in parties, be more interested in politics, discuss politics
more, and so on than those who did not protest.
But these statistical associations decrease systematically across time.
From the average of 0.37in 1990, the average association between pro-
test and political engagement (considering all possible pairs of indicators)
drops to 0.25 in 2000, and to 0.18 in 2012. Moreover, many of these
associations lose statistical significance across time. At least at the mass
level, protest and institutional politics took increasingly divergent paths.
Political Parties Barely Participate inCollective Protests

Another way of exploring the relations between movements and polity
members consists of examining with our dataset of protest events (which
covers the period 20002012) how common it is that political partiesa
key polity memberpartake in collective proteststhe traditional activity
of social movements. Party protest, as we label this phenomenon, hap-

pens when leaders, activists, and/or sympathizers of political parties par-
ticipate in protest events and identify themselves as suchtypically through
public statements and chants or by carrying flags, banners, posters, or other
visible signs related to their party.
Although the subject of party protest can be pursued more extensively,25
in this chapter it suffices to note three findings. First, party protest is rare
in Chile: we found evidence of party presence in only about 6% of protest
events between 2000 and 2012. This is consistent with the detachment
thesis. Second, not all parties are equally prone to participate in protests.
The Communist Party (including its youth wing) remains very relevant,
accounting for about 60 % of all party protest, and is followed from a
considerable distance by the Socialist Party (9.2%), the Humanist Party
(6.9%), and the Party for Democracy (4.6%). The Christian Democrats
protest very little, and the rightist parties (UDI and National Renewal) do
not protest at all. The Communist Party is a less powerful polity member
than any of the others mentioned above (except the Humanist Party). It
lacked congressional representation from 1990 until 2009, its vote share
has been consistently lowtypically between 4% and 6%and only in
2013 became a member of the Concertacin (or Nueva Mayora, the gov-
erning coalitions more recent name). Finally, consistent with the detach-
ment thesis, there is a marked decrease in party protest since 2006. While
in the 20002006 period there was party presence in about 10% of all
protest events, this drops to about 4% for the 20072012 period.
Movements Rely Little inPolity Members forMobilizing Resources

Based on resource mobilization theory,26 we could argue that an important
dimension of the relations between movements and polity members relates
to the extent to which the latter channel resources to the former. How do
Chilean movements obtain much-needed financial and social resources27
for sustaining growing protest? If protest results from the strong ties unit-
ing movements and polity members (as the closeness thesis implies), we
should find that resources come from state and governmental funds, pro-
grams and policies, as well as donations from political parties or individual
political leaders. But if protest results from the detachment of movements
from institutional politics, we should find that resources come from other
venuesyet definitely not from polity members. For assessing this point,
we interviewed 36 movement leaders of environmental, student, and
Mapuche organizations.28 In a nutshell, interviews suggest that Chilean

organizations rely very marginally on institutional actors when it comes
to mobilizing resourcesthey rely on a wide array of other sources. What
follows is a first approximation of this topic, which in future research could
be complemented with quantitative data on funding sources and strategies.
Chilean environmental organizations linked to global environmen-
tal networks obtain much of their resources from international founda-
tions and foreign governments, especially European onessuch as the
Rosa Luxembourg Foundation, the Packard Foundation, Oxfam, and the
Finnish Embassy. Organizations also occasionally benefit from rich indi-
vidual donorsas was the case of the Patagonia Without Dams campaign,
whose stability and material existence heavily depended on the support of
Douglas Tompkinss Pumaln Foundation.29 Some organizations benefit
from small funds provided by the Chilean state, but these are tiny. One
interviewed put it this way: in Chile there are no state funds for sustain-
ing oneself. Well, the Environment Protection Fund, it is 2 million pesos,
but with 2 million pesos you cannot pay even four salaries, nor a single
month. Environmental leaders emphasized, however, that they only apply
for funding to those sources that do not curtail their autonomy or that
at least have a political or ideological orientation that is consistent with
theirs. As the leader of an organization with important international links
put it, We have decided institutionally not to accept funds that condi-
tion our decisionsthat is, we protect as much as possible our autonomy.
Especially since the context applies so much economic and political pres-
sure, we try to fund ourselves with resources that do not imply any form
of external conditioning.
Smaller organizations that face environmental hazards in specific
localitieswith a not-in-my-backyard stylehave different funding strate-
gies. These organizations are more spontaneous, less professionalized, and
often disappear once the conflict that motivated them recedes. As they do
not have the expertise or infrastructure to apply for international funds,
they mobilize local resources from the affected communities, with neigh-
bors providing small monetary donations or voluntary workin ways that
resemble Morris description of the American Civil Rights movement.30
Occasionally, they receive support from the mayor, which may side with
the community in opposition to a common threat. According to the leader
of a neighborhood association: We reach an agreement with the mayor
In a board meeting, we define the date of the protest, and manage to
convoke the people, and also we get the mayor on board. Because, if we
go to Santiago [Chiles capital] the mayor lends us the buses. Yet these
approaches remain within the boundaries of local politics. They rarely
escalate into contacts with the party the mayor belongs.
The university student movement mobilizes material resources in ways
clearly different from those employed by the environmental movement,
but both movements have in common their low reliance on polity mem-
bers. Student federationsthe highest representative body of students at
the university levelreceive many of their financial resources from their
respective universities. And student centers, which represent the students
of specific colleges within universities, are also supported by the deans
office. As these resources come from the universities students belong to,
they cannot be used with complete autonomy, but the range of activities
they support is considerable. These go beyond academic or recreational
activities and may involve public awareness campaigns on certain topics
as well as protest logistics (such as making or purchasing protest flyers,
banners, and kits for alleviating the effects of teargases in marches). Some
student leaders also noted that parties and the government have no say
regarding how to spend these resources.
Student organizations obtain the remaining resources from a wide array
of activities such as parties, music shows, raffles, and academic activities
with renowned intellectuals. Resources occasionally come from donations
from better-off adults such as parents and faculty members, who feed stu-
dents during occupations and strikes. A student leader relates that any
time there is action, or at the beginning of the year, we organize a fun-
draising campaign with friends, parents and professors. Professors tend
to be an important source of funding because we are close to them.
Some student organizations require regular money contributions from
their members. As most studentsespecially those from the so-called
traditional universitiescome from the middle or upper classes, they are
successful at extracting resources from their social networks.
Finally, student organizations engaged in protest activities often ben-
efit from the human capital of students or recent graduates. Medicine
and nursing students take care of wounded students in demonstrations,
law students work on the legal dimensions of reform proposals presented
by the movement, and music and theater students stage cultural perfor-
mances. As an interviewee put it, our advantage is our cultural capital,
the university keeps growing, and everybody donates their professional
and technical skills.
What role do political parties play in this story? Some interviewees sug-
gest that the Communist Party and the Socialist Party channel resources
to leftist student organizations, while the conservative right UDI benefits
student groups aligned with their ideologyparticularly the Movimiento
Gremial at the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile. We do not have
estimates about the quantitative relevance of such resources, but accord-
ing to the interviewees they seem to be just one among many sources.
Out of the three movements considered here in some detail, the
Mapuche movement perhaps relies least on institutional politics in terms
of resources (although some organizations partially do so, as noted
below). There are two broad types of Mapuche organizations and they
differ in that respect.31 Some are oriented toward cultural goals such as
promoting and preserving Mapuche identity and language, developing
intercultural educational programs, or improving the socioeconomic
situation of the Mapuche people through educational fellowships and
access to health services. Mostly based in urban areas, they feel comfort-
able within the institutional framework of the Chilean state and often
receive resources from it through the National Corporation of Indigenous
Development (CONADI), the Funds for Art (FONDART) program, and
the Indigenous Development Area (ADI) program. Although they may
also rely on self-produced resources,32 these organizations depend to a
considerable extent on institutional politics.
The situation is different for organizations with a more radical stance
such as the All Lands Council or the Coordinadora AraucoMalleco
(CAM). They do not identify with Chile as a nation and aim at political
autonomy. They heavily engage in disruptive and violent protest tactics.
Clandestine or semi-clandestine as they are, they do not receive funds
from polity members whatsoeverthey find it contradictory to be sup-
ported by an institutional order they do not want to be part of. Also, many
polity members from across the political spectrum are unwilling to sup-
port organizations which they believe commit terrorist acts. These organi-
zations rather depend on resources from the aggrieved communities. They
organize cultural festivals and receive donations from other sympathetic
groups from civil society. They also collect food and clothes for the fami-
lies of jailed Mapuche commoners or for those besieged by police forces.
These funding sources are not constant but sporadic and linked to par-
ticular situations. As one Mapuche interviewed put it, there is no funding
that endures across time there are donations at particular junctures.
Movements Build Their Collective Action Frames asaReaction

totheDeficiencies ofInstitutional Politics
The detachment of Chilean social movements from institutional politics
goes beyond the mobilization of tangible resources. It also affects the
crafting of movements collective action frames. As noted by framing the-
orists, movements use collective action frames for identifying problems,
attributing blame, proposing solutions, and creating beliefs about the
urgency and efficacy of collective action. All these converge in an enlarged
and more powerful mass of activists.33
A closeness explanation of the rise of protest in Chile suggests the
existence of strong links between movements and polity members. This
implies, empirically, a substantial overlap in the contents of the frames
espoused by movements and the discourses and actions of polity members.
The detachment thesis, however, claims that protest booms as movements
and polity members detach from each other, and this in turn implies that
movement frames have little resemblance with policy members discourses
and actions. We hold this last view, but we do not claim that movement
frames develop independently from polity members actions. Rather, we
see movement frames as a reaction to the inability of polity members
to address the problems detected by movementswe call this reactive
framing. While a systematic analysis of this topic would require an entire
chapter, here we offer some evidence for our argument.
Consider for instance the environment. While post-transition gov-
ernments certainly modified in several ways environmental institutions,
they rarely challenged the economic orientation inherited from dictator-
ship, which creates enormous incentives for companies to extract natural
resources with negative consequences for the environment and human
health. Environmental concerns were never a top priority among Chilean
parties, and Chilean leftist parties did never turn greenan intermittent
green caucus (bancada verde), mostly but not exclusively composed of
Concertacin congressmen, could not boost significant reforms. In fact,
environmental priorities decreased among the Chilean congressmen.34
Environmental political parties have been traditionally weak and partisan
think tanks do not have environmental issues among their main priorities.
Under such conditions, polity members could never be a hub of ideologi-
cal inspiration for environmental movements.
In this context, the collective action frames of Chilean environmen-
tal organizations are largely a reaction to the existing model of exploita-
tion of natural resources and to the inability of polity members to address
environmental problems.35 These frames emphasize how, in a neoliberal

context that imposes little state regulation and in which common goods
such as water are privatized, companies profit from overexploiting natural
resources. This has a host of negative consequences, from the halving of
the native forest and the extinction of many animal species, to the ero-
sion of lands, the contamination of rivers, and severe health problems for
human communities located nearby the sites of exploitation. Especially
after the Ralco conflict in the 1990s, environmental organizations started
blaming post-transition governments for not having implemented signifi-
cant reforms in that respect, and private entrepreneurs for just being inter-
ested in making money disregarding its consequences.36 Thus, sources
other than the Chilean polity nurture these frames. These include interna-
tional models about environmental activismas in the case of GreenPeace
Chile and research centers such as the Latin American Observatory of
Environmental Conflicts (OLCA)or the domestic elaborations of reac-
tive organizations emerging inlocal communities affected by environmen-
tal hazards.
The collective action frames of the university student movement also
stand in sharp contrast with the contents of the educational policies car-
ried out by post-transition governments. There is no such thing as a single
movement framedifferent student organizations across universities have
their own views. However, some notions are widespread across movement
organizationsfor instance, that the Chilean education system is in crisis,
that it is absurdly expensive, and that this forces most would-be students
to take burdensome loans from the state and private banks, which is seen
as unfair. Also widespread are the beliefs that there are considerable differ-
ences in the quality of the education provided by different institutions and
that the state is not preventing educational entrepreneurs from making
illegal profits. Students blame several actors for this situation, from the
military governmentwhich stimulated the privatization of the system
to the post-transition polity memberswhich did not reform it structur-
ally. In terms of prognosis, the mainstream discourse within the movement
aims at guaranteeing state funding for all university studentsso that the
education becomes a universal right rather than a consumption good.
These frames are to a considerable extent a reaction to the moderation
(in view of the movements goals) of the reforms carried out by post-
transition governments. While they dramatically increased public expendi-
ture in education and boosted secondary and tertiary coverage, they did
not de-commodify the system.37
Finally, the trajectory of part of the Mapuche movement provides the

starkest example of reactive distancing from institutional politics in terms
of frames and goals. During the early 1990s, many Mapuche organizations
believed that the new democratic era would come with definitive answers
to their long-lasting demandsincluding the preservation of their tradi-
tional ways of life, the protection of their natural environments, and the
devolution of usurped ancestral lands. The creation of the CONADI in
1993 fed some of these expectations.
Yet the CONADI was less consequential than many expected. It did not
stop the continuous exploitation of lands and forests and the buildings of
energy projects that altered the Mapuche environment and communities.
Meanwhile, the repression of resisting Mapuche communities increased,
and in 1997, President Eduardo Frei removed some CONADI members
who opposed his views. As Bidegain shows in his chapter in this volume, all
this converged, by the late 1990s, in the tactical radicalization of protests
and the emergence of new organizations that sought political autonomy
and the emancipation of the Mapuche people (though it is important to
recall that many organizations did not follow this path). Thus, according
to the Coordinadora Arauco Malleco (CAM), the Chilean state imposes a
Western, foreign culture on the Mapuche people, which includes an alien
state, judicial system, and economic system.38 Organizations like the CAM
see Chilean polity members as merely protecting and reproducing this
system. From this perspective, resistance and violent protest remained as
the only plausible path. It is difficult to imagine a case of detachment from
polity members as severe as that of autonomist Mapuche organizations.
Movement Links withPolity Members Are Mostly Instrumental

Detachment does not mean that the relationships between Chilean social
movements and polity members are inexistent. Because many of the
changes that movements demand require legislative decisions and actions
taken by political authorities, they must try to influence them, and this
often requires engaging in negotiations.
We asked the social movement leaders we interviewed how they and
their organizations relate with polity members. Many recognize that they
have ties to some politicians, authorities, and political parties, but these
ties are mostly characterized as instrumental, sporadic, and shaped by mis-
trust. According to the interviewees, movement leaders tend to contact
politicians only when needing their help with specific problems or issues,
and politicians are receptive to movements only when the latter man-
age to stage large and visible protests. As an environmental leader put it,
when our organizations manage to lead a social movement, then political
actors immediately start flattering usso to speak. When mobilization
recedes and they control the situation from the political structures, well,
they become less interested in dialoguing with us. Encounters between
politicians and activists may take place in private settingslike the homes
of politiciansor in public ones. They are often tense and sometimes they
end up in altercations. According to some activists, this stems from their
dissatisfaction with politicians, who continuously make promises they
rarely honor.
Thus, many student organizations are flatly detached from the politi-
cal status quo. As one student leader put it: When you say party, they
[the students] tell you no, I have nothing to do with parties. Parties
are like AIDS, in the past everybody wanted them, now nobody wants
parties. And almost the same happens with authorities. Since most stu-
dents are indifferent to or have negative views on political parties, leaders
who appear to follow the dictates of a given party rather than that of the
student body can lose their positions. Leaders tied to parties thus usually
downplay such attachments. They rather emphasize that they only follow
the will of students as reflected in assembliesto the point they call them-
selves spokesmen rather than (center or federation) presidents. This is
consistent, since the mid-1990s, with the emergence of an autonomist
wing within the student movement that emphasizes horizontal organiza-
tional structures.39 Though self-identified with the political left, this wing
rejected the moderation of Concertacin governments. Its most visible
organizations were the SurDA initially, the Front of Libertarian Students,
and the Autonomous Left led by Gabriel Boric.
In the case of the Mapuche movement, there has never been in Chile a
strong indigenous party. During the last decade, the Wallmapuwen party
has attempted to become one, but it faced insurmountable obstacles to
even acquire legal existence. This stands in sharp contrast with regional
experiences of powerful indigenous parties like the Bolivian MAS and the
Ecuadorian Pachakutik.40
This is not the whole picture, though. Going back to the interviews,
some environmental leaders seem to have relatively harmonious relations
with specific politicians of different parties, some of which become allies.
For instance, a local environmental leader explains that we have the
support of a senator that has accompanied us to present the protection
resource [a legal figure] and is always asking what we are working on, and
he is the only one that stands with the people. Likewise, seven out of
the nine presidential candidates in the 2013 elections signed a declaration
drafted by environmental activists in which they pledged to protect the
Patagonia area from large-scale projects if elected.41 This affinity between
political leaders and activists partially results from the fact that, as one
interviewee noted, many environmental leaders and most members of the
political class share a common upper-class background. They may even
have overlapping friendship and family networks. This creates trust and
eases relations despite ideological differences.
Additionally, as suggested above, some student organizations are
organically tied to the Communist Party and the Socialist Party, while oth-
ers are tied to UDI.Likewise, Mapuche organizations that value govern-
mental programs targeted at indigenous communities also establish good
working relationships with wingka (non-Mapuche) politicians that secure
the provision of state resources. These organizations are also tied to a large
number of Mapuche mayorscurrently gathered in the Association of
Municipalities with Mapuche Mayors.
In sum, while the interviews reveal that there is variation in the strength
of the links between movement organizations and polity members, these
links are generally ephemeral, instrumental, and shaped by suspicion,
all of which is consistent with our identification of the detachment of
social movements. Organic, collaborative ties do exist but seem to be an
exception.
Can Movements BeInfluential Even If Detached?

TheRole ofProtest Tactics
The previous section argued that in the present Chilean social movements
are considerably detached from institutional politics. Is lack of influence
the price movements have to pay for such detachment? This is not neces-
sarily the case. Movements can be detached and influential as long as they
manage to display protest tactics powerful enough to press governments
to act in ways that address movement demands. We illustrate this claim
by comparing the very influential student movement and the less influen-
tial Mapuche movement. We select them because they are two important
movements that vary markedly in their degree of influence. This allows
us to better explore why such variation takes place (we will not consider
the environmental movement in the following analysis since it stands in
an intermediate position in that respect). We emphasize tactics but do not

deny the role of other factors in shaping movements influence. For space
reasons, we cannot address them here.
The student movement is possibly the one that elicited the most favor-
able responses from the Chilean governments of the last decade (which
includes both Alianza and Concertacin administrations). The 2006
protest campaign of secondary studentsthe so-called pinginos (pen-
guins)was arguably the decisive factor that moved the Bachelet govern-
ment to craft a broad political coalition that replaced the Organic Law of
Education (LOCE, inherited from the Pinochet era) by a new law, the
General Law of Education (LGE). While not all student demands were
addressed, the new law reduced the capacity of schools to discriminate
against students for economic reasons and tightened the requirements
schools had to meet for gaining official recognition.42 The 20112012
massive protest campaignthis time led by university studentswas also
very consequential. It moved Sebastin Pieras government to substan-
tially increase public funding for education, reduce the interest rates of
educational loans provided by the state from 6% to 2%, and establish top
loan payments after graduation. Reforms also included the creation of a
public agency in charge of supervising the system, and prohibited com-
mercial banks from providing educational loans. Universities suspected
of malpractice were prosecuted and closed.43 Finally, the flagship policy
of the current center-left government presided by Michelle Bachelet
the educational reformis closely related to the demands of the student
movement, which also has translated into an increased influence of former
student leaders through their hiring at the Ministry of Education.
If the student movement was highly influential, the Mapuche move-
ment can be placed on the opposite side of the spectrum. The current
institutional framework regarding indigenous issues was set up in 1993
by Law 19.253, which implemented a fund for transferring ancestral lands
to the Mapuche people and improving their socioeconomic situation.
Slow advances and government mismanagement led to a radicalization
of Mapuche protest in the late 1990s and deepened the conflict between
them and the Chilean state. The Bachelet and Piera governments imple-
mented new programssuch as the Origins Program and the Araucana
Planwhich were less effective than expected. Also, they did not prevent
the expansion of energy projects that ended up harming Mapuche com-
munities and lifestyles as well as their access to natural resources. The most
important innovation was the ratification in 2008 of Convention No. 169
of the International Labor Organization, which nonetheless did not have

a major impact.44
Additionally, the Mapuche activists were more systematically and heav-
ily repressed than students. For instance, according to our protest events
dataset, only 19% of those educational protests which had some type of
police repression can be characterized as experiencing violent repression
(by which we mean that there were injuries or deaths during the protest
or that the police used firearms). Yet violent repression took place in 47%
of the corresponding Mapuche protests. Going beyond protest events
themselves, repression also involved violent police encroachments into
Mapuche communities (a phenomenon without counterpart for student
organizations) and the application to Mapuche activists of the antiterrorist
law, which increased punishments compared to regular laws. This led to
many Mapuche casualties over the years, creating deep grievances which
fueled more protest.
How can we make sense of differences in movement influence? We first
develop an argument based on the literature about tactics and movement
impacts.45 We then use it for understanding our cases.
One of the most important drives of governmental officials is to increase
their chances of staying in office in future administrations. In democra-
cies, this ultimately depends on winning more votes than competitors, and
this in turn depends on their popularity and public approval. When fac-
ing demands by social movements, governmental leaders will try to act in
ways that increase, maintain, or at least do not hurt their public approval.
Movements can thus be influential if authorities perceive them as capable
of affecting such approval.46 This, in turn, will depend on, among other
things, the features of their collective protests. Specifically, four features
of protests will provide relevant information to governments about the
capacity of movements to shape their public approval: protests massive-
ness, public visibility, disruptiveness, and violence.
First, the massiveness of protests is likely to be read by politicians as an
indicator of the level of popular discontent. Because massive discontent
risks reducing governmental approval and damaging future electoral per-
formances, governments have more incentives to make more concessions
to larger protest groups.47 Massive protests are also threatening to govern-
ments because they open opportunities for smaller movements and may
create protest cascades.48
The public visibility of protests also matters. Protests taking place in
large cities are more likely to be extensively covered by the mass media,
and more residents and bystanders can have a first-hand experience of

it. Visibility multiplies the impact of massivenessmore people who are
protesting are seen by more people who are watchingand therefore
increases its influence on public opinion. Also, when visibility is high,
more bystanders are exposed to police repression to protesters, and the
media are more likely to spread images of repression that may end up
hurting governmental approval.49 Conversely, protests taking place in
smaller communities have fewer bystanders and lower media coverage.
Also, repression toward activists will be less likely to damage governmental
public approval. The testimonies of repressed activists can be more easily
camouflaged, delayed, or distorted by police agents. Low protest visibility
makes movements less influential.
Third, scholars have also studied the consequences of disruptive versus
nondisruptive protest.50 Disruptive protest (like blocking roads or occupy-
ing buildings) creates obstacles for the routine activities of the population
and the authorities.51 This decreases governmental popularity because the
affected groups feel that the government is not protecting them. Thus,
governments have strong incentives for suppressing disruptive tactics.
However, if disruptive protest takes place in visible places, governments
will favor deactivation through concessions rather than repression, there-
fore increasing movement influence.
Finally, we consider the role of violent protest.52 The same as most
people do not like governmental repression, they do not like activist vio-
lence, which is usually considered illegitimate.53 Some groups may ask the
government to use an iron hand to show protestors who rules here,
motivating government repressionwhich more people will consider
appropriate given the violent nature of protestors. Violent groups will also
elicit fewer concessions from governments: governments do not want the
public to see them as weak enough to give up to violent groups. For the
opposite reasons, less violent movements may elicit less repression and
more concessions, ultimately becoming more influential.
Consequential Differences inCollective Protest: TheStudent

andMapuche Movements
Guided by the previous discussion, next we explore the tactical differ-
ences between the student and the Mapuche movements using our protest
events dataset. While many other factors are at play for explaining their
differential outcomes, we believe that protest tactics is an important one.
Student protests are by all measures more massive than Mapuche pro-
tests. This is evident, first, in Graph 2.2 above. Not only do more people
participate in student protests each year but also the gap increases across
time. Also, student protest events are much larger than Mapuche events
(respectively, an average of 10,187 vs. 698 participants). Excluding events
with more than 15,000 participants (which may disproportionately affect
averages) also yields average student protests about five times larger than
Mapuche protests (2507 vs. 542 participants, respectively). This is consis-
tent with common wisdom. Both in 2006, but especially in 2011, student
marches gathered dozens of thousands of protestors. During some days
in the winter of 2011, it is estimated that more than 100,000 people took
the streets across the country. These were the most massive marches in
Chile since those that, in the late 1980s, contributed to the transition to
democracy.
Why were student protests so massive? In part, as noted below, because
the number of youngsters with access to higher education is also massive.
Also, as most students require a loan for studying, the collective action
frames spread by movement leaders regarding free education resonate
among a wider group of people. Why were Mapuche protests smaller? The
Mapuche people represent a small proportion of the population (about
4% according to the 2002 census).54 They are geographically segregated
about half of them are concentrated in Regions IX and Xand have lower
levels of education, employment, and income than the non-Mapuche pop-
ulation, as well as higher poverty rates.55 All these factors tend to depress
protest participation.56
Student protests are not only more massive but also more visible than
Mapuche protests. An indicator of visibility is the population size of
the province where the protest takes placelarger provinces have more
bystanders and typically more media coverage. Table 2.1 shows the six
provinces with the largest proportion of protest events for educational
and Mapuche demands and the respective province population. A total of
71% of all student protests took place in the highly populated province
of Santiago, the central province in the countrys capital, which comprises
the downtown and La Moneda (the Presidential Palace). By contrast, only
19% of Mapuche protests took place in Santiago. Beyond Santiago, about
15 % of student protests took place in Valparaso and Concepcin, two
other central and populous localities. Yet most of the Mapuche protests
outside Santiago are scattered across less populated provinces (particularly
Cautn, Malleco, and Arauco, in the center-south of the country). Thus, it
Table 2.1 Provinces where student and Mapuche protests took place (Chile,
20002012)
Student protests Mapuche protests
Province % of protests Province population Province % of protests Province population
Santiago 70.8 4,668,473 Cautn 28.4 667,920

Valparaso 11.1 876,022 Malleco 24.4 201,615
Concepcin 4.8 912,889 Santiago 19.1 4,668,473
Cautn 3.1 667,920 Arauco 7.3 157,255
Iquique 1.7 238,950 Valdivia 4.7 356,396
Copiap 1.2 155,713 Concepcin 3.2 912,889
Others 7.4 Others 13.0
Total 100 Total 100
Source: Protest events dataset based on CLACSOs chronologies of protest. Population figures come from
http://www.ine.cl/cd2002/
is harder for Mapuche protests to capture the attention of the public, the
media, and ultimately political authorities.
The high visibility of student protests did not prevent police repression,
which was hard at times and about which there were innumerable com-
plaints by human rights organizations. Yet high visibility forced under-
cover police operations and possibly limited the brutality of repression, at
least compared to Mapuche repression in the countryside. Bystanders and
the media could easily notice and register police excesses against students.
Moreover, nowadays most students have cell phones that allow them to
take pictures and record video. Yet many Mapuche protests took place in
rural areas (landed estates or fundos), where police repression is less likely
to trigger the mass media and public opinion dynamics that end up harm-
ing governmental approval.
Finally, student and Mapuche protest also differ in their tactical rep-
ertoires. Table 2.2 shows the percentage distribution of tactics employed
in student and Mapuche protests. We identify five types of tactics: pacific
(e.g. marches or demonstrations), artistic (e.g. music or theatrical perfor-
mances), disruptive non-violent (e.g. strikes, blockings roads, or occupying
buildings), self-destructive (e.g. hunger strikes), and violent (e.g. damag-
ing public or private property, setting things on fire, engaging in lootings,
or attacking police forces). Both movements essentially rely on pacific and
non-violent disruptive tactics, but the latter are proportionally more prom-
inent among students (40.1% vs. 31.7%). Also, students rely slightly more
on artistic tactics (4.8% vs. 3.1%), while Mapuche protest depends more
on self-destructive (7.5% vs 2.5%) and violent (18.3% vs 11.5%) tactics.
Why do these tactical differences matter for understanding movement
influence? Student protests were very disruptive, actually more than sug-
gested by Table 2.2. Student marches in the main city avenues impeded
the routine activities of many citizens and institutions. The seizing of edu-
cational buildings halted the normal teaching of classes. This was amplified
by the large numbers of participants, as seen above. Moreover, students
often resorted to strongly ludic and carnivalesque tacticsfrom parades in
underwear to collective dances and kiss-inswhich increased the sympa-
thy from the general population to the movement. In fact, opinion polls
during the 2006 and 2011 campaigns showed that a large majority of the
population approved of student demands.57 Also, because student actions
were not overly violent, governments could not react to the disruption
with indiscriminate repression. And violence during student protests was
often displayed by very small groups of hooded individuals (encapucha-
dos), which destroyed public and private property and confronted the
police. Yet student leaders emphasized repeatedly in their media appear-
ances that encapuchados were not part of the movement but just oppor-
tunists, therefore reducing the stigma attached to the movement, which
presented itself as peaceful.
Compared to students, however, the tactical repertoire of Mapuche
resistance emphasized violent tactics (such as the seizing of land estates or
setting trucks and ranches on fire) or self-destructive ones (typically hun-
ger strikes). In fact, more than one quarter of all Mapuche tactics belong
to these groups combined. Although Chileans support many demands of
Mapuche organizations,58 violent tactics do not elicit the kind of massive
public sympathy that force governments to take movements seriously into
Table 2.2 Distribution of

Student Mapuche
tactics by social movement
(%) (Chile, 20002012) Pacific tactic 41.2 39.5
Artistic tactic 4.8 3.1
Non-violent disruptive tactic 40.1 31.7
Self-destructive tactic 2.5 7.5
Violent tactic 11.5 18.3
Total 100 100
Source: Protest events dataset based on CLACSOs chro-

nologies of protest
account. When in 2007 the Survey of Social Cohesion in Latin America

(ECOSOCIAL) asked Chileans to what extent they considered the use of
violence by indigenous peoples reclaiming their ancestral lands justified,
65 % said it could never be justified, while 25 % said it could be justi-
fied only at times.59 Additionally, although 32 % of all Mapuche tactics
are non-violent disruptive, their disruptive potential was undermined
because these protests tend to be smaller (as noted above) and because
many of them took place in remote rural areas, away from large urban
centers. All this made it easier for governments to face Mapuche demands
with repression rather than concessions.
Conclusions
This chapter aimed at offering an overview of the relations between social
movements and institutional politics in contemporary Chile. We presented
four main claims. First, collective protest has been growing in Chile dur-
ing the last decade. Second, when it comes to mobilizing resources and
crafting collective action frames, social movements are considerably (and
possibly increasingly) detached from polity members such as parties, gov-
ernments, and political elites. Third, such detachment partially explains
the increase in protest. As institutional politics do not deliver the changes
that movements demand, collective protest becomes a more attractive
and plausible political strategy. Fourth, the rise of protest does not ensure
social movement impact. In order to be influential, movements need to
stage massive protests in visible places using predominantly disruptive and
artistic tactics. We believe our analysis provides insights that go beyond
the Chilean case. Specifically, that protest booms in a context of dete-
riorated (and deteriorating) party-movement linkages defies some well-
established predictions.
This chapter has limitations that must be addressed in the future in
order to deepen our knowledge on the topic. First, although we empha-
sized the changing relations between social movements and polity mem-
bers for understanding protest increases, other factors also matter. Some
of them are the expansion of tertiary education, the consolidation of a
new middle class with some degree of material well-being, and the sud-
den eruption of digital networks, which dramatically reduced the costs
of transmitting information and coordinating collective actions. Second,
important social movements that we ignored in this chapter need to be
considered. They include the labor, squatter, sexual diversity, feminist, and
pro-life and pro-choice movements, as well as more short-lived regional-

ist campaigns in the extreme north and south of the country. The main
tenets of this chapter may not apply to all of these movements. Third, we
need to consider political parties more in detail, for instance, by asking
whether different parties have different strategies and incentives for estab-
lishing connections to social movements, or whether party calculations
about social movements shape electoral campaigns. Fourth, we need a
more detailed analysis of the collective action frames of major movements,
as well as a study of their overlap with the contents of the frames of polity
members. Fifth, we could gain much from a study of the overlap of the
social networks of movement leaders and members of the political elites.
Sixth, we need more specific and systematic information about the types
and amounts of resources mobilized by each movement. Finally, our pro-
test events dataset, while unique of its kind, could be complemented in the
future with other sources in order to reduce selection bias and description
bias.60
Notes
1. Scully, Rethinking the Center: Party Politics in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-
century Chile.
Chile and Peru.
3. Bao (1985), Lo Social y lo Poltico, un Dilema Clave del Movimiento
Popular.
4. Hipsher, Democratization and the Decline of Urban Social Movements
in Chile and Spain; Oxhorn, Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors
and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile; De la Maza, Los Movimientos
Sociales en la Democratizacin de Chile and Sociedad Civil y Democracia
en Chile; Garretn, La Redemocratizacin Poltica en Chile. Transicin,
Inauguracin y Evolucin.
5. Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America.
7. Ibid.
8. For a review, see Meyer, Protest and Political Opportunities.
9. In this chapter, we are puzzled by changes in collective protestand in that
respect we follow major works in this theoretical tradition such as Eisinger,
The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American cities, Tilly, From
Mobilization to Revolution, McAdam, Political Process and the Development
of Black Insurgency, 19301970, and Kriesi etal., New Social Movements in
Western Europe: A Comparative Analysis. However, it is important to keep
in mind that the political process theory has been used for understanding
other kinds of social movement activity such as court actions, voter regis-
tration initiatives, economic boycotts, organizational founding, number of
movement organizations, and even policy outcomes (Meyer, Protest and
Political Opportunities: 133).
10. McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention, 121.
11. McAdam, Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency,
19301970.
12. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics,
7475.
13. Ibid.
14. Arce (2010), Parties and Social Protest in Latin Americas Neoliberal Era.
15. Arce and Rice (2009), Societal Protest in Post-stabilization Bolivia,

9094.
16. Arce, Parties and Social Protest in Latin Americas Neoliberal Era.
17. Tricot, Movimiento de Estudiantes en Chile: Repertorios de Accin

Colectiva Algo Nuevo?; Somma, The Chilean Student Movement of
20112012: Challenging the Marketization of Education; Gmez
Leyton, La Rebelin de las y los Estudiantes Secundarios en Chile.
Protesta Social y Poltica en una Sociedad Neoliberal Triunfante.
18. The dataset was collected as part of FONDECYT grant 11121147 The
Diffusion of Collective Protest in Chile, 20002012 (Principal Researcher:
Nicols Somma). A team of four social sciences students coded the descrip-
tions of all protest events appearing in the Chronologies of Protest pro-
duced by the Latin American Center of Social Sciences (CLACSO), which
in turn are based on a wide array of information sourcesfrom main-
stream newspapers and radios to websites of social movement organiza-
tions. Inter- rater agreement levels were around 90 %. Our study
followedand adapted to Chilethe Dynamics of Collective Action
project, carried out for the United States by Doug McAdam, John
McCarthy, Susan Olzak and Sarah Soule. Unfortunately, as of October
2015, the Chronologies of Protest are not available anymore via CLACSOs
internet website (http://www.clacso.org.ar).
19. The all category includes the five claims shown in the figure plus several
others like transport, health, housing, human rights, womens rights, and
sexual diversity.
20. We logged this variable for reducing the impact of very massive events.
21. This section is based in Somma and Bargsted, La Autonomizacin de la
Protesta en Chile.
22. Verba et al., Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics,
272.
23. See Somma and Bargsted, La Autonomizacin de la Protesta en Chile,
for details.
24. Polychoric correlations estimate the association between ordinal and/or

dichotomous variables like those used in our analysis. Like the more
commonly used Pearson correlation coefficients, they range from 1
(perfect negative correlation) to 1 (perfect positive correlation).
25. Somma, When do Political Parties Move to the Streets? Understanding
Party Protest in Chile (20002012).
26. See Edwards and McCarthy, Resources and Social Movement

Mobilization, for a review.
27. Social resources refer to voluntary work, organizations, and social net-
works See Edwards and McCarthy, Resources and Social Movement
Mobilization.
28. These interviews were also carried out as part of FONDECYT grant

11121147 The Diffusion of Collective Protest in Chile, 20002012.
29. Schaeffer in this volume.
30. Morris, Black Southern Student Sit-in Movement: An Analysis of Internal
Organization.
31. Lavenchy, El Pueblo Mapuche y la Globalizacin. Apuntes para una
Propuesta de Comprensin de la Cuestin Mapuche en una Era Global;
Bidegain in this volume.
32. Edwards and McCarthy, Resources and Social Movement Mobilization.
33. See Benford and Snow (2000), Framing Processes and Social Movements:
An Overview and Assessment, for a review.
34. See Universidad de Salamanca Estudios.
35. See also Schaeffer in this volume.
36. Schaeffer in this volume; Azkarraga (2008), Movimientos Anti-mineros:
El caso de Pascua-Lama en Chile; Altieri and Rojas (1999), La Tragedia
Ecolgica del Milagro Neoliberal chileno; Carruthers, Environmental
Politics in Chile: Legacies of Dictatorship and Democracy.
37. See Donoso in this volume.
38. Ruiz, Autonomismo Mapuche (19071992). Renuevos de un Tronco
Antiguo; Tricot, Lumako: Punto de Inflexin en el Desarrollo del
Nuevo Movimiento Mapuche; Klein, Los Movimientos de Resistencia
Indgena. El caso Mapuche.
39. Donoso, Dynamics of Change in Chile: Explaining the Emergence of the
2006 Pingino Movement.
40. Madrid, The Rise of Ethnic Politics in Latin America.
41. Schaeffer in this volume.
42. Donoso, Dynamics of Change in Chile: Explaining the Emergence of the
2006 Pingino Movement.
43. von Blow and Bidegain, It Takes Two to Tango: Students, Political
Parties and Protest in Chile (20052013); Somma, The Chilean Student
Movement of 20112012: Challenging the Marketization of Education.
44. Donoso, Chile y el Convenio 169 de la OIT: Reflexiones sobre un

Desencuentro; Bez (2009), Chile, Entrada en Vigencia del Convenio 169
OIT y el Conflicto en la Regin de La Araucana; Fuentes, Derechos
Humanos de los Pueblos Indgenas: Chile tras la Ratificacin del Convenio
169 de la OIT.
45. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest; Amenta etal. (2010), The Political
Consequences of Social Movements; Giugni, Was it Worth the Effort?
The Outcomes and Consequences of Social Movements.
46. Amenta et al., The Political Consequences of Social Movements,

298299; Giugni, Was it Worth the Effort? The Outcomes and
Consequences of Social Movements, 379.
48. Tarrow, Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics.
49. Weitzer, Incidents of Police Misconduct and Public Opinion.
50. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest; Piven and Cloward, Poor Peoples
Movements: Why they Succeed, How they Fail.
51. Taylor and Van Dyke, Get up, Stand up: Tactical Repertoires of Social
Movements, 281.
52. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest; Piven and Cloward, Poor Peoples
Movements: Why they Succeed, How they Fail; Giugni, Was it Worth the
Effort? The Outcomes and Consequences of Social Movements.
53. Weitzer, Incidents of Police Misconduct and Public Opinion; Crozat,
Are the Times Changin? Assessing the Acceptance of Protest in Western
Democracies.
54. Instituto Nacional de Estadsticas, Estadsticas Sociales de los Pueblos

Indgenas en Chile Censo 2002.
55. Cerda, Situacin Socioeconmica Reciente de los Mapuches en la Regin
de La Araucana; Lavenchy, El Pueblo Mapuche y la Globalizacin. Apuntes
para una Propuesta de Comprensin de la Cuestin Mapuche en una Era
Global.
56. Schussman and Soule, Process and Protest: Accounting for Individual
Protest Participation.
57. See http://www.elmostrador.cl/pais/2013/04/16/adhesion-al-movi
miento-estudiantil-se-eleva-a-86-segun-encuesta-de-imaginaccion/ and
http://www.cooperativa.cl/noticias/pais/educacion/movimiento-estu-
diantil/encuesta-cooperativa-nueve-d e-cada-10-familias-apoyan-
demandas-estudiantiles/2013-05-27/213251.html
58. Lavenchy, El Pueblo Mapuche y la Globalizacin. Apuntes para una
Propuesta de Comprensin de la Cuestin Mapuche en una Era Global, 16.
59. Valenzuela etal., Vnculos, Creencias e Ilusiones. La Cohesin Social de los
Latinoamericanos.
60. Earl etal., The Use of Newspaper Data in the Study of Collective Action.
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PART II
Case Studies
CHAPTER 3
Outsider andInsider Strategies: Chiles

Student Movement, 19902014
SofiaDonoso
Introduction
The protest wave spearheaded by students in recent years has shaped the
political agenda in Chile in ways that few would have anticipated. From
2011 onwards, nation-wide demonstrations triggered a debate on educa-
tion and political reforms, which even today still has not ebbed. Crucially,
the demands of the student movement were integrated into the political
platform of President Michelle Bachelet (20142018). The most impor-
tant tax reform since 1990, explicitly linked to the funding of the new
educational policies, came to be a key pillar of the Bachelet administra-
tions legislative agenda. The call for a new Constitution, which important
sectors of the student movement heeded, also became part of the national
agenda.
Research for this chapter has been supported by the following grants from
CONICYT Chile: CONICYT/FONDAP/15130009, and CONICYT/FON
DECYT/Regular/1160308. The author is grateful for useful comments by Marisa
von Blow and Cristbal Rovira.
S. Donoso (*)
Universidad de Chile and Pontificia Universidad Catlica de Chile,
Santiago, Chile

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_3
66 S. DONOSO
The student movement spurred the development of new political actors

as well. In 2012, student leaders founded Revolucin Democrtica,1 a
new left-wing political movement, and elected one of its main figures into
Congress. The Izquierda Autnoma, another leading student movement
organization, took the same path. Finally, the protests in 2011 motivated
the creation of a new governing coalition that could push for the reform
process. The Concertacin de Partidos por la Democracia, the center-
left coalition in power between 1990 and 2010, expanded to also include
the Communist Party and other smaller political forces. Two former
Communist student leaders were elected deputies in the 2013 elections as
part of the new coalition, dubbed Nueva Mayora. In sum, then, Chiles
student movement has impacted both the policy agenda and the correla-
tion of political forces in significant ways.
The eruption of the student movement follows years of building-up
mobilization capacity. In this chapter, I trace its development since the
transition to democracy in 1990. I do so by putting particular emphasis
on how the movements strategies have shifted as a result of its interaction
with the institutional sphere. Specifically, I outline how the student move-
ments strategy-making has defined demands, tactics, venues in which
demands are made, and the audience or target toward which the claims
of the movement are directed. This analytical lens to the study of social
movements brings to the fore the pivotal importance of the interactions
with other actors, as well as the intentions that activists attribute to their
actions.2 Strategy-making is thus analyzed as a relational process in which
the responses of the political establishment to movement demands shape
the subsequent formulation of petitions and tactics to employ.
The iterative process in which social movements match strategies to polit-
ical opportunities does not take place in a vacuum. Strategies that are devel-
oped through the interaction with political authorities and other actors both
during and between protest wavesand the very notion of what is consid-
ered possible to achieveare molded by historical and political constraints.
Yet, they are also shaped by the routes that actors embark upon to surpass
existing restrictions. Underpinning these premises is a reflexive understand-
ing of human agency that highlights how actors expectations and actions
are formed and modified by the use of structural resources and the changes
that occur in these.3 As Meyer and Staggenborg have argued, the strategies
of social movements sit at the intersection of structure and agency.4
Departing from this perspective, I contend that the student movements
accumulation of experiences has motivated the concurrent employment of
OUTSIDER ANDINSIDER STRATEGIES: CHILES STUDENT MOVEMENT... 67
outsider and insider strategies. The literature has traditionally referred

to the former as challenges to existing institutions through the use of pro-
test tactics such as street rallies and occupations, and to the latter as efforts
to push for reform from within political institutions and/or through insti-
tutional methods such as lobbying and other forms of participation in
state institutions.5 In line with recent scholarly contributions that question
this dichotomy,6 I argue that while always in tension, the development of
the student movement has resulted in an increased capacity to use both
types of strategies in complementary ways.
The diversification of strategies is grounded on the different assessments
made by the student organizations that compose the movement. On the one
hand, the gradual distancing between the center-left political parties and stu-
dent movement organizations has stirred street protests and occupations of
education buildings as a means to push for the student movement demands.
On the other hand, existing distrust of the political establishment has
prompted the strategic decision to advocate education and political reforms
from within the political arena both by engaging in electoral competition
and by occupying key posts within the state apparatus. I conclude that while
this latter use of insider strategies has opened new channels to influence the
political agenda, it has also complicated collective action in new ways.
My findings are based on an analysis of newspaper data, organizational
documents, and more than 50 semi-structured interviews with student lead-
ers and policy-makers conducted between 2009 and 2014. The use of inter-
views to reconstruct the student movements strategizing across time allowed
me to access first-hand accounts of the process under analysis. This com-
pensated for the dearth of analytical literature on the student movement.7
Contrasting the different accounts that emerged through the interviews, and
through the newspapers, also helped me to counteract one of the dangers
of the use of interviews, namely, that the interviewees misrepresent or exag-
gerate certain aspects of the process under scrutiny.8 Finally, the interviews
offered an opportunity to understand how key actors of the student move-
ment interpreted the political context and the strategies of their opponents
and other actors of the field. Understanding these interpretations, which
were crucial in the formation of the movements strategies, was decisive in
tracing the shifts in the response to the structure of political opportunities.
The chapter is organized as follows. Since the inquiry emphasizes social
movements strategizing, I begin with a brief overview of the treatment
of this topic in the literature, arguing the need for a historically grounded
and relational approach. The chapter goes on to analyze how the accu-
mulation of experiences shaped the student movements strategy-making
68 S. DONOSO
around demands, tactics, arenas, and targets, throughout the three most
significant waves of protest since 1990, namely, those of 2001, 2006, and
2011. Showing how the accumulation of experiences motivated student
organizations to push for the movements agenda both from outside
and inside the political establishment, in the final section, I examine the
complications involved in this mixed strategy. Through this account, I seek
to contribute to the analysis of the build-up of the most influential social
movement in Chiles post-transition era and to a more complex under-
standing of the relationship between social movements and institutions.
A Historically Grounded andRelational

Understanding ofSocial Movement Strategies
Examining how social movements advance their claims by raising material
resources, mobilizing political support, and gaining society-wide legiti-
macy using both external and internal resources, the literature has mostly
centered on social movement tactics. This refers to the toolkit that
activists employ to push for their demands.9 Examples that we typically
associate with contemporary social movements are rallies, boycotts, sit-ins,
strikes, and petition drives. Extant scholarship has been less prolific in the
study of social movement strategies per se.10 In contrast to protest tactics
that are easily observable in the public spaceand can therefore easily be
codified and examined through protest event analysis, the predominant
methodology in social movement researchit is difficult to establish the
existence of a social movement strategy.
Furthermore, there is no consensus on how to define strategies. As
Maney et al.11 note, the literature has emphasized various dimensions,
such as the pursuit of goals, internal movement organization, and external
transformation, when analyzing the strategies of social movements. As a
general approach that I adopt in this chapter, however, strategies can be
thought of as a plan of collective action intended to accomplish certain
goals.12 This involves making decisions on demands, tactics, targets of the
movements claims, and arenas in which to engage in collective action
(e.g. legislatures, courts, electoral politics, mass media, and the public).13
The political process model, the most widely used theoretical approach
to the study of social movements relationship with the institutional ter-
rain, also served to think about strategies. The concept of political oppor-
tunity structure, introduced by Tilly, McAdam, and Tarrow, among others,
denotes how political institutions send signals to social or political actors
that encourage them to use their internal resources to form social move-
ments. The political process model suggests that social movements define
their strategies based on existing access to participation, evidence of politi-
cal alignment within the polity and splits within the elite, the appearance of
influential allies, and/or a decline in the states capacity or will to repress
dissent.14 Hence, when the political system is open, social movements will
tend to work with existing institutions to advance their goals.15 On the
contrary, when the political system is closed to social movement demands,
they are more likely to adopt confrontational strategies that go beyond
existing institutional channels for participation.16
Nevertheless, the political process model does not help us to explain the
process through which strategies are constructed. As Goodwin and Jasper17
avow, [p]rocess theorists tend to wash the meaning and fluidity out of
strategy, agency, and culture so that they will look more like structures.18
In a recent contribution, Rossi19 offers two concepts to better grasp the
process behind the development of strategies and their historical and
political embeddedness. Arepertoire of strategy is defined as the [] his-
torically constrained set of available options for non-teleological strategic
action in public, semi-public (evolving across specific groups), or private
arenas.20 This concept encompasses the most contentious and publicly
manifest repertoires. It therefore complements Tillys21 extensively applied
concept of repertoire of contention, which refers to protest forms such
as boycotts, strikes, and petitions that we have come to associate with
modern social movements. Yet, in contrast to repertoires of contention,
which change slowly through the development of states and regimes, rep-
ertoires of strategies shift in response to the dynamic interplay between
social movements and the responses of the political system that take place
in the medium and short term.22 This involves taking into account how
strategies constantly shift as a result of ongoing internal debates, the inter-
action with political authorities, and how historical drivers guide changes
in the structure of political opportunities.
The concept of stock of legacies, in turn, addresses the question of how
the accumulation of past experiences shapes social movements future for-
mulation of strategies. It is defined as the concatenation of past struggles,
which, through the sedimentation of what is lived and perceived to be
lived as well as what is intentionally learned, produces an accumulation of
experience that adds or eliminates specific strategies from the repertoire of
strategies as both a self-conscious and oblivious process.23 Emphasizing
how historical legacies influence the adoption of strategies, this concept
70 S. DONOSO
contributes to elucidating why different social movements respond differ-

ently to the same structure of political opportunities.
Together, the concepts of repertoire of strategies and stock of legacies
help us to counter the invariant and transhistorical premises contained in
the political process model, which results in an inadequate treatment of
social movement strategies. Thus, they offer a short- and medium-term
perspective that allows for reconstructing the gradual development of
strategies. Introducing an analytical lens that accounts for how the sedi-
mentation of previous interactions with the institutional sphere and other
actors of the field shape strategies, we gain a deeper understanding of
how social movements cultivate specialized expertise and a complex web
of relationships with political authorities. This accumulation of resources,
I argue, delimits social movements room of maneuver and defines their
capacity to employ both outsider and insider strategies.
Underpinning this analysis, finally, is a relational understanding of the
social world. Acknowledging that the units of analysis of social phenom-
ena are dynamic and ever unfolding, this view calls attention to how these
units derive their meaning from the changing functional roles they play
within that transaction.24 In this way, as I seek to show in this chapter, the
student movements strategizing can never be fully understood if analyzed
in isolation; it needs to be related to the changing nature of its opponents
and structural conditions for mobilization.
Protest Waves andStrategizing: Defining Demands,

Tactics, Arenas, andTargets
The Transition toDemocracy andDisarticulation ofCollective
Action
Under the slogan security to study, liberty to livetellingly expressing
the intertwined nature of the demands related to education and to the
countrys democratizationthousands of students mobilized against the
Pinochet junta during the 1980s. The end of authoritarianism in 1990
meant that the diverse political actors who had joined forces against the
military regime no longer had a common enemy. In the new political sce-
nario, the student movement faced the challenge of formulating a strategy
that resonated with its constituencies. As Rodrigo Roco,25president of the
FECh, recalls, it was necessary to generate a new reading in accordance
to what was happening in Chile (and the world) post-dictatorship.Yet,
student movement organizations struggled to adapt to the political cir-

cumstances. In particular,the Federacin de Estudiantes de la Universidad
de Chile (Student Federation of the Universidad de Chile, henceforth
FECh), historically the stronghold of the student movement, entered a
period of decline after the transition to democracy.
Internal disputes about how to address this challenge severely weak-
ened the FECh in the beginning of the 1990s. Whereas many student
leaders supported the Concertacin, others questioned what were consid-
ered insufficient initiatives in the field of education.26 A highly publicized
financial and administrative mismanagement scandal further aggravated
the conflicts within the organization. The decay was patent when the
FECh closed its door in 1993 due to the lack of quorum in the student
elections. It was only reconstituted two years later.
The agenda of the Federacin de Estudiantes de la Pontificia Universidad
Catlica de Chile (Student Federation of the Pontificia Universidad
Catlica de Chile, henceforth FEUC), in turn, centered on demands such
as the extension of publicly funded university credits to private universities
and human rights issues.27 After heading the federation between 1985 and
1993, militants of the Concertacin parties lost power to the conservative
political movement that historically dominated the Universidad Catlica:
the Movimiento Gremial.28 With a few interruptions, the conservatives
remained in power until 2009.
A different development arose in other universities with strong mobi-
lization traditions, such as the Universidad de Concepcin and the
Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educacin. Here, radical left
movements, which were critical of the Concertacin government, were
able to win the presidencies of their respective student federations during
the first years of democracy. Nevertheless, their employment of protest
tactics such as barricades and the use of Molotov cocktails, in addition to
frequent clashes with the police, generated divisions among the students.29
After almost two decades of authoritarian rule, the use of violence was
rejected by other left-wing forces, which understood that it delegitimized
student organizations as a whole.30 These splits restrained the prospects
of constructing an alliance of left-wing political forces across universities.
High school student organizations followed a similar path of disar-
ticulation after the reinstatement of democracy in 1990. The Asamblea
de Centros de Alumnos de Santiago (Assembly of Student Councils of
Santiago, henceforth ACAS) was headed by the Concertacin parties
youth sections. It coordinated the student councils of the schools, based
72 S. DONOSO
on a decree created by the military regime, and was therefore often con-
demned for its illegitimate origin.31 Rather than engaging in political
issues, the ACAS fulfilled social functions such as organizing anniversaries,
parties, and the like. Many leftist groups criticized the ACAS for its depo-
liticized nature.32
An alternative space was provided by the Federacin de Estudiantes
Secundarios de Santiago (Federation of High School Students of Santiago,
henceforth FESES), an umbrella organization of high school student fed-
erations.33 The organization struggled to define an identity for the new
democratic era and was criticized for its domination by the Communists
and its hierarchical decision-making structure.34 As many interviewees
note, the lack of resonance with the student base was expressed in the
FESES struggle to garner support, and the low turnout when it called for
a demonstration or any other event.
Without a strong social movement that could push for reform, the pros-
pects for introducing major changes to the education model bequeathed
by the military regime were slim. Especially because the Concertacin,
early on in the new democratic era, made clear that the structural pillars of
this education system would remain untouched. This is not to say that the
governments of the center-left stayed passive in the policy field of educa-
tion. Public expenditure as a percentage of GDP increased from 2.4 % in
199035 to 4 % in 2012.36 Importantly, it allowed a significant expansion of
education at all levels. The percentage of Chileans with secondary school
education increased from 79.8 % in 1990 to 96.5 % in 2006.37 Participation
in higher education, in turn, grew from 16.8 % in 1990 to 59 % in 2012.38
These improvements reaffirmed to the Concertacin of the benefits
of keeping the education model introduced during the military regime.
At the same time, this complicated the prospects for alliance-building
between the student movement and leaders of the center-left coalition in
the pursuit of reforms that challenged the main premises of the education
system.
As for high school education, these premises are rooted in the voucher
system, which was locked in through the instatement of the Ley Orgnica
Constitucional de la Enseanza (Constitutional Law of Education,
henceforth LOCE) just a few days after the military regime left power.
Following the neoliberal prescriptions, the educational voucher, paid out
to schools by the Ministry of Education, sought to promote the growth
of a private market of education39 and drive down the costs of education.40
This created an education system structured along three main administra-

tive categories: public schools run by the municipalities that receive the
voucher, private schools that receive the voucher, and private schools that
do not receive the voucher. As I show in later sections, these categories
replicate existing socioeconomic inequalities.
The system of higher education, which also underwent sweeping
reforms during the military regime, only exacerbates this reproduc-
tion of inequalities. The Ley General de Universidades (General Law of
Universities) from 1980 gradually reduced state support to public uni-
versities and introduced incentives for the expansion of private provision
of higher education. The slashing of state funding to higher education,
in turn, translated into a sharp increase in university fees.41 As a result, in
2015, Chile had some of the most expensive tuition rates in the world.42
The biggest share of the fee is paid by the students and their families.
Chile is, in fact, one of the OECD countries with the highest share of pri-
vate expenditure on tertiary education (65 % in comparison to the OECD
average of 30 %).43
In sum, the Concertacins embracement of the education model in
addition to the disorientation of the student movement organizations that
historically had been most politicized meant that the education model
remained largely unchallenged. It would take until 2001 before Chile wit-
nessed rallies spearheaded by students again.
The 2001 Mochilazo

In the context of disarticulation of student movement organizations, to
mount a challenge to political authorities was a considerable task in the
1990s and early 2000s. Also, the stock of legacies of past struggles played
a role in the demobilization of the student movement. The Concertacin
parties forged a close relationship with social movements in general,
and many student leaders in particular, during the struggle against the
dictatorship. The existence of these relationships held back a more gen-
eral questioning of the center-left coalition that could serve to mobilize
students for education reform. Furthermore, many former members of
the student cadre gained positions in the state apparatus of the newly
established democratic government.44 Backing the Concertacin in the
post-transition era was also commonly seen as supporting democracy.45
The stock of legacies constituted by earlier struggles thus often meant
discarding more disruptive strategies that could threaten the center-left
74 S. DONOSO
coalition and the delicate power balance that supported the reinstatement
of democratic rule in Chile.
In light of the above, student organizations redirected their attention
to their internal reconstruction. This is not to imply that student organiza-
tions abandoned street demonstrations.46 Yet, aware of the weakening of
their mobilization capacity, the building-up of student organizations and
the construction of an agenda that resonated with the student base were
prioritized.
High school students would spearhead the first significant mobilizations
in 2001 based on this strategic orientation. Their organizational renewal
had a defining moment with the creation of the Asamblea Coordinadora
de Estudiantes Secundarios (Coordinating Assembly of High School
Students, henceforth ACES) in late 2000 by students belonging to some
of Santiagos magnet high schools.47 The foundation of this new orga-
nization responded to a shared diagnosis among students of these high
schools about the pressing need to bring together the diverse autonomous
political and cultural groups that were mushrooming across the capital
city. These so-called collectives were usually composed of students who
identified with the inorganic left, that is, a left that was neither rooted
in the parties of the Concertacin nor in the Communist Party. As one of
the founding ACES leaders explains:
We are not a generation that became politically committed based on the

tragic history of the left during the dictatorship; we are a generation that has
been socialized during the 1990s. We have been shaped by Chilean society,
one that is totally dominated by the market but without political authoritari-
anism []. Their logics [the ones of the traditional left] are based only on
complaints against a Chile that had broken down, but we complain about a
Chile that exists now and weare based on the dynamics that this contempo-
rary Chile imposes on us.48
The objective of ACES was to politicize high school students social expe-
rience, and thereby to construct a political platform based on students
everyday concerns.49 The strategy built on widespread disgruntlement
with the quality of the school infrastructure and the authoritarian manner
of many school directors, among other issues.50 Although ACES also had
a critical view on the education model as a whole, its agenda focused on
very specific demands, such as infrastructure improvements, access to IT,
leisure time facilities, permission for male students to wear long hair, fewer
restrictions on the dress code, and more participatory decision-making

procedures in the schools.51
In this way, the goal of the ACES was to construct a movement from
below by politicizing high school students everyday experiences, and
not drawing from the traditional lefts historical flagships, such as human
rights issues and the epic struggle against the dictatorship. Part of this
strategy involved the introduction of new, more democratic, and hori-
zontal organizational features. The resulting organizational structure had
spokespersons in lieu of a president, and an assembly as a decision-making
mechanism. This contrasted to the organization of ACAS and FESES,
which ACES considered too rigid and hierarchical. The aim of this orga-
nizational form was twofold: to facilitate decisions originating from the
bottom-up,52 and to prevent cooptation by the political parties by making
the assembly the locus of the decision-making process.53
While the foundation of ACES was grounded on a critical vision of
the demobilization process after 1990, its strategic definition of specific
demands, tactics, and arenas to mobilize responded to a rather contin-
gent turn of events. In early April 2001, only a few months after the
creation of the ACES, there was a delay in the distribution of the student
transportation passes and an increase in the fees that students had to
pay for them. Attentive to the agitated mood among the students, the
ACES spearheaded the Frente Anti-Alzas (Anti-Increase Front). The stu-
dentsmain tactics, street protests in Santiago, received considerable pub-
lic attention and became known as the Mochilazo.54 After several weeks
of protest, unseen at the time, the education authorities committed to
taking over the administration of the school passes, which previously were
the responsibility of the umbrella organization of the private transport
enterprises.
In spite of the specific issue at stake, namely, the student transporta-
tion pass, the students who spearheaded the 2001 Mochilazo considered
it a significant accomplishment.55 For them, it was a way of transferring
responsibility from private hands to the state and reverse part of the states
detachment from field of education.56 It was the first time students were
able to mobilize and have a positive impact, which had an important dem-
onstration effect for later student mobilizations. In the words of Sebastin
Vielmas,57 who ten years later would actively participate in the 2011 mobi-
lizations, from this mobilization we learned that if you go out on the
streets you achieve things.
76 S. DONOSO
The 2006 Pingino Movement

High school students strategic focus on building-up of organizational
capacity was, as noted, based on the politicization of students everyday
demands. Yet, as years passed by, disgruntlement grew with the education
system as a whole. In 2006, the year the Pingino movement took off,
46.8 % of the student population was enrolled in public schools, 45 % in
state-subsidized private schools, and 6.7 % in private schools without state
funding.58 The vast majority of students from the most deprived economic
groups attended public schools, students from middle-income groups
were enrolled in both public and state-subsidized private education, and
upper-middle and upper-class students almost exclusively attended private
education.59 Segregation and unequal distribution of resources translated
into sharp inequalities in terms of educational outcomes.60 In turn, this
inequality impacted the results of the university entry exam. As a conse-
quence, poorer students had access to lower-ranked institutions of higher
education.61 Given that there is a huge variance in the rate of return of
higher education degrees, Chiles education model was an active system
of reproduction of existing inequalities.
To construct a strategy that more directly targeted the education model
per se, ACES and other high school student organizations had to expand
their repertoire of strategies to also include what I have referred to as insider
strategies. This was facilitated by their participation in a d
ialogue platform
set up by the Secretara Regional Ministerial de Educacin (Regional
Ministerial Secretariat of Education, henceforth SEREMI of Education) in
2005 to address the student protests that sporadically emerged every year.62
After meeting weekly for almost a year, a report was submitted in
December 2005 to the Ministry of Education. This included proposals on
issues such as the duration of the student transportation pass and the cost
of the university entrance exam feeas well as broader themes such as the
restructuring of the LOCE, and municipality-based education.
However, the submission of the report coincided with the general elec-
tions and the coming into power of a new government. In the changing
political scenario, the report was soon forgotten. This created indignation
and gave the initial impulse to the 2006 Pingino movement, which took
its name from high school students black and white school uniforms. The
joint work at the SEREMI of Education during 2005 served to create
bonds between members of ACES and ACAS, resulting in the adoption
of a single organization, the Asamblea de Estudiantes Secundarios de
Santiago (Assembly of High School Students of Santiago, henceforth AES).

Paradoxically, the participation in the dialogue platform also prepared many
of the Pingino leaders for their role during the massive protests in 2006
as they became well acquainted with the problems of the education system.
In April 2006, only a few weeks after the start of both the school year
and the fourth consecutive Concertacin government, headed by Michelle
Bachelet of the Socialist Party, the AES called for a first street rally.63 It
was also spurred by some extensively covered stories about the deficient
infrastructure that affected many schools across the country. Several dem-
onstrations followed. These protests soon turned violent and ended in
repeated clashes with the police. The violence generated negative media
coverage, which motivated a strategic shift and the employment of a new
tactic, namely, the school sit-in. By the end of May 2006, 200,000 high
school students in Santiago were participating in school take-overs, and
another 120,000 across the country.64
The Pingino movement quickly succeeded in garnering public sup-
port. Survey data of the time shows that public support of the student
demands peaked at 87 %65 and that the number of respondents who iden-
tifiededucation as a policy priority rose from 5 % to 10 % during 2006.66
Importantly, the movement also introduced the issue of education to the
government agenda. In June 2006, the Bachelet administration instituted
a Presidential Advisory Commission to channel the conflict with the stu-
dents. Once again, student movement organizations decided to engage in
an institutional arena with the aim of influencing the content of the edu-
cation debate. As Mara Jess Sanhueza,67 one of the AES spokespersons,
states: we knew that we would be disadvantaged [in the commission] but
it was a fairer end than a simple demobilization would have been. At least
we gained the process of formulating proposals.
Nevertheless, after the final report was submitted, six months after the con-
stitution of the commission, disappointment spread. Whereas the Bachelet
government followed many of the commissions recommendations on how
to reform the LOCE and increase the resources available to municipalities
as ways of securing high-quality education, the bills that later were sent to
Congress were rejected. This was partly due to the votes of Concertacin
members. As one Ministry of Education senior official68 expresses, the peti-
tions of maximalist nature [of the Pinginos] clashed with the cruel reality of
politics, namely, the lack of political force to pursue their demands.
Criticisms by the opposition but also by many prominent Concertacin
members of the bill proposed by the Bachelet administration motivated the
78 S. DONOSO
opposition parties of the center-right to present their own law proposal.

This, in turn, forced the creation of an intra-parliamentary committee in
which this and the governments bills were discussed. This deliberation cul-
minated in the drafting of a new bill that aimed to replace the LOCE.The
Ley General de Educacin (General Law of Education, henceforth LGE)
was passed in 2009. The introduction of a preferential subsidy for stu-
dents of lower income, which had formed part of the Bachelets govern-
ment program but deemed unlikely to be passed,69 was promulgated in
2008. Finally, two state agencies were created: the Agencia de Calidad de
la Educacin (Agency for the Quality of Education), approved in 2008,
in charge of guaranteeing the provision of quality of education, and the
Superintendencia de Educacin (School Inspectorate), approved in 2011
to regulate the use of public resources assigned to education, examine
existing standards, provide support for schools, and apply sanctions.
The Pinginos, however, considered the LGE and the new state agen-
cies followers ofthe same neoliberal logic that previously had guided the
education model. As they held that their main demands remained unmet,
the 2006 protest wave provided the strategic anchoring for the massive
protests that would arise in 2011.
The 2011 Protest Wave

The Pingino movement exposed the Concertacins ambiguous stand-
points on the need for structural reforms in the education sector. From the
perspective of many high school students, the negotiation of the educa-
tion bills, and the 2007 parliamentary accord were considered a betrayal of
their original demands.70 Wariness grew as a result. This impelled a strat-
egy focused on the overhaul of the education system but without counting
on the support of the Concertacin.
Decisively, this strategic orientation was shared by differentuniversity
student organizations. Within the FECh, an intense internal debate fol-
lowed the 2006 protest wave.71 The Nueva Izquierda Universitaria, com-
posed of previously fragmented left-leaning collectives and in power during
most of the period 20042009, took on the challenge of redirecting the
FECh. The new left-wing alliance gathered the Izquierda Autnoma and
many disillusioned former members of the Communist youth, both of
which strongly believed in the need to renovate the left.72
In addition to a critical evaluation ofthe fate of the Pingino move-
ment, for the Nueva Izquierda Universitaria the Crdito con Aval del
Estado (Private Credit with State Guarantee, henceforth CAE), which
had been approved in 2005, became a battleground for a more confron-

tational approach to the Concertacin. As the name suggests, this reform
introduced easily obtained, government-backed education loans provided
by banks. Mobilizing against the CAE became a priority. As Federico
Huneeus,73 who headed the FECh between 2008 and 2009, remarks: We
wanted to touch upon the issues that demonstrated the contradictions of
the Concertacin, and its politics of finance [of education] was the most
evident case at hand.
In parallel to the strategic reorientation driven by the FECh, a similar
effort was under wayat the Universidad Catlica. Here, the experience of
2006 and its aftermath motivated the coalescing of erstwhile divided cen-
trist and left-wing political movements that reacted against the universitys
absence from the national educational debate.74 In late 2008, a new politi-
cal group, the Nueva Accin Universitaria (New University Action, hence-
forth NAU), was founded. To the surprise of NAU members themselves,
only two months after its creation the organization gained direction of the
student federation, the FEUC, in its elections.
In March 2009, NAU welcomed the new students with a flyer entitled
Is NAU politicized? NAU explicitly talked about politicizing both the
university and the education debate. The answer that was spelled out in the
flyer read: Yes, we are a political movement, and yes, we are politicized
(up to our ears).75 In doing so, NAU was actively seeking to subvert the
pejorative meaning that the conservatives historically had attributed to the
verb politicize, both at the university and national levels.76 In other words,
it was resignifying the stock of legacies that characterized student activ-
ism at the Universidad Catlica. This strategy proved to be a successful
formula. In fact, NAU managed to break with the historical dominance of
the conservatives at the Universidad Catlica and win all the FEUC elec-
tions between 2008 and 2013.
The emergence and consolidation of NAU at the Universidad Catlica
facilitated a dialogue with the FECh presided by the Nueva Izquierda
Universitaria.77 In a joint strategic move to unite forces, in 2009, both orga-
nizations spearheaded a national congress to discuss the model of higher
education. A general assessment was that in the neoliberal education model,
profit-making and the subsidiary role assigned to the state suppressed the
notion that free, quality education is a social right.78 Aware of the sharp
increase in the levels of student indebtedness due to the CAE reformfive
years after the introduction of this credit scheme, 200,000 students, that
is, 23 % of higher education students, accessed education through this pro-
gram79the financing of higher education was also hotly debated.80
80 S. DONOSO
A natural step after the congress spearheaded by the Universidad de

Chile and Universidad Catlica was the call for a march to recover public
education.81 The general elections in late 2009 and the ascension of the
first center-right wing government since 1990 only reinforced the impetus
for mobilization.82 In February 2010, however, an earthquake of a mag-
nitude of 8.8 forced the postponement of the coordinated mobilization
effort to 2011.83 During most of 2010, student organizations centred on
relief efforts across the country.
Once the shock produced by the earthquake started to decrease,students
carefully planned a firstrally for late April 2011, and another one for mid-
May, just before the annual presidential address to the nation. End of profit-
making in educationour dreams do not belong to you, and here there is
no education; there is profit-making, became recurrent slogans in the rallies
that from that moment onwards would mark the year 2011. The first dem-
onstrations, which gathered hundreds of thousands of people not only in
Santiago but in several other major cities,84 showed that the student move-
ment had struck a chord with the people it intended to mobilize. Also public
opinion largely supported the student demands, which obtained approval
rates between 76 % and 70 % between August and December 2011.85
High school students mobilized side-by-side with the university students
during the whole of 2011. These efforts were led by ACES86 but also by a
second, more moderate high school student organization, the Coordinadora
Nacional de Estudiantes Secundarios (CONES), created in 2011. Throughout
the year, the student movement pressed for its demands through both street
protests and occupation of education b uildings. But it also introduced novel
tactics. The use of social media to diffuse well-developed campaigns was
particularly useful in laying out the arguments behind the movements com-
plaints about profit-making and indebtedness.87
The massive protests forced the Piera administration to meet some of
the student demands and to replace the Minister of Education three times.
Arguably, the most important concession was to lower the interest rate
of the student loans from 6 % to 2 %.88 Yet, the governments refusal to
discuss the more structural student demands triggered additional marches
across the country.
The growth of the movement was followed by internal disputes about
how to move forward. Two blocs were soon delineated.89 On one side
were center and left-wing forces with a party affiliation, predominantly
to the Communist Party. The other group, which themedia and public
alike have referred to as the radical left, was composed of diverse political
organizations that were critical of the traditional political parties. While
the former group dominated the Confederacin de Estudiantes de Chile

(henceforth, CONFECH),90 the inter-university students union, at the
beginning of 2011, as the year unfolded the latter gained force.91
This shift in the correlation of forces paved the way for more ambitious
demands that, although supported by the group of centrist and left-wing
forces, were previously deemed unrealistic. While the petition presented in
the beginning of 2011 included an increase of public resources to higher
education and the introduction of a fee system based on students income
(sistema de arancel diferenciado),92 as more radical student organizations
gained force, free, quality education, and a constitutional reform that
guaranteed education as a social right, became the student movements
rallying cry.93 Additionally, the petition of the CONFECH included a tax
reform and a modification to the royalties on the mining sector to secure
funding for an education reform.94
Furthermore, with the experience of the 2006 Pingino movement in
mind, the student movement extended the debate on education reforms
to a more general discussion of the politics behind the policy-making in
the field of education. Profit-making with public money was possible
because of the existing collusion between the political and economic
elites, it was argued.95 Student leaders denounced, repeatedly, that inboth
the Concertacin and the right-wing political parties, members sit on the
boards of the schools, and are owners or associated with private schools
and universities in other ways. Foregrounding these conflicts of interest,
the student movement insisted on a constitutional change that provided
the necessary political conditions for transforming the education model.
At the same time, the experience of the Pinginos had left a lesson that
proved vital for the unfolding of the student movement. As the mobi-
lizations gained force, the less radical group of centrist and left-wing
forces within the movement backed the idea to sit and negotiate while
the movement was alive.96 They thus favored the adoption of an insider
strategy to push the student demands forward. The more radical factions
of the movement that had gained more power in the second half of 2011,
instead, preferred to continue the mobilizations in the streets.97 In light
of the way in which the demands of the 2006 movement had been pro-
cessed in meetings and the advisory commission, and the distrust that
characterized the relationship with the government, the movement opted
for sticking at outsider strategies as a way of accumulating forces. This
maximalist standpoint left the student movement without any major gains
in 2011in spite of having spearheaded the most massive protests since the
reinstatement of democracy. Yet, as argued by Federico Huneeus,98 FECh
82 S. DONOSO
president in 20082009, this allowed the student demands to become

part of the 2013 election debate:
We accomplished a lot in terms of introducing demands, creating conscious-

ness, establishing ourselves as a relevant actor, and shifting the discussion
to the left []. The fact that we did not negotiate allowed the debate to
remain open, which, in turn, permitted our demands to reach higher levels.
Indeed, as I describe in the next section, the 2011 mobilizations set

the terms of the policy agenda and the correlation of political forces in the
years to come. In this new scenario, the student movement broadened its
repertoire ofstrategies, challenging the status quo both from within and
outside existing political institutions.
Table 3.1 Summary of the Student Movements strategizing during its main
protest waves, 20012011
2001 Mochilazo 2006 Pingino Student movement
movement in 2011
Diagnosis Existing student The education The education system

organizations do not system is unjust is unjust and the
represent the interest of because of political system does
high school students. It structural reasons not allow for changes
is necessary to politicize
the social experience
Demands Free school travel pass Change the Constitutional change
and other specific legislation to to enable an overhaul
demands, such as privilege public of the education
improvements to the education system
infrastructure and less
restrictive rules in the
schools with regard to
clothing, hair, etc.
Main Street protests Street protests, Street protests, school
contentious school occupations, sit-ins,
tactics occupations flash mobs, social
media campaigns
Arenas in which Executive branch Executive branch Executive and
to press forthe legislative branches
movements
demands
Target Education authorities Concertacin The colluded political
governments and economic elites
Source: Own elaboration based on interview material, organizational documents and newspaper data.
Outsider andInsider Strategies inthePursuit

ofEducational andPolitical Reforms
Pushing forReforms intheStreets

Since 2011, the student movement has continued to mobilize in the
streets to push for reform. This outsider strategy follows from the diag-
nosis that defined the course of the student movement during the latter
half of 2011, that is, to keep up with the pressure through street protests.
It is rooted in a profound distrust of existing political parties and the
capacity of institutions to process the demands of the movement. The
weight of student organizations in the CONFECH that are critical of the
administrations of the Concertacin and Piera partly explains the con-
tinuing calls for mobilization. In early 2014, when the Nueva Mayora
began its government, four main political movements were in charge of
the CONFECHs executive board. Although the Communists were one
of these groups, the other three, Unin Nacional Estudiantil, NAU, and
Frente de Estudiantes Libertarios, were rather skeptical of the willingness
of the new government to undertake an overhaul of the education system.
As one student leader put it, President Bachelet takes our slogans and
empties them of content.99 Accordingly, as another student argued, you
are either in government or in the streets with the people.100
The profound dissafection with the political establishment was also pat-
ent among high school students, who have marched alongside university
students in all major rallies since 2011. The gap between high school stu-
dents and the political establishment was also expressed by the ACES-
led call to not vote in the 2012 municipal election or the 2013 general
elections.
While the CONFECH called students to keep up with the protests
soon after the general elections in late 2013,101 the new political scenario
created by the coming into power of the Nueva Mayora shifted the con-
ditions for mobilization. The adoption of many of the demands of the
student movement, among others, the most significant education reform
in 50 years,102 disoriented the student base. While periodic demonstra-
tions often gathered around 100,000 people,103 they were not as massive
as in 2011.
During the years 2015and 2016, students continued to mobilize and
discontent grew as a result of the shifting positions of the government in
the field of education. The focus on how to finance the reform in place
84 S. DONOSO
of forminga coherent plan that could guide the different partial reforms
toward a common objective was particularly criticized.104 The ambigu-
ous stances toward public education within the Nueva Mayora, especially
among Christian Democrats, revived the worst memories of the 2006
Pingino movement. If anything, the period since the start of the Nueva
Mayora government has deepened students wariness with the political
parties of the center-left.
Engaging inElectoral Competition

Distrust in the political elites also had a second reaction. As mentioned,
the 2011 mobilizations convinced many student leaders that no matter
how massive the protests were, political constraints hindered the demands
of the movement from being realized. In the words of Giorgio Jackson,105
one of the most visible student leaders, in 2011, for us students it was
evident, really tangible, that with each new demand we hit the walls of the
Constitution. Consequently, Jackson and many others advocated taking
part in the institutional arena and running for office to push for the move-
ments demands.106
There were two different versions of this insider strategy. The first one,
pursued by former members of NAU, involved running in the elections as
independent candidates. In 2012, they founded Revolucin Democrtica.
At first, the political organization presented three independent candidates,
yet due to lack of resources, eventually only Revolucin Democrtica
leader Giorgio Jackson participated in the elections. As a signal of support,
the Nueva Mayora withdrew its candidate in the race where Jackson ran,
paving the way for his victory. He garnered enormous support: 48.17 % of
the vote. In Congress, Jackson initially supported the governments edu-
cation reformsalthough he has become increasingly critical as the Nueva
Mayoras internal disputes have limited the scope of part of the reform
program. He has also advocated for a constituent assembly to change the
current Constitution.
Whereas more distant than Revolucin Democrtica from the members
of what previously constituted the Concertacin, the Izquierda Autnoma
followed a similar route. This political organization also nominated three
candidates in the 2013 parliamentary elections. Gabriel Boric, the Izquierda
Autnomas most famous figure, was elected deputy of the Region of
Magallanes with 28.07 % of the vote. In Congress, Boric has been critical
of both the content and the process through which the government has
written its education bills. He has also been a fierce defender of a constitu-
ent assembly as a mechanism to draft a new Constitution.
A different version of this insider strategy was followed by former
student leaders Camila Vallejo and Karol Cariola, both members of the
Communist Party and elected into Congress in 2013 with 43.77 % and
37.14 % of the vote, respectively. Time and again in 2011, they publicly
voiced their criticisms to the Concertacin in general and to the first
presidency of Michelle Bachelet, in particular. In spite of that, soon after
Bachelet announced that she would run for a second term in office, the
Communist Party was invited to take part in the Nueva Mayora. Because
this new coalition included many of the most heartfelt demands of the
student movementin its platform, joining it, some reasoned, was a way of
achieving the goals that had not been obtained during the Piera adminis-
tration or in the Concertacin governments. As Karol Cariola107 put it, as
[part of the] Communist Party we have sought different mechanisms to
defeat this system. We have done it from outside the institutional sphere,
through the social struggle, and we decided to enter now because we
found that the best way to change it is from within.
Mobilizing theState
As a growing body of literature has stressed, recognizing the heterogene-
ity that always is part of social movements signifies that we cannot, a priori,
dismiss certain actors from a social movement because they work for the
government.108 People that form part of the state bureaucracy to advance
the policy agenda of the social movement that they belong to have been
referred to as institutional activists.109
In the case of Chiles student movement, a second insider strategy
pursued by many of those who actively had participated in the student
mobilizations in the years prior to the 2013 elections was to seek to influ-
ence the pace and content of the Bachelet governments policy program
from within the state apparatus. Again, one case in point is Revolucin
Democrtica. Soon after the electoral campaign in 2013, Revolucin
Democrtica announced that it would seek to critically collaborate with
the new Bachelet administration, both from Congress and the state. In
other words, while Revolucin Democrtica would not form part of the
government coalition and intended to carefully examine its proposals, it
would support many of the reforms on the Nueva Mayoras agenda. An
illustrative example of this support is Miguel Crispi, one of Revolucin
86 S. DONOSO
Democrticas founders and policy advisor at the Ministry of Education

between March 2014 and May 2016. One of his main tasks was to bridge
the positions within the government and those of the student movement
and assist in the drafting of education policies.110 Crispi was not alone
in seeking to influence both the procedures and the content of the gov-
ernments education agenda. Gonzalo Muoz, member of Revolucin
Democrtica and coordinator of its education agenda, was the Director of
the Division of General Education at the Ministry of Educationbetween
March 2014 and May 2016 when both he and Crispi resigned from their
government positions due to their criticisms to the governments educa-
tion bills.
Another example is the role played by the Communist Partys student
leaders in the Nueva Mayora government. While they have not occupied
key posts in the Ministry of Education, as members of the ruling coali-
tion, Communist student activists have actively sought to influence the
policy agenda from the government positions they have occupied since
the beginning of 2014. An important case is Camilo Ballesteros, former
president of the student federation of the Universidad de Santiago, who
currently heads the Division of Social Organizations. From this position,
Ballesteros has undertaken the important task of promoting the govern-
ment program to social organizations. Part of this has involved the advo-
cacy for a constituent assemblyto change the constitution.
The Student Movement Today: Accomplishments andTensions

The formal political representation gained by ex-student leaders in
Congress and in the state apparatus has undoubtedly meant a shift from
hostility or indifference to a closer relationship between political authori-
ties and the student movement. It thus epitomized what Gamson refers to
as acceptance of the movement in his seminal study of the impact of social
movements.111 The pursuit of insider strategies has not only involved hav-
ing additional votes in Congress in favor of a new educational model, but
it has also opened up new possibilities for setting the agenda on education
and political reforms. Camila Vallejo, for example, presidedover the lower
chambers education committee in 2014, which gave her a central place
in the education debate. The critical voices raised in Congress by both
Giorgio Jackson and Gabriel Boric have awarded them top positions in the
lists of the most popular politicians in Chile, in a period when the political
establishments approval rates have dwindled.112
After the four former student leaders were elected into Congress, they
were all quick to declare that they would have one foot on the street and
another in Congress. The public and media alike started to refer to the
newly elected deputies as the Bancada Estudiantil (Student Legislators).
Yet, the differences between the four deputies soon emerged. While they
share a history of mobilization, the fact that two of them belong to the
Nueva Mayora has marked a clear divide. As Gabriel Boric,113 deputy and
member of the Izquierda Autnoma, underscores, I think that there still
is a lot of convergence in the subject of education [] but when it comes
to voting, they [the Communist former student leaders] are subject to a
logic of coalition while we [] are not.
The Communist student leaders have also faced criticisms in the stu-
dent base. In 2013 when the Communist Party announced its intention
to join the Nueva Mayora, its youth section lost the elections in many
university student federations.114 In 2015, the party only headed four
student federations.115 Indeed, as Meyer and Staggenborg116 contend,
[r]elationships with one set of actors, such as elite allies, can threaten
those with another group such as grassroots constituents.
Likewise, while not forming part of the Nueva Mayora, Revolucin
Democrtica has also been criticized for occupying government posi-
tions. The fact that members of the political movement worked at the
Ministry of Education at the same time as other members criticized the
education reform has been particularly condemned by the Nueva Mayora.
Revolucin Democrtica has also had to cope with the resignation of many
members. In an open letter, some of them explained that their decision to
leave the newly established political party was because the revolutionary
has been undermined by prioritizing the power of the dominant institu-
tions to the detriment of the power of the people.117 Without a doubt, as
Abers and Tatagiba118 affirm, social movement networks put constraints
on the actions of institutional activists that other public officials do not
face. As the cases of Revolucin Democrtica and the Communist Party
show, although the networks that activists belong to serve as a source of
guidance and inspiration to defend particular priorities, unfulfilled expec-
tations can also provoke the loss of those networks.
Since the massive protests in 2011 and following years, the employ-
ment of insider strategies has led to this dilemma. Whereas the expan-
sion of the student movements repertoire of strategies is the result of
the assessment of previous protest waves, the ever unfolding interaction
between the movement, its opponents, and other actors of the field has
created new tensions to resolve in the coming years.
88 S. DONOSO
Conclusion
Although the emergence of social movements often surprises observers,
they very rarely start from scratch. In this chapter, I analyzed how his-
torical legacies shaped the strategic options of the student movement, and
how experiences of mobilization accumulated during the protest waves
of 2001, 2006, and 2011 and broadened the repertoire of strategies it
employed.
The relationship between the student movement and the political par-
ties on the center-left has been of critical importance in this analysis. I
argued that student activists strategic focus one organizational recon-
struction in the early 2000s was a response to the lack of affinity with the
traditional left and an effort to reconstruct a movement from below that
resonated with the student base. In 2006, grounded in this initial organi-
zational development, the strategies of the Pinginos centered on educa-
tional inequalities and targeted the Concertacin governments. The way
in which the demands of the Pinginos were channeled, in turn, deepened
dissafection with the center-left coalitions willingness to pursue structural
reforms of the education system. Therefore, in the 2011 protest wave, the
student movements strategy directed the political and economic elites
and introduced political demands such as a new Constitution that could
enable the reforms envisioned by the students, that is, free, quality educa-
tion as a social right.
The political systems reaction during and in the aftermath of the 2011
mass mobilizationslack of response from the Piera administration, on
the one hand, and embracement of most of the student demands by the
new government coalition, on the otherpartly explains the deployment
of new insider strategies from 2013 onwards: electoral competition and
the attempt to push for reform from within the government coalition.
Pursuing parliamentary representation and joining the government after
having spearheaded a major social movement, student leaders followed the
path undertaken by many other politicians in Chile and elsewhere. Yet,
the speed with which they transitioned from the streets to the institutional
terrain is arguably a novelty. In any case, their experiences showcase the
very often blurry boundaries between movement politics and institutional
politics. Indeed, as McAdam and Tarrow119 argue when calling for bridg-
ing different forms of contention, turning into political parties or joining
electoral coalitions is one of the mechanisms through which social move-
ments can exert influence over domestic politics. However, by no means
was the student movements extension of repertoire of strategies backed

by a consensus among student organizations. For many students, conten-
tious tactics are still the only way to attain the movements goals, which
explains the continuous use of outsider strategies such as street protests
since 2011.
It is important to note that the sedimentation of mobilization experi-
ences that have directed the student movements strategizing has been
anything but linear. Rather, it has been the result of a long process of
trial and error that goes beyond the scope of this chapter to document.
Although not straight-forward, the gradual development of the student
movement after the transition to democracy has involved a process of
scaling-up. Through a continuous assessment of the internal forces and
political conditions, the movement has been built on small victories to
make larger claims. Today, few would downplay the impact it has had on
Chiles political life.
The case of Chiles student movement, finally, informs the ever more
important research agenda on the relationship between social movements
and political parties. Social movements impact policy agendas, create new
political parties, and shift the alignments of political forces. As shown in
this chapter, rather than members and challengers of the political
arena, there is a continuum between different forms of contention that,
while in tension, have the potential to complement each other.
Notes
1. In June 2016,Revolucin Democrtica became a political party.
2. Rossi, Conceptualizing Strategy Making, 15.
3. Mahoney and Snyder, The Missing Variable, 24.
4. Here I am following Meyer and Staggenborg, Thinking about Strategy,
4.
5. Soule etal., Protest Events.
6. E.g. Banaszak, The Womens Movement and Inside and Outside the
State, Abers and Keck, Practical Authority and Pettinicchio,
Institutional Activism.
7. For some important exceptions, see Jara, Democratic Legitimacy under
Strain; Guzmn-Concha, The Students Rebellion in Chile; and Bellei
etal., The 2011 Chilean Student Movement.
8. Tansey, Process Tracing and Elite Interviewing, 767.
9. Taylor and Van Dyke, Get up, Stand up, 266.
10. Maney etal., An Introduction to Strategies to Social Change, xiv.
90 S. DONOSO
11. Ibid., xvii.

12. Ibid., xvii.
13. Meyer and Staggenborg, Thinking about Strategy, 9.
14. Tarrow, Power in Movement, 7780.
15. Kitschelt, Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest.
16. Ibid.
17. Goodwin and Jasper, Caught in a Winding, Snarling Vine.
18. Ibid., 29.
19. Rossi, Conceptualizing Strategy Making.
20. Ibid., 22.
21. Tilly, Social Movements.
22. Ibid., 31.
23. Ibid.
24. Emirbayer, Manifesto for a Relational Sociology, 287.
25. Roco, La Resurreccin de la FECh en Democracia, 16.
27. Thielemann 2014, 44.
28. The Movimiento Gremial was founded in the 1960s under the leadership
of Jaime Guzmn. This movement collaborated closely with the military
regime. It also constitutes part of the base of the Unin Demcrata
Independiente, Chiles main conservative party, created in 1988.
29. Thielemann, La Anomala Social de la Transicin, 52.
30. Ibid., 53.
31. Interviews with Daniela Moraga (8/11/2011), Vctor Orellana
(6/5/2011), and Julio Reyes (15/11/2011).
32. Interviews with Pablo Orellana (1/7/2009) and Daniela Moraga
(8/11/2011).
(6/5/2011), and Julio Reyes (15/11/2011).
34. Interviews with Julio Reyes (15/11/2011), Pablo Orellana (1/7/2009),
and rsula Schler (3/11/2011).
35. MINEDUC, Indicadores de Educacin en Chile 2006, 39.
36. OECD, Education at a Glance, 260.
38. Bellei etal., The 2011 Chilean Student Movement, 429.
39. Cox, Education Reform in Chile, 3.
40. Carnoy, National Voucher Plans in Chile and Sweden, 309.
41. Austin, Armed Forces, Market Forces, 39.
42. OECD, Education at a Glance 2015. Country Note, 2.
43. Ibid.
45. Burton, Social Democracy in Latin America, 60.
46. For a historical account of the 1997 protests spearheaded by the FECh,
see Thielemann, La Anomala Social de la Transicin.
47. Magnet high schools are municipal schools the majority of them in
Santiago that historically have had top performance in educational mea-
surements. High competition defines who can enter one of these
institutions.
48. Interview with Julio Reyes (15/11/2011).
49. Interviews with Vctor Orellana (6/5/2011) and rsula Schler
(3/11/2011).
50. Interviews with rsula Schler (3/11/2011) and Daniela Moraga
(8/11/2011).
51. Interview with Vctor Orellana (6/5/2011).
52. Revista Punto Final, Entrevista a Lucas Castro.
53. Interviews with Vctor Orellana (6/5/2011) and rsula Schler
(3/11/2011).
54. This name is derived from mochila, which is the Spanish word for
backpack.
(6/5/2011), Julio Reyes (15/11/2011), and rsula Schler
(3/11/2011).
56. ACES 2001.
57. Sebastin Vielmas (16/1/2014).
59. Burton, Hegemony and Frustration, 37.
60. OECD, Education at a Glance. Country Note, 2.
61. UNDP, Expansin de la Educacin Superior en Chile, 49.
62. Interviews with Almeyda 2012, Cuevas 2012, Traverso 2011.
63. Donoso, Dynamics of Change in Chile.
64. Convocatoria es a una movilizacin pacfica, El Mercurio [accessed
January 3, 2016].
65. OECD and World Bank, Revisin de polticas nacionales de educacin,
29.
66. FromLatinobarmetros online data.
67. Interview with Mara Jess Sanhueza (28/7/2009).
68. Interview with Pedro Montt (20/8/2009).
69. Interviews with Pilar Romaguera (14/8/2009) and Pedro Montt
(20/8/2009).
70. Interviews with Sebastin Vielmas (16/1/2014) and Isabel Salgado
(27/2/2014).
71. Interviews with Giorgio Boccardo (17/8/2009) and Federico Huneeus
(29/4/2013).
92 S. DONOSO
72. Interview with Federico Huneeus (29/4/2013), and Melo and Grau,
La FECh 20042006, 13.
73. Interview with Federico Huneeus (29/4/2013).
74. Interview with Giovanna Roa (25/1/2014).
75. Personal communication with Joaqun Walker.
76. Interview with Joaqun Walker (28/1/2014).
77. Interviews with Miguel Crispi (25/1/2014), Marcos Lozano
(28/3/2014), Paul Floor (25/2/2014), and Joaqun Walker
(28/1/2014).
78. Interviews with Chilet (27/2/2014) andMiguel Crispi (25/1/2014);
Jackson, El Pas que Soamos.
79. Meller, Universitarios, El Problema no es el Lucro sino el Mercado!, 63.
80. Interviews with Miguel Crispi (25/1/2014) and Joaqun Walker
(28/1/2014).
81. Interviews with Lagos 2014, Miguel Crispi (25/1/2014).
82. Interviews with Miguel Crispi (25/1/2014) and Joaqun Walker
(28/1/2014).
83. Interviews with Miguel Crispi (25/1/2014), Camila Cea (4/3/2014),
and Paul Floor (25/2/2014).
84. For a conservative estimate of the numbers of participants based on the
figures registered by the police, see Ramrez and Bravo, Movimientos
Sociales en Chile, 20.
85. Adimark, Evaluacin de Gobierno 2011.
86. In 2010, the ACES was re-founded to better reflect new decision-making
mechanisms. While the original ACES from the early 2000s followed the
rule one school, one vote, the new ACES changed to one political collec-
tive, one vote. Bidegain, Autonomizacin de los Movimientos Sociales, 212.
87. For more details about the digital strategy of the Student Movement, see
Garca et al., What Can Twitter Tell us about Social Movements
Network Topology and Centrality? and Ponce Lara, El Flash Mob.
88. Presidente promulga Ley que disminuye tasa de inters del CAE de un
6% a un 2%, La Tercera, September 26, 2012 [accessed January 7,
2016].
89. Bidegain, Autonomizacin de los Movimientos Sociales, 291293.
90. Since 1984, the CONFECH has brought together the student federa-
tions of the traditional universities. In 2011, private universities were also
allowed to take part in the umbrella federation.
91. As Bidegain documents in Autonomizacin de los Movimientos Sociales
(294), at the beginning of 2011, the first group represented 20 federa-
tions and the radical left 15. At the end of the year, this had been reversed:
the radical left had 24 federations and the group of center and left-leaning
organizations had 15.
92. CONFECH, Convocatoria Movilizacin y Paro Nacional.

93. CONFECH, Petitorio 2011.
94. CONFECH, 2011.
95. Interviews with Francisco Figueroa (15/11/2011) and Federico
Huneeus (29/4/2013).
96. Interview with Federico Huneeus (29/4/2013).
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid.
99. UNE y FEL, la oposicin que Bachelet deber enfrentar al interior del
movimiento estudiantil, Chile B, Realidades en Perspectiva, http://
www.chileb.cl/reporteros/une-y-fel-la-oposicion-que-bachelet-debera-
enfrentar-al-interior-del-movimiento-estudiantil/ [accessed January 2,
2016].
100. Interview with Isabel Salgado (27/2/2014).
101. Confech llama a seguir con la movilizacin estudiantil en 2014 ante las
profundas diferencias con Bachelet, La Tercera, January 12, 2014
[accessed January 3, 2016].
102. Michelle Bachelet presenta primeros proyectos de reforma educacional y
la califica como la ms significativa en 50 aos, La Tercera, May 19,
2014 [accessed January 4, 2016].
103. La primera marcha estudiantil en el nuevo mandato de Bachelet, coop-
erativa.cl, May 8, 2014 [accessed January 4, 2016].
104. See, for example, Expertos detallan la lista de pendientes de la Reforma
Educacional, radiouchile.cl, October 23, 2014 [accessed January 4,
2016].
105. Giorgio Jackson, El Pas que Soamos, 137.
106. Interviews with Giovanna Roa (25/1/2014), Javiera Martnez
(23/1/2014), Pedro Pablo Glatz (27/1/2014).
107. Karol Cariola, El Congreso y el gobierno se han transformado en ver-
daderos Olimpos, emol.cl, December 31, 2013 [accessed December 3,
2015].
108. Abers and von Blow, Movimentos Sociais Na Teoria e Na Prtica,
Pettinicchio, Institutional Activism, Abers and Tatagiba, Institutional
Activism, Banaszak, Inside and Outside the State.
109. Abers and Tatagiba, Institutional Activism, 73. For a similar argument,
see Pettinicchio, Institutional Activism.
110. El desembarco del movimiento Revolucin Democrtica en el Ministerio
de Educacin, La Tercera, March 24, 2014 [accessed January 3, 2016].
111. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest.
112. CERC-Mori Survey, December 2015. Interestingly, this has not been the
case of Camila Vallejo and Karol Cariola, the two former student leaders
of the Communist Party.
94 S. DONOSO
113. Boric explica en qu se diferencia de Vallejo y Jackson, y de paso aclara

que la bancada estudiantil no existe, theclinic.cl, October 7, 2015
[accessed January 4, 2016].
114. Irac Hassler, la jotosa que busca presidir la Fech 2014, theclinic.cl,
October 22, 2013 [accessed January 4, 2016].
115. La presin por la izquierda que preocupa al PC, La Tercera, August 22,
2015 [accessed January 6, 2016].
116. Meyer and Staggenborg, Thinking about Strategy, 7.
117. Militantes de Revolucin Democrtica renuncian, eldesconcierto.cl,
December 12, 2014 [accessed January 4, 2016].
118. Abers and Tatagiba, Institutional Activism, 95.
119. McAdam and Tarrow, Ballots and Barricades.
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CHAPTER 4
From Cooperation toConfrontation:

TheMapuche Movement andIts Political
Impact, 19902014
GermnBidegain
Introduction
In 2010, the bicentennial anniversary of Chilean independence, a collective
hunger strike of 32 imprisoned Mapuche activists attracted both national and
international media attention. The strike, which lasted more than 80 days,
forced the government to withdraw the anti-terrorism lawsuits against the
strikers and to make some minor amendments to the Anti-terrorism Law1 that
had been invoked against them. The hunger strike provides a good example of
the radical strategies used by the Mapuche movement in its attempt to impact
public policy. It also showcases the tension that has characterized the relation-
ship between the movement and the Chilean state for more than a decade.
I am very grateful to Marisa von Blow and Sofa Donoso for all their insightful
comments on this chapter. Research discussed in this publication has been
supported by the project RS130002 of the Iniciativa Cientfica Milenio of the
Ministerio de Economa, Fomento y Turismo and the Centro de Estudios de
Conflicto y Cohesin Social (COES), CONICYT/FONDAP/15130009.
G. Bidegain (*)
Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI), Montevideo,
Uruguay

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_4
100 G. BIDEGAIN
The picture was quite different 20 years ago. During the first demo-
cratic government, the Mapuche movement was actively involved in the
government- led process of creating new indigenous institutions. This
cooperative dynamic resulted in the 1993 Indigenous Law,2 and the
creation of the Corporacin Nacional de Desarrollo Indgena (National
Corporation of Indigenous Development, CONADI), a state agency
tasked with the implementation and supervision of indigenous policies
such as land restitution, cultural recognition, and socioeconomic develop-
ment, among others. Many of the most important leaders of the Mapuche
movement at the time participated in this institution.
Nonetheless, this cooperative dynamic rapidly changed. At the end of
1997, an important autonomist strand developed in the movement and
the demand for some form of political autonomy gained prominence.3
This strand gradually overshadowed the most cooperative sectors. Direct
actions, such as land takeovers and the burning of forestry plantations,
trucks, and logging industry machines belonging to companies operat-
ing in claimed lands, were employed by some Mapuche communities and
organizations. The Chilean state has responded with harsh measures. The
application of existing emergency legislation4 against the accused Mapuche
leaders became a common practice, and reports of police brutality against
activists and Mapuche communities were published by Human Rights
Watch5 and the National Human Rights Institute.6
How can the shift from a predominantly cooperative strategy to a more
confrontational one be explained? What consequences has this change
produced in terms of the impact of the Mapuche movement? These two
questions guide this chapter, which provides an overview of the main char-
acteristics of the movement between 1990 and 2014.
I argue that the answers to these enquiries are intertwined, and that
one element is of particular importance: the nature of the demands raised
by the Mapuche movement. As has been widely acknowledged in social
movement scholarship, the types of issues promoted by social movements
affect their capacity to have a political impact.7 Kriesi etal.8 have argued
that we need to distinguish between high-profile and low-profile issues.
While high-profile issues put at stake the most important cleavage struc-
tures of a polity and the authorities conceptions of the role and inter-
ests of the state, low-profile issues concern less relevant (and more easily
attainable) topics.9
In this chapter, I show that the demands of the Mapuche movement
involve high-profile policy domains. The demands for the recognition
FROM COOPERATION TOCONFRONTATION: THEMAPUCHE MOVEMENT... 101
of collective territorial and political rights, for example, could seriously

threaten some core principles of the liberal socioeconomic model instituted
by the military regime and maintained by successive democratic govern-
ments since 1990. Importantly, this situation delegitimized the insider
strategy10 of the cooperative sectors within the movement, prompting the
rise of an autonomist strand that gained increasing importance and privi-
leged confrontational strategies to protest against the lack of state response.
In spite of the intensity and persistency of the protests, recognition of
the political and territorial indigenous rights remains elusive. Therefore,
regarding the second question that I seek to answer in this chapter, I
contend that the change from cooperation to confrontation has been inef-
fective, at least until now, in significantly advancing the recognition of the
high-profile demands of the movement.
Assessing the impacts of social movements requires precise identification
of the domain in which specific outcomes are being analyzed. In this chap-
ter, I focus on political impacts, which can be conceived of as the responses
of the political system to their actions.11 Acknowledging that success and
failure are relative concepts, Kolb proposes to define a benchmark against
which to compare the impacts of a movement. According to him, the
benchmark can be the impacts of movements with similar demands in dif-
ferent contexts or the fate of the same movement over time.12 For the sake
of brevity, I focus on the national arena. Thus, the benchmark will be set
at the situation of the Mapuche at the end of the dictatorship. It will be
shown that there is a mixed record regarding the accomplishment of the
movements demands since the transition to democracy in 1990. While
very important improvements were achieved on low-profile issues, high-
profile demands have not been significantly better addressed in democracy
than under dictatorship.
I adopt a definition of social movements as internally diverse. Indeed,
social movements are networks of informal interactions among diverse
individuals, groups and organizations with competing ideas about which
demands, strategies, and/or tactics to employ.13 However, I argue that
while this dispersion is a common feature of social movements, the incapac-
ity of Mapuche organizations to coordinate among themselves, even at basic
levels, has hindered their capacity to impact political decisions. This lack of
coordination is particularly harmful to their interests due to the lack of
monetary resources available to Mapuche organizations and communities.
This chapter is based on more than 30 interviews with activists and politi-
cal actors, which are complemented with an extensive bibliographical review,
102 G. BIDEGAIN
and evidence from secondary sources. The first section offers an overview
of the Mapuche population in Chile, the demands of the Mapuche move-
ment, and an outline of the main characteristics of the cooperative period.
In order to understand the switch from cooperation to confrontation, the
second section analyzes two specific episodes that can be considered trans-
formative events.14 The third section then sketches the main characteristics
of the Mapuche movement and its impacts during the conflictive period
that lasts until today.
The Mapuche movement intheCooperative Period

(19901997)
The Mapuche inChile

The Mapuche people are the largest ethnic minority in Chile, represent-
ing 9 % of its population according to the 2012 National Census.15 They
once lived autonomously in the space that makes up the Araucana region
today. After the military occupation and annexation by the Chilean state
between 1861 and 1883, they lost most of their territory and political
autonomy. Between 1883 and 1929, the state resettled them in reserva-
tions and promoted the colonization of their former territory by foreign as
well as Chilean migrants. The state recognized and protected the collective
ownership of the reservation lands through different types of legal titles.
The space of the reservations represented 500,000 hectares, 5 % of the ten
million hectares the Mapuche occupied at the time of Chilean indepen-
dence. However, it is estimated that by 1970 approximately 131,000 of
the 500,000 Mapuche hectares had been usurped through different means
by non-Mapuche people.16 The Araucana, the region with the highest
Mapuche concentration and where most Mapuche live, is the poorest
region of Chile. By 2011, poverty at the national level was estimated at
14.4 %. In the Araucana, 22.9 % of the population lived in poverty.17
From Dictatorship toDemocracy

After the harsh repression of all political and social expression that fol-
lowed the 1973 military coup, the Mapuche movement started to rebuild
itselfby the end of the 1970s. This process was triggered by the attempts
of the military regime to divide the collective property titles of the indig-
enous communities and withdraw the protection of their lands.18
The Centros Culturales Mapuche (Mapuche Cultural Centers) were

created in 1978 under the Catholic Churchs protection to oppose the
governments plans. This organization, which changed its name to Ad
Mapu in 1980, became the most important organization of the move-
ment. Nonetheless, it was unable to thwart the militarys plans. In 1979,
the government issued Decree-Law 2.568,19 which fostered the division
and suppression of Mapuche communities. By the end of the dictatorship
ten years later, every community had been divided.20
In spite of the inability to achieve its original objective, the movement
persisted and reoriented its efforts toward the fight for democratization.
However, the unity of Ad Mapu broke down. Under the influence of the
general political environment, it became a space of political dispute among
the different parties that led the opposition against the dictatorship.21 As
a consequence, several new Mapuche organizations were created.22 Each
one of these held privileged relations with a different opposition party.
During the 1989 presidential campaign, an important agreement with
the presidential candidate of the center-left political coalition was reached:
the Nueva Imperial Agreement. This accord defined the Mapuche move-
ments insider strategy, which marked the first years of the restored
democracy.
The Demands oftheMapuche movement

The Mapuche organizations that emerged during the dictatorship and led
the cooperative phase that characterized the immediate post-transition
years embraced three main types of demand.23 In the first place, an impor-
tant group of demands regarded the extension and protection of indig-
enous lands. The abolition of Decree-Law 2.568, its replacement by a new
Indigenous Law, and the recognition of the Ttulos de Merced (mercy land
titles) and other ancient collective titles in order to recover usurped lands
were part of this agenda. However, some organizations also asked for the
recognition of collective rights24 over their historical territory and natural
resources. This more ambitious demand progressively gained importance,
becoming particularly relevant during the confrontational period. The
second group of demands referred to the political recognition of the exis-
tence of indigenous people in Chile. Furthermore, Mapuche organiza-
tions wanted recognition to be paired with their active participation in the
debate of the new Indigenous Law as well as in those political decisions
that could affect them. Finally, a third group of demands regarded the
104 G. BIDEGAIN
recognition of cultural rights as well as the institution of specific policies

to protect the Mapuche culture and to foster the economic and social
development of the Mapuche people.
Following Kriesi et al.s25 distinction between high and low-profile
issues, it can be argued that the political recognition of the indigenous
peoples as part of the Chilean state and the recognition of indigenous
territorial rights over their historical spaces operate in high-profile policy
domains. In fact, the recognition of indigenous collective rights such as
the right to consultation has provoked major conflicts in several countries
worldwide, due to the clash between the indigenous communities way of
living and the extractive economic development models fostered by some
national governments.26 In the Chilean case, the Mapuche historical ter-
ritory is very rich in natural resources and successive governments have
fostered private investments to exploit them.27 Many aggrieved commu-
nities have opposed different economic projects and their consequences
(the logging industry, hydroelectric dams, highways, etc.), touching high-
profile issues such as the energy and the resource exploitation domains. As
will be shown in the second section, some specific conflicts over these types
of projects unleashed the confrontational period of relations between the
Chilean state and the Mapuche movement. Before moving to this, I will
outline the main traits of the cooperation period between the Mapuche
organizations and the government, as well as its political outcomes.
Cooperation andIts Outcomes

The Nueva Imperial Agreement of December 1, 1989 set the main fea-
tures of the cooperation period. Two weeks before the national elections,
it was signed between the presidential candidate of the Concertacin, the
opposition center-left coalition, and the most important indigenous orga-
nizations of the time.
The agreement addressed the main demands of the Mapuche move-
ment. The presidential candidate committed to recognizing indigenous
peoples in the Constitution and to creating an Indigenous Law and a
National Indigenous Corporation with indigenous representation. The
Concertacin also promised to ratify ILO Convention No. 169,28 which,
among other things, recognizes indigenous rights over their historical ter-
ritory (for instance, the right to prior consultation regarding infrastruc-
ture or resource exploitation projects).
On their side, the indigenous organizations promised to support and

defend the future government as well as to channel their legitimate
demands through the requests and mechanisms of participation that
will be created by the future government. 29 Therefore, the Nueva
Imperial Agreement explicitly committed the Mapuche organizations to
avoiding non-institutional channels of claim-making. Through the signa-
ture of this agreement, the Mapuche movement chose an insider strategy
to relate with the democratic government.
The collaboration between the elected government and the Mapuche
organizations quickly materialized through the creation in 1990 of
the Comisin Especial de Pueblos Indgenas (Special Commission of
Indigenous Peoples, CEPI), which brought together governmental and
indigenous representatives of the main organizations. CEPI was tasked
with diagnosing the situation of the countrys indigenous people and
advising the government on indigenous politics as well as proposing a
draft bill to create an institution in charge of the indigenous develop-
ment.30 After intense work that included grassroots participation and a
National Congress of Indigenous Peoples to debate the draft bill, CEPI
sent it to the Executive branch. However, the resulting law had impor-
tant differences from the draft bill approved by the National Congress of
Indigenous Peoples. Some changes were made by the government before
sending it to Congress, and very important changes occurred during its
parliamentarian debate as a consequence of the negotiations between the
governmental and opposition parliamentarians.31 In the end, the enacted
Indigenous Law was much more modest than the original draft bill in
terms of the recognition of indigenous people, participation rights, land
rights, and control over natural resources by the communities. Moreover,
while the Executive sent a bill to Congress on the ratification of ILO
Convention No. 169 in 1991 as well as a bill to recognize indigenous
peoples in the Constitution, both initiatives failed due to the lack of a
legislative majority. The Concertacin blamed the political parties on the
center-right for these failures.
In which ways did the law advance the demands of the Mapuche
movement? In the first place, it recognized the existence of indigenous
people as well as indigenous lands and included a commitment by the
state to protect them (Article 1). Furthermore, through the creation of an
Indigenous Land and Water Fund, the law established two mechanisms to
increase indigenous land ownership (Article 20). First, those communi-
ties or individuals lacking the necessary amount of land to prosper could
106 G. BIDEGAIN
apply for subsidies. Second, in cases of conflict over land titles, the Fund
resources could serve to mediate between the communities and the occu-
pants of the lands. As the law did not allow for expropriation, the solution
had to be reached through an economic arrangement with the non-
indigenous occupant. The law also created an Indigenous Development
Fund to foster the development of indigenous persons and communities
(Article 23).32 Finally, one of the most important points of the law was the
creation of CONADI, the institution in charge of developing policy rec-
ommendations to improve the living conditions of the countrys indige-
nous communities. In accordance with Mapuche demands, this institution
included indigenous representation (through elections). Nonetheless, the
government kept control over the institution by directly appointing 9 out
of the 16 members of its National Council. Many of the most influential
Mapuche leaders formed part of the new institution as indigenous coun-
cilors or as staff members.33
The Indigenous Law and the creation of CONADI are institutional
outcomes of the cooperative period that signaled significant changes from
the statusquo during the dictatorship. Nonetheless, the demands that I
previously defined as high-profile policy issues, that is, the constitutional
recognition of indigenous peoples and their political and territorial rights,
were not achieved. In terms of substantive policy outcomes, in turn, the
efforts of CONADI to restore indigenous lands were important changes
from the policies implemented during the dictatorship. However, as it
will be shown, they were considered insufficient or too slow by many
communities and organizations. Moreover, according to critical interpre-
tation, the Concertacin governments were not really committed to the
promotion of indigenous rights. These critical sectors progressively gained
importance inside the movement, especially when the limits of the new
institutional setting in affecting high-profile issues became evident. We
turn in the next section to this important change in the Mapuche move-
ment, which accounts for the beginning of what commonly is referred to
as the Mapuche conflict.
The End ofCooperation
Discordances intheCooperative Phase

Even if cooperation was the predominant tone between 1990 and 1997,
some divergent standpoints developed during these years. Importantly,
a more autonomist discourse developed and some activists adopted a
more critical stance toward what was referred to as insider tactics. The All
Lands Council,34 the most active organization of the cooperative period,35
for example, spearheaded several peaceful land takeovers in 1991 and
1992. Against a backdrop of the celebrations of the 500th anniversary
of Americas discovery, these actions still attained a considerable media
impact.36
Besides its confrontational tactics, two other important features dis-
tinguished the All Lands Council. First, it expanded the movements
demands, invoking self-determination and political autonomy rights to
their ancestral lands for the Mapuche people.37 Second, at the orga-
nizational level, the Council gave a major role to traditional Mapuche
authorities such as the lonkos (chiefs), and the werken (spokespersons).
From an autonomist stance, this option aimed both to reinvigorate the
Mapuche culture and to avoid the occidental organization model followed
by most Mapuche organizations (which elected a president, vice president,
treasurer, etc.).38
The Council was unable to challenge the dominant cooperative dynamic
of this period. However, as Adolfo Millabur, an important Mapuche leader
states, its autonomist discourse and practice facilitated young Mapuche
generations to develop an independent interpretation of reality, divorced
from that promoted by political parties; a very suspicious and skeptical
one.39 In this sense, it has been argued that the Council sowed the
autonomist ideology in the Mapuche movement.40
In any case, as we will see below, two specific events were crucial in
watering the seed and fostering the development of the autonomist strand
inside the movement, putting an end to the cooperative phase that char-
acterized the transitional years. These events can be considered transfor-
mative events, which have been defined in the literature as turning
points in structural change, concentrated moments of political and cul-
tural creativity when the logic of historical development is reconfigured by
human action but by no means abolished.41
Transformative Events andtheRadicalization oftheMovement:

TheLumaco andRalco Conflicts
During the night of December 1, 1997, three logging trucks full of
wood were attacked and burned by Mapuche activists in the commune of
Lumaco, when Mapuche despair exploded violently for the first time
since the end of the dictatorship.42 This event was a watershed moment
in the movement.43
108 G. BIDEGAIN
This particular event pushed into the publics eye the conflictive situ-
ation between the Mapuche communities and the logging companies,
which have a strong presence in Mapuche territory. Since the beginning
of the dictatorship, the military regime actively fostered the development
of this industry in the south of Chile, a policy that was continued post-
democratization. As a result, there was an explosive growth of forestry
plantations.44 The poverty and lack of land of Mapuche communities con-
trasted with the development of this economic activity. Furthermore, the
forestry plantations caused serious environmental problems that directly
aggrieved the neighboring indigenous communities.45
Thus, the burning of the logging trucks took place in an already tense
context between some Mapuche communities and the logging companies
operating in their surroundings.46 These communities first followed the
institutional path, resorting to CONADI and regional political authorities
to present demands related to pieces of land reclaimed as ancestral prop-
erty but legally owned by logging companies.47 Many argue that insuffi-
cient response to their demands motivated a more radical course of action.
The land occupation led to confrontations with forestry private guards
and the police, which finally resulted in the burning of the trucks.48
A key organizational consequence of the process triggered by the
burning of the trucks was the creation of a new Mapuche organization
that quickly gained public relevance: the Coordinadora de Comunidades
en Conflicto Arauco-Malleco (Coordination of Arauco-Malleco
Communities in Conflict, CAM).49 After the Lumaco events, representa-
tives of Mapuche communities and organizations met to analyze the new
scenario. There was no agreement regarding the use of violent means to
protest. Ultimately, this disagreement motivated the creation of CAM,
an organization that embraced disruptive protest tactics.50 Besides, this
case exposed the difficulties faced by many poor communities in obtain-
ing a satisfactory response to their land demands through the mecha-
nisms of the Indigenous Law. After Lumaco, the movement increasingly
integrated disruptive protests into its repertoire of action, which in some
cases included the legitimization of political violence.
The second important conflict to be outlined is the Ralco conflict. This
case put the Mapuche movement in opposition to the Chilean govern-
ment and ENDESA Chile,51 which promoted the construction of a hydro-
electric plant on the Biobo River. According to the 1993 Indigenous
Law and the 1994 Environmental Law,52 the Ralco project had to be
approved by the National Environmental Corporation (CONAMA) and
CONADI. Environmental approval by CONAMA was granted after a

very controversial process, which included blatant pressure on the envi-
ronmental authority by the executive.53
The executive also exerted pressure on CONADI.A report issued by
the institution under Director Mauricio Huenchulaf accused the Ralco
dam project of violating the Indigenous Law. It argued that the construc-
tion would affect the subsistence lands and homes of the indigenous,
something explicitly forbidden by the law. However, according to the gov-
ernment, there was a conflict between the Indigenous and the Electric54
laws. While the former protected the indigenous lands, the latter allowed
the government to expropriate the lands of individual owners to benefit
collective Chilean interests. In the governments judicial interpretation,
the Electric Law had precedence over the Indigenous Law.55 According
to the executive, the dam was a national priority that was necessary for
the countrys economic development. Therefore, the debate regarding
the indigenous rights had to be focused (and limited) on reaching fair
compensation for the Pehuenche56 families through agreements between
them and ENDESA.57
The opposition of the director of CONADI to the project led to his
removal by the government.58 The government claimed administrative
reasons, but the Mapuche believed that the reason behind his removal
was his opposition to the Ralco Dam.59 In April 1997, a new director
was appointed: Domingo Namuncura. Namuncura was affiliated with one
of the political parties of the governmental coalition, the Partido Por la
Democracia, but had no ties to the Mapuche movement. Mapuche organi-
zations perceived Namuncura as a rubber stamp appointee; but in the end
he also opposed the land exchanges proposed by ENDESA. By August
1998, the new national director explicitly opposed the project, putting
it at risk. The government responded unambiguously: it also removed
Namuncura. For the second time in less than two years, the government
removed a national director of CONADI due to his opposition to the
dam project (the vote of the director was crucial since all indigenous rep-
resentatives opposed the project). Furthermore, in a symbolic manner,
the executive designated for the first time since the creation of CONADI
a non-indigenous national director. In the end, the executive imposed its
will and the dam was built.60
The management of the Ralco conflict showed the limitations of
the Indigenous Law in protecting indigenous rights and the inability
of CONADI to act from within the state as an effective barrier against
110 G. BIDEGAIN
governmental economic policies that could violate them. From the per-
spective of Mapuche activists, the executives intervention in CONADI
showed the Chilean states unwillingness to defend indigenous rights
when they clashed with powerful economic interests.61
The distrust toward the whole political system by the autonomous sec-
tors of the movement was reinforced, and the position within the move-
ment of the pro-Concertacin Mapuche leaders who had privileged a
cooperative strategy after transition was seriously affected.62
These two transformative events showed the limits of the cooperative
strategy for pursuing the Mapuche demands and deepened the divide
between the movement and the state. As a consequence, autonomist
expressions gained importance and progressively overshadowed the more
cooperative wing of the movement.
The Conflict BetweentheMapuche

andtheChilean State (19992014)
The Upsurge ofMapuche Mobilization

The Lumaco and Ralco conflicts marked the end of the cooperative period
inaugurated by the Nueva Imperial Agreement. After the burning of the
logging trucks in Lumaco in 1997, there was a significant increase in disrup-
tive actions undertaken by the Mapuche movement. Toledo Llancaqueo63
identifies a cycle of protest between 1997 and 2005. The cycle reached
its peak in 2001 and then progressively declined until 2005. In 2006,
protest increased again. The protest event database created by Nicols
Somma64 (see Chap. 2 in this book) for the 20002012 period confirms
the temporary decline of protest between 2003 and 2005 as well as the
2006 increase in the levels of protest identified by Llancaqueo. Moreover,
Sommas data shows significant levels of sustained protest between 2006
and 2012 (see Graph 4.1). Therefore, in spite of lacking comparable data
for the whole 19972014 period, available research shows that between
these years Mapuche mobilization has been sustained. The CAM stood
out in period due to its nationalist discourse, its direct, violent confron-
tation with state forces, and the high number of imprisoned activists it
counts among its numbers. However, some communities not linked to
it mobilized spontaneously or were developed through other autonomist
organizations.65
Mapuche protests 2000-2012

80
70
Number of protest events
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012
Year
Graph 4.1 Mapuche protest events (20002012). Source: Own elaboration

with data of the project The diffusion of collective protest in Chile, 20002012
coordinated by Nicols Somma (Protest in 2012 is underestimated since data has
only been gathered for the first semester of the year)
A second important aspect to be underlined is the geographical con-

centration of the protests. Sommas data shows that 84 % of the protest
took place in traditional Mapuche territory, several hundred kilometers
away from the Metropolitan Region (where only 13 % of protest events
occurred). This is reasonable, since the demand for land is centered on
what historically constituted Mapuche territory. In any case, it is worth
noting that the protest events staged by the Mapuche movement are more
geographically condensed than the Mapuche population (see Graph 4.2).
A third feature of the protests is that despite their relative constancy,
they have not been able to gather a large number of people (see Chap.2).
Following della Porta and Diani,66 it can be argued that the inability to
mobilize a large number of people has led the Mapuche movement to rely
more on the logic of damage and the logic of bearing witness than on
the logic of numbers. In fact, one of the most important features of the
Mapuche movement in the confrontational period is the undertaking of
direct action to foster their claims, even at high costs for both the activists
and their communities. The most disruptive repertoires of action such as
the land takeovers, the burning of forestry plantations and machinery, and
road blockades signify heavily involved activists, who by participating risk
legal prosecution. Land takeovers represented 19 %, road blocking 8 %,
the takeover of public or private buildings 7 %, and the burning of forestry
112 G. BIDEGAIN
90
80
70 Mapuche population
Protest events
60
Percentage
50
40
30
20
10
0
Historical Metropolitan Rest of the
Mapuche Region country
Territory
Geographical location
Graph 4.2 Geographical location of the Mapuche population and protest.

Source: Own elaboration with data of the project The diffusion of collective pro-
test in Chile, 20002012 coordinated by Nicols Somma and of the INE (INE,
Estadsticas Sociales de los Pueblos Indgenas en Chile Censo 2002) for population
distribution (Protest in 2012 is underestimated since data has only been gathered
for the first semester of the year)
plantations and logging machinery 3 % of the protests. Another important

tactic that emerged in this period as a consequence of the imprisonment
of Mapuche activists is the hunger strikes of prisoners, accounting for 7 %
of the protest events of the period.
The reinforcement of the autonomist stream of the movement after
19971998 does not mean that the cooperative sectors disappeared.
CONADI continued to regularly elect indigenous representatives to
the National Council, and the center to left political parties included
indigenous sections comprised of Mapuche activists, even if these sec-
tions are almost irrelevant politically.67 Moreover, an important number
of Mapuche organizations and communities have gained access to eco-
nomic resources through CONADIs cultural and economic development
plans. CONADI has registered in historical Mapuche territory 2963 com-
munities and 1146 indigenous associations.68 However, even if the more
cooperative sectors usually support the claims of the autonomists and par-
ticipate in some protests, the autonomous sectors of the movement are the
ones that lead the mobilizations.
A final point that must be raised is the scarcity of economic resources

available to the autonomous organizations. Due to their autonomic politi-
cal stance, they neither apply for state funds nor receive any partisan sup-
port. This situation severely restricts their access to economic resources,
which usually come from self-funding activities, the communities support
(which are in turn very poor), or international aid, in some cases.69 The
contrast with the resources handled by private companies operating in the
Mapuche territory is blatant.
What Political Impact? State Response During

theConflictive Period
The successive governments have responded to the remobilization of the
Mapuche communities through a combination of repression and devel-
opment policies. This approach has been labeled by several authors as a
carrot-and-stick strategy.70 In either approach, a defining characteristic of
the governmental responses in this period is the lack of major institutional
innovations. The ebbs and flows of the indigenous policies took place
inside the general institutional setting established in the 1993 Indigenous
Law.
A starting point is the repressive component of the governmental pol-
icy. Successive governments have acted decisively to protect the pub-
lic order and the private property of the legal owners of the disputed
lands in the cases of land takeovers and the burning of logging plantation
and machinery. This approach has led to recurrent violent confrontations
between Mapuche activists and public forces, resulting in the deaths of
three young Mapuche activists killed by the police in forced eviction pro-
cedures during land takeovers (in 2002, 2008, and 2009). In all three
cases, due to Chilean legislation, the policemen were judged by mili-
tary courts and remained unpunished. A Human Rights Watch report71
summarizes the inability of the Chilean judiciary to defend Mapuche activ-
ists from police abuse: those seeking justice and redress for abuses
committed by the police currently have no access to an independent and
impartial court. Military courts still assert sole jurisdiction for abuses such
as torture, homicide, or the unjustified use of force by carabineros (police
forces), if committed while on duty or on military premises. In practice,
the great majority of complaints against carabineros for ill-treatment or
excessive force bring no result.
114 G. BIDEGAIN
One of the most controversial aspects of the governments repressive

response to the movements rising mobilization was the use of emergency
legislation to persecute Mapuche activists.72 After the 1997 burning of
logging trucks in Lumaco, successive governments have invoked the Law
on Internal Security73 and the Anti-terrorism Law, resulting in very heavy
police presence in the mobilized communities.74 However, this repressive
turn did not slow down mobilization in the south, which continued to
expand and intensify.
The Anti-terrorism Law has dire consequences for due process and
undermines the presumption of innocence.75 Moreover, it has a very
ambiguous definition of terrorism that allows its application in cases where
no human life is threatened. In fact, most applications of this law against
Mapuche activists involved attacks on private property.76 This practice
has been denounced by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the
rights of indigenous peoples in 200377 and again in 2009.78 Nevertheless,
between 2002 and 2014, each government has applied the Anti-terrorism
Law against Mapuche activists.
A direct consequence of state repression against the most active sec-
tors of the movement was the imprisonment of many Mapuche activ-
ists (see Table 4.1). Ending the application of emergency laws against
the Mapuche became a crosscutting demand of the movement, which
denounces the criminalization of social protest. Mapuche organizations
have also denounced the militarization of Mapuche territory due to the
heavy police presence that has become usual in many communities. Several
national and international human rights organizations have echoed these
denouncement, underlining police abuse of Mapuche communities via
recurrent search and seizure procedures undertaken to find evidence
against accused activists.79
Successive governments have not only responded to the protests through
repressive means. They have developed specific policies to foster the cul-
tural and social development of the indigenous peoples without altering
the main institutional setting defined by the 1993 Indigenous Law. Several
rounds of dialogue with Mapuche communities and organizations have
been promoted to listen to indigenous demands and propose new policies
to address the identified problems, but without major success.80
The rise of mobilization also affected the budget allocated to indig-
enous policies, which increased regularly between 1997 and 2002, when
mobilization reached its peak. By 2002, the indigenous budget q uadrupled
compared with 1997. Between 2002 and 2006, the indigenous budget
Table 4.1 Number of Prisoners

Year
imprisoned Mapuche
activists (condemned or in 2008 47
preventive detention) 2009 36
2010 57
2011 18
2012 9
2013 29
2014 16
Source: Own elaboration using
data of the Comisin tica Contra
laTortura
stagnated, but it then increased again after 2007.81 However, from a more
general point of view, the budget for indigenous policies remained mar-
ginal. While the indigenous population represents 11 % of the Chilean
population,82 the indigenous budget never surpassed 0.4 % of the public
budget between 1994 and 2008.83
The Programa Orgenes has been the most ambitious plan created during
the period. This program was instituted by the government of Ricardo Lagos
and involved the economic collaboration of the Inter-American Development
Bank and the Chilean state, injecting large amounts of resources into social
and cultural programs between 2001 and 2012.84 The objective of the pro-
gram was to contribute to the holistic, community-led development of
peoples of Aymara, Atacameo and Mapuche identities in rural areas.85 The
Programa Orgenes implied the allocation of more resources but the mainte-
nance of the governmental focus toward indigenous policy: a culturally sensi-
tive approach aiming to overcome indigenous poverty without questioning
their lack of political recognition as indigenous peoples.86
Regarding land devolution, between 1990 and 2013, CONADI bought
and delivered 142,48487 hectares of land to the Mapuche communities
through the application of Article 20b of the Indigenous Law (which
deals with pieces of land where there is legal conflict between indigenous
and non-indigenous owners). The budget allocated to the Indigenous
Land and Water Fund (FTAI) has increased over the years. During the
19972002 cycle of protests, it experienced a significant boost. As a share
of the national budget, the FTAI budget passed from 0.06 % in 1997 to
0.12 % in 2002 (see Graph 4.3). Yet it has been insufficient to respond
116 G. BIDEGAIN
0.18
0.16
0.14
Percentage of total public budget
0.12
0.1
0.08
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
1995 1997 1999 2001 2003 2005 2007 2009 2011 2013
Indigenous Land and Water
Fund budget
Graph 4.3 FTAI budget evolution as part of the public budget (19952014)
Source: Own elaboration using data of the Direccin Nacional de Presupuestos
to indigenous needs.88 Moreover, since CONADI lacks the resources and

bureaucratic capacity to process all the demands, it is common knowl-
edge that land takeovers are necessary to speed up the process of land
devolution. This is recognized by political as well as social actors89 and
has been recently empirically proven in a quantitative study that shows
that engaging in conflict has significant effects on government investment
to purchase lands for the communities involved.90 As a result, Mapuche
communities receive mixed incentives from the ambiguous state response:
land takeovers are necessary to get CONADIs attention but can provoke
the repression and imprisonment of the activists by the police. A Mapuche
leader recently stated during a land takeover that there is no land pur-
chase without violence. Her community had been waiting for several
years for a response to their formal land demand to the governmental
institutions before passing to direct action.91 Certainly, this dynamic does
not help to overcome the conflict between these communities and the
Chilean state. Land recuperations are experienced as victories achieved

at high cost rather than the result of the fulfillment of the states duties
toward the indigenous peoples.
Regarding recognition, a symbolically important result was the report
of the Historical Truth and New Deal Commission, published in 2003.
The commission was created in 2001 by the Lagos government and was
in charge of helping the government in the penning of a new deal on
indigenous matters. One important feature of the commission was its
integration; it included the participation of many autonomist Mapuche
leaders as well as government representatives.92 The report delivered to
the president recognized the existence of a historical debt owed by the
Chilean state to the indigenous peoples, especially toward the Mapuche.
Moreover, the commission insisted on the importance of recognizing the
existence of indigenous peoples in Chile and recommended reforming
the constitution in order to recognize their political and territorial collec-
tive rights.93 Nonetheless, the recommendations regarding constitutional
recognition were not taken up, and the Historical Truth and New Deal
report remained in effect more symbolic than institutional.94
The ratification of ILO Convention No. 169 on indigenous rights in
2008 has been the most important institutional reform in the conflictive
period. The Convention recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples to
consultation on and participation in those issues that can affect the indige-
nous and their historical territory. This was a long-standing demand of the
Mapuche movement and a commitment of the Concertacin parties for
18 years. However, the ratification of the Convention was a very contro-
versial process. In order to get the necessary votes, the Concertacin gov-
ernment reached an agreement with the right-wing opposition coalition.
This agreement resulted in the inclusion of an interpretative clause in
the ratification bill that severely restricted the reach of the convention. Due
to the protest of Mapuche organizations, the government sent a query to
the ILO regarding the possibility of including the interpretative clause
in the bill. This possibility was explicitly rejected by the international orga-
nization, and the Convention was finally ratified in 2008 without any
restriction.95 As a result of this process the indigenous world did not
celebrate the ratification, a demand that lasted for 18 years. They under-
stood that the ratification was contaminated.96 On the other hand, the
ILO Convention does not make explicit the way in which consultation and
participation must be accomplished. National governments must there-
fore define the specific procedures. For the time being, the consultation
118 G. BIDEGAIN
procedures created in Chile have received severe criticisms for not meet-
ing international standards.97 Notwithstanding, the ratification of the ILO
Convention No. 169 is a major institutional step that provides the Chilean
indigenous people with important legal tools for fostering respect for their
rights. It is, however, too early to assess its long-term impact.
Conclusion
During the cooperative phase analyzed in this chapter, the Mapuche move-
ment relied on external resources to foster its demands, namely, an explicit
alliance with government actors. The Indigenous Law and the creation of
CONADI were important outcomes of this cooperation and represented
significant improvements to the situation experienced during the dictator-
ship. These institutions allowed the successive democratic governments to
meet low-profile demands such as the extension of indigenous education
coverage, the promotion of economic development plans in rural commu-
nities, and fostering policies of cultural recognition. Nonetheless, the new
institutional setting also defined the limits on political and territorial rec-
ognition. Moreover, as the Ralco dam case made clear, CONADI quickly
hit institutional limitations in protecting indigenous rights.
While significant, the results of the cooperative phase frustrated some
sectors of the movement that progressively gained importance, proposing
an autonomist discourse and privileging confrontational tactics to show
their discontent.
The autonomous turn limited the external resources of the movement
to form political alliances. The lack of external resources has forced the
movement to rely on its internal resources, but these resources are also
scarce, as has been shown in this chapter. The Mapuche protest has been
constant, disruptive, and intense, but has involved low numbers of pro-
testers who are concentrated in Mapuche territory. These characteristics,
in combination with the low media attention they usually get, have seri-
ously limited the capacity of the movement to achieve significant institu-
tional impact with their high-profile demands. However, it has proven
successful in affecting the allocation of resources inside the established
institutional setting. In fact, the governments reaction has combined
repression and investment in low-profile issues like cultural recognition,
education grants, social and economic development plans, and the return
of land through the Indigenous Land and Water Fund.
The governments strategy failed to promote effective integration of

the Mapuche in Chilean society. Violent confrontations involving police
officers, landowners, logging private security forces, and Mapuche activ-
ists have become normal in some parts of Mapuche territory. In 2012, a
policeman was killed by a bullet during a search and seizure procedure in
a Mapuche community.98 In 2013, a couple was killed when a group of
Mapuche attacked their rural residence.99 In 2014, a Mapuche was run
over and killed by an agricultural workers tractor during a pacific land
takeover. These cases add to the three Mapuche killed by the police dur-
ing land takeover eviction procedures in 2002, 2008, and 2009, illustrat-
ing the critical situation in the South of Chile. In 2010, 75 % of Chileans
opined that there were strong (45 %) or very strong (30 %) conflicts
between the Mapuche and the non-Mapuche population.100
Maybe the spiral of violence will foster a new political approach to
the Mapuche reality. In that sense, and recognizing the lack of political
response to the Mapuche demands, a Concertacin senator states: I feel
that violent acts are the only stimuli that could motivate them [the politi-
cal parties] to be interested in a new deal, and I regret this.101
Recent developments indicate the governments determination to
address the high-profile demands of the movement. In 2014, the recently
reelected President Michelle Bachelet named for the first time in Chilean
history a Mapuche as the Intendente (the Executive representative) of the
Araucana. Furthermore, Bachelets governmental program includes the
constitutional recognition of collective rights of the indigenous peoples,
the creation of autonomous spaces in the indigenous territory, and the
creation of an Indigenous Ministry. It remains to be seen if these com-
mitments remain unfulfilled promises or if they are accomplished. If the
latter is the case, the switch to a confrontational strategy will be proven an
effective tactic for a low internal and external resources social movement.
For the time being, what remains clear is that so long as its high-profile
demands go unaddressed, it seems very unlikely that a solution to the so-
called Mapuche conflict will be found in the near future.
Notes
1. Ley 18314. Determina conductas terroristas y fija su penalidad.
2. Ley 19253. Establece normas sobre proteccin, fomento y desarrollo de
los indgenas, y crea la Corporacin Nacional de Desarrollo Indgena.
3. There is a wide range of autonomous positions inside the movement. See
Marimn, Autodeterminacin. Ideas Polticas Mapuche en el Albor del
Siglo XXI.
120 G. BIDEGAIN
4. Emergency legislation provides the government with exceptional powers

such as suspending regular judicial procedures. It is usually invoked in
states of emergency or when the state security is under threat.
5. Human Rights Watch, Undue Process: Terrorism Trials, Military
Courts, and the Mapuche in Southern Chile.
6. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Informe Anual 2013.
Situacin de los Derechos Humanos en Chile.
7. E.g. Gamson, The Strategy of Social Protest; Kolb, Protest and Opportunities.
8. Kriesi etal., New Social Movements in Western Europe.
9. Ibid., 83.
10. Soule etal., have defined insider tactics as those that attempt to exert
influence within the confines of the institutionalized political system.
Outsider tactics are those that attempt to exert influence through other
mechanisms (e.g. protest, grass-roots lobbying, etc.).
11. The literature has also addressed other kinds of impacts, like cultural and
biographical impacts. See, e.g., Giugni, Political, Biographical, and
Cultural Consequences of Social Movements.
12. Kolb, Protest and Opportunities, 25.
13. Diani, The Concept of Social Movement.
14. Sewell, Historical Events as Transformations of Structures.
15. Instituto Nacional de Estadsticas, Censo 2012 Resultados XVIII Censo de
Poblacin.
16. Bengoa, Historia de un Conflicto, 51; Haughney, Neoliberal Economics,
Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile, 20.
17. Data obtained from the website of the Ministry of Social Development:
Encuesta de Caracterizacin Socioeconmica Nacional CASEN 2011.
18. Gacita, Toward an Explanatory Model of Mapuche Mobilizations
under the Chilean Military Regime; Guillaudat and Mouterde, Los
Movimientos Sociales en Chile, 19731993.
19. Decreto Ley 2568. Modifica ley N17.729, sobre proteccin de indge-
nas, y radica funciones del Instituto de Desarrollo Indgena en el Instituto
de Desarrollo Agropecuario.
20. Rupailaf, Las Organizaciones Mapuches y las Polticas Indigenistas del
Estado Chileno (19702000), 75.
21. Martnez Neira, Transicin a la Democracia, Militancia y Proyecto
tnico. La Fundacin de la Organizacin Mapuche Consejo de Todas las
Tierras (19781990), 601.
22. Reuque, Una Flor que Renace: Autobiografa de una Dirigente Mapuche.
23. In order to assess the most important demands of the organizations, I
systematically analyzed all the issues of the magazine Ntram between
1985 and 1992, paying special attention to the published organizational
documents. This magazine was an important space where the Mapuche
organizations expressed their views regarding indigenous issues.
24. Collective rights are defined by Sanders as the rights of groups that have
goals that transcend the ending of discrimination against their members
for their members are joined together not simply by external discrimina-
tion but by an internal cohesiveness. Sanders, Collective Rights, 369.
25. Kriesi etal., New Social Movements in Western Europe.
26. Aylwin et al., Entre El Desarrollo y el Buen Vivir. Recursos Naturales y
Conflictos en los Territorios Indgenas.
27. Toledo Llancaqueo, Pueblo Mapuche.
28. This commitment was not included in the Nueva Imperial agreement but
was part of the electoral promises of the Concertacin. See for instance
Concertacin de los Partidos por la Democracia, La Concertacin de
Los Partidos Por La Democracia a Los Pueblos Indgenas, 14.
29. Authors translation. The Nueva Imperial Agreement is available at:
http://www.politicaspublicas.net/panel/biblioteca/doc_view/21-acu-
erdo-de-nueva-imperial-1989.raw?tmpl=component [Accessed 30
January 2015].
30. Comisin Especial de Pueblos Indgenas, Congreso Nacional de Pueblos
Indgenas de Chile, 1213.
31. Aylwin, Los Conflictos en el Territorio Mapuche: Antecedentes y Per
spectivas; Aylwin, Materializaciones y conflictos.
32. In 1995, CONADI created the Culture and Education Fund to protect
and develop indigenous cultures.
33. Interview with Gonzalo Toledo Martel (20/11/2013).
34. Auki Wallmapu Ngulam in the Mapuche language or Consejo de Todas
las Tierras in Spanish.
35. Like many other organizations, the Council also resulted from the
breakup of Ad Mapu in the eighties. Nonetheless, it developed a very
critical discourse towards the Chilean political parties and their linkages
with the most important Mapuche organizations.
36. Additionally, some particular conflicts, like the land dispute of the
Quinqun communities or the protests sparked by the construction of
the Pangue hydroelectric plant, also disrupted the environment of general
cooperation and called media attention. See e.g. Bengoa, Historia de un
Conflicto; Haughney, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and
Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile.
37. Martnez Neira, Transicin a la Democracia, Militancia y Proyecto
tnico. La Fundacin de la Organizacin Mapuche Consejo de Todas las
Tierras (19781990); Marimn, Autodeterminacin. Ideas Polticas
Mapuche en el Albor del Siglo XXI.
38. Interview with Lautaro Loncn (13/12/2013).
39. Interview with Adolfo Millabur (20/11/2013).
40. Pairicn Padilla, Sembrando Ideologa.
41. McAdam and Sewell, Jr., Its About Time: Temporality in the Study of
Social Movements and Revolutions, 102.
122 G. BIDEGAIN
42. Marimn, Lumaco y El Movimiento Mapuche.

43. Foerster and Lavanchy, La Problemtica Mapuche; Toledo Llancaqueo,
Prima Ratio. Movilizacin Mapuche y Poltica Penal. Los Marcos de La
Poltica Indgena en Chile 19902007; Tricot, Autonoma, el Movimiento
Mapuche de Resistencia; Pairicn Padilla, Maln: la Rebelin del
Movimiento Mapuche 19902013.
44. Aylwin, Los Conflictos en el Territorio Mapuche: Antecedentes y
Perspectivas, 286.
45. Toledo Llancaqueo, Pueblo Mapuche.
46. Tricot, El Nuevo Movimiento Mapuche and Lumako.
47. See the Informe de la Comisin Especial de Observadores de la Sociedad
Civil para Conocer de los Hechos Ocurridos en las Comunidades
Mapuche de Lumaco, available online at: http://www.mapuche.info/
lumaco/inf971223.htm [website consulted the 01/02/2015].
48. Llaitul and Arrate, Weichan, Conversaciones con un Weychafe en la Prisin
Poltica.
49. For an excellent and exhaustive account of the origins and development
of the CAM, see Pairicn Padilla, Maln: la Rebelin del Movimiento
Mapuche 19902013.
50. Weftun, first year, number 1, 2001. Official publication of the
Coordinadora Arauco Malleco, available online: http://www.nodo50.
org/weftun/ [website consulted the 9/11/2014].
51. The National Electric Company, privatized under Pinochets
dictatorship.
52. Ley 19300. Aprueba ley sobre bases generales del medio ambiente.
53. Namuncura, Ralco, represa o pobreza?; Moraga, Aguas Turbias. La Central
Hidroelctrica Ralco en el Alto Bo Bo; Haughney, Neoliberal Economics,
Democratic Transition, and Mapuche Demands for Rights in Chile.
54. DFL 1. Aprueba modificaciones al D.F.L.N4, de 1959, ley general de
servicios elctricos, en materia de energa elctrica.
55. Haughney, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche
Demands for Rights in Chile, 127128.
56. The Pehuenche are part of the Mapuche people. They live in the south
central Andes Mountains of Chile and Argentina.
57. Interview with Martn Zilic, Intendente of the Biobio region 19942000
(25/06/2014).
58. Namuncura, Ralco, represa o pobreza?
59. Interview with Domingo Namuncura (03/12/2013).
60. Moraga, Aguas Turbias. La Central Hidroelctrica Ralco en el Alto Bo
Bo.
61. Interviews with Ana Millaleo (30/11/2013), Paul Paillafilu

(30/11/2013), Marta Yaez Queupumil (05/12/2013), Fernando
Pairicn (09/12/2013), Venancio Couepn (13/07/2014).
62. Interview with Domingo Namuncura, 03/12/2013.
63. Toledo Llancaqueo, Prima Ratio. Movilizacin Mapuche y Poltica
Penal. Los Marcos de la Poltica Indgena en Chile 19902007.
64. I am very grateful for the generosity of Nicols Somma for sharing his
dataset for this research. The dataset was collected as part of the
FONDECYT grant 11121147 The diffusion of collective protest in
Chile, 20002012 (PI: Nicols Somma).
65. Fortin and Pairicn, 20 Aos de Desencuentro. Las Demandas del
Movimiento Mapuche y una Posible Solucin al Conflicto.
66. della Porta and Diani, Social Movements.
67. Interviews with Fernando Quilaleo (15/11/2013), Eugenio Tuma
(20/08/2014), Eugenio Alcamn (24/06/2014), Ana Millaleo
(30/11/2013) and Alejandro Navarro (20/08/2014).
68. Information available at the CONADIs website: http://www.conadi.
gob.cl/index.php/registro-de-comunidades-y-asociaciones-indigenas
[Accessed 5 May 2015].
69. Interviews with Adolfo Millabur (20/11/2013), Enrique Antileo
(06/12/2013), Marta Yaez Quepumil (05/12/2013) and Lautaro
Loncn (13/12/2013).
70. Haughney, Neoliberal Economics, Democratic Transition, and Mapuche
Demands for rights in Chile; Aylwin, La Poltica del Nuevo Trato: ante-
cedentes, alcances y limitaciones; Pairicn Padilla, La Nueva Guerra de
Arauco: la Coordinadora Arauco Malleco y el Conflicto Mapuche en el
Chile de la Concertacin 19972002 (Tomo II).
Courts, and the Mapuche in Southern Chile, 8.
73. Ley 12927. Seguridad Interior del Estado.
When the Executive authorities consider that some action put in danger
the internal state security they can invoke this law, which among other
exceptions regarding ordinary crimes set fixed time limits for each stage
of the trial, give judges greater discretion in evaluating evidence, and
limits rights of appeal (Human Rights Watch 2004, 17).
74. Mella Seguel, Los Mapuche Ante la Justicia: la Criminalizacin de la
Protesta Indgena en Chile.
124 G. BIDEGAIN
76. Mella Seguel, La Aplicacin del Derecho Penal Comn y Antiterrorista

Como Respuesta a la Protesta Social de Indgenas Mapuche Durante el
Periodo 20002010.
77. United Nations Economic and Social Council, Informe del Relator
Especial Sobre la Situacin de los Derechos Humanos y las Libertades
Individuales de Los Indgenas, Sr. Rodolfo Stavenhagen, Presentado de
Conformidad con la Resolucin 2003/56 de la Comisin, 22.
78. UN Human Rights Council, Informe del Relator Especial Sobre la
Situacin de los Derechos Humanos y las Libertades Individuales de los
Indgenas, James Anaya. Adicin. La Situacin de los Pueblos Indgenas en
Chile: Seguimiento a las Recomendaciones Hechas por el Relator Especial
Anterior.
79. Instituto Nacional de Derechos Humanos, Informe Anual 2012.
Situacin de los Derechos Humanos en Chile, 25.
81. Toledo Llancaqueo, Presupuesto del Sector Pblico y Polticas Indgenas.
Chile 19942008.
82. INE, Sntesis de Resultados.
83. Toledo Llancaqueo, Presupuesto del Sector Pblico y Polticas
Indgenas. Chile 19942008.
84. The Program had two phases. According to the data available at the
IADB website, the first phase (20012006) involved USD 58,000,000
and the second one (20062012) USD 109,900,000.
85. Direccin de Presupuestos, Sntesis Ejecutiva. Programa Orgenes.
Authors translation.
86. Bello, El Programa Orgenes y la poltica pblica del gobierno de Lagos
hacia los pueblos indgenas.
87. Data available in the CONADI webpage.
88. Direccin de Presupuestos, Informe Final de Evaluacin. Programa
Fondo de Tierras y Aguas Indgenas. Corporacin Nacional de Desarrollo
Indgena, 14.
89. Interviews with Senator Alberto Espina (17/07/2014); Senator Eugenio
Tuma (20/08/2014) and Lautaro Loncn (13/12/2013). Fieldwork
notes of my travels to the Bo Bo and the Araucana regions in 20132014.
90. Bauer, Politics of Pressure: Indigenous Mobilization and Land Policy
Implementation.
91. Villagrn Barra, Comunidad Mapuche Depone Toma de Fundo Agrcola
en Mulchn.
92. For instance, it included the leaders of the All Lands Council and the
Identidad Territorial Lafkenche. However, it had no representatives from
CAM.
93. Comisin Verdad Histrica y Nuevo Trato con los Pueblos Indgenas,
Informe de La Comisin Verdad Histrica y Nuevo Trato con los Pueblos
Indgenas, 535.
95. Donoso, Documento de Trabajo No8. Convenio 169 de la OIT:
Implicancias de una Ratificacin.
96. Interview with Domingo Namuncura (03/12/2013).
97. See e.g. http://mapuexpress.org/2015/02/05/los-vicios-de-la-consulta-
en-chile-y-el-incumplimiento-del-estandar-de-derechos#sthash.jVLzV0Yx.
dpbs [Accessed 19 February 2015].
98. The courts have not yet been able to find who was responsible for the
shot, and the Mapuche argue that he was killed by friendly fire.
99. A machi (Mapuche religious authority) has been found guilty of the crime.
100. Centro de Estudios Pblicos, Estudio Nacional de Opinin Pblica
No63. Noviembre-Diciembre 2010.
101. Interview with Eugenio Tuma (20/08/2014).
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CHAPTER 5
Democratizing theFlows ofDemocracy:

Patagonia Sin Represas intheAwakening
ofChiles Civil Society
ColombinaSchaeffer
Introduction
In May 2011, people took to the streets to protest against the approval
of HidroAysn, a mega-dam complex proposed in the Region of Aysn,1
Chilean Patagonia. Observers and the media alike were quick to note that
such a citizen movement had not taken place since the mobilizations in
the 1980s against General Augusto Pinochets dictatorship (19731989).2
It was just the beginning. A few weeks later, secondary and tertiary stu-
dents (and then their teachers and parents) organized strikes and protests
against the neoliberal education system, with five major demonstrations
taking place in only three months.3
Mobilizations against HidroAysn started on the day of the projects
approval by the regional environmental commission in Coyhaique (Aysn,
Southern Chile) on 9 May 2011. Later that day, people also took to the
streets in cities all over the country: Iquique, La Serena, Valparaso, Santiago,
Rancagua, Talca, Concepcin, Valdivia, and Temuco. In Santiago, a rally
was organized on May 9. There were also three massive demonstrations
C. Schaeffer (*)
Callao 3417, dpto 51, Santiago, Chile

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_5
132 C. SCHAEFFER
(on May 13, 20, and 28) and a cultural act on May 21. Each of these dem-
onstrations had parallel rallies in other cities. There were also rallies abroad,
for instance, in Madrid, Hamburg, Paris, Rome, Melbourne, and Sydney.4
The campaign against HidroAysn, the project to build five dams in
Chilean Patagonia, became the largest environmental campaign in Chilean
history. In 2014, Patagonia Sin Represas (Patagonia Without Dams,
henceforth PWD) gathered more than 80 local, national, and interna-
tional organizations and fostered a public debate on the proposed dams as
well as on other issues such as regionalization, electricity markets, citizen
participation, and a constitutional reform. The PWD achieved its climax in
May 2011. Then, in 2014, in a decision that was qualified as historical and
a crucial victory for the environmental movement, HidroAysn was finally
rejected by the Comit de Ministros (Committee of Ministers),5 which
makes the final decision regarding the environmental licenses of projects.6
The events that unfolded after 2011 opened up a series of questions:
How could an environmental issue and, more specifically, an environmen-
tal campaign against the construction of dams in Aysn gain so much
traction and become the starting point of broader and massive demonstra-
tions? What are the main features of the PWD, and in which ways did they
facilitate the impact of the campaign? What does the PWD tell us about
the Chilean environmental movement?
In this chapter, I focus on the PWD as an entry point to furthering our
understanding of the Chilean environmental movement. There is a dearth
of scholarly attention to the recent history of Chilean environmental-
ism. Apart from publications by environmental NGOs,7 interviews,8 and
El Factor Ecolgico (The Ecological Factor), a book by Carlos Aldunate9
published in the early 2000s, there are few exhaustive accounts of this
movement. In the case of the PWD, there are a handful of scholarly publi-
cations.10 However, these studies have focused mainly on the controversy
over HidroAysn, and not specifically on the PWD and the Chilean envi-
ronmental movement. The analysis presented in this chapter advances our
knowledge of Chile in particular, as well as of environmental politics and
movements in general by delving deeper into the dynamics of movements.
I rely on the distinction between arborescent and rhizomatic assemblages
to further unpack these dynamics. The Chilean case shows how they are
crucial to understanding the history, evolution, challenges, victories, and
losses of not only the environmental movement, but also movements in
general.
DEMOCRATIZING THEFLOWS OFDEMOCRACY... 133
The chapter argues that the Chilean environmental movement is com-

posed of multiple and heterogeneous organizations and actors, as well
as different discourses on nature. There is no homogeneity among the
various groups, organizations, and individuals. I therefore propose that
the movement is best understood as an assemblage that takes rhizomatic
and/or arborescent forms at different moments in time and within dif-
ferent organizational spaces in the movement. Arborescence is used to
refer to the notions of centralization, linearity, and hierarchy. Arborescent
organizations work through branches, are intolerant to competition, and
tend toward monopolization strategies. Strength is gained from maturity,
which is also related to the difficulties arborescent forms have adapting
to new circumstances. Conversely, rhizomatic ways of organizing are het-
erogeneous; they involve multiple connections between points without
hierarchy. They entail multiplicity: as there is no unifying center, there are
multiple entryways as well as imitation and de-territorialization. Rhizomes
are resilient, because they have the capacity to regenerate in unexpected
forms and moments.11
The PWD was successful because it was assembled after a period of
organizational and political learning. This period was necessary so that
environmental organizations and activists could find the common ground
and experience needed to work together. These elements, combined with
a shifting political and social context in the country, help us understand
the stopping of HidroAysn.
There are three main sources of data in this chapter: qualitative inter-
views, participant observation, and secondary sources. Fieldwork was
conducted in Chile from December 2012 to May 2013. A total of 34
semi-structured interviews with PWD activists (14 in Aysn and 20 in
Santiago) were conducted. I also kept a fieldtrip journal and took notes
of several informal conversations. I participated in eight meetings, four
seminars, one rally, two mailing lists, and two cultural events, among other
activities. Secondary sources, in turn, included written media, audiovisual
material, movements websites, and academic publications.
Section two briefly discusses the main theoretical insights underpinning
the analysis of PWD.Section three reviews the recent history of the Chilean
environmental movement. The fourth section analyzes the organization of
the PWD, before proceeding to discuss the main findings regarding PWD
and its main organizational and political learning processes.
134 C. SCHAEFFER
A Note onTheory: Movements asAssemblages
Various metaphors have been used to grasp the elusive nature of move-
ments. According to Mario Diani:
It is difficult to grasp the nature of social movements. They cannot be

reduced to specific insurrections or revolts, but rather resemble strings of
more or less connected events, scattered across time and space; they can-
not be identified with any specific organization either, rather, they consist
of groups and organizations, with various levels of formalization, linked in
patterns of interaction which run from the fairly centralized to the totally
decentralized, from the cooperative to the explicitly hostile.12
In this chapter, I draw on the metaphor of social movements as assem-

blages13 to understand the Chilean environmental movement and the
PWD. I understand the PWD as part of the environmental movement,
although it has exceeded it. I rely on the distinction made by activists
between the PWD campaign and the PWD movement. These two
instances can be understood as umbrella spaces, that is, spaces where:
diverse organizations, collectives, and networks converge around common

hallmarks while preserving their autonomy and specificity. Rather than
recruitment, the objective becomes horizontal expansion and enhanced
connectivity.14
While the campaign is a more formal, centralized, and hierarchical

space, the PWD movement is beyond the control of any environmental
actor (organization, grassroots organization, activist, etc.) and has there-
fore exceeded the environmental movement.
The notion of assemblage allows us to better understand these dif-
ferent spaces. More specifically, it captures an important tension within
the PWD and the Chilean environmental movement: the tension between
multiplicity, diversity, disorder, and lack of control, on the one hand, and
coherence, singularity, and stability, on the other. An assemblage is a mul-
tiplicity that exceeds its component parts but which nonetheless retains
elements of specificity.15 It names a process of emergence, process and
stabilization, and connotes a sense that relations might be reassembled
through changing forms of authority.16 Assemblage points to a process of
bringing together and gathering elements, emphasizing both emergence
and process.17 The concept of assemblage allows coherence and singularity

to rise from multiplicity. Difference and disagreement do not need to be
eliminated in order to attain functionality and coherence across time and
space; they can co-function.
An assemblage may take different forms: it can be more or less rhizom-
atic or arborescent.18 Originally a French term, arborescence is used in this
context to generate the image of centralization and hierarchy in the sense
of being treelike. Rhizomatic, on the contrary, refers to the notion of a
rhizome. According to David Schlosberg:
Rhizomes are a type of root system that does not send up just one sprout or
stalk; rather, they spread underground and emerge in a variety of locations.
Rhizomes connect in a way that is not visiblethey cross borders and reap-
pear in distant places without necessarily showing themselves in between.19
Although the rhizomatic propensities of movements have been high-

lighted in the literature,20 arborescent propensities are also important to
understanding movements. A binary opposition of arborescent and rhi-
zomic forms of political assemblage can be misleading, because these two
kinds of assemblages are not opposites, but rather interdependent and
entangled as they work in concert.
In the case of the PWD, the notion of assemblage helps to capture the
contingency, fluidity, emergence, and nonlinearity of the process of bring-
ing together different scales and actors. However, it simultaneously opens
up the analysis to the existence of decentralization and hierarchy, order
and disorder, and informal organizing as well as professionalizationand
thus, to the existence of rhizomatic (decentralization, disorder, informal
organizing) and arborescent (centralization, hierarchy, formal organizing,
professionalization) propensities in the environmental movement. The
notion of propensity is particularly useful: it is not about fixed characteris-
tics of the movement. It points to moments in time (or to spaces within
assemblages) where the rhizomatic or arborescent elements are more prev-
alent, although in practice we can see both ways of organizing happening
at the same time. In the case of the Chilean environmental movement, at
certain levels and in certain networks within these assemblages, hierarchy,
centralization, and control have been predominant. Yet, in general, as I
show, rhizomatic propensities have prevailed.
136 C. SCHAEFFER
Environmental Movements andPolitics inChile
Diversity, heterogeneity, and lack of governability are usually mentioned

as the main characteristics of the Chilean environmental movement, both
in the literature and in activists accounts. This is important in two senses.
First, it means that there is no organizational center, but also no discourse,
idea, practice, or framework that unifies the various ways of understanding
and living the environment. It resembles David Schlosbergs21 remarks
on the environmental justice movement (EJM) in the United States. For
Schlosberg, diversity and lack of uniformity were important in the EJM
given that:
there is no insistence on one singular point of view, one point that will solve
all problems, or one tactic to be used in all battles. There is no one environ-
mental justice, minority, or grassroots view of the environment.22
David Carruthers23 arrived at a similar conclusion when analyzing the

Chilean environmental movement in the early 2000s. For Aldunate,24
diversity is also a key element of Chilean environmentalism, stressing that
the environmental movement is diverse, fluid, and flexible. However, my
research also showed that the movement has gone through different phases
with different levels of rhizomatic and arborescent propensities, and that
these phases entailed important political and organizational learning pro-
cesses. Thus, these propensities have not been static in time. Since its begin-
nings in the 1960s and the recovery of democracy in the early 1990s, the
movement mostly exhibited rhizomatic propensities. However, during the
1990s it became more arborescent, as environmental organizations faced
new challenges: they had to become more technocratic and expert-oriented
to engage with the state and donors in a context of scarce funding. Although
rhizomatic propensities were still there (especially at the grassroots level and
when environmental organizations worked closely with these communi-
ties), this phase entailed a turn toward arborescent propensities.25
Since 1994, technocratic management has slowly taken over environ-
mental decision-making. In this technocratic phase, arborescent propen-
sities were more prevalent, at least within environmental organizations.
This was particularly evident when they were dealing with the state and
the new environmental institutions (e.g. the Environmental Impact
Assessment System). It was also related to the need to compete for
scarce funds. Chile was defined as a middle-income-country and donors
hence shifted resources to Eastern Europe.26 More strict demands on
applications (in terms of technical rigor and expertise) to fund projects

were required by donors.27
However, the latter is only one side of the story. There is a tension in the
literature, and specifically in Aldunates28 analysis, between the environmental
movement and environmental organizations. Nevertheless, environmental-
ism cannot be reduced to these organizations (although they can be very
important). As Carruthers29 noted, communities faced important environ-
mental conflicts and these organizations kept working with those communi-
ties. Various activists told me that from the 1990s until the present, their
organizations have kept organizing workshops with communities and local
organizations everywhere in the country: on the water code, the constitu-
tion, and environmental and electricity laws, among others. This work can be
aptly described as rhizomatic. It is done not by one, but by several activists
and organizations at different levels and places (e.g. schools, local councils,
community organization), with and without funding.
In the next two subsections, I introduce two cases that are important to
understanding the environmental movement in general and the PWD in par-
ticular. The first is the case of the mobilizations against the Ralco dam, built
during the 1990s. Here, the environmental movement realized that a radical
and eco-centric discourse on the environment was not going to be heard by
the postdictatorship governments. This case also entailed crucial learning
experiences for the environmental movement. As one activist argued, it is not
possible to understand the PWD without understanding Ralco.30
The second case is of the mobilizations against Barrancones, a coal plant.
It shows a moment of rhizomatic radicalism,31 as Woods etal.32 would put
it, illustrating the decentralized and heterogeneous movement that took
authorities and Chileans by surprise in 2010. This was a key precedent for the
PWD, prefiguring its move to certain levels of rhizomatic radicalism in 2011.
The Disenchantment: Ralco andtheMaking ofEnvironmental

Institutions
Ralco is a dam in the Araucana Region with an installed capacity of 570
megawatts. It is located in an exceptional ecosystem and in the ancestral ter-
ritories of the Pehuenche people.33 Ralco became one of the most heated and
controversial environmental and indigenous issues of the 1990s in Chile.
Ralco was also a crucial test for the new democratic authorities and
institutions.34 It was possible to see, in practice, the way the new institu-
tions established by the indigenous and environmental laws were going
to work.35 Ralco conducted an Environmental Impact Statement (EIS)
138 C. SCHAEFFER
v oluntarily, however, as Domingo Namuncura36 shows, Empresa Nacional

de Electricidad Sociedad Annima (ENDESA), the company behind the
project, was unwilling to modify its plans according to the reports find-
ings. The EIS was seen as one more regulation to comply with, not as a real
change to the rules of the game regarding investment projects. What activ-
ists and even public servants realized during the process was that Eduardo
Freis administration (19942000) was willing to interpret the new laws and
use all available loopholes to proceed with a project that it saw as necessary
to foster economic growth, and that was not up for discussion.37, 38
Ralco showed that investment projects were going to be approved in
the way companies presented them, and that environmental and indig-
enous considerations were not going to change the way things had been
done in the previous decades. The way to interpret the new laws had to be
in line with what was established in the Constitution of 1980. The Chilean
model of development was not going to be challenged.39
The Grupo de Accin por el Bo Bo (Bo Bo Action Group, henceforth
GABB), a coalition of organizations, galvanized most of the opposition to the
project. Some of its strategies were to present alternative studies that showed
that Ralco was not necessary to confront Chiles growing electricity demand,
to monitor the environmental assessment process of the project, and to orga-
nize rallies and protest events. The GABB also established alliances with local
and international organizations. However, there were significant setbacks for
the GABB,40 because of divisions among environmental organizations, as well
as between indigenous and environmental organizations.41
The Surprise: Social Media andBarrancones

One of the precedents to the mobilizations against HidroAysn was a
demonstration, in August 2010, against the construction of Barrancones,
a coal power plant south of Punta Choros (Coquimbo Region, north of
Santiago) designed by the French-Belgian company Suez Energy. The
plant, if built, would have had an installed capacity of 540 megawatts.
Various organizations opposed Barrancones, including the Movimiento
por la Defensa del Medio Ambiente (Movement for the Defense of the
Environment, henceforth MODEMA) and Chao Pescao (Goodbye, Fish).
The latter played an interesting role, as it was a new organization of young
activists with experience in the audiovisual arts. They produced a docu-
mentary on the conflict,42 which was shown across the country and dif-
fused through social media. Chao Pescao used new repertoires, for instance,
streaming the documentary while pedaling a couple of bikes so that the
energy necessary to stream it was produced in situ.
The regional environmental commission approved Barrancones on 24

August 2010. The meeting was followed and broadcast by organizations
through social media. Using Twitter, a rally was called for that afternoon
in downtown Santiago. Although not as massive as the demonstrations
against dams in Patagonia in 2011, in the year 2010 it was considered
a novelty to have around 2000 people on the streets of Santiago in a
rally convened the same day.43 There were also parallel rallies in other cit-
ies. Two days later, President Sebastin Piera (20102014) asked Suez
Energy to change the location of the plant and the company agreed.44 In
November 2010, Suez Energy renounced its environmental license,45 and
to this date, there is no information about the proposed new location of
the project.
This unfolding of the events was perceived as a victory for the environ-
mental movement. However, it also entailed some complex outcomes.
The controversy over Barrancones politicized and delegitimized envi-
ronmental institutions, opening-up the black-box of environmental
decision-making. First and foremost, it became clear that the president
could influence (and could be influenced on) decisions that were deemed
and presented as purely technical. At the same time, the case involved
empowerment and the feeling of winning a battle. Barrancones showed
that mobilizing was a legitimate form of action and, perhaps more impor-
tantly, that it could be effective.46
In terms of organizational dynamics, the campaign against Barrancones
was run by a newly established organization (Chao Pescao) in conjunc-
tion with local organizations. Chao Pescao ran a multimedia campaign that
managed to transform a local matter into a national issue.
Understanding Patagonia Without Dams

In 2004, ENDESA announced its plan to build dams in the Aysn Region.
HidroAysn was created in 2006in a joint venture with Colbn, where
ENDESA controlled 51 % of the company. ENDESA is a transnational
corporation controlled by the Italian state-owned ENEL.47 The remain-
ing 49 % of HidroAysn belongs to Colbn, a Chilean conglomerate that
belongs to Grupo Matte, which in turn belongs to one of richest families
and economic groups in Chile.48
HidroAysn proposed building five dams in Aysn, two on the Baker
and three on the Pascua River (Fig. 5.1). Aysn is located 1000 kilome-
ters south of Santiago, the capital of Chile. HidroAysn would have been
located in the southern zone of Aysn.
140 C. SCHAEFFER
Fig. 5.1 Map showing the Aysn Region and the Baker (two proposed dams)
and Pascua River (three proposed dams). Source: Google Maps, adapted by author
The construction of these five dams would have flooded 5900 hectares;
the dam complex having an installed capacity of 2750 megawatts. The energy
produced was not intended for local consumption. A 2000-kilometre power
line had to be built to bring the electricity from Aysn to Santiago, and
to the northern regions of the country, where various mining projects are
located.49 The exact route of the power line was unknown, and it was not
confirmed whether some sections would have been submerged.
Assembling Patagonia Without Dams

The process of assembling PWD can be divided in the following stages: (1)
information and organization, (2) reaching out, and (3) crystallization.
They are important to understand, first, how PWD works and what kind
of organizations joined it, and second, the learning processes required to
enable PWD.
Information andOrganization
The creation of HidroAysn in 2006 triggered a process of information
gathering and organization in Aysn. With the aim of socializing infor-
mation among local organizations and the wider public about the stakes
involved in HidroAysn, a group of organizations located in Aysn held a
series of workshops.50 The result was the creation, in January 2006, of a
coalition of organizations, the Coalicin Ciudadana Aysn Reserva de Vida
(Citizen Coalition Aysn Life Reserve, henceforth, the Coalition) and the
issuing of a public statement with a critical position on the p rospect of
building dams in the region.
Shortly, other organizations joined the Coalition, such as a local orga-
nization based in Cochrane, called the Defenders of the Spirit of Patagonia
and the National Outdoor Leadership School Patagonia, and, from Puerto
Tranquilo, the Chamber of Commerce and Tourism. New organizations,
dedicated to the defense of the territory, were also created. These new and
old organizations joined networks of organizations such as the Coalition,
created their own networks, or participated in the opposition to the build-
ing of dams independently.
Reaching Out
Groups opposing the dams also established alliances with organizations
outside Aysn, particularly with organizations based in Santiago and
abroad. There were previous experiences of activists from Aysn working
with some of the main environmental organizations in Chile (for instance,
in the case of the campaign against Alumysa, an aluminum plant pro-
posed near Puerto Aysn). One of these organizations was Ecosistemas.
Its director, Juan Pablo Orrego, was also an emblematic figure in the cam-
paign against the Pangue and Ralco dams in the late 1980s and 1990s.
142 C. SCHAEFFER
Crystallization
The process of organizing and building of networks crystallized in 2007.
That year, and as a way to generate synergies between organizations and
individuals critical to the construction of dams in Patagonia, the Consejo
de Defensa de la Patagonia (Council for Defense of Patagonia, henceforth
CDP) was established by local and regional activists, well-known activ-
ists, and environmental organizations. The CDP brought together local,
national, and international organizations in a loose network of organiza-
tions. It is the main organizational structure behind the PWD campaign.
Since 2007, more than 80 organizations have joined the CDP. The
founding document of the CDP states that it is not a new institution, but
an inter-institutional agreement to further common objectives defined as
the protection of Chilean Patagonia.51 The CDP is a non-legal entity
with material resources of its own; it acts through the corporations, foun-
dations, community organizations, and individuals that belong to it.52 To
work in the CDPs Executive Secretariat or General Assembly is under-
stood as voluntary work. This means that it is a role an activist takes while
working at an environmental organization (or another kind of job) as a
full-time professional (thus, the salary is paid by the organization).
For instance, organizations such as Greenpeace Chile participated
with cyber actions or by organizing media-oriented protest events at
HidroAysns buildings. Chile Sustentable (Sustainable Chile), on the
other hand, has always worked on energy and water policies, closely work-
ing with parliamentarians and the president to provide alternative techni-
cal expertise. In general, this kind of work is described as the way in which
each organization contributes to the PWD.
The CDP has been one of the main networks of organizations behind the
PWD campaign. However, as time passed and dams in Patagonia became an
issue of widespread concern, the PWD turned to something more than a cam-
paign restricted to environmental organizations, as the next section will show.
The Actors
Actors participating in the PWD range from environmental organizations,
through organizations concerned with local development, culture, work,
and even religion, to political authorities and philanthropists like Douglas
and Kris Tompkins. These actors are also located at different scales and
work at different levels of action. The PWD can thus be understood as
multi-scalar, operating locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. It has
employed jumping scale processes,53 as well as the combination of
place-based with supra-place politics.54 The PWD has a wide repertoire of

action: organizing rallies, cultural acts, and other types activities (e.g. talks
at schools), at the same time as working with formal institutions such as
the Environmental Impact Assessment System.
The distinction between the PWD campaign and the PWD move-
ment is important and must be emphasized, as the campaign is more
hierarchical and centralized than the PWD movement, especially at the
level of the CDP, one of the most structured and institutionalized spaces
of PWD.Nevertheless, even the CDP lacks a single clear center. Various
environmental organizations participate, with an arrangement that allows
for autonomous, but coordinated work. The CDP is not a homogenous
entity, because the majority of organizations enjoy a similar standing.
I will now review some paradigmatic examples of the kinds of actors
participating in PWD. This also shows how the PWD campaign was
exceeded, becoming a broader movement, the PWD citizen movement.
Environmental Organizations
As noted above, the process of organizing and building networks crystal-
lized in 2007, when the CDP was founded by local and regional activ-
ists, well-known activists (e.g. Sara Larran, Juan Pablo Orrego, Hernn
Sandoval), and national and international environmental organizations.55
In Chile, environmental organizations are usually located in Santiago.
They are considered national because of their scope; they are interested
in environmental issues at the national level and work on diverse issues
such as water, biodiversity, forests, pollution, citizen participation, fishing,
mining, and so forth, particularly through analyzing and advising in mat-
ters of public policy and monitoring the legislative process.
In Aysn, that is, at the regional level, there are organizations that
can be classified as environmental. However, they usually do not consider
themselves or present themselves as such. They address a broad set of
issues (local development, decentralization, promotion of arts and culture,
etc.) that activists understand in terms of civil society or social issues. They
do not see themselves as environmentalists, although environmental
issues can be predominant in their actions.
Finally, there are organizations at the local level, but they work dif-
ferently. These organizations lack the permanent funding necessary to
constitute a more formal organization like the national environmental
organizations (with permanent, full-time paid staff, an office, etc.). They
rely on small grants from the national, regional, or local government,
foundations, and the work of volunteers.
144 C. SCHAEFFER
Religious Organizations
An actor that gradually became involved in the PWD is the bishopric of
Aysn. Bishop Infanti56 has had an active role in the PWD and in the
struggle for the recovery of water in Chile, so that water stops being a
private good. The bishop has written high-profile ecclesiastical documents
and letters,57 organized seminars and activities and has served as a spokes-
person for the PWD at the national and international levels.
Political Authorities
An example of a political authority involved in the PWD is Senator Antonio
Horvath.58 In 2011, in the midst of protests against HidroAysn, he was
an important supporter of the PWD.
There are other political authorities that have joined the PWD, par-
ticularly since 2011 and during Congress review of certain bills proposed
by the executive. These bills (e.g. the Ley de Carretera Elctrica or Public
Electricity Highway Bill), according to the PWD, would facilitate the
building of the dam complex and would give more power to electricity
corporations. Representatives close to the PWD have stopped some of
these bills.
During the general elections in 2013, the CDP established the initiative
Vota Sin Represas (Vote Without Dams).59 Candidates could sign a decla-
ration that stated their commitment toward the protection of Patagonia
from large-scale projects of the kind proposed by HydroAysn. From
the nine presidential candidates, seven signed the commitment (Marcel
Claude, Marco Enrquez-Ominami, Ricardo Israel, Toms Jocelyn-Holt,
Roxana Miranda, Franco Parisi, and Alfredo Sfeir).60 Michelle Bachelet
and Evelyn Matthei did not sign the commitment. They were the can-
didates of the two largest party-coalitions in the country: the center-left
Nueva Mayora (New Majority), a new pact of parties that belonged to the
Concertacin (Agreement, Pact), and the center-right Alianza (Alliance).
However, before the runoff election between them, and to receive the sup-
port of Alfredo Sfeir (who run for the Ecologist-Green Party), Bachelet
publicly stated that she would not proceed with HidroAysn if elected.61
International Donors
A key actor has been the Pumaln Foundation. It is a Chilean-based foun-
dation established through an international trust based in the United
States.62 Douglas Tompkins and Kris Tompkins created the foundation.
Pumaln has acted as a mediator among the various organizations

participating in the CDP and PWD campaign. It has provided stability
and material existence through the financial resources it has put at the
campaigns disposal. Interviews and fieldwork showed that Pumaln has
funded small projects at the local level and permanently funded the pub-
lic relations and advertising campaign of the PWD campaign, as well as
the majority of legal actions. The advertising campaign included the con-
struction of a brand, billboards located on main highways, and ads in
regional and national newspapers, among other activities. The legal area
includes lawyers that have followed the administrative and legal processes
and started legal actions when possible.
ther Types ofOrganizations

O
These include chambers of tourism and associations of regional business
owners, among others. A striking example is the regional association of
public servants. During the environmental assessment of HidroAysn,
public servants at the regional level (grouped under the Consejo Regional
de la Agrupacin Nacional de Empleados Fiscales or Regional Council of
the National Association of Public Servants) decided to publicly reject
the project before it was approved in 2011. They felt that the common
good was threatened by the constant pressures and political interven-
tions from political authorities (mainly from Santiago) without a proper
assessment.
There is also the work of other types of organizations, such as the
Jvenes Tehuelches (Young Tehuelches). They have worked at the local,
regional, and national levels informing and mobilizing students.
In sum, the PWD started as an environmental campaign that was more
or less restricted to environmental organizations and became a broader
movement sustained by a network of individuals and organizations located
at different levels (e.g. local, regional, national, and international) and
working on different issues (e.g. social, cultural, labor, religious). Some
organizations belong to the CPD (e.g. environmental organizations),
while others joined coalitions of organizations that consider themselves
part of the PWD campaign, but that have not necessarily joined the CDP
(e.g. public servants, political representatives, religious authorities). There
are also organizations that just identify themselves as members of what
they call the PWD movement (e.g. Young Tehuelches, local associa-
tions, among others).
146 C. SCHAEFFER
What Is New inPatagonia WithoutDams andWhat

Does It Tell Us AboutChiles Environmental
Movement?
One of the PWDs achievements is that it created a space where various
organizations could work together, combining the strengths of their dis-
courses and practices. The PWD has combined emotions with expertise,
as well as elements of deep ecology with more anthropocentric concerns.
Indeed, interviewees repeatedly stated that what was new and/or excep-
tional about the PWD was that disparate groups and organizations were finally
working together. This kind of work also stretched beyond environmental
organizations in Santiago to the streets and to the regional and local levels.
In the PWD, issues that divided and caused conflict among organi-
zations have been transformed into issues that bring people and orga-
nizations together. I identified at least four main sources of tension and
conflict: (1) sources of funding, (2) type of work carried out and its value,
(3) professional versus voluntary work, and (4) relation with organizations
and/or individuals that were not from Aysn.63
In the case of funding, and although it can be (and it has been) a
source of tension, it can also be crucial to bringing people and organi-
zations together. Activists and organizations have accepted the trade-off
and complexities of dealing with donors and their agendas. Tensions
around the value of different repertoires of action (e.g. writing a report on
HidroAysn versus rallying on the streets), as well as whether the work is
professional or voluntary were transformed into rules of operation (explic-
itly and implicitly) regarding the division of labor.
Something similar happened with the distinction between NYC and
VyQ.64 People in Aysn told me that in the end, it is a matter of loving
these lands rather than whether you were born there or not. According to
them, as time passed and experience was gained, some issues could be left
aside or reworked. It was usually described as a process of collective learning.
The existence of funding, particularly through the Pumaln Foundation,
has secured the material existence of the PWD through a public rela-
tions and advertising campaign. This provided activists, particularly those
from national environmental organizations, a concrete space to work
together. As discussed in previous sections, the rhizomatic propensities
of the Chilean environmental movement also entailed that it has been
difficult, at least in previous years, to work together for a common cause
in a coordinated way across time and space. At the same time, issues
around funding were also mentioned as sources of conflict. A strategic
decision by organizations participating in the CDP was to receive fund-

ing by the Tompkins and their foundations to run a campaign such as the
PWD.This entailed risks and advantages. For instance, there are organi-
zations that decided not to receive money from the Tompkins. Examples
of such organizations are those based in Cochrane, where conflicts with
the Tompkins and their Patagonia Park project have been a source of divi-
sion in the community.65 However, the organization still belongs to the
CDP and PWD campaign.
Nevertheless, there is more to the PWD than the existence of more
funding. Here, again, we find a tension between stability and emergence,
as the myriad activities, organizations, and people behind PWD cannot be
reduced or explained only by the existence of funding. As Patricio Segura
explains:
[To have the backing of] the same Douglas [Tompkins] or Sara Larran
is important, because they are trustworthy people, it makes a difference,
because they dont only support this [the campaign and movement] with
resources. However, beyond all the money, the main wealth of the cam-
paign, and this you could actually value in economic terms, is all the vol-
untary work. Or, how much do you think it costs us what Residente66 did?
Nothing!67
In addition, in previous controversies, such as Ralco, activists had to learn

to work first with an authoritarian government and then with succes-
sive democratic governments, and this learning experience was consid-
ered when organizing the PWD.They decided to work with and within
government institutions (e.g. participating in the Environmental Impact
Assessment System, writing a report on electricity in Chile, lobbying at
the National Congress) while adopting a critical approach to the Chilean
model of development (e.g. rallying on the streets, refusing to reduce the
dams issue to a costbenefit analysis).
In the case of Ralco, for instance, the proponents of the dam success-
fully divided the issue at stake into an indigenous issue, on the one side,
and an environmental issue, on the other. Exactly the opposite happened
in the case of the PWD, which managed, through a successful advertising
campaign, public visibility, and support,68 to show that the discussion was
not divided among discrete, separated issues. On the contrary, a broad
debate regarding energy politics, decentralization, land planning, water
rights, and constitutional reform was opened up by the controversy over
HidroAysn.
148 C. SCHAEFFER
Regarding energy politics, for the first time since the dictatorship the
private model of electricity generation was questioned and challenged by a
broad range of actors that included academics, citizens, activists, and poli-
ticians from the opposition and the governing coalition. A couple of days
before the approval of HidroAysn, then President Piera (20102014)
announced the establishment of a government commission69 to analyze
the electricity sector and to set the basis for a new electricity framework for
Chile.70 After the approval of HidroAysn, organizations and parliamen-
tarians participating in the PWD announced the establishment of a parallel
citizen-parliamentarian commission,71 arguing that the government com-
mission was comprised of those representing the interests of the electricity
sector.72 These two reports73 were delivered to the president in a public
ceremony and widely discussed in various forums and public events, allow-
ing for a broader debate regarding electricity to take place.
According to Juan Pablo Orrego, to understand these developments
one must first understand Ralco:
I think that you have to go back. Bo Bo [Ralco] is a compulsory referent

if you want to talk about the history of the social environmentalist move-
ment. We did the same then, and we were considered crazy, no one lis-
tened or was interested That critical reflection we had to build it; that
analysis, nobody had it in the 1990s. The in-depth assessment of what
the Constitution of 1980 means in terms of human rights, peoples rights,
citizens rights, the environment, it wasnt there yet. I was surprised at how
pioneering we were, and because of that, maladjusted, almost eco-terrorists
Little by little we ended up, without even wanting, like in a detour
we ended up looking at the Constitution, the Water Code The Water
Code is the fifth cherry on top of the cake, but the Constitution also, the
Constitution that establishes a specific economic model, ultra neoliberal 74
Sara Larran makes a similar analysis.75 She explains that Aylwins admin-
istration promoted and passed key legislation regarding the environment;
laws were based on the preventive principle and what has been referred
to as a model of coordination.76 The environment was understood as a
transversal dimension of development, and thus it could not be reduced to
one, sectorial authority. However, in practice, the model was transformed
into one that subordinated environmental concerns and authorities to the
ministries of production (Agriculture, Economy, Energy, Finance, Mining,
etc.). This was not evident, however, until Freis administration. In 1996,
Frei issued a document, which was sent to all public services. It stated that
no investment project was going to be rejected; it had to be approved with

conditions. This was known as the Frei doctrine.77 For environmental-
ists, compliance entailed transforming the environmental assessment of
projects into a mere formality to negotiate mitigations.78
This analysis shows the process of political learning, which can be fur-
ther unpacked in terms of: (1) the environmental movement understand-
ing, during the 1990s and early 2000s, the rules of the game regarding
the environment under the Concertacins democratic rule, and (2) the
environmental movement learning how to deal with the new environmen-
tal institutions, for instance, with the environmental assessment system or
the legislation related to environmental controversies. This also entailed
a process of becoming experts to understand the Constitution and
related legislation. This expertise was crucial to the construction of argu-
ments against HidroAysn, to know how the system worked, and what its
conditions and limitations were. Activists also participated in the drafting
of many of the new environmental institutions79 and their reform. There
were thus new institutional avenues from where to challenge investment
projects such as HidroAysn.
Conclusion
Environmental discourses and practices have changed over time in Chile.
The case of the PWD is relevant, as it shows some of the key learning
experiences of the Chilean environmental movement. These organizations
have learned to work together (organizational learning), what to expect
from the state, and how to relate to it (political learning). In the case
of the PWD, environmental organizations converged around a common
cause (to stop the dams in Patagonia) in the largest environmental cam-
paign in Chilean history.
During the dictatorship, environmentalism flourished in Chile. It was
one more force that opposed the military regime. However, once democ-
racy was reestablished and the former opposition was in power, the main
tenets of the Chilean model of development were not changed, particularly
regarding natural resources and environmental politics. Furthermore, and
in line with international trends, the environment became an institutional-
ized space, with technocrats and experts in charge of administering it.
There is a prevalent tension between rhizomatic and arborescent pro-
pensities when looking at past and present environmental conflicts and
campaigns in Chile. Resolving this tension has entailed finding a balance
150 C. SCHAEFFER
between diversity as weakness, on the one hand, and diversity as a novel,

profound source of strength driving not only a new movement, but also
a different way of doing politics, on the other. This way of doing poli-
tics involves a basic trade-off between less hierarchical and authoritarian
ways of organizing, but risking division and lack of unity. This tension is
also present in the PWD, but it has been transformed into a productive
tension, as multiplicity and diversity have become a strength and con-
testation strategy. In the case of the PWD, the way to bring together a
powerful assemblage of people and organizations required finding cer-
tain broad commonalities around Patagonia (no dams should be built
in Patagonia) and establishing operational rules. Funding also played a
crucial role in these learning processes, as well as the experience of past
campaigns and controversies.
The PWD is not entirely new, but it is different. It must thus be
understood as the result of a process where organizations and individuals
managed to find ways of working together, combining the strengths of
their discourses and practices, and of what they learned from past experi-
ences. Organizations also learned to deal with new institutions and what
to expect from them, as well as from political authorities in a democratic
environment.
The PWD has also been a crucial learning experience for other social
movements and organizations in Chile. It was a successful campaign that
managed to stop HidroAysn. This was important not only for the PWDs
activists, but for Chileans in general, as a final proof that organized citizens
can make a difference.
Notes
1. Regions are Chiles first-level administrative division.
2. Kuzmicic (personal communication); La Tercera, Con incidentes and
Enfrentamientos entre manifestantes y carabineros en varias regiones tras
aprobacin de proyecto HidroAysn; Fernndez, Interview and La Calle
Me Distrajo.
3. See Donoso in this volume.
4. See the following for various media reports on these mobilizations: Flores,
Protestas; El Mostrador, Treinta mil personas; Jofr and Yaikin,
Carabineros dispersa a manifestantes; La Tercera, Con incidentes termina
masiva manifestacin en contra de HidroAysn and Enfrentamientos;
Labrn et al., Tercera marcha; Meganoticias, Manifestantes contra
HidroAysn; Radio Cooperativa, Manifestaciones contra HidroAysn
andAprobacin de HidroAysn; and World Weather Post, Chile: Massive

Protests.
5. The Committee is composed of the Minister for the Environment, who
presides, and the Ministers for Agriculture, Economy, Energy, Health, and
Mining.
6. El Mostrador, Comit de Ministros.
7. See, for instance, Canelo de Nos magazine El Canelo, La Pandilla
Ecolgica.
8. See, for instance, Mendoza, Todos Queramos ser Verdes.
9. Aldunate, El Factor Ecolgico.
10. Radovic, Patagonia Sin Represas and La Emergencia del Movimiento
Social; Scherman etal., Student and Environmental Protests in Chile;
Segura and Bourlon, Represas en Aysn; Romero Toledo, Environmental
Conflicts and Historical Political Ecology and Ecologa poltica y repre-
sas; Romero Toledo etal., Agua, Poder y Discursos; Varas etal., Latin
America Goes Electric.
11. Schlosberg, Networks and Mobile Arrangements; Carruthers, ed.,

Environmental Justice in Latin America.
12. Diani, Introduction, 12.
13. Davies, Assemblage and Social Movements; Marrero-
Guillamn,
Actor-Network Theory; McFarlane, Translocal assemblages; Woods
etal.,Rhizomic radicalism and arborescent advocacy.
14. Juris, The New Digital Media, 198.
15. McFarlane, Translocal assemblages, 561.
16. Ibid.
17. Faras, Introduction.
18. Woods etal., Rhizomic Radicalism and Arborescent Advocacy.
19. Schlosberg, Networks and Mobile Arrangements, 120.
20. See, for instance, Carruthers, Environmental Justice in Latin America;
Froehling, The Cyberspace war of ink and internet; Schlosberg,
Networks and Mobile Arrangements.
21. Schlosberg, Networks and Mobile Arrangements.
22. Ibid., 124.
23. Carruthers, Environmental Politics in Chile.
25. The Chilean environmental movement is not alone in having followed this
path. A study of Germany, the United Kingdom, the United States, and
Norway shows similar developments in terms of the flourishing of environ-
mental concerns and the technocratization and co-optation of activists and
organizations by the state. See Dryzek et al., Environmental
Transformation of the State.
26. Lambrou, The Changing Role of NGOs, 114.
152 C. SCHAEFFER
7. Hojman, NGOs and the Chilean Transition to Democracy, 18.

2
29. Carruthers, Environmental Politics in Chile.
30. Juan Pablo Orrego, interview with author, 20 January 2013.
31. Rhizomic radicalism can be understood as a radicalization of rhizomatic
principlesor propositions, as Woods etal. would define themof orga-
nization, that is, a radicalization of heterogeneity, multiplicity, imitation,
de-territorialization, and resilience.
32. Woods etal., Rhizomic Radicalism and Arborescent Advocacy.
33. Carruthers and Rodrguez, Mapuche Protest; Mayol, Apaga y vmonos;
Moraga, Aguas Turbias; Namuncura, Ralco: represa o pobreza?
34. Carruthers, Environmental Politics in Chile. See also Bidegain in this
volume.
35. CONAMA and the Corporacin Nacional de Desarrollo Indgena

(CONADI) (National Corporation of Indigenous Development) were
created by Law 19,300 and Law 19,253, respectively, which were passed
under the government of Patricio Aylwin (19901994).
36. Namuncura, Ralco: represa o pobreza?
37. A striking example is that President Frei asked two indigenous directors of
CONADI to resign, appointing a non-indigenous director who finally
approved the transfer of lands from the company to the Pehuenche people
so that the flooding of indigenous territories could proceed.
38. Latta, Citizenship and the Politics of Nature; Namuncura, Ralco:

represa o pobreza?
39. See Somma and Medel in this volume.
40. Carruthers and Rodrguez, Mapuche Protest.
41. See Latta, Citizenship and the Politics of Nature.
42. Chao Pescao, Chao Pescao, Salvemos Punta de Choros.
43. Emol, Mil jvenes se manifestaron and Con 38 detenidos termina mar-
cha; Radio Cooperativa, Carabineros disolvi marcha; The Clinic,
Miles llegan a convocatoria flash and A salvar Punta Choros!;
Mardones and Salazar, Fuerte represin policial.
44. La Tercera, Presidente Piera le pide a empresa.
45. El Observatodo, Corema recibe formalmente renuncia.
46. Cancino, Chile 2011.
47. ENDESA is a Spanish electricity and gas corporation that belongs to

ENEL.Currently, 30 per cent of ENEL is controlled by the Italian state.
ENDESA was previously the Chilean state-owned national electricity com-
pany. It was privatized in the late 1980s in a controversial process that also
involved the transfer of water rights from the state to the private conglom-
erate. See Bauer, Against the Current and Mnckeberg, El Saqueo de los
Grupos Econmicos al Estado Chileno.
48. Grupo Matte; Forbes, 2015 Ranking: The Worlds Billionaires.
49. Segura, HydroAysen and Energia Austral; Romero Toledo etal., Agua,
Poder y Discursos.
50. Segura and Bourlon, Represas en Aysn.
51. Consejo de Defensa de la Patagonia Chilena, Consejo de Defensa de la
Patagonia Chilena, authors translation.
52. Ibid., authors translation.
53. Urkidi and Walter, Dimensions of Environmental Justice.
54. Escobar, Territories of Difference, Chap. 6.
55. National organizations include, among others, Chile Sustentable,

CODEFF, Fiscala del Medio Ambiente, Greenpeace Chile, Terram, and
Oceana. International organizations include, among others, the Association
for the Study of America Latina (Italy), Vaino Auer Foundation (Argentina),
International Rivers (USA), and the Natural Resources Defense Council
(USA). The complete list of organizations can be found at the PWDs
website.
56. Luis Infanti, interview with author, 10 February 2013.
57. Infanti, Danos hoy el agua de cada da.
58. Antonio Horvath, interview with author, 2 January 2013.
59. Consejo de Defensa de la Patagonia Chilena, Vota Sin Represas.
60. Ecosistemas, Vota sin Represas Cierra Campaa.
61. Rivas, Alfredo Sfeir oficializa apoyo; El Diario Financiero, Hidroaysn
se toma el debate; Consejo de Defensa de la Patagonia Chilena, Vota Sin
Represas.
62. The Conservation Land Trust.
63. The distinction between NYC and VyQ is important here. NYC means
nacido y criado (born and raised) and VyQ venidos y quedados (the ones
who came and stayed).
64. See note 63.
65. Jones, Ecophilanthropy.; McAllister, Pumas with Cameras.
66. Residente is Calle 13s leader and singer, a celebrity who publicly opposed
the building of dams in Patagonia.
67. Patricio Segura, interview with author, 2 May 2013. Authors translation.
68. See the following surveys: Diego Portales University & Feedback,

Encuesta Jvenes y Participacin; Ipsos, Estudio de Opinin Pblica:
Octubre 2009 and Estudio de Opinin Pblica: Abril 2011; La Tercera
Surveys Centre, 74 % rechaza HidroAysn.
69. Comisin Asesora para el Desarrollo Elctrico (CADE) (Government
Commission for Electric Development).
70. Iriarte, Gobierno crea comisin asesora.
71. Comisin Ciudadana-Tcnico-Parlamentaria (CCTP) (Citizen-Technical-
Parliamentarian Commission).
154 C. SCHAEFFER
72. Energa Ciudadana, Comisin de Energa Ciudadana Parlamentaria

(CCTP).
73. Comisin Asesora para el Desarrollo Elctrico, Informe; Comisin

Ciudadana-Tcnico-Parlamentaria, Chile Necesita una Gran Reforma
Energtica.
74. Juan Pablo Orrego, interview with author, 20 January 2013. Authors
translation.
75. Larran, Desafos Ambientales del Desarrollo Nacional.
76. Ibid., 3.
77. Ibid., 4.
78. Ibid.
79. Ibid.
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CHAPTER 6
Feminism andGender Policies inPost-

Dictatorship Chile (19902010)
NicoleForstenzer
Introduction
During 2015, the Chilean Congress undertook a heated debate on the
legalization of abortion in specific situations (danger for the mothers life,
severe fetal malformations or pregnancy as a result of rape), thus shining
the spotlight on President Michelle Bachelets ability to deliver on one
of her many campaign pledges. Womens rights and, perhaps more tell-
ingly, womens reproductive and sexual rights, have reached center stage
in the political debate. This could potentially put an end to a long period
of stalemate on fundamental issues for womens agency. An era during
which feminist voices were muffled and gender policies turned a blind eye
to often life-threatening situations of illegal abortions and lack of effective
access to birth control seems to have been partially overcome.
Indeed, since Chiles transition to democracy in 1990, the femi-
nist movement went from being a vibrant and plural social movement
committed to bringing Pinochets military dictatorship down alongside
other social movements (trade unions, university and secondary-student
N. Forstenzer (*)
UMR Dveloppement & Socits, Paris, France

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_6
162 N. FORSTENZER
movements, pobladores movements, etc.), to a highly divided and hardly

audible voice in the public debate on womens rights. At the same time,
however, the newly established democracy incorporated some of the
claims set forth by the feminist and womens movement.
Having the Chilean state step into the field of gender equality entailed
far-reaching changes for the feminist movement. Some feminists chose to
cooperate with the state, whether directly from within the Servicio Nacional
de la Mujer (National Agency for Women, henceforth, SERNAM), or
indirectly from the outer fringe of the public sector, that is, non-profit civil
society organizations. Other feminists, on the contrary, viewed this turn of
events as an attempt to subdue their more radical claims and force them
into accepting reform as the only way forward. The feminist movement
thus underwent clashes and confrontations which ultimately led to seri-
ous fault lines calling into question the very existence of a movement.
These divisions, as well as the general backlash against social and political
participation, led to a clearly delineated field of legitimate and accept-
able womens rights. This entailed the rejection of more radical claims,
depicted as idealistic and marginal.
In this chapter, I analyze the dynamics of the feminist movement since
the last years of the dictatorship. I highlight the impact of the interplay
between gender public policies and feminist professionalization in fram-
ing womens rights issues in newly democratic Chile, ruled by a center-
left coalition but deeply indebted to Pinochets political and institutional
framework. A brief historic overview of second-wave feminism and the
transition is presented as an introduction. I then examine the changes
within the landscape of feminist organizations and the debates around the
approval and implementation of gender public policies. In doing so, I seek
to highlight the evolution in feminists collective action repertoires in rela-
tion to different moments within the cycles of protest.1 I also summarize
the Chilean states gender policymaking activity.
Mobilizing these two levels of analysis, I show how the combined out-
come of these last 25 years has involved an overall rejection of more radical
claims and voices and has not led to as many changes for women as could
have been expected. I discuss the opposition between institutional and
autonomous feminists and argue, in a discussion with Franceschet,2
Stoffel,3 Ros Tobar et al.,4 and other analysts, that there is a third cat-
egory of feminist organizations in the Chilean social movement landscape:
social mobilization organizations. I then focus on two major feminist
claimsviolence against women and sexual and reproductive rightsto
FEMINISM ANDGENDER POLICIES INPOST-DICTATORSHIP CHILE (19902010) 163
illustrate how the political context and power relations within the feminist
movement have interacted and led to divergent policy outcomes. Lastly,
I contend that the last decade has gradually spurred a re-politicization of
gender and therefore a new role for feminist voices in the public debate,
alongside the overall protest dynamics initiated by other social movements
(see the analysis by Somma and Medel in this volume).
The analysis in this chapter is based on fieldwork carried out between
2004 and 2009in Valparaiso, Chile. The approach chosen for this research
follows the general premise of this volume, namely, the need to go beyond
the traditional divide in social sciences between public policy studies and
social movement theory. This involves incorporating a longitudinal and
cross-sectional perspective to analyze the complex interplay of collective
action and gender public policies.
The choice of the research site, Valparaiso, proved fruitful: Valparaiso
is a port which left the height of its glory behind when the Panama Canal
opened at the beginning of the twentieth century and is now one of
Chiles poorest cities. Nonetheless, it is an energetic political and cultural
landscape, namely because of its significant student population, with many
small grassroots organizations, such as artists squats or work cooperatives,
alternative media outlets or more traditional student unions or environ-
mental and right-to-the-city groups. With approximately 275,000 inhab-
itants, Valparaiso is also the third largest city in Chile. It is located only
120km from Santiago and is home to the Chilean Congress, which ties the
city into the closer loop of political debates and policymaking. Regarding
the feminist movement, there is a small but nonetheless significant num-
ber of feminist and womens groups in Valparaiso and its province, which
are mostly grassroots organizations. The Casa de la Mujer de Valparaso
(Womens House of Valparaiso) as well as the Foro Red de Derechos
Sexuales y Reproductivos (Forum Network for Sexual and Reproductive
Rights) played a crucial role in the 1990s bringing organizations together
and welcoming new activists. The Casa de la Mujer de Valparaso was shut
down at the beginning of the 2000s due to lack of funding, whereas the
Foro Red fell prey to a series of internal conflicts which impelled many
member organizations and activists to leave it. The Colectiva Feminista
Las Sueltas was created in 2005 as a result of these events by five feminists
who had previously been Foro Red participants but no longer felt that was
the space for their activism. As a member of the Colectiva, I worked along-
side other local feminist groups (Colectivo Belm de Srraga, Catlicas por
el Derecho a Decidir) and participated in network organizations such as the
164 N. FORSTENZER
Red Chilena contra la Violencia Domstica y Sexual and the Campaa 28

de septiembre for the decriminalization of abortion. This meant organizing
campaigns and events, as well as coordinating protests.
Fieldwork also included a comprehensive document analysis of Chilean
government reports and other documents, as well as studies on women
and gender in Chile published by regional and international organiza-
tions In addition, semi-structured interviews were carried out between
November 2008 and March 2009 with four public officials at SERNAMs
regional office in Valparaiso, with two public officials in charge of women
at the Via del Mar municipality, as well as with professional gender advo-
cates working at NGOs.
In sum, then, the outcome of this research is situated knowledge, with an
explicitly recognized political positioning as both an activist and a researcher.
Studying Gender andFeminism inaPost-

Dictatorship Context
On a theoretical level, this research builds on the literature on feminism
and gender policies from Chile (K.Araujo, M.Ros, M.Pisano, T.Valds),
from North America (S.Franceschet, L.Baldez, P.Richards, among oth-
ers) as well as French-language research (B.Marques-Pereira, S.Stoffel).
Before delving into the analysis of the interaction between feminist poli-
tics and gender policies in Chile, it is important to clearly define some of
the key concepts that are used in this chapter: gender, the Feminist and
Womens Movement and the Chilean transition and post-dictatorship.
The notion of gender has been used increasingly over the last 20 years
as it has penetrated the arena of international organizations and policy
recommendations. It is currently used as a synonym for women, biological
sexual differences, or even feminism, in a markedly depoliticized manner.5
It was initially set forth by feminist researchOakley used it for the first
time in 1972in her study called Gender, Sex and Society6as a means
to highlight the social rather than natural or biological nature of male and
female categories. French feminism, namely the materialist movement,
proposed several other concepts to account for the structural inequality in
men and womens relations, such as social sex7 or sexage.8 The con-
cept of social relations between male and females (rapports sociaux de
sexe) gradually became the materialist branch of French feminisms chosen
concept. Kergoat9 defines social relations as a tension which is present
throughout the social field:
[] In this case, it is the tension between men as a social group and

women as a social groupthese social groups cannot be equated to the
biologically-inspired dual categorization of males and females.[] Their
relations can be characterised as follows: - the relationship between these
groups is antagonistic;- the differences that can be observed between men
and womens practices are social constructions and cannot be linked to a
biological causation;- this social elaboration has a material and not a merely
ideological basisto put it differently, a change in peoples mindsets will
never take place spontaneously if it is disconnected from the sexual division
of labor().
As regards feminist movements, according to Fougeyrollas-Schwebel,10

they develop in parallel to the idea of human rights and to the assertion of
universal equality. Scholars worldwide acknowledge that two key moments
of feminist mobilizationcalled wavesstand out: the first wave is
made up of the struggles for womens enfranchisement from the mid-
nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth century. The second
wave refers to a later period of mobilization starting in the 1960s1970s
which focused on demands such as sexual and reproductive rights and
challenged the gendered labor division. Second-wave feminists claims can
be summed up as positing the private sphere as a political issue.
In Latin America, and especially in the Southern Cone, second-wave
feminism developed later, at the end of the 1970s and during the 1980s,
in the context of military dictatorships. In fact, many women leftist activ-
ists had come into contact with European and North-American second
waves while exiled from their home country. The difference between fem-
inist movements and womens movements is fundamental in Chile, but
also helps to understand the struggles for womens rights in other areas
of the world. Regarding the European context, Fougeyrollas-Schwebel11
writes that Feminist movements must be distinguished from popular
womens movements which do not directly express demands for specific
rights for women (). In Chile, the term feminist is highly con-
troversial and sometimes elicits rejection: indeed, it has been linked to
first-wave liberal feminists and is therefore too often reminiscent of bour-
geoisie or middle- and upper-class educated womens interests, despite
many popular womens participation in the Chilean first wave namely
during the Popular Fronts.12 Chilean second-wave feminism was made up
of a feminist movement as well as a plural array of womens organizations,
making it an alliance of middle-class and working-class women united by
the aim of ousting the dictatorship and demanding political agency. As I
166 N. FORSTENZER
will explain hereafter, after the return to democracy the womens move-
ment disappeared and the feminist movement shattered into a myriad
of different organizations. Feminists in Chile do not consider that these
organizations put together actually constitute a movement anymore, not
since the 1990s.
Since its second wave, the feminist movement has developed in a similar
way at the global level, namely as a reaction to the United Nations action
in favor of womens rights and gender equality. Indeed, the Decade for
Women (19761985) and the UN Conference for Women in Mexico in
1975 were the starting point for a series of major international confer-
ences which reached a climax at the 1995 Fourth World Conference on
Women in Beijing. As I argue in this chapter, Fougeyrollas-Schewebels
conclusion can easily be applied to Latin American and Chilean feminism:
() international pressure has furthered the cause of womens rights but
has led to less radical feminist movements. They are henceforth meant to
behave as non-profit organizations working on womens behalf. ().13
The characterization of the current period as the Chilean post-
dictatorship rather than the Chilean post-transition is a key compo-
nent of the theoretical framework developed in this research. As Joignant14
points out, the transition narrative is aimed toward the present and the
future, conveniently turning its back on Chiles murkier past. At mid-
term, the first democratically elected President Patricio Aylwin stated
that the transition had ended and that Chile had successfully renewed its
longstanding republican and democratic tradition. This was only the first
of a long series of political operations which sought to define the transi-
tion as the very short period between the end of the military regime and
the beginning of the first democratically elected governments term even
though the democratic recovery was painstakingly slow and frequently
called into question by the military or Pinochet himself.15 Despite these
attempts, the Chilean transition has constantly resurfaced in political
debates and social protest, especially at the time of Pinochets arrest in
London.16 The narrative of post-transition Chile now bent on consolidat-
ing democracy, modernizing the state, and public governance also carries
the implication that the past is past and canand shouldbe put to rest.
However, this narrative is ceaselessly contradicted by social demands for
truth and justice (Verdad y Justicia) on human rights violations and the
location of disappeared peoples remains, the obstinate memory17 of a
past that simply will not be allowed to pass quietly into history.18
These issues have been thrust onto the political agenda and are far-
reaching: as a candidate in the 2013 Presidential elections, Bachelet
pledged to do away with the 1980 Constitution, to make education
public and free (see Donosos chapter in this volume), and to continue
reforming pensions and the social welfare system. Indeed, as pointed out
in the introduction, the 1980 Constitution included a series of lock-in
provisions that made it nearly impossible to make radical changes. These
marked authoritarian constraints on the newly reinstated democracy have
led many analysts and observers to characterize the Chilean regime of the
1990s as a protected,19 limited20 regime, or as a democracy under
guardianship.21
Thus, some scholars challenge the prevailing label of post-transition
used by many.22 In this sense, I have chosen to refer to this period as the
post-dictatorship: the teleological implications of the transition narra-
tive contribute to concealing the crucial role the dictatorship has played in
the current political contexts genesis.
Importantly, feminists are currently divided around this main challenge
of how to deal with the post-dictatorial political landscape. These divi-
sions are based on political beliefs and loyalties (reformists vs. radicals)
as well as the individual belonging to different generations of activism.
The Concertacins gender policies have relied heavily on professionalized
feminists who have chosen to tone down some of their own demands and
have in turn requested thismore or less explicitlyof other feminists as
a precondition for any unity or action as a movement.
As I show in the following pages, the institutional provisions estab-
lished by the dictatorship as well as the right-leaning center of gravity in
Chilean politics have made some crucial feminist claims, such as the right
to autonomous decision-making and physical integrity or womens social
and economic rights, impossible to address in the framework of public
policy.
Chilean Second-Wave Feminism: TheStruggle

forDemocracy intheCountry andat Home
As in other Latin American countries, Chiles second feminist wave in the

1980s took place under A.Pinochets dictatorship. The particular context
proved to be, albeit paradoxically, an opening for women to play a more
prominent role in Chilean politics. After the coup of September 11, 1973,
168 N. FORSTENZER
many female UP militants had to flee their country and came into contact
with European and North-American second-wave feminism while in exile.
Others were forced to take their political activity underground and cau-
tiously endeavored to organize the resistance to the brutal new regime.
Women were at the forefront of the resistance, as the military tended to
perceive them as less political. As Franceschet23 has argued, in Chile gen-
dered citizenship patterns are based on masculine versus feminine spheres
for public participation. Political crises in Chile have involved a blurring
of the distinction between political and social activism, allowing women
to step out of their traditionally assigned social roles and into more tra-
ditionally masculine politics while asserting that they are bringing in
something different. Baldez24 stresses the key condition of political
party realignment for women to mobilize as women in Chilean politics,
portraying themselves as outsiders beyond party divides. The extreme
political situation of the 1980s therefore carved out a space for women to
organize as women, claiming to be above and beyond partisan politics and
in favor of fundamental principles such as life or concern for loved ones.
During the 1980s, women organized in three main fields.25 They orga-
nized as mothers, wives, daughters, or sisters of disappeared victims of
the dictatorships repression. Second, women from Chiles shantytowns
bearing the brunt of the economic crisis also created new organiza-
tions and led mobilization efforts. Lastly, specifically feminist organiza-
tions were created. In all of these different settings, women organized
politically as women, staging new and often ambiguous forms of militant
motherhood.26 Women seized this characterization and stepped out of
the traditional frame, in an exercise in gender-bending, politicizing and
subverting the motherhood frame and stretching it to include fundamen-
tally political claims.27
The womens and feminist organizations created during the 1980s were
diverse. They included Indian womens organizations, women workers,
pobladoras (such as MOMUPO, Movimiento de Mujeres Pobaldoras), and so
on.28 Some were avowedly feminist whereas others were wary of the feminist
label because it has been construed as an expression of educated, middle-
class or even bourgeois women (as was often the case in Chilean first-wave
feminismcf. Maza Valenzuela)29 despite working-class womens involve-
ment in feminist and womens organizations during the Popular Fronts.30
They chose to identify as women or as a specific brand of feminists: pobla-
doras feministas, for instance. Without a doubt, this issue is closely linked to
the intersection of social class and gender in Chilean history.
As feminist groups staged flash protests in the streets of Santiago and

the series of protests against the regime initiated by trade unions gained
momentum, the feminist and womens movements came together to
take part in the anti-regime uprising and to voice their specific claims.
Recurrent rallying cries were Democracy in the country and at home,
or There can be no democracy without women, which highlighted the
feminists reflection on their experiences of political participation prior to
the coup: most feminists were leftist militants who called into question
their political activity within parties before the coup.31
The federation of organizations that was prominent in first-wave femi-
nism, Movimiento pro Emancipacin de la Mujer Chilena (MEMCH), was
re-established in 1983, in order to bring the different feminist and womens
organizations together. International womens days, celebrated on March
8, demonstrated the movements strength and provided for increasingly
massive demonstrations. In December 1983, over 10,000 women gathered
in Santiago and the movement Mujeres Por la Vida was officially born.
As early as the mid-1980s, however, divisions surfaced within the Feminist
Movement. Kirkwood,32 a feminist sociologist who played a key role in the-
orizing Chilean feminism in the midst of the second wave, argued that the
division between feministas and polticas, grounded in the contentious
issue of double militancy, could be summed up as follows: the polticas
believed there is no democracy without feminism whereas feministas
held the opposite view, there is no feminism without democracy.
As political parties were re-established and negotiations with the mil-
itaries in power unfolded, the decision to pursue feminist activism or to
postpone it on behalf of the greater overarching objective of overthrowing
the regime caused serious splits in the movement. The polticas were also
divided between feminists who were militants in left-wing parties such as the
Communist Party or the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR),
which refused to buy into the regimes conditions for a gradual and pre-
defined transition based on the steps laid out in the 1980Constitution, and
instead believed in an armed intervention or in a massive social uprising.33
The feminist movement nonetheless remained strong until the end of the
1980s, when all efforts turned toward the 1988 plebiscite.34 Different sets
of demands were set forth: Mujeres por la Vida presented a series of claims to
the opposition parties in 1986. In 1988, as the plebiscite was scheduled to
take place, the Movimiento Feminista published a document called Womens
Demands to Democracy. A total of 20,000 women attended a concentra-
tion at the Santa Laura stadium in Santiago on March 8, 1989.
170 N. FORSTENZER
In the run-up to the countrys first democratic elections in over 15

years, Pinochet abolished the Health Codes article 119, which provided
for abortion in medically justified cases,35 but also had Congress ratify
Chiles signature of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all forms of
Discrimination against Women (CEDAW).36 These seemingly contradic-
tory initiatives teased out boundaries for the ensuing periods approach of
womens rights: womens rights fit into Chiles overall endeavor to return
to the international stage while providing reassurances on human rights,
but do not include any potentially contentious issues such as abortion.
Shortly after the reinstatement of democracy, in 1991, SERNAM was cre-
ated as part of the Ministry of Social Affairs (the MIDEPLAN, Ministerio
de la Planificacin), in 1991.
The feminist and womens movement entered a long-lasting period of
divisions, unmet expectations and setbacks.
The Feminist Movement: Autnomas,

Institucionales andActivism
The states intervention in the field of promoting and furthering wom-
ens rights and equal opportunities proved highly divisive for the Feminist
Movement. The core tension in Chilean feminism from the days of suffrag-
ette struggles has been the opposition between autonomy versus integra-
tion, rather than the equality versus difference frame of North American
and European feminism.37 This opposition can be defined as the alterna-
tive between including feminist claims and activism within thetraditional
channels of formal politics, that is, mainstream political parties or mass
social organizations, or choosing to pursue an independent agenda for
social change (independent on an organizational, theoretical, and militant
level). At the beginning of the 1990s, the polticas versus feministas
conflict was replaced by the institucionales versus autnomas conflict,
which echoed the continental level and played out during regional femi-
nist encuentros throughout the 1990s.38
In a sea change which affected not only feminist movements across
the world, the 1990s was an era of ideological turnabout regarding social
movements: they were pressed by governments and international orga-
nizations to give up claiming and complaining, to become proactive and
adopt the narrative of capabilities and human rights while speaking the
language of projects.39 This required a specific set of skills that are not
traditional activist skills.40 In addition, it demanded a shift in focus, from
a more horizontal organizing and awareness-raising endeavor turned

toward society and the public opinion, toward a more vertical relationship
with State and supranational organizations in charge of drafting legislation
and granting civil society organizations funding for the implementation of
policies and programs.
In Latin America, this global context was exacerbated by the lack of
funding available for grassroots organizations as democratic States ushered
out authoritarian regimes and monopolized aid flows. In the case of Chile,
the fact that the transition was led by a coalition including socialist parties
placed a particular strain on feminists relationship to the state.41 Double
militancy provided for a preferential access to state resources and oppor-
tunities for some feminists, whereas others were marginalized and viewed
as disruptively dissident. This is the case for feminists who were double
militants but in more radical left-wing parties, such as the Communist
Party or the MIR.42
The less-educated activists from the womens and Feminist Movement
soon felt they had been sidelined and abandoned by the femocrats:
the more-educated, middle-class feminists who had developed professional
skills that were quickly put to use in government positions or civil society
organizations. These are the institucionales, according to their critics, a
name they themselves reject. The political ties among these women led to
what Woodward has called a velvet triangle,43 the smooth circulation of
feminists between government, academia and civil society organizations.
This configuration of gender policymaking necessarily involved feminists
reframing feminist claims to make them suitable for public policy and gov-
ernment narratives on gender and social inequality. In the Chilean case,
nonetheless, this was also combined with the serious constraints on the
quality of democracy, leading many feminists to tone down or censor their
own claims or claims made by other feminists and grassroots organizations,
from outside the realm of policymaking and politically acceptable claims,
especially during Bachelets first term in office. Richards,44 for example,
sets forth a compelling analysis of this situations impact on pobladoras,
rural and indigenous women. Pobladoras difficulties in being viewed as
partners and not just social policy recipients by femocrats and the state
have also been documented and analyzed by Adams45 and Schild.46
Some scholars (Franceschet, Marques-Pereira, among others) have
argued that the evolution of the feminist movement in post-dictatorship
Chile has led to state feminism. As I have argued elsewhere,47 this must
be nuanced by the systematic rejection of anything related to feminism in
172 N. FORSTENZER
gender policies and by the political conflicts surrounding womens rights,

which have involved watering down and stifling the claims and initia-
tives which could potentially have the greatest impact on womens liv-
ing conditions and empowerment. Therefore, rather than state feminism,
this institutional branch of feminism can be more accurately designated as
professional gender advocates.48
The autonomous branch of feminism decided very early on that the
policymaking system was rigged against radical societal change and that
breaking down their agenda into a shopping list of demands was not
an option. They have consistently advocated for civilizational change and
for complete autonomy from funding sources. Autonoma theoreticians,
such as Pisano49 and Gaviola, describe the insidious impact of profession-
alization and institutionalization within the movement and have set forth
landmark analyses for Latin American feminism.50
Prominent Chilean feminists, such as Margarita Pisano, are some of the
autonomous movements key theoreticians.
As of 1998, separate continental encuentros are organized. In 2009, the
founders of the autonomous current nonetheless broke with the auton-
mas encuentro and explained that even their autonomy had been tainted
by a brand of feminism that had lost touch with radical feminisms history
and memory and no longer represented a credible possibility for political
mobilization. From then on, these feminists chose to leave the feminist
political identity all together and labeled themselves Rebel Movement
from the Outside (Movimiento Rebelde del Afuera).51 They have also
made a point of keeping professional feminisms from rewriting feminist
history and presenting it as a linear series of achievements enabled by
cooperating with the government and international organizations, as at
the Chilean 2005 feminist encuentro in the run-up to Bachelets first elec-
tion as President or regarding documentary films or books on the feminist
movement.52
As most scholarly attention focused on the institucionales/autnomas
conflict, grassroots feminist organizations have been overlooked. These
organizations make up a third category that I have chosen to call social
mobilization feminism. These organizations believe autonomy is key for
activism but decide on a pragmatic basis when and how to work with state
agencies, international organizations, and even other feminist civil society
organizations. Their members are volunteers and they struggle with con-
straints such as having to balance work, family responsibilities, and activ-
ism. These organizations come and go but have continued to exist since
the return to democracy. Unlike the more institutionalized feminists, most

of the women in these organizations were not left-wing party militants
before the dictatorship. They are the next generation of feminists who
came to political activism during the campaign for the No in the 1988
plebiscite.
The three branches of Chilean feminism have different repertoires
of collective action. The professionalized feminists focus on producing
expert knowledge, on advocacy and monitoring compliance with interna-
tional commitments (Caas53 and Alvarez54 on Latin American feminism;
Araujo55 on the transnationalization of Chilean institutional feminists).
These actions require adequate organizational structures, financing, and
technical and political skills.56 The autnomas produce critical reflections
on feminism and on neoliberalism and capitalisms impact on womens
daily lives. They also carry out awareness-raising activities within the
Feminist Movement and beyond. The social mobilization feminists have a
more classical militant repertoire, including petitions, rallies, demonstra-
tions, happenings, as well as more novel forms of online political agitation,
as noted during fieldwork in Valparaiso.
The feminist activist year is based on a calendar of special mobilization
dates, from International Womens Day on March 8 to the International
Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women on November 25,
including regional campaigns such as the September 28 Day for the
Legalization of Abortion in Latin America and the Caribbean. These
small groups work together informally or within networks or campaigns
and include more professional groups with easier access to funding and
international fora, such as Catlicas por el Derecho a Decidir and more
marginal anarco-feminist or eco-feminist groups.
This state of play within the feminist movement and the work-in-
progress of gender policies have overlapped, have run parallel or even
opposite ways and at times have intersected to redefine the scope of claims
for womens rights. A distinction has gradually surfaced between legiti-
mate and radical demands, excluding dissident voices from public
debates and framing womens rights as an issue of equality of opportuni-
ties or equity. Inequalities among women along multiple positions of class,
race/ethnicity and sexual orientation, womens autonomy, thanks to sex-
ual and reproductive rights, or the calling into question of the neoliberal
model have been banned from the realm of legitimate, state-sanctioned
womens rights because of their disruptive potential.
174 N. FORSTENZER
The Institutionalization ofGender Policies

andtheRole Played byProfessional Gender
Advocates
The 1990s was a decade of far-reaching changes within the feminist and
womens movement. SERNAMs creation in 1991 was the outcome of
the first in a long series of political stand-offs on womens rights in the
post-dictatorship.
The institutional framework set up by the dictatorship allowed little
room for changing the economic and social policies general direction.
As noted in the introduction, the neoliberal transformation of the state,
which was trimmed of most of its powers and fields of intervention, left
labor relations, health care, pensions, education, natural resources, etc.
in the hands of the private sector. In addition to this, Chilean socialists
were first-hand witnesses and participants in international socialisms shift
toward social-democracy or reformism.57 The left-right divide thus was
rebuilt around the series of moral issues (temas valricos) on the politi-
cal agenda: womens rights/gender versus traditional family values; sexual
and reproductive rights versus faith-based perspectives on sex and repro-
duction; marriage and divorce; crime, drugs, and insecurity.58
The discussion of the bill that created SERNAM showcased the politi-
cal tensions surrounding the institutionalization of gender policies. Not
only the right-wing parties, but also the Christian Democratic Party, dog-
gedly opposed any threats to family as a fundamental social unit or to the
close association of womanhood and motherhood. The text which was
finally adopted thus expressed the tension between womens individua-
tion, which Marques-Pereira59 defines as their acknowledgment as sub-
jects beyond roles as mothers and spouses, and familialism, a fundamental
trait of Chilean society according to Araujo.60 Article 2 states SERNAMs
mission, stressing the strengthening of the family and womens nature
and specificity. Franceschet therefore notes61: Given the Concertacins
unwillingness to pursue policies that it knew would be divisive, SERNAM
came into existence with a potentially irresolvable tension at its core: to
pursue womens equality while strengthening the (traditional) family.
The Development ofSERNAM

Two main phases stand out in SERNAMs development: a first phase of
institutional consolidation and cautious gender policies, from 1991 to
2000, and a second, bolder phase, from 2001 to 2010.
SERNAMs first years (19912000) were aimed at setting the stage

for policies that would be acceptable within the two main frames that co-
existed in Chilean post-dictatorship politics on gender, namely, womens
rights and conservative moral values. The two first Ministers of SERNAM
were Christian Democrats with no feminist track record (Soledad Alvear,
who would later become the Christian Democratic Party leader between
2006 and 2008, and independent but Christian Democratic affiliated
Josefina Bilbao). This reflected the predominant role of the Christian
Democrats during this first ten-year phase (19912001) of democratic
rule.
During this period, SERNAMs efforts focused on defining its institu-
tional mandate and building legitimacy. Its first action plan was drafted in
1994 (Plan de Igualdad de Oportunidades). It presented general lines of
action but remained vague on the means and tools to achieve these goals.
As a highly sensitive policy field, its first achievements were legal reforms
asserting formal gender equality: the Constitutional reform enshrining
men and womens equal rights (amendment of articles 1 and 19-2 of
the Constitution), legal equality for children born in or out of wedlock
(1998), and the first law on domestic violence (1994). SERNAM was
designed as a coordinating body: it can only implement pilot programs
or supervise implementation of programs designed by other government
or local authorities. Its main substantive policies during this phase were
poverty alleviation programs targeting women from the poorest q uintile,
heads of households or seasonal workers (temporeras). The Chilean del-
egations participation in the UN Conference of Beijing on Womens
Rights sparked a controversy regarding the use of the term gender, con-
strued as a threat to family values, and the assertion of pro-life positions.
The teenage sex education program JOCAS (Jornadas de Conversacin
en Afectividad y SexualidadConversations on Sexuality and Feelings)
was shut down in the midst of a scandal on providing secular options for
teenagers sex life and birth control.62
The turn of the millennium brought a new impulse to gender pol-
icies in Chile. On the one hand, the power balance shifted within the
Concertacin, as the progressive pole gained more clout when Ricardo
Lagos, member of the Socialist Party and the Party for Democracy (PPD,
Partido por la Democracia), was elected President in 2001. Moreover, the
first woman President, Michelle Bachelet, also from the Socialist Party,
was elected for the following term of office (20062010) and though
not a self-identified feminist, she made gender a political priority. On the
whole, this second phase (20012010) made for a more active role of
176 N. FORSTENZER
SERNAM, headed by PPD Adriana Delpiano and Christian Democrat

Laura Albornoz, who, despite her party affiliation, made for a very pro-
active and visible SERNAM. SERNAMs second Equal Opportunity
Plan (20002010) was at the same time more operational and more far-
reaching, and Michelle Bachelets Gender Agenda, drafted by profession-
alized feminists, was undoubtedly a peak for this new era in gender policy.
The emphasis shifted from formal equality (equal opportunities) to gender
equity. Iconic measures characterize this phase: the legalization of divorce
(Civil Marriage Act, 2004), thecriminalization of domestic abuse (Second
Intra-Family Violence Act, 2005), the nomination of women ministers in
key departments (foreign policy, defense) under Lagos then the idea of
parity under President Bachelet, support for affirmative action for political
representation, the development of child care solutions and a better access
to the labor market for women were among SERNAMs priorities in this
second phase.
The Nexus BetweenGender Policies andFeminist

Politics: Defining Womens Rights
Gender Policies andWomens Rights: TheStates Definition
ofWomens Rights
The Chilean states gender policies can be grouped into three catego-
ries: legal changes, social policies targeting poor women, and state mod-
ernization involving gender mainstreaming, which will not be discussed
in this chapter. The legal changes enacted thanks to SERNAM sought,
first, to enshrine formal equality in the Chilean legal framework, such as
the Constitutional amendment stating that men and women are equal
(1999) or the law granting the same rights to children born in and out of
wedlock (Ley de Filiacin, 1999).
The second phase in SERNAMs legal action focused more on for-
mal issues with a significant impact on many womens living conditions,
such as the legalization of divorce (Ley de Matrimonio Civil, 2004),
which allowed for a better enforcement of alimony payments, or the first
law on intra-family violence (1994) which made intra-family violence a
misdemeanor but more crucially laid the ground for more State and/or
State-funded programs for women victims (more on the issue of domestic
violence below).
More recently, SERNAMs law-sponsoring activity has become bolder

(except under Pieras administration, the first right-wing President
elected since the 1950s, between 2010 and 2014) to encompass laws mak-
ing intra-family violence a crime (2nd Intra-Family Violence law, 2005),
making femicide a specific criminal offense (2010), advocating quotas for
electoral politics (several bills but none was adopted) and decriminaliz-
ing abortion for therapeutic reasons (rape, serious fetal malformation,
danger for the mothers lifethis bill is currently being examined by the
Chilean Congress). Legal reforms have been crucial for formal equality as
well as for laying the ground for more substantive policies in fields such
as health care, education, or employment. International law and bind-
ing commitments made by the Chilean state, such as UNs CEDAW or
the Belem do Para OAS Convention on Violence against Women (1994),
have been central in securing many of these legal reforms. Several profes-
sional feminists have specialized in this field, drafting shadow reports for
international organizations on the Chilean states compliance efforts, for
instance, or taking the Chilean State before the Inter-American Justice
Tribunal (this is the case of the NGO Corporacin Humanas, for instance).
The second key field in SERNAMs activity has been social and welfare
policies, even though the agency only has remit for pilot programs or
coordinating substantive programs with other public authorities. Shortly
after its creation, SERNAM launched the Program for Women Heads
of Household (1994), delivered by municipal Womens Offices and act-
ing as a nexus between the different services available to women such as
childcare (JOCAS), job placement (OMIL), finishing secondary educa-
tion cycles or participating in technical and vocation training programs,
health care namely dental care. The program initially targeted the poorest
households headed by women providers (19942001) but was at a later
stage reoriented toward lower-income households above the lowest decile
(when the program was reinstated in 2007). This program has continued
until today with results varying between municipalities, often depending
on the public officials in charge of its implementation.63
Beyond SERNAMs limited capacity to design and implement substan-
tive policies, several social policy measures have specifically targeted wom-
ens living conditions and well-being. The Chile Solidario benefit system
established during Bachelets first term (in 2002, under MIDEPLANs
authority) is designed to reach out to the poorest Chilean households
and help them access sectoral programs or benefits. Chile Solidario is also
based on a conditional cash transfer program alongside psycho-social
178 N. FORSTENZER
guidance (Programa Puente) and implies a series of responsibilities for

the recipients, such as making sure children attend school and get medi-
cal check-ups, adults actually seeking employment and the family being
in touch with the different state-run social agencies. Women are targeted
as priority beneficiaries for the program as they are considered more reli-
able and more likely to put the money received to use to benefit the
whole family. However, as many Conditional Cash Transfer Programs
(CCTP) schemes, it relies heavily on womens reproductive role within
the family and on a social level. The numerous demands to be met in
order to continue to receive benefits are time-consuming and not inher-
ently empowering,64 contributing to making CCTPs impact on womens
agency ambiguous, at best. Moreover, the pension reform enacted in
2012 created a basic minimum pension, especially meant for women who
hadnt contributed for long enough to receive a pension. It also added
years of contribution per child, thus compensating women, to a certain
extent, for career interruptions due to child-birth and rearing.
These measures reflect post-2000 social policy orientations based on
the idea of individual empowerment and capabilities, often implying cat-
egories of worthy/unworthy poor, rather than social and economic rights
and entitlements.65 Women are not viewed as agents of their own living
conditions, especially women from poor neighborhoods (pobladoras)
or rural women (even more so for indigenous women) and the aim of
empowerment falls short of engaging these women in true ownership of
these programs or allowing them to weigh in on the decision-making pro-
cess. In a repetition of old patterns, when upper-class women would bring
tea and sewing activities to shantytown women (from nineteenth-century
Church charities to late twentieth-century Centro de Madres), today edu-
cated middle-class feminists provide professional services and support to
poor pobladoras.
This legislative activity has nevertheless remained squarely within the
boundaries drawn by the post-dictatorship. Blofield and Haass 2005 study
of the Chilean Congresss law-making activity from 1990 to 2002 shows
that a bill is most likely to be enacted if it is not a major questioning of the
social and economic neoliberal model or of traditional gender roles.66
In sum, then, 25 years of gender policies have gradually led to a clearly
defined scope for womens rights initiatives: womens rights are framed
as an issue of equal opportunities rather than substantive equality and are
allowed onto the policy agenda only inasmuch as they do not call into
question the status quo on a moral level, based on the centrality of family
values and womens primary role as mothers, or on a material level, i.e.

the social and economic neoliberal vision of society, of public/private and
individual/collective rights and responsibilities.
Making Change Happen: AttheInterface ofGender

Policies andFeminist Politics
Violence against women and sexual and reproductive rights has been two
major feminist claims since 1990. Both are linked to womens right to
bodily integrity and to autonomous decision-making regarding their bod-
ies and sexuality. On the issue of violence against women, feminist coali-
tions bringing together grassroots organizations and professional gender
advocates effectively weighed in on the policymaking process and achieved
progress on different fronts, even though it involved initial failures and
trade-offs on framing and narrative. On the highly controversial topics
of abortion and birth control, however, the political context was sealed
off to broaching these issues and feminists divisions on strategy as well as
substance meant the stalemate lasted for almost the whole period.
Combating Domestic Violence: TheIntra-Family Violence

Legislation
Violence against women was one of the main topics set forth by second-
wave feminism for the nascent democracy to take action on. As Chile rati-
fied major international conventions requiring the state to prevent and
sanction violence against women (CEDAW, Belem do Para) and SERNAM
was created, combating domestic violence surfaced as a priority for gen-
der policies. As second-wave feminism faded, the umbrella organization
Red Chilena contra la Violencia Domstica y Sexual (Chilean Network to
Combat Domestic and Sexual Violence) was created in 1994.67 This net-
work gathered feminist NGOs alongside grassroots womens organiza-
tions, philanthropic battered womens shelters and activist groups and set
out to advocate in favor of criminalizing domestic abuse. Engaging with
the Executive branch and with female lawmakers involved a far-reaching
reframing of the problem, which went from conjugal violence to intra-
family violence (cf. Araujo et al.68). This meant that the focus was not
exclusively on women but was broadened to encompass children or elderly
dependents exposed to abuse behind homes closed doors. It also meant
that men were not singled out as the main, if not exclusive, perpetrators
180 N. FORSTENZER
of abuse. A first law was enacted in 1994, making intra-family violence a

misdemeanor. SERNAM was given the mandate to provide protection for
victims of intra-family violence and carry out awareness-raising activities.
This first experience of engaging in law-making proved a failure for most
feminists, as the outcome was so far removed from their initial goals.
Indeed, very quickly it became clear that the campaign was pushing
women to seek help from the police but the measures following a com-
plaint did not provide women with effective protection. More and more
women were harassed, threatened and too often killed by their partners,
boyfriends, husbands or exes, often despite temporary court restraining
orders or the fact that legal proceedings were underway.69 In 2005, a sec-
ond VIF law was enacted, making routine abuse (maltrato habitual) a
criminal offence. Over the period, the Red continually sought to position
violence against women as a major public issue and to remind the public
of the different aspects of violence against women (psychological abuse,
economic violence, etc.). Starting in 2005, it launched a major campaign
called El Machismo Mata, with different components and events such
as marches with torches on November 25th (International Day against
Violence against Women), traveling monuments to victims of violence,
paper and online graphic campaigns.
In 2005, SERNAM Minister Laura Albornoz also became very pres-
ent and outspoken in the media on violence and femicides and SERNAM
started to keep count of women killed by their partners or exes on its web-
site. The media seized the subject but chronicled these womens deaths at
the hands of people they shared their lives with in gruesome detail, remain-
ing at the surface of their implications for gender relations in Chilean soci-
ety. In 2011, a law specifically criminalizing femicide was enacted.
Violence against women has clearly not disappeared in Chile, but it is
now a legitimate concern for political debate and policymaking. Violence
against women also continues to be one of feminists major concerns and
claims, as there is still much to be done to highlight and combat the differ-
ent dimensions and forms violence against women can take. In this sense,
this demand is a rallying cry for diverse feminist and womens organiza-
tions and is a meaningful platform for collective action.
Sexual andReproductive Rights: Birth Control andAbortion

Sexual and reproductive rights are another key feminist demand in the post-
dictatorship. Abortion had been legal in Chile, for medical reasons, since
1933. Yet, as previously mentioned, as Pinochet was on the verge of leaving
power, he had the Health Code amended and criminalized all attempts to
terminate a pregnancy or aiding or abetting a woman to do so, in all cir-
cumstances. These issues were alsoand more cruciallydivisive for the
coalition in power between 1990 and 2010, since the Christian Democrats
tended to side with the right rather than with their coalition allies when
pressed on this turf. For a long time, abortion was a political taboo, men-
tioned by no candidate for fear of losing the election over anti-family and
non-Christian positions. Of course, Chilean women have continued to have
abortions, in often life-threatening situations: rich women travel abroad or
have an abortion performed in expensive upper-class Santiago private clin-
ics whereas poor women use risky and unsafe methods without medical
care (parsley, knitting sticks, and clandestine abortion doctors). The use of
misoprostol as a means to self-administer a drug-based abortion has made
abortions somewhat safer if the women have access to adequate informa-
tion and purchase the genuine chemical compound, but has also led to a
new black market and to a decrease in abortion-related mortality, meaning
unsafe abortions are construed as less of a public health issue.70
At the turn of the millennium, the battleground therefore shifted
toward birth control and the morning after pill. Right-wing parties,
the major faith organizations and extremist Catholic sects (Opus Dei,
Schoenstatt, Legionarios de Cristo), also in control of major media out-
lets and Chilean big businesses, have waged a long legal battle against
this drug (for a full recount, cf. Casas Becerra71). They were able to
prevent its market availability for almost 20 years, arguing before courts
that it has an abortive effect. When they lost this battle and Bachelet
decided to make the morning after pill available in public health centers
because despite the fact that it was legal to carry the drug hardly any
pharmacies didthe right-wing took the issue before the Constitutional
Tribunal (2008). At a time when Chilean society was expressing a col-
lective refusal of social injustice and impunity vis--vis the dictatorships
unpunished human rights violations,72 the opinion bristled, stressing
that the Constitutional Tribunal was a dictatorship-era legacy with no
right to creep into peoples beds and do away with 60 years of fam-
ily planning policies (the request had to do with the hormone levo-
norgestrel, which is also found in regular hormonal birth control, i.e.
pills and hormonal intrauterine devices, IUDs). The Constitutional
Tribunal nonetheless ruled against the morning after pills distribution
in Minister-run health centers, once again jeopardizing womens access
to effective birth control. Nonetheless, the issue of abortion surfaced in
the political debate and through this last struggle came to be reframed
182 N. FORSTENZER
as a matter of social justice, unfairly hindering poor womens sexual and

reproductive rights and even putting them in life-threatening situations.
As Bachelet was running for her second presidential term, she pledged
to ask Congress to lift the ban on abortions for medical reasons (whether
related to the fetus or the mother) and in the event of the pregnancy
being the outcome of rape. This bill is currently under parliamentary
discussion.
This issue has been highly divisive for feminists as it calls into ques-
tion the Concertacins position as well as the general power relations
within the movement. On the one hand, professionalized feminists have
been in favor of keeping a low-profile on this topic, advocating the simple
decriminalization of abortion or limiting claims to medical-related termi-
nations of pregnancy, whereas grassroots organizations have made legal,
free, and safe abortion the sine qua non condition of womens empower-
ment (cf. debates at the Encuentro Nacional Feminista in Olmu in 2005).
Ultimately, significant headway has been made lately thanks to the general
ascendant protest dynamic and the acute awareness of Chilean societys
unfair distribution of wealth and power rather than to feminists engage-
ment with this issue in the public debate.
Conclusion
The feminist movement has undergone a radical transformation in post-
dictatorship Chile, going from the height of the second wave, hand in hand
with a powerful womens movement, to a fragmented and diminished land-
scape of activists and organizations lacking voice and presence in the public
space. The divisions brought about by double militancy and the transitions
political orientation, combined with the institutionalization of gender pub-
lic policies, deepened the fault line between institutional and autono-
mous feminists. The third category of social mobilization feminists, which
I have contributed to analyze and highlight, are key players in keeping femi-
nist politics alive. Beyond a merely strategic or tactical disagreement, the
autonomy versus institutionalization discussion shapes and frames feminist
philosophical and political approaches to fundamental issues such as the
gendered division of labor or sexual and reproductive rights.
However, this should not lead to overlooking the remaining femi-
nists and their intense and passionate efforts to change gender relations
in Chilean society, whether through public policy and a reform agenda,
theoretical productions or social awareness-raising and political activism.
Gender policies in post-dictatorship Chile have made cautious, but none-

theless significant improvements to womens rights, as other issues have
gradually surfaced within the public debate. The post-dictatorship pro-
vided ideal conditions for the creation of a velvet triangle (A.Woodward,
2004)between State agencies, universities, and non-governmental organi-
zations. However, I have argued that this took place while the State and the
formal political realm deliberately established a clear distance from femi-
nist claims. Thus, rather than a case of state feminism, the professionalized
feminists in Chile could be referred to as professional gender advocates.
Chilean feminists must now learn to build alternative political visions
with others, within the feminist landscape and beyond, with other social
movements, to ensure that neither feminist demands nor overarching
claims for equality are left behind in the upcoming struggles for more
democracy and social justice in Chile, namely the yet ill-defined process of
drafting a new Constitution for Chile.
Notes
1. McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, Pour une Cartographie de la Politique
Contestataire.
2. Women and Politics in Chile.
3. Pratiques et Stratgies Pour un Meilleur Accs des Femmes la Cit:
Considrations partir du Cas Chilien.
4. Un Nuevo Silencio Feminista? La Transformacin de un Movimiento Social
en el Chile Postdictadura.
5. Bisilliat, Le Genre: Une Ncessit Historique Face des Contextes
Aportiques.
6. Oakley, Sex, Gender and Society.
7. Mathieu, LAnatomie Politique, Catgorisations et Idologies du Sexe.
8. Guillaumin, Sexe, Race et Pratique du Pouvoir. Lide de Nature.
9. Kergoat, Division Sexuelle du Travail et Rapports Sociaux de Sexe, 3940.
10. Fougeyrollas-Schwebel, Mouvements Fministes.
11. Ibid., 139.
12. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises.
13. Fougeyrollas-Schwebel, Mouvements Fministes, 143.
14. Joignant, La Politique des Transitologues: Luttes Politiques, Enjeux

Thoriques et Disputes Intellectuelles au cours de la Transition Chilienne
la Dmocratie.
15. Gl. Pinochet was Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean armed forces until
1998 and then was a lifelong Senator (Senador vitalicio, a position given to
all former Presidents).
184 N. FORSTENZER
16. Joignant, La Politique des Transitologues: Luttes Politiques, Enjeux

Thoriques et Disputes Intellectuelles au cours de la Transition Chilienne
la Dmocratie.
17. Reference to the title of Guzmans documentary film Chile, The Obstinate
Memory, 19961997.
18. Huneeus, La Dmocratie dans un Pays Divis par le Passe: Le Chili.
19. Olavarra, Protected Neoliberalism.
20. Moulian, Chile Actual. Anatoma de un Mito.
21. Guillaudat and Mouterde, Les Mouvements Sociaux au Chili, 1973-1993.
22. Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile; Ostiguy, La Transformation
Du Systme de Partis Chilien et La Stabilit Politique Dans La
Post-Transition.
23. Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile.
24. Baldez, Why Women Protest, 107.
25. Marques-Pereira and Raes, Trois Dcennies de Mobilisation Fminines et
Fministes en Amrique Latine.
26. Craske, Women and Politics in Latin America.
27. Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile, 5758; Marques-Pereira, Le
Chili: Les Femmes et la Gauche. Une Relation Amicale?
28. Valds, De lo Social a lo Poltico. La Accin de las Mujeres Latinoamericanas.
29. Liberales, Radicales y la Ciudadana de las Mujeres en Chile

(1872-1930).
30. Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises.
31. Kirkwood, Ser Poltica en Chile; Las Feministas y los Partidos; Marques-
Pereira, Le Chili: Une Dmocratie de Qualit Pour Les Femmes?;
Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile.
32. Ser Poltica en Chile; Las Feministas y los Partidos.
33. Ros Tobar, Godoy, and Guerrero Caviedes, Un Nuevo Silencio Feminista?
La Transformacin de un Movimiento Social en el Chile Postdictadura,
5859.
34. The October 1988 plebiscite was part of the Constitutions plan, which, in
1980, determined that there a plebiscite should be held, to ask the Chilean
people if they wished to keep General Pinochet in office. Nonetheless,
contrary to its initial intentions, the opportunity was seized upon by the
opposition as a means to exit the dictatorship peacefully: opposition parties
campaigned intensely for the No option and there was a voter registra-
tion drive.
35. Law 18.826 of September 15th, 1989, with one article stating that No
action undertaken in order to provoke an abortion will be tolerated. This
is one of the numerous leyes de amarre, tie-in laws, Pinochet passed to
lock the country into his policies or political views.
36. December 6th, 1989.
37. Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile; Kirkwood, Ser Poltica en Chile;
Las Feministas y los Partidos.
38. Caas, Le Mouvement Fministe et les Institutions Internationales.
39. Destremau, Les Droits Sociaux Lpreuve Des Droits Humains: Les
Limites de la Solidarit Internationale.
40. Marques-Pereira, Le Savoir du Genre au Chili: Une Connaissance

Vocation Politique et Pragmatique Dans un Contexte de Dmocratisation.
41. Marques-Pereira, Le Chili: Les Femmes et la Gauche. Une Relation

Amicale?
42. Ros Tobar, Godoy, and Guerrero Caviedes, Un Nuevo Silencio Feminista?
La Transformacin de un Movimiento Social en el Chile Postdictadura.
43. Woodward, Building Velvet Triangles: Gender and Informal Governance.
44. Pobladoras, Indgenas and the State. Conflicts over Womens Rights in Chile.
45. Gender and Social Movement Decline Shantytown Women and the

Prodemocracy Movement in Pinochets Chile.
46. Recasting Popular Movements; Market Citizenship and the New
Democracies.
47. Forstenzer, Reprsenter les Intrts des Femmes dans le Chili de la Post-
Dictature: Enjeux et Conflits.
48. Ibid.
49. Margarita Pisano (19322015) is a major Chilean feminist theoretician.
She is the author of Un Cierto Desparpajo, among many other books and
papers.
50. Pisano, Un Cierto Desparpajo; Gaviola, Bedregal, and Rojas, Feminismos
Cmplices, Ms Gestos Para Una Construccin Radicalmente
Antiamnsica.
51. Gaviola, Bedregal, and Rojas, Feminismos Cmplices, Ms Gestos Para
Una Construccin Radicalmente Antiamnsica.
52. Forstenzer, Reprsenter Les Intrts des Femmes dans le Chili de la Post-
Dictature: Enjeux et Conflits.
53. Le Mouvement Fministe et les Institutions Internationales.
54. El Estado del Movimiento y el Movimiento en el Estado.
55. Araujo, Transnationalisation et Politiques Publiques; Les Processus

Dinstitutionnalisation Des Agendas Fministes.
56. Marques-Pereira, Laccs Des Femmes Lespace Public: Du Local au
National, de Linternational au Transnational; Lexcercice de La
Responsabilit Publique et les Rapports de Genre En Amrique Latine;
Spanou, Fonctionnaires et Militantes: Etude des R apports entre
Ladministration et les Nouveaux Mouvements Sociaux, 184.
57. De Sve, La Chute du Mur de Berlin et lEbranlement de la Gauche
Chilienne.
58. Hecht Oppenheim, La Democracia Chilena en los Aos Posteriores a
1990 y la Incorporacin Poltica de las Mujeres.
186 N. FORSTENZER
59. La Citoyennet Politique des Femmes, 123.

60. Representaciones Simblicas de lo Femenino y Esfera Poltica Chilena: El
Caso de Bachelet.
61. Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile, 119.
62. Forstenzer, Une Dradicalisation Collective? Institutionnalisation et

Divisions du Fminisme Chilien.
63. Forstenzer, Politiques de Genre et Fminisme Dans le Chili de la Post-
Dictature, 1990-2010.
64. Arriagada and Mathivet, Los Programas de Alivio a la Pobreza Puente y
Oportunidades; Una Mirada desde los Actores.
65. Borgeaud-Garcianda etal., Penser le Politique en Amrique Latine.
66. Defining a Democracy.
67. Araujo, Guzmn, and Mauro, El Surgimiento de la Violencia Domstica
como Problema Pblico y Objeto de Polticas.
68. Ibid.
69. Haas, The Rules of the Game: Feminist Policymaking in Chile.
70. Red Chilena contra la Violencia Domstica y Sexual, Violencia Sexual y
Aborto, Conexiones Necesarias.
71. La Saga de la Anticoncepcin de Emergencia En Chile: Avances y Desafos.
72. Doran, Les Effets Politiques des Luttes Contre Limpunit au Chili: De
la Revitalisation de Laction Collective la Dmocratisation.
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Enjeux Thoriques et Disputes Intellectuelles au cours de la Transition
Chilienne la Dmocratie. Politique et Socits 24(23): 3359.
Kergoat, Danile. 2004. Division Sexuelle du Travail et Rapports Sociaux de Sexe.
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Hlne Le Doar, and Danile Snotier, 2e dition augmente, 3544.
Politique dAujourdhui. Paris: PUF.
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Santiago: FLACSO.
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Internationale de Politique Compare 12(3): 365378.
. 2005b. Le Chili: Une Dmocratie de Qualit pour les Femmes? Politique
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. 2008. Laccs des Femmes lespace Public: du Local au National, de
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CHAPTER 7
Coping withNeoliberalism Through Legal

Mobilization: TheChilean Labor
Movements New Tactics andAllies
FranciscaGutirrezCrocco
Introduction
There is a broad consensus among scholars that neoliberal policies have
weakened Chiles labor movement during the last three decades. Imposed
in the late 1970s by the military regime and deepened after the restoration
of democracy in 1990, the Chilean model of development has restrained
the scope of action of organized labor by limiting its rights, privatizing pub-
lic companies, and promoting flexibility in the labor market.1 Disoriented
by the scope of these changes, the labor movement has undergone a deep
fragmentation, and has lost support among workers. In fact, less than a
third of firm-level trade unions currently adhere to a peak union,2 which
makes the coordination of workers around common goals very difficult.
Likewise, the percentage of organized workers has visibly decreased since
This research was financed by CONICYT/FONDAP/15130009, CONICYT/

PAI/79140069 and CONICYT/FONDECYT/Iniciacin/11150217.
F.G. Crocco (*)

Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Santiago, Chile

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_7
192 F.G. CROCCO
1970: from 30 % to 16.4 % of the workforce in 2013.3 This has reduced

the chances of trade unions to have a political impact in Chile.
Most of the scholarly literature since the 1990s has focused on explain-
ing the decline of Chiles labor movement. The emphasis has been put on
the difficulties affecting trade unions4 rather than on the strategies they
have employed to address them. Research from the Direccin del Trabajo
(Department of Labor, henceforth, DL), the principal state body in charge
of enforcing labor legislation, has been one of the exceptions to this rule,
noting that unions have developed a culture of negotiation that allows them
to achieve some victories in big firms.5 In the same vein, other researchers
have argued that the ability of union leaders to generate arrangements with
firms during the process of economic restructuring has been instrumental
in improving unionization in some sectors.6 More recently, there has been
growing scholarly attention to extra-legal tactics7 used in some economic
branches with little union tradition by what has been referred to as the new
union model, in which a series of high-profile conflicts have been staged
(e.g., those engaged in by outsourced workers in the copper industry and
precarious workers in the forestry and salmon industries). In contrast with
the Central Unitaria de Trabajadores de Chile (the Unitary Workers Center
of Chile, the most influential peak union federation, henceforth CUT), this
new unionism guards its independence from the political parties, even
though it does give a political orientation to its actions.8
Notwithstanding their contribution to highlighting the agency of
Chilean trade unions, the studies cited aboveshow important limitations
to explaining how the labor movement has coped with neoliberalism dur-
ing the last three decades. While the first group of researchers fuels the
idea of a non-confrontational unionism, the second group is focused on
the exceptional cases in which trade unions have been able to mount col-
lective action and exert political influence.
In this chapter I contribute to the debate on the fate of Chiles
organized labor by showing that trade unions have not remained pas-
sive in the face of unfavorable political and institutional circumstances.
Acknowledging existing barriers, the chapter examines how trade unions
have created new strategies to deal with the obstacles set by the neoliberal
policies, challenge the established order and recover the power lost dur-
ing recent decades. However, unlike the existing literature, I go beyond
the analyses of the exceptional cases and examine more general patterns
of action employed by Chilean trade unions to counter the inauspicious
context for collective action.
COPING WITHNEOLIBERALISM THROUGH LEGAL MOBILIZATION... 193
In particular, I analyze what social movement scholars refer to as legal

mobilization.9 In the case analyzed in this chapter, this involves the
actions that trade unions take against firms and/or the state in court or
at the DL, with the deliberate purpose of broadening workers scope of
action. As social movement scholarship has shown, people can expect
to gain more than mere reparations by denouncing the infringement of
a law. Social movements can promote the judicialization of a cause in
order to force new interpretations of the law and in so doing create new
rights and strengthen democracy.10 They can also use legal action to raise
awareness of rights among their constituents, increase political opportu-
nities, set the agenda, or achieve other goals.11 This literature has dem-
onstrated that the law does not merely serve as a set of guidelines that
constrain behavior, but also as a framework that can be used to produce
social change.12 This approach has challenged the traditional distinction
between the effects ofactions inside the system and actions taking place
outside. As protests, boycotts, or strikes, legal actions can also lead to
radical transformations.
Based on official data and interviews,13 in this chapter I argue that
denouncing the violation of a law before the DL and courts has been one
of the most sustained and widespread tactics among Chilean trade unions
since the 1990s. This tactic has been akey repertoire of action because it
has served to contest the power of employers in a context where the effi-
cacy of other tactics has been limited. Furthermore, I contend that, albeit
modestly and inconstantly, the DL and the Labor Courts have been crucial
allies of the Chilean labor movement since the restoration of democracy.
Chile is not the only country in which the denunciation of labor law
infringements has come to be a central part of the work of trade unions.
The same trend has been observed to varying degrees in both industrial-
ized nations14 and developing countries.15 However, there is a dearth of
studies focused on this strategy.16 In fact, unlike the literature on social
movements, scholarship on trade unions has largely overlooked the offen-
sive power of legal action. An example of this fault is the absence of a
discussion about the role of the courts and administrative agencies in the
revitalization process that trade unions have undergone in the industrial
world since the 1980s.17 Legal mobilization has not been interpreted as
a valid means for trade unions to recover strength and attract new mem-
bers. Based on the analysis of the Chilean case, in this chapter I stress the
importance of the role played bythe law and legal action in the efforts of
organized labor to recoup and improve working standards.
194 F.G. CROCCO
The argument of this chapter is developed as follows. First, it examines

how the labor policies that have been undertaken throughout the last
three decades have fostered a transformation of the repertoire of action
of Chiles trade unions. Second, it shows how trade unions have applied
and re-signified legal proceedings to achieve their own goals since 1990.
Finally, the chapter discusses the extent to which the DL and the courts
have actually behaved as allies for trade unions during the period under
scrutiny.
The Institutional Drivers oftheRise ofLegal

Mobilization
Dismantling Job Protection (19731990)
The breakdown of democracy in 1973 marked the end of four decades
of increasing social conquest by the Chilean labor movement. Despite
the strong opposition of the business class and the frequent repression
of unions by the state in different periods,18 from the 1920s onwards,
organized labor succeed in forcing measures in favor of workers. Evidence
of this is the promulgation of Latin Americas first Labor Code in 1931,
which recognized collective rights of bargaining and striking, amongst
others. The increasing pressure of workers and peasants for equity-
enhancing reforms and political participation hastened the triumph of the
Unidad Popular in 1970. This coalition of left-wing political parties that
came to power was supported by the main union organization at the time,
the Central nica de Trabajadores, and promised to carry out a demo-
cratic transition to socialism which would satisfy the aspirations of work-
ers. The military coup of 1973, however, interrupted the deployment of
this program.
Immediately after the coup, trade unions were forbidden and union
leaders were put in prison or forced into exile. The labor movement was
considered one of the primary targets of the military regimes internal
war.19 In 1979, as part of the foundation of a new development model,
the military regime enacted a set of laws known as the Labor Plan that
restored union rights but within a radically different framework. Following
neoliberal prescriptions, the economic advisors of the military regime
believed that investment and job creation were harmed by excessive regu-
lation and non-salary-related labor costs such as unionization, minimum
wage, and other factors thatincreased the cost of labor.20 Consequently,
the Labor Plan sought to broaden employer control over the produc-
tive process, reducing workers protection. In particular, trade unions
prerogatives were strongly limited.21 In fact, the Labor Plan reduced the
possibilities of collective bargaining, restricting it to the firm-level and lim-
iting the issues subject to negotiation to wage readjustment. At the same
time, workers were allowed to negotiate with the employer without the
intervention of a trade union, through the constitution of negotiation
groups. The LaborPlan also gave employers the right to replace striking
workers and to fire union members without a justified cause. In contrast to
the prior legal framework, in which all the workers of a firm automatically
became members of the union if 55 % of the workers approved its creation,
the new legislation established voluntary union membership. Finally, it
also facilitated the creation of parallel unions within the same firm, mak-
ing 25 workers sufficient to form a union. Through these measures, the
new labor legislation had the explicit aim of depoliticizing trade unions.22
The Limited Advancements onCollective Rights

UndertheConcertacin Era (19902010)
The restoration of democracy and the triumph of the Concertacin de
Partidos por la Democracia(henceforth, Concertacin) in the 1990 presi-
dential elections created great expectations among trade unions. Given
their key participation in the movement that ended with the military
regime23 and their strong relationship with the new authorities,24 the lead-
ers of the CUT trusted that the restoration of workers rights would only
be a matter of time. This belief was only strengthened by thefact that since
its formation in 1988,25 the CUT has been run almost uninterruptedly by
leaders belonging to the political parties of the governing coalition.26
But the first government did not meet unions expectations. The presi-
dential administration of Christian Democratic Patricio Alwyn sought
to promote a national social pact with the CUT and the primary busi-
ness association, the Confederacin de la Produccin y del Comercio
(Confederation of Production and Commerce, henceforth CPC). As a
result, a set of Acuerdos Marco (Framework Accords) were signed that
included proposals for labor legislation that could be acceptable to both
workers and business and contained formulations referring to the need
for a healthier and safer workforce, which were vague enough to avoid
conflict between the two sides.27 Additionally, they included important
benefits such as an increase in pension and family subsidies of 10.6 % and
196 F.G. CROCCO
25 %, respectively.28 Crucially, a national minimum wage agreement was

signed between the CUT and the CPC in 1991, linking adjustment levels
to productivity increases and future inflation.29
However, apart from increasing the minimum wage, these general
accords were mostly a demonstration of goodwill.30 The package of reforms
approved in 1991 was limited in terms of extension of collective rights. It
sought to favor unionization with measures such as facilitating the organi-
zation of temporary workers and reducing the minimal quorum to orga-
nize a legal union in a small firm. It also aimed to help finance unions by
forcing workers who were beneficiaries of collective agreements without
being part of the union to pay partial union dues. However, the package
did not include the demands that would become the core of the CUTs
claims in matters of collective rights: the regulation of collective bargain-
ing at the branch level, the elimination of the negotiation groups, and
the end of the replacement of workers during strikes. Regarding individual
rights, progress was modestly more significant. Severance pay limits were
re-established to levels similar to those of pre-1973, and it became man-
datory to justify dismissals, as it had been before the military regime and
its 1979 Labor Plan. Nevertheless, this latter measure was rendered inef-
fective as in practice employers could refer to the principle of company
needs to excuse dismissals.
During the subsequent presidency of the Christian Democrat Eduardo
Frei (19942000), the state signed the International Labor Organization
(ILO) conventions on union autonomy, which reinforced the legitimacy of
the core demands of the CUT.Seeking to adapt the national legislation to
the international laws and extend the scope of action of trade unions, the
president sent a new package of reforms to parliament in 1999. This bill,
however, was resisted by the employers associations and finally rejected.31
With a similar purpose, Socialist President Ricardo Lagos (20002006)
announced a reform package which unearthed huge opposition in the
business sector. Given that the government did not have a majority in par-
liament, it was forced to drop the issues related to collective bargaining.
The core demands of the CUT were, once again, not included. On the
other hand, the reform that finally passed in September 2001 contained
an employers obligation to pay a bonus to workers replaced during a
strike and other aspects related to individual labor law, such as a reduction
of the working hours per week (from 48 to 45). Furthermore, the Lagos
administration made progress in the field of compensatory programs by
introducing compulsory unemployment insurance for salaried workers.
The program of the fourth government of the Concertacin, presided

over by Michelle Bachelet (20062010) of the Socialist Party, did not
embrace an extension of the existing labor rights. Her major achievement
in the field of labor policies was the enactment of the Subcontracting and
Transitory Labor Act (henceforth, Subcontracting Act) in 2006, which
aimed at regulating the expanded practice of outsourcing. However, the
law was contested by the CUT because it did not modify the definition of
enterprise. The CUT fought for broadening this term beyond registered
name and tax code. The reason was that this definition allowed the same
group of owners to appear on the paper as different firms that in reality were
managed centrally. Nominally reducing the size of their firms, this strategy
allowed employers to evade obligations to negotiate terms of employment
with all the unions at the same time and to ensure a nursery for women
employees, among others obligations required of big companies.
The CUT would have to wait until the reelection of Michel Bachelet in
2014 for that definition of enterprise to be revised and a new package of
reforms to expand collective rights to be sent to Congress. Supported by
the Nueva Mayora, a new coalition that included the Communist Party,
Bachelets administration presented to the parliament a bill that included
the elimination of negotiation groups in firms that already had trade unions
and the end of the replacement of workers during the strike among its most
celebrated measures. Still, this proposal did not contain the extension of
collective bargaining to the branch level, as the CUT demanded. The future
of this reform is still uncertain, because it has met strong opposition by
business organizations.After being disputed at the Constitutional Court,
the bill was finally passed in August 2016. Its scope is less ambitious than
in the original bill and it places collective bargaining at the individual level.
In sum, then, scholars commonly agree that the labor agenda of the
governments since the restoration of democracy has been timid and that
the impacts of the changes to the Labor Plan have been particularly mod-
est in the field of collective rights.32
The Compensatory Reinforcement oftheDepartment ofLabor

andtheLabor Justice System
While union rights remained restricted after the reinstatement of democ-
racy, the opportunities for workers to defend their rights through legal
proceedings expanded. As I show in this section, the center-left govern-
ments seem to have compensated for the scant advancements in the field
of collective rights by giving the DL and the labor courts increased power.
198 F.G. CROCCO
The DL is an administrative agency under the Labor Minister. It has

its roots in the Labor Office that was founded in 1907, but its current
structure and powers were established in 1924 as part of the process of
expansion of workers rights that was interrupted by the military coup.
Traditionally, the DL has been responsible for ensuring compliance with
labor laws by performing inspections of companies and issuing penalties
when necessary. It has also been responsible for establishing the mean-
ing and the reach of labor laws through official legal statements (dic-
tmenes in Spanish), and providing technical support to the stakeholders.
Nevertheless, since the restoration of democracy, the agency has experi-
enced ceaseless expansion of its functions. The first reform undertaken
during the government of the Concertacin introduced mediation by the
DL and arbitrage as alternative mechanisms for workers to resolve labor
disputes. In the same vein, the Subcontracting Act of 2006 forced compa-
nies that provide temporary workers to other companies to be registered
and authorized by the administrative agency. In 2005, the reform to the
Labor Justice System gave the DL the prerogative of denouncing firms
before the Labor Court on behalfof workers when fundamental rights are
abused. In this way, since 1990, almost every new labor statute has been
accompanied by a mandatory reference to this public body.33
The interviewed DL employees complain that agency funds and staff
did not increase proportionally to the DLs new functions. While the
agency has undergone a significant improvement, it still confronts several
obstacles in successfully assuming the challenge of defending the quality
of jobs.34 However, according to data collected by the ILO, the Chilean
DL is one of the strongest labor institutions in the world in terms of the
number of inspectors per worker. In fact, Chile has more labor inspectors
per 10,000 workers (1.7) than developed countries such as the United
States (0.1), Finland (1.5), France (0.8), and the United Kingdom (0.5).35
The role of labor courts has also been reinforced since 1990, albeit more
gradually. Chile has had specialized courts and procedures for dealing with
labor disputes since 1924. However, the first measure adopted by the mili-
tary regime was to substitute the existing judges with representatives of
the government. In 1981, labor courts were abolished. They were re-
established five years later, but in much smaller numbers. When democracy
was restored, the labor courts worked under such difficult conditions that
workers had no real access to justice.36 The government of Ricardo Lagos
took the first serious step to resolving this problem by making the reform
to the Labor Justice System as one of its priorities. The package of reforms
included a substantial simplification of the procedures and an increase in
the number of courts and judges, among other measures.37 In 2005, the
reform was finally approved and gradually began to be implemented.
Strengthening the power of the DL and the judges in labor disputes,
the governments of the center-left coalition sought to provide workers
with minimal state protection against the abuses of employers. However,
in a context of restricted collective rights, Chilean trade unions took
advantage of the opportunities that this policy offered. In short, devoid of
the necessary guarantees to directly and successfully confront employers,
trade unions have found in the DL and the courts a channel to fight for
workers rights.
The Mutation oftheRepertoire ofAction

oftheChilean Trade Unions Since1990
The literature on social movements has challenged the traditional view

that judicial proceedings are tactics that do not contest the political sys-
tem. As I show below for the Chilean case, legal actions are not only
invoked in an attempt to restore existing rights that have been violated,
but also to favor more radical transformations. In other words, Chilean
trade unions resort to the DL and/or the courts not only to defend a right
that has been violated, but also to pursue more offensive goals.
The Shift Within theCUT

During the first two governments of the Concertacin, the CUT fol-
lowed a moderate strategy, prioritizing negotiation with the stakeholders
and avoiding direct confrontation with authorities. Led by the Christian
Democrat Manuel Bustos, the peak union shared with the Concertacins
leaders the fear that excessive social mobilization could endanger the
newly established democracy. As a result, its objections to the neoliberal
reforms became less pronounced.38
The scant advancements of the Concertacins labor agenda triggered
a turn to the left within the CUT at the end of the 1990s. Since what
has been referred to as the re-foundational assembly, the union began
to more openly challenge the neoliberal model and the labor policies
of the Concertacin era.39 In 2011, the CUT supported the Student
movement and also signaledthat it was no longer an unconditionalally
of the center-left coalition. This redefinition coincided with the increas-
ing influence of the Communist Party in the peak union, which was
200 F.G. CROCCO
consolidated with the election of Brbara Figueroa, a communist mili-

tant, to the General Secretary position in 2012.
Consistent with the gradual process of intensification of its demands,
the CUT redefined its repertoire of action. It affirmed that it would be
open to negotiating with stakeholders, but without renouncing recourse
to mobilization when the conditions for a favorable agreement were not
met.40 In 2003, in reaction to the proposal of the government to increase
flexibility in the labor market, the historical peak union called a national
strike for the first time after the restoration of the democracy. Since then,
this tactical play has been repeated almost every year as a way to pressure
authorities to reform the Labor Code and extend minimum wage, among
other purposes.
However, the calls for a national strike have had a limited response. As
noted in the introduction, the CUT has faced a deep crisis of represen-
tation since the end of the 1990s which, among other things, has been
expressed in declining union membership. This crisis has been prompted
by the political differences among the members of the organization and
publicized accusations of tampering in CUT elections and the misuse of
funds against the CUT directory. As a result of these problems, the his-
torical peak union has undergone two significant scissions that have given
birth to a new alternative peak union.41 Simultaneously, it has lost con-
trol over more than two-thirds of the firm-level trade unions that do not
adhere to any national structure.
These changes have led to the increasing importance of legal mobiliza-
tion. Too weak to mobilize workers, the CUT has sought alternative strat-
egies to confront the authorities and employers. The peak union has used
legal mobilization with political purposes when pushing for reforms that
have been systematically blocked by the opposition in the parliament. For
instance, in 2005 the CUT appealed in court against all the Pension Fund
Administrators, accusing them of false advertising and breach of contract,
with the explicit aim of punishing these companies and authorities for the
unfulfilled promises that they made when the pension system was priva-
tized in the 1980s.42 The suit was brought to the Supreme Court in 2008,
but did not succeed.43 Similarly, the CUT lodged an appeal against the
Chilean government before the Inter-American Court of Human Rights
to eliminate the existing ban on trade union leaders occupying public
office positions while serving in unions.44 At the same time, the CUT has
been counseling and orienting grassroots trade unions that have taken
judicial actions against their firms or the state.
The Expansion ofLegal Mobilization AmongGrassroots Trade

Unions
The CUT is not the only organization that resort to legal mobilization to
attain their goals. In fact, the increase in the use of this tactic has been even
more marked at the firm-level. According to the last National Survey on
Labor Conditions, 52 % of firm-level unions have denounced the violation
of a labor law at the DL or the labor courts during the last 12 months,
while only 13 % of them have made a legal or extra-legal strike in the same
period.45 These percentages were similar between 2006 and 2014.46 Even
though the DL did not register the nature of the person who denounces
the firm before 2006making it impossible to differentiate between the
actions taken by individual workers or trade unionsthe multiplication of
the number of denouncements before the DL since 1990 (from 24,689
to 76,836 in 201347) suggests that legal mobilization has been one of
the main strategies for firm-level trade unions since the restoration of the
democracy.
In the Chilean system, workers may decide to report the violation of
a labor law to the DL or the labor courts. However, union leaders resort
to the DL more often because it is a cheaper, more accessible strategy for
them. As an interviewed union leader of a firm-level union in the gas dis-
tribution sector put it:
Its a long process to file a lawsuit. You have to collect a lot of information,
and find the right people to represent you in court. Not all trade unions
have the resources to have such a good lawyer. [] Good lawyers are work-
ing for employers and if you want to have such a good a lawyer, you have
to pay a lot.
Similarly to the CUT, firm-level trade unions do not report the firm to
the DL and/or the courts only to restitute a right that has been abused
(Gutirrez Crocco 2014). For instance, interviews show that union lead-
ers use legal mobilization to create points of reference that can be used
to give arguments more weight.48 In other words, they use the DL and
court sanctions to give a legal form to their claims and to pressure authori-
ties to introduce a new law. As I show below, many of the modest legal
changes that trade unions have obtained from the government since 1990
have been made using previous DL legal statements and/or court-rulings
as proof of the inconsistency of the current legislation and the need for a
broader protection for workers.
202 F.G. CROCCO
Interviews also show that trade unions use legal mobilization for tacti-
cal purposes to increase the likelihood of success of other actions. In fact,
interviewed DL employers observe that union leaders control the timing
of the allegations, reserving some actions for moments such as collective
bargaining processes when they need to reinforce the pressure on employ-
ers. As one interviewed union leader stated, [its] a bit like saying: We
are going to face a collective bargaining process now, and were ready
to go on strike []49 By doing this, trade unions seek to make the
employer more responsive to the demands of the workers and show that
they are willing to take the process to its natural conclusion if necessary.
In this section, I have argued that legal mobilization has played a key
role in the repertoire of action of the Chilean union movement since the
restoration of democracy. Reporting the abuse of a labor law to the DL
and/or the courts has been a strategy to fight for an extension of workers
rights at the different levels. However, the fact that trade unions increas-
ingly resort to legal mobilization for these different purposes does not
necessarily imply that this strategy has been as effective as union leaders
expect. To what extent have the DL and the judicial power helped Chilean
trade unions to contest the inherited legal order? I develop this question
in the following section.
Uncertain Allies forWorkers

There are important examples of legal changes prompted by union cam-
paigns and pressure on the DL and/or the courts. For example, long
before the law against what has been referred to as the multiRUT50 was
enacted in early 2014, various trade unions worked to ensure that the DL
and the courts forced firms owned by the same individuals or economic
group to negotiate as a group, even though this right did not formally
exist. Before the 2014 law was passed, the definition of enterprise was
unclear, allowing for abuses such as the division of companies in order to
circumvent labor and tax obligations related to the size of the unit. Legal
mobilization allowed trade unions to deal with this problem and pressure
authorities to change the law. Similarly, trade unions from the transporta-
tion sectors fought for several years to force employers to limit working
hours and to consider break time in the calculation of the wage of the
workers of this sector. The DLs legal statements and the court-ruling
motivated authorities to call stakeholders for a negotiation, which ended
with the promulgation of the law in 2008 that modified the regulation of
the working time in this sector. As one of the union leaders stated: We
gained the law almost without protesting, simply by taking the employers
to the courts.51
Another recent example is the Supreme Court prohibition of the
replacement of workers during strikes and recognition of the right of
workers from the public sector to be treated as other workers in matters of
fundamental rights.52 By doing this, the upper representative of the judi-
cial power endorsed one of the most valued goals of the CUT since the
restoration of democracy and forced the government to incorporate some
of these aspects in the bill to reform the Labor Code.
These victories should not, however, detract from the fact that legal
mobilization has not always brought the results that trade unions expected.
Moreover, the orientation of the DL and the courts has undergone some
significant changes throughout the last two decades that are important to
underline.
The DL
As the DL directly depends on the Labor Minister, it has been vulnerable
to political cycles. Union leaders, lawyers, and DL employees have iden-
tified at least two main turning points in the history of the agency. The
first one took place at the end of the administration of Mara Ester Feres,
a Socialist lawyer who led the institution between 1994 and 2004. The
interviewees agree in that Mara Ester Feres was the National Director
most clearly committed to the workers cause, which reflected in the DLs
actions. In fact, Feres identification with workers brought her the antipa-
thy of employers, who accused her of being too ideological for the posi-
tion she kept for ten years. As one interviewed firm lawyer stated: []
[after] the cycle of the democratic governments began, after Aylwin, the
DL progressively leaned toward the left. A turning point in this process
was queen Mara Ester Feres [] She left horrible legal statements and
other things.53
In 2004, Mara Ester Feres publicly supported the strike of the DLs
employees, who were protesting for an improvement in their working
conditions. This put her in direct conflict with the Minister of Labor,
and she was forced to resign. Her departure helped mitigate the DLs
204 F.G. CROCCO
reputation as a political organism representing workers, even if employers

continued to perceive the institution as partial. As one interviewed firm
lawyer expressed, one could expect a partial treatment in the process, and
this often doesnt exist.54
The second turning point was the triumph of the Coalicin por el
Cambio, a center-right wing coalition,in the 2009 presidential elections.
For the first time after the restoration of democracy, a right-wing politi-
cal coalition won the presidential elections. During the government of
President Sebastin Piera, the DL was led by Mara Cecilia Snchez, a
lawyer with a long career in the agency. Notwithstanding that this appoint-
ment sought to guarantee the neutrality of the DL, several interviewees
noted a shift in the orientation of the agency.
Nevertheless, as I show elsewhere, existing data suggests a different
reality.55 Graph 7.1 shows the evolution of the number of inspections and
the percentage of inspections that have ended in a fine against the com-
pany over the last two decades. This rate can be understood as a measure
of the DLs orientation: we assume that the greater the number of inspec-
tions that end in a penalty, the more favorable to workers the DL is. The
figure demonstrates that the DLs inspections have progressively become
less favorable for workers since 1999 and that the Piera administration
did not substantially change this trend. In fact, the percentage of inspec-
tions that result in a fine fell dramatically between 1999 and 2009 (from
62.2 % to 19.7 %), while remaining stable during Pieras presidency
(around 19.7 %). Moreover, the number of inspections began to decrease
in 2007, two years before the triumph of the right-wing coalition in the
presidential elections.
The decrease in fines is the result, in part, of the rationalization of the
procedures of the DLs inspections. Several internal ordinances have been
promulgated since the end of the 1990s to define with more precision the
prerogatives of the inspectors in the field to sanction companies. From the
interviews with the DLs employees and lawyers, it is possible to infer that
this rationalization has been a response to the pressure that the employers
have exerted through the judicialization of the disputes with the DL.As
a lawyer states:
The successful actions of the inspected companies against the DLan appli-
cation for protection in the ordinary justice or a complaint in the special
labor justicehave forced the DL to be more prudent when it applies the
sanctions.
Graph 7.1 Evolution of the number of inspections and the percentage of inspec-
tions that result in a fine (There is no public data on fines for the period
20012003). Source: Gutirrez Crocco, Francisca, and Ignacio Gutirrez Crocco,
Chile: Judicializar para ganar derechos? 14
Paradoxically, the progressively more moderate action of the DL has

not dissuaded union leaders from denouncing companies to the agency.
As I showed before, the DL is still the preferred place for trade unions
to confront employers. Even if they are sensitive to the changes in the
orientation of the DL, unions have not stopped resorting to this agency.
The interviewed trade union leaders suggest that this happens because
denouncing a firm before the DL, even if it does not always bring the
desired results, is less costly than direct confrontation with employers.
Striking is too dangerous for workers in Chile because of the limited
guarantees that the law provides.56 In need of an accessible alternative
to pressure employers during and after collective bargaining, firm-level
trade unions resort to the DL.
206 F.G. CROCCO
The Justice System at theDifferent Levels

The specialized courts and the Supreme Court have adopted a different
attitude toward the cause of the trade unions that can afford this type of
legal mobilization and bring their cause to these arenas. While the former
have been key in the fight of the organizations to contest the inherited
institutional order, the latter has played a more conservative role.
The data provided by the Oficinas de Defensa Laboral (Labor Defender
Offices)57 suggests that legal mobilization at the labor courts has been par-
ticularly effective for trade unions. In 2013, 48.1 % of the causes ended in
a total agreement between workers and employers, 34.5 % in a verdict
that was totally favorable to the worker, and only 2 % in a verdict that
was partially favorable or unfavorable to the worker.58 A total of
15.4 % of the causes was classified as Other endings.59 This data confirms
the perception of interviewed union leaders and lawyers that denouncing
a firm before labor courts can be more effective for workers than doing it
before the DL.
The reform of the labor justice system in 2005 seems to have inaugu-
rated a new cycle, where trade unions are more willing to resort directly
to courts instead of to the DL, in spite of the higher costs that this first
strategy has for union leaders. By simplifying the procedures and reducing
the time-limit of court-ruling, the reform raised the confidence of trade
union leaders in the labor courts. As one of the interviewed union leaders
explains:
Before [the reform], we encouraged workers to sue the firm only when they
were not paid, when they got fired, when they were fired in a serious breach
of contract. But to the others we said: You know, its not convenient to sue
because youre going to be waiting three, four years and nobody assures you
anything. But when the law changed we began to tell all workers to sue.60
While workers have tended to receive a favorable response from special-

ized courts, the upper judicial structure has acted differently. From the
perspective of interviewed lawyers, the magistrates of the Supreme Court
have tended to be more explicitly pro-employer.61 The main reason they
give is that the magistrates of the Supreme Court have not had specialized
studies on labor rights and therefore understand labor law as entitlements
derived from a contract between two equal parts rather than as a protec-
tion for the weakest part in labor relations. This different conception of
the labor legislation mightexplain the more conservative interpretation of

the law at this level.62
Available data seems to confirm this perception. After 2008, com-
panies and workers can appeal to the Supreme Court through the so-
called Recurso de unificacin de jurisprudencia (jurisprudence unification
resource, JUR). In this legal proceeding, the appellant demonstrates that
there are other court-rulings that have interpreted the labor law differ-
ently and demands a unification of criteria by the magistrates. According
to the analysis that I undertook of the database on court-rulings63 between
2008 and 2013 there have been a total of 448 JURs. Most were presented
by employers (54.4 % by private employers and 21.8 % by public agen-
cies). While 55.6 % of the JURs presented by the employers are ultimately
accepted, only 11 % of the ones that are presented by workers achieve the
same. In other words, the Supreme Court has favored employers rather
than workers when it has been forced to choose between contradictory
interpretations of the labor law.
The Supreme Court is less susceptible to political changes than the DL
because the names of the new magistrates are proposed by the members
of the Court. However, it is the countrys president who chooses among
the candidates and the parliament ratifies this decision.
In April 2014, Michelle Bachelet named Carlos Cerda Fernndez to
the Supreme Court. The incorporation of this known defender of the
human rights during the dictatorship and the departure of Patricio Valdez
from the Fourth Room, the one in charge of the labor disputes, altered
the power balance in the Court in favor of the magistrates who support
a more worker-protective interpretation of the law. Experts on labor law
agree that this event has radically changed jurisprudence.64 For instance,
the Court has recognized the right of public employers to be treated the
same as workers in the private sector in matters of fundamental rights;
the obligation of employers to consider transport and food allocations in
the calculation of the monetary compensation for dismissal; the prohi-
bition against replacing workers during the strike; and the total respon-
sibility of the main firm when a contract worker suffers an accident.65
In all these matters, the Court showed different criteria in the past that
favored employers. My analysis of the JUR database confirms this shift
in the orientation of the Supreme Court. During 2014, the magistrates
accepted only 4.5 % of the JURs presented by employers while 69 % of
those presented by workers.66 The JUR has become a powerful tool for
trade unions to broaden workers rights.
208 F.G. CROCCO
Conclusion
Chiles labor movement suffered from the policies introduced during the
military regime and continued during the democratic governments. Yet,
as I showed in this chapter, trade unions have not been passively facing the
barriers that neoliberal policies have put on their path. While traditional
repertoires of action such as the strike have declined, trade unions have
increasinglyresorted to the DL and the labor courts to contest the inher-
ited institutional order. They have appropriated these legal proceedings to
force employers to respect existing rights and, even more importantly, to
promote changes in labor relations.
Legal mobilization has helped trade unions obtain some advance-
ment during the last two decades that has been key to broadening the
scope of action of workers. The recent shift in the orientation of the
Supreme Court seems to mark the beginning of a new cycle, where we
can expect these advancements of union legal mobilization to be more
numerous. However, at present, the fact is that legal mobilization is
far from having brought about a rights revolution in favor of work-
ers. At the same time, this change in the repertoire of action of trade
unions has deepened the dependency of the Chilean labor movement
on the state, which has been pointed out as one of its historical limita-
tions.67,68 Trade unions have put their faith in the DL and the Judicial
Power, which could cause more serious problems in the future, when
the orientation of these institutions change as a result of a changing
political cycle. The labor policies of the Concertacin governments are
responsible for fostering this dependency. Incapable of abolishing the
limits to collective rights that the Labor Plan imposed in 1979, the
center-left coalition has compensated workers by increasing the pow-
ers of the DL and the Labor Justice System. Thus, it has created the
incentives for trade unions to make legal mobilization their primary
fighting tactic.
I want to conclude by pointing out the relevance of the findings pre-
sented in this chapter. Scholarship has mainly focused on the decline of the
Chilean labor movement, underestimating the capacity of organized labor
to adapt. Instead, in this chapter I proposed shifting the focus from the
barriers to collective action to the study of trade unions coping strategies.

Considering coping strategies involves recognizing the agency of trade
unions and representing them as more than the victims of their external
circumstances.
This approach also enables a different diagnosis of the evolution of
labor conflict. The study of labor relations has traditionally been based on
the evolution of the strike, which has led scholars to conclude that col-
lective labor disputes have declined since 1990. Nevertheless, the conflict
between unions, employers, and authorities take different forms, the strike
being only one of them. As shown in this chapter, most of the conflict
throughout the last three decades has taken place in the judicial and DLs
arena. In other words, collective labor disputes have not weakened after
the transition to democracy; rather, they are taking place in other institu-
tional spaces.
Notes
1. See Sehnbruch, The Chilean Labor Market; Cook, The Politics of Labor
Reform; Moulian, Chile Actual: Anatoma de Un Mito; Winn, The
Pinochet Era; Frank, Politics without Policy.
2. Direccin del Trabajo, Encuesta Laboral (ENCLA) 2011.
3. See Garcs and Milos, FOCH CTCH CUT; Direccin del Trabajo,
Compendio Estadstico de 1990 a 2012.
4. See Radrign, Movimiento Sindical en Chile; Drake, El Movimiento
Obrero en Chile; Moulian, Chile Actual; Agacino, Notas: Acumulacin,
Distribucin y Consensos en Chile.
5. See Espinosa, Sindicalismo en la Empresa Moderna; Yanes and Espinosa,
Sindicalismo en Chile.
6. See Palacios-Valladares, From Militancy to Clientelism.
7. Chilean labor law forbids work stoppages outside of the collective bargain-
ing process. However, the conventions signed by the Chilean state with
the International Labor Organization and the current jurisprudence rec-
ognize striking as a fundamental right. This creates a contradiction with
the more restrictive national legislation. For this reason, I use the concept
of extra-legal mobilization to denote the tactics used by trade unions
that imply the deliberate interruption of work taking place outside of the
regulated procedures.
8. See Aravena Carrasco and Nez, El Renacer de la Huelga Obrera en
Chile; Baltera and Dussert, Liderazgos Sindicales Emergentes.
9. See McCann, Law and Social Movements.
210 F.G. CROCCO
10. See Burstein, Legal Mobilization as a Social Movement Tactic; Epp, The
Rights Revolution; McCann, Rights at Work; OBrien, Rightful Resistance.
11. McCann, Law and Social Movements.
12. Ibid.
13. The data presented in this article was collected in two phases; first, between
the years 2009 and 2012, during a study that sought to identify the general
trends of the contemporary Chilean labor movement, and again in 2014,
during research that deepened the understanding of the specific problem
of union legal mobilization.
To measure the extent of legal actions, I use official data from the DL.To
analyze the meanings that trade unions give to these actions, my argu-
ments are based on (1) 47 semi-structured interviews of union leaders of
different union structures and economic branches; (2) declarations of
union leaders in the press, published between 2003 and 2013in La Nacin
and El Mostrador. To identify the extent into which the DL and the Judicial
Power have favored unions, I employ actors perceptions. I augment the
information from the interviews union leaders had with other actors: one
judge, three union lawyers, two firm lawyers, and eight DL officials. In
addition, I contrast actors perceptions with official data from: (1) the
Compendium of the DL; (2) the Annual of the Labor Justice pub-
lished by the Ministerio de Justicia (Justice Minister); (3) the database of
the Supreme Courts rulings published by the Judicial Power.
14. See Roomkin, A Quantitative Study of Unfair Labor Practice Cases, 245;
McCammon, Labors Legal Mobilization; Chappe, Dnoncer en Justice
les Discriminations Syndicales; Plisse, Judiciarisation Ou Juridicisation?;
Conley, Trade Unions, Equal Pay and the Law in the UK.
15. See Chen, Legal Mobilization by Trade Unions; Fazio, Judicializacin
de la Protesta Sindical en Argentina; Anner, Meeting the Challenges of
Industrial Restructuring; Cardoso, Neoliberalism, Unions, and Socio-
Economic Insecurity in Brazil.
16. See McCammon and Kane, Shaping Judicial Law in the Post-World War
II Period.
17. See Frege and Kelly, Union Revitalization Strategies in Comparative
Perspective and Varieties of Unionism:Comparative Strategies for Union
Renewal; Heery, Kelly, and Waddington, Union Revitalization in Britain;
Hamann and Martinez Lucio, Strategies of Union Revitalization in Spain.
18. See Angell, Politics and the Labour Movement in Chile; Rojas Flores, La
Dictadura de Ibez y los Sindicatos (19271931).
19. See Winn, The Pinochet Era, 21.
20. See Campero, Macroeconomic Reforms, Labour Markets and Labour
Policies.
21. See lvarez Vallejos, El Plan Laboral y la Negociacin Colectiva.
2. See Piera Echenique, La Revolucin Laboral en Chile.

2
23. See Barrera, Sindicatos bajo Regmenes Militares.
24. See Foxley and Bustos, Conversaciones con Manuel Bustos.
25. The CUT is considered the successor of the Central nica de Trabajadores,
the main peak union in Chile, which was founded in 1953 and abolished
in 1973 after the military coup. The CUT was informally created in 1988
during the No campaign in the plebiscite that ended the Pinochet era.
The new peak union was formally recognized by the law in 1991.
26. With the exception of the period between 1998 and 2000, during which
the CUT was led by the Communist Ethiel Moraga.
27. See Epstein, Labor and Political Stability in the New Chilean Democracy,
50.
28. See Frank, Politics without Policy, 117.
29. Ibid.
30. See Sehnbruch, The Chilean Labor Market, 62.
31. See Mizala and Romaguera, La Legislacin Laboral y el Mercado del
Trabajo en Chile.
32. See, for example, Sehnbruch, The Chilean Labor Market; Rojas Mio,
Los Desafios Actuales del Derecho del Trabajo en Chile; Ugarte, El
Nuevo Derecho del Trabajo, 4; Frank, Politics without Policy; Cook, The
Politics of Labor Reform in Latin America; Mizala and Romaguera, La
Legislacin Laboral y el Mercado del Trabajo en Chile.
33. See Ugarte, Inspeccin del Trabajo en Chile, 193.
34. See Bensusn, La Inspeccin del Trabajo en Amrica Latina, 1021.
35. See International Labour Organization, Labour Inspection Rate (inspec-
tors per 10,000 Employed Persons).
36. See Gazmuri, La Reforma a la Justicia Laboral, 63.
37. See Flores Monardes, La Reforma a la Justicia del Trabajo, 159.
38. See Fras Fernndez, Los Desafos del Sindicalismo en los Inicios del Siglo
XXI; Valenzuela, Sindicalismo, Desarrollo Econmico y Democracia;
Epstein, Labor and Political Stability in the New Chilean Democracy;
Campero, Los Actores Sociales en el Nuevo Orden Laboral.
39. See Zambrano, Trabajo y Sindicalismo en los Nuevos Tiempos; Fras
Fernndez, Los Desafos del Sindicalismo en los Inicios del Siglo XXI.
40. See Zambrano, Trabajo y Sindicalismo en los Nuevos Tiempos. Para La
Formulacin de Estrategia Sindical; Fras Fernndez, Los Desafos del
Sindicalismo en los Inicios del Siglo XXI.
41. The first scission took place in 1995, producing the Central Autnoma de
Trabajadores (CAT), and the second, in 2005, the current Union Nacional
de Trabajadores (UNT). Still, the CUT represents more than the 80 % of
the firm-level trade unions that are affiliated with a peak union according
to the Direccin del Trabajo, Encuesta Laboral (ENCLA) 2011.
212 F.G. CROCCO
42. See La Nacin, CUT Anuncia Acciones Legales contra AFPs por
Publicidad Engaosa; Aranguiz, CUT Presenta Demanda Contra
AFPs.
43. See El Ciudadano, CUT Present Querella contra las AFPs, con Base a
Datos de CENDA.
44. See La Nacin, CUT Recurre a la Corte Interamericana para Acceder al
Congreso.
45. See Encuesta Laboral (ENCLA) 2011.
46. See Gutirrez Crocco, Contesting the Inherited Labor Order.
47. See Direccin del Trabajo, Anuario Estadstico de la Direccin del

Trabajo.
48. Interview with a union leader of an air company cinducted by author,
October 2014.
49. Interview with a DL employee by author, August 2014.
50. The RUT (Rol nico tributario in spanish) is a number that identifies a firm for
all legal purposes. The concept of multiRUT is used to refer to firms which
belong to the same owner or group but have different identification numbers.
51. Interview with a union leader of an inter-firm union in the transportation
sector by author, October 2014.
52. See Urza, Corte Suprema se Distancia de Fallos Pro Empresa en

Materia Laboral; El Mostrador, Suprema Favorece Trabajadores
Internos.
53. Interview with a firm lawyer by author, August 2014.
54. Interview with a firm lawyer by author, August 2014.
55. See Gutirrez Crocco and Gutirrez Crocco, Chile: Judicializar para
Ganar Derechos?
56. According to the last ENCLA, 51.5 % of the union leaders of Chilean firm-
level trade unions think that workers do not join the organization because
they fear negative consequences, and 14.3 % because they do not see the
utility. See Direccin del Trabajo, Encuesta Laboral (ENCLA) 2011.
57. The public organism that provides a lawyer to workers who do not have
the resources to hire a private one.
58. In the Chilean system, workers and employers can attain an agreement
during a conciliation process before the judge pronounces a verdict. The
agreement can be total or partial according to the number of items in
the original workers complaint that is satisfied in the negotiation. When
the conciliation does not work, the dispute is resolved by the judge. In that
case, the result can be totally or partially favorable to the workers
position, or completely unfavorable.
59. See Ministerio de Justicia, Anuario Estadstico Justicia Laboral.
60. Interview with a union leader of an inter-firm union of the transport sector
by author, October 2014.
61. Interview with a lawyer representing both firms and workers by author,
August 2014.
62. This was the interpretation of the three lawyers that I interviewed.
63. See Poder Judicial, Bases Jurisprudenciales.
64. Interview with a workers lawyer and member of the bureau of the Chilean
Association of Labor Lawyers by author, August 2014.
65. The cited list of significant sentences has been retrieved from the analysis
of experts in the press. See e.g. Urza, Corte Suprema se distancia de fal-
los pro empresa en materia laboral; El Mostrador, Suprema Favorece la
Huelga sin Derecho a Reemplazo, ni siquiera con Trabajadores Internos.
66. See Gutirrez Crocco and Gutirrez Crocco, Chile: Judicializar para
Ganar Derechos?
67. See Angell, Politics and the Labour Movement in Chile.
68. See Epstein, Labor and Political Stability in the New Chilean Democracy.
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OIT/CUT.
PART III
Chile in Comparative Perspective

CHAPTER 8
Chilean Social Movements andParty Politics

inComparative Perspective: Conceptualizing
Latin Americas Third Generation
ofAnti-Neoliberal Protest
KennethM.Roberts
Introduction
The groundswell of social protests that swept across Chile in the early
2010s was in many respects a continuation of long-standing patterns
of periodic social upheaval against free market (or neoliberal) poli-
cies in contemporary Latin America. At the national level, however, the
Chilean protest cycle marked a sharp departure from a prolonged period
of relative societal quiescence that followed the countrys 1990 transi-
tion to democratic rule. Moreover, from a broader comparative perspec-
tive, Chiles wave of protests manifested a number of distinctive traits
that differentiated it from previous cycles of anti-neoliberal social protest
in Latin America. While belonging, broadly conceived, to the Polanyian
I thank Sofa Donoso and Marisa von Blow for their very helpful comments and
suggestions for this chapter. I also thank Eduardo Silva for a series of intellectual
exchanges that influenced my thinking on this topic.
K.M. Roberts (*)

Department of Government, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_8
222 K.M. ROBERTS
double movement of societal resistance to market liberalization,1 Chiles

protest movements often articulated different types of material grievances
and claims than their predecessors elsewhere in Latin America, and their
political timing was located at a very different stage in the dialectical pro-
cess of market liberalization.
Indeed, Chiles protest cycle is best conceived not as a continuation of
preexisting patterns or waves of regional contention, but as the leading
edge of a potential third generation of anti-neoliberal social protest in
Latin America. The character and claims of third-generation movements
are heavily conditioned by their political and economic timing; rather than
defensive responses to crisis-induced austerity measures and structural
adjustment policies that threaten established social and economic relation-
ships, third-generation movements emerge in contexts of advanced liber-
alization that have been thoroughly reconfigured by technocratic attempts
to narrow the political domain and create what Polanyi called market
society. Indeed, Chiles third-generation movements were not only post-
structural adjustment but also post-left turn, that is, they followed in the
wake of initial attempts by moderate leftist governments to promote social
inclusion within the parameters of market society. These movements thus
adopted an offensive strategic orientation that aimed to deepen redistribu-
tive reforms and re-politicize social and economic fields that had pre-
viously been subjugated to market criteria and, consequently, insulated
from public processes of democratic contestation and collective decision
making.2 The movements sought to reclaim or expand social citizenship
rights that are diametrically opposed to the individualizing logic of a heav-
ily commodified and largely self-regulating market society.
Like earlier generations of anti-neoliberal protest in Latin America,
however, the Chilean movements were not simply a response to material
grievances, as they brought to the surface a deeper crisis of democratic
governance and political representation. As such, they can only be under-
stood in the broader institutional context of Chilean democracy and its
post-transition patterns of partisan representation, social deactivation, and
technocratic de-politicization.3 As explained in the chapters by Donoso
and von Blow, Bidegain Ponte, and Somma and Medel, Chilean move-
ments emerged as political parties roots in society withered and they
progressively lost the capacity to articulate and channel a wide range of
societal demands. Protest movements, therefore, challenged mainstream
parties to open new channels of participation for societal actors and to
broaden the range of public policy debate around social citizenship claims
CHILEAN SOCIAL MOVEMENTS ANDPARTY POLITICS INCOMPARATIVE... 223
for educational equality, environmental protection, and labor and

indigenous rights. Extra-institutional forms of social protestin short,
contentious politics4thus played a central role in re-politicizing
diverse social fields and redefining the public policymaking agenda.
To advance conceptual and theoretical understanding of this third gen-
eration of anti-neoliberal social protest, this chapter places the Chilean
protest cycle in a regional comparative perspective. It begins with a theo-
retical overview of the relationship between social protest, parties, and
political institutions, then explains the political and economic logic of
first- and second-generation protest movements in Latin Americas neo-
liberal era. An analysis of similarities and differences in the grievances,
claims, and political setting of Chiles third-generation movements fol-
lows. The comparative analysis identifies the threads of continuity that
connect Chilean movements to earlier waves of anti-neoliberal protest in
Latin America, while highlighting what is politically novel and distinctive
in this most recent cycle of contention.
Most important, the analysis provides comparative insight into the
political contextualization of societal resistance to market liberalization
in Chile and other Latin American countries. According to Karl Polanyi,5
the expansion of markets into new spheres of social and economic rela-
tionships frequently generates a double or countermovement of societal
resistance to market-induced hardships and insecurities. As Polanyi recog-
nized, and as the Latin American experience amply shows, these double
movements can take a number of different political forms. They may find
expression in contentious or institutionalized political arenas, and they
are both conditioned by and potentially transformative of party politics.
Indeed, the variable expressions of Polanyian resistance in Latin America
are indicative of specific types of representational patternsand deficits
found within national party systems. Identifying the nexus between social
protest and these representational deficits is the central task of this chapter.
Market Reform, Social Protest, andPolitical

Institutions: Conceptualizing Polanyis Double
Movement
Scholarship on social movements and contentious politics has long recog-
nized that material grievances alone do not dictate the patterns and rhythms
of social protest. Grievances related to political exclusion, corruption, gen-
dered inequalities, the environment, or cultural rights and identities play
224 K.M. ROBERTS
central roles in many types of protest, and even where material grievances
are present, protest dynamics are heavily conditioned by organizational
resources and networks, political opportunities and constraints, and the
social construction of collective identities.6 A number of important recent
studies on social movements in Latin America, however, have sought to
refocus attention on material grievancesin particular those related to
market liberalization policiesand the role they play in the instigation of
mass social protest.7 Even where market reforms enhance economic effi-
ciency, they can create pockets of economic hardship or insecurity among
social groups who bear the brunt of specific adjustment policies, including
workers who face layoffs or wage cuts, low-income consumers threatened
by the privatization of public services and the elimination of price con-
trols or subsidies, and local communities whose control over land, water,
and natural resources is challenged by the extractive activities of multina-
tional firms. Not surprisingly, Polanyis metaphor of the double move-
ment is often invoked to describe the myriad forms of social protest that
contested market-based structural adjustment policies in the aftermath to
Latin Americas 1980s debt crisis.8
Ironically, Polanyi himself had little to say about social protest, and
it was not integral to his concept of the double movement. For Polanyi,
the double movement was a principle of social protection against the
pernicious effects of a market-controlled economy. This principle aimed
at the conservation of man and nature through powerful institutions
and protective legislation, restrictive associations, and other instruments
of intervention.9 Polanyis conceptualization clearly reserved a central
role for state and political institutions as well as social organizations in the
construction of protections against commodification. The role of social
mobilization in shaping or inducing an institutional response was left
largely unexplored.
Nevertheless, the Latin American experience during the neoliberal era
suggests that there is a complex reciprocal relationship between social
mobilization or protest and institutional responsiveness to claims for social
protection from market insecurities. Although localized or sector-specific
protest activities can emerge around concrete economic grievances in vir-
tually any political context, widespread social protest that links together
diverse societal interests or claims is most likely to occur where formal
representative institutions are closed, failing, or ineffectual. Indeed,
Polanyis double movement is most likely to find expression in widespread
social protest not only where states are unresponsive to claims for social
protection, but where party systems fail to effectively articulate and chan-
nel such claims in the first place. In such contexts, cycles of social mobi-
lization and protest may well be required to elicit a meaningful response
from state or party institutions. Where party systems do articulate and
channel claims for social protection, however, the double movement may
well be contained within the formal partisan, regulatory, and state poli-
cymaking institutions envisioned by Polanyi, minimizing social mobiliza-
tion and protest. As I argue below, this was the case in Chile for the first
decade-and-a-half of democratic rule after 1990, until a variety of new
movement organizations emerged to articulate claims and contest social
policy spheres that mainstream parties had largely neglected.
Two important theoretical insights can be derived from this recipro-
cal interaction between political institutions and social protest. First, anti-
neoliberal social protest is likely to be far less common than market-based
hardships and insecurities, and also less common than the double move-
ment for societal protection that such insecurities foster. This insight fol-
lows logically from the understanding that widespread social protest is
but one of several different political manifestations of Polanyis double
movement, all of which are conditioned by representative institutions and
their responsiveness to claims for social protection. Second, widespread
social protest is rarely, if ever, a response to material grievances alone;
instead, it nests material grievances within an overarching critique of polit-
ical institutions and their lack of responsiveness or effective representation.
As stated by Silva in his seminal study of contemporary Latin American
social movements, political exclusion, understood at its most basic as the
capacity of pro-neoliberal reform forces to ignore popular sector demands,
was a powerful force behind the unification of streams of anti-neoliberal
mobilization.10
These theoretical insights are developed below through an analysis of
Latin Americas three generations of anti-neoliberal social protest. The
analysis highlights the reciprocal relationship between social protest and
political institutions, in particular the conditioning of protest by partisan
competitive alignments. It also suggests that Chiles recent cycles of social
mobilization are indicative of an unprecedented politicization of social
citizenship rights in the neoliberal era, a process that is intimately tied to
a deepening crisis of partisan and representative institutions in the post-
1990 democratic regime.
226 K.M. ROBERTS
First andSecond Generations ofAnti-Neoliberal

Protest inLatin America
Although opposition to neoliberalism has been part of the master fram-
ing of social protest in much of Latin America since the 1980s,11 protest
cycles in the region are far from uniform. Movements vary widely in their
social composition and organizational forms, the content of their material
grievances or claims, and the repertoires of contention they employ. More
important for our purposes, they vary as well in their political logic and
timing vis--vis the historical, region-wide process of market liberaliza-
tiona process that began in Chile and other Southern cone military dic-
tatorships in the mid-1970s, then swept across the region, largely under
democratic auspices, in the aftermath of the debt crisis in the early 1980s.
This political variation is the starting point for demarcating the three dif-
ferent generations of anti-neoliberal protest in the region.
The first generation of anti-neoliberal protest coincided with the ini-
tial adoption of austerity measures and structural adjustment policies in
response to the debt and inflationary crises that accompanied the demise
of state-led development. Widespread job losses occurred in the formal
sector of national economies during the initial period of economic adjust-
ment, as private sector layoffs, reductions in tariff protections, the privati-
zation of public enterprises, and cuts in public spending forced the burdens
of adjustment onto the backs of workers. At the same time, governments
slashed wages, cut social programs, and eliminated price controls or subsi-
dies that had traditionally propped up popular consumption of basic goods
and services. Protests against these adjustment measures, therefore, were
predominantly reactive and defensive in nature. They aimed to protect
employment, wages, consumption, and public services in contexts where
basic economic well-being was directly threatened by some combination
of recession, inflation, and market restructuring.
Not surprisingly, organized laborthe bastion of popular collective
action during the era of state-led development12spearheaded mobili-
zation during the opening wave of anti-neoliberal contention.13 Strike
waves and other forms of labor unrest spiked in many countries during
the early stages of crisis and reform, as unions fought to defend workers
material interests in wages and employment, as well as their organizational
gains and political influence under the old order. Argentina, for example,
experienced 13 general strikes in response to a deepening inflationary
crisis and the rather tepid efforts of the Alfonsn government to adopt
adjustment measures in the late 1980s.14 Labor was hardly alone, how-
ever, in resisting the initial adoption of austerity and structural adjustment
policies. Price shocks associated with cuts in subsidies or the elimination
of price controls for food and gasoline, for example, triggered spontane-
ous protests and food riots among the urban poor in a number of coun-
tries. These riotsoften dubbed IMF riots because austerity measures
had been mandated as a condition for international debt reliefoccurred
in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico,
Panama, Peru, and Venezuela.15
These patterns of societal resistance sometimes succeeded in delaying
or watering down the market liberalization process, as in Uruguay, where
strikes and protests were buttressed by popular referenda that allowed
voters to veto specific privatization measures.16 In their most expansive
formssuch as the five-day, multicity uprising known as the Caracazo that
greeted the 1989 adoption of neoliberal shock treatment by Venezuelan
President Carlos Andrs Prez17protests played a central role in the
development of national crises that would eventually produce dramatic
political change. Nowhere, however, was the initial wave of strikes, riots,
and protests strong enough to prevent structural adjustment from mov-
ing forward; every country in Latin America had liberalized markets by
the late 1980s and early 1990s, the heyday of the so-called Washington
Consensus.18
In many respects, then, first-generation protests were the defensive
residuum of a social order in decay, and a prelude to the political defeat
of popular sectors in the decade that followed the onset of the debt crisis.
As hyperinflation pummeled governments that experimented with het-
erodox alternatives to market liberalism, deeper and more comprehensive
structural adjustment programs were imposed, organized labor entered
into a steep decline, and societal resistance withered and fragmented.
Technocrats converged on variants of neoliberal orthodoxy, while scholars
took note of the surprising weakness of popular resistance to the demo-
cratic implementation of structural adjustment policies that were once
presumed to require the iron fist of a Pinochet to impose.19
By the middle of the 1990s, hyperinflation had been vanquished in
Latin America, and every country in the region had gone through struc-
tural adjustment, even if they varied in the thoroughness and effectiveness
of their liberalization policies.20 In essence, the region had entered a post-
adjustment political era, one with a different set of economic and political
coordinates for social mobilization and protest. Whereas first-generation
228 K.M. ROBERTS
anti-neoliberal protests were a transitional phenomenon, rooted in efforts

to defend socioeconomic interests that were embedded in statist develop-
ment models and threatened by adjustment measures, a second generation
of protest episodes took aim at market society itself.
Two basic and often interrelated sets of economic grievances lay behind
these second-generation protests, which reached their apogee in Argentina
in 20012002, Ecuador in 19992000, and Bolivia between 2000 and
2005. First, new cycles of economic crisis demonstrated the vulnerabil-
ity of market society to global financial shocks and/or domestic financial
mismanagement, exposing popular sectors to acute economic hardships in
contexts where porous social safety nets provided little protection. A mas-
sive and costly bailout of Ecuadors liberalized financial system in 1999
produced a new round of austerity measures and a rising tide of social
protest, while Argentina slipped into a prolonged recession at the end of
the decade as its fixed exchange ratea legacy of earlier efforts to con-
trol hyperinflationundermined export performance. Second, govern-
ment efforts to extend market liberalization policies to new sectors of the
economy encountered significant societal resistance. This could be seen in
Ecuadors efforts to liberalize agricultural markets in the mid-1990s and
dollarize its economy in 2000, along with Bolivias attempts to privatize
municipal water systems in 2000 and encourage foreign firms to export
natural gas in 2003.
As Silva explains, these second-generation protest waves were still
primarily defensive in character, as they aimed to protect popular sec-
tors from new crisis-induced economic hardships or market-based dislo-
cations and insecurities.21 The social composition of second-generation
protest movements differed in significant ways, however, from that of
first-generation movements. Although organized labor remained active
in second-generation protests, unions had been dramatically weakened
during the period of economic transition,22 and they no longer provided
political leadership or an organizational fulcrum for broader patterns of
societal resistance. Instead, community-based networks of unemployed
workers took the lead in Argentinas Piquetero (picketers) movement in
the late 1990s and early 2000s, while the urban poor erupted in a spasm
of riots as the economic crisis intensified in 20012002.23 In Ecuador and
Bolivia, indigenous movements gathered strength over the course of the
1990s and joined with other community organizations and, in Bolivia, the
coca growers union in the massive uprisings against pro-market govern-
ments of the early 2000s.24
In these three countries, second-generation protest movements also

differed from their first-generation predecessors in their political impact.
Mass protest movements forced the resignation of the De la Ra govern-
ment in Argentina in 2001 and led directly or indirectly to the toppling
of two presidents in Bolivia (in 2003 and 2005) and three consecutive
elected presidents in Ecuador (1997, 2000, and 2005). In so doing,
they paved the way for the election of new governments in the first
decade of the twenty-first century that were left-leaning and avowedly
anti-neoliberal in their policy orientations. Indeed, the left-Peronist
governments of Nstor Kirchner and Cristina Fernndez de Kirchner
in Argentina, Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) in
Bolivia, and Rafael Correa in Ecuador were generally aligned on the
more radical left flank of the regional left turn, joining Hugo Chvez
of Venezuela, where traditional parties had never recovered from the
first-generation Caracazo in 1989.
In Bolivia and Ecuador, then, as in Venezuela, explosive patterns of
social protest paved the way to mass electoral protest in the postadjust-
ment era. Voters rebelled against established parties and elected populist
outsiders (Chvez and Correa) to the presidency, or the leaders of new
movement parties (Morales) that were forged out of the protest move-
ments themselves.25 In essence, Polanyis double movement of societal
resistance to market liberalization emerged in the streetsin the form of
protests, marches, riots, and highway blockadesand then migrated to
the electoral arena. It first outflanked, then demolished traditional party
systems, brought down pro-market governments, elected left-leaning out-
siders to national executive office, and, ultimately, mobilized plebiscitary
forms of popular sovereignty to circumvent traditional legislative bodies,
convoke constituent assemblies, and refound the constitutional bases of
democratic regimes.
This rapid progression from social protest to electoral protest and insti-
tutional change, and the deeper coupling of anti-neoliberal sentiments
with a crisis of partisan and regime institutions, was hardly uniform in
Latin America. It was, instead, heavily conditioned by partisan political
alignments during the process of market liberalization, which I have else-
where characterized as a critical juncture in the political development of
Latin American societies.26 These conditioning effectsand their implica-
tions for understanding third-generation protests in Chileare outlined
below.
230 K.M. ROBERTS
Critical Junctures, Partisan Alignments, andSocial

Protest
Although anti-neoliberal protests, both first and second generation,
occurred virtually everywhere in Latin America, they were far more explo-
sive and politically transformative in a select group of countries that expe-
rienced de-aligning patterns of market reformthat is, bait-and-switch
reforms adopted by labor-based populist or center-left parties that were
traditional bastions of support for statist and redistributive development
policies. Such bait-and-switch patterns of reform, which occurred in
Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela, de-aligned party systems and
electoral competition programmatically. In these countries, all the major
partiesboth conservative and populist or leftistadopted or supported
structural adjustment policies, and no major left-of-center party remained
to articulate and channel societal resistance to market orthodoxy.27 Partisan
competition, therefore, ceased to be structured and aligned by meaningful
programmatic distinctions between rival party organizations.28
In short, the critical juncture of market liberalization was program-
matically de-aligning for party systems when all the major parties con-
verged on similar structural adjustment policies and ceased to offer
voters meaningful alternatives. Such de-alignment produced a competitive
dynamic of neoliberal convergence that effectively reified the Washington
Consensus in the partisan sphere. Neoliberal convergence, however, was
an unstable equilibrium prone to highly disruptive reactive sequences
in the postadjustment era,29 as it channeled societal resistance into extra-
systemicindeed, often anti-systemicforms of social and electoral pro-
test that outflanked established party systems on the left (with the partial
exception of Argentina). The Polanyian backlash, therefore, was not only
targeted at market society, but at technocratic political institutions that
largely excluded dissident voices and, therefore, shielded market society
temporarily, at leastfrom institutionalized forms of political contesta-
tion. The combination of grievances related to market insecurities and
political exclusion thus proved to be an especially volatile mix.
Conversely, second-generation protests were less widespread and
politically transformative where the critical juncture of market liberaliza-
tion had aligned party systems programmatically along a left-right axis
of competition. Programmatic alignment occurred where conservative or
centrist political actorswhether parties, as in Brazil, Uruguay, and El
Salvador, or military rulers, as in Chiletook the lead in the process of

market reform, and a major party of the left was present to offer consis-
tent opposition. Such alignments produced a competitive dynamic of con-
tested liberalism, with a basic cleavage between supporters and opponents
of neoliberal orthodoxy. In the aforementioned cases, this programmatic
axis of competition was reinforced by a basic left-right regime cleavage
between parties that had supported or opposed military dictatorships in
the 1970s and 1980s.
Reactive sequences in the initial postadjustment era were far less dra-
matic and turbulent in this set of countries. In Chile, Brazil, El Salvador,
and Uruguay, major parties of the left provided institutionalized outlets for
societal dissent, muting social protest (until recently, at least) and channel-
ing opposition to the neoliberal model into relatively stable forms of elec-
toral contestation. Party systems remained intact, with strong centrist or
conservative parties facing rising leftist rivals that moderated their stands
and eventually captured the presidency after 2000 by means of an institu-
tionalized alternation in power. In office, these leftist parties encountered
significant institutional constraints on their reform agendas. They oper-
ated within the rules of established democratic regimes, avoiding plebi-
scitary attempts to refound constitutional orders. Likewise, they avoided
dramatic breaks with macroeconomic orthodoxy but experimented with a
variety of redistributive social policies to address the social deficits of the
neoliberal model.
In these countries, therefore, the Polanyian double movement asso-
ciated with postadjustment, second-generation protests was largely
channeled intoand moderated byinstitutionalized forms of politi-
cal representation, rather than mass, extra-systemic forms of social and
electoral protest. In essence, the institutional legacies of aligning critical
junctures decoupled material grievances from political exclusion. Aligning
and de-aligning critical junctures thus bequeathed party systems and com-
petitive alignments that varied dramatically in their ability to channel and
contain societal resistance to market liberalism in the initial postadjust-
ment period. Although both types of critical junctures were followed by
political shifts to the left, the character of these left turns was strikingly
different in the two modal pathways. As explained below, these different
types of left turns are instrumental for understanding the political logic of
third-generation anti-neoliberal protests in the region.
232 K.M. ROBERTS
Chilean Social Movements: Pioneering theThird

Generation ofAnti-Neoliberal Protests
Second-generation anti-neoliberal protests erupted in postadjustment
settings when pro-market governments sought to extend free market
reforms or manage new financial crises in liberalized banking systems. In
the paradigmatic cases, they helped spawn or strengthen new leftist alter-
natives that were eventually elected into public office where party systems
had been weakened by de-aligning critical junctures. By contrast, Chiles
third-generation protests erupted in a context of advanced liberalization,
some 30 years after initial structural adjustment and 15 years after the
onset of center-left democratic efforts to wed market efficiency with more
inclusive and mildly redistributive social policies. Indeed, Chiles protest
cycle erupted after a moderate left turn in the governing coalition, in
the aftermath period of an aligning critical juncture that entailed wide-
spread sociopolitical demobilization.
Rather than defensive reactions to economic crises and government
attempts to impose or extend liberalization policies, Chiles third-
generation protests have a more offensive character: they advocate a
strengthening or expansion of public services and forms of social citizen-
ship that go well beyond those established by moderate center-left govern-
ments operating within the constraints of macroeconomic orthodoxy (see
Table 8.1 below). In Chile and, more ambiguously, Brazil in 2013, third-
generation protests have articulated grievances related to the public pro-
visioning of basic services like education, health care, and transportation.
Grievances based on the narrow reach, limited access, or deficient quality
of these services are clearly expressed by middle-class sectors as well as the
working and lower classes; when combined with increasing mobilization
around labor rights claims as in Chile,30 the social composition of third-
generation protests can become unusually broad. The Brazilian protest
movement in 2013, for example, articulated diverse claims for expanded
public services, as well as a plethora of other grievances expressed by both
conservative and radical left critics of the incumbent leftist Workers Party
(PT). As a deepening corruption scandal and an economic slowdown
eroded support for the PT, however, the protest movement shifted in
a more conservative direction over time, making it increasingly difficult
to locate within an anti-neoliberal comparative framework. The Chilean
protest movements, by contrast, clearly outflanked the established party
system on the left, and made the neoliberal model itself a focal point of
political contestation.
Table 8.1 Three generations of anti-neoliberal protest in Latin America

Protest Political timing Major actors Nature of claims Paradigmatic
generation cases
First Initial adoption Labor unions, Defense of jobs, National strikes in

of austerity and urban poor wages, price Argentina, late
structural controls, and 1980s; Caracazo
adjustment subsidies urban riots in
policies in times Venezuela, 1989
of crises
Second Postadjustment Unemployed Defense of jobs, Argentinas
responses to workers, urban consumption, piquetero movement
financial crises in poor, community and food riots, late
liberalized indigenous control of land 1990s2002;
economies or movements and water indigenous
efforts to deepen resources movements in
neoliberal Ecuador and
reforms Bolivia, water and
gas wars in Bolivia
early 2000s
Third Advanced Students, More offensive Chilean student,
liberalization environmental claims for public environmental, and
organizations, services and labor movements
working and social citizenship since 2011
middle-class rights (public
groups education,
health care,
labor rights,
environmental
protection, etc.)
The Chilean case is especially instructive for analyzing the politics

of third-generation protests, as the country has long been considered
Latin Americas neoliberal showcase. The Pinochet military dictatorship
(19731990) launched Latin Americas, and the worlds, first great experi-
ment in post-Keynesian neoliberal structural adjustment, and it imposed the
regions most comprehensive, ideologically doctrinaire, and economically
successful case of market liberalization. Although every country in Latin
America outside of Cuba adopted macroeconomic stabilization and struc-
tural adjustment policies in response to the debt and inflationary crises of
the 1980s, Chile advanced the furthest in consolidating what are arguably
the four central social pillars of the neoliberal model: the liberalization of
234 K.M. ROBERTS
labor markets and the large-scale privatization of delivery systems for social
security, health care, and education. These social pillars were constructed
under the Pinochet regime starting in the late 1970s, and they remained
largely intact under the center-left governments of the Concertacin alli-
ance following Chiles transition to democracy in 1990. As the focal point of
most social mobilization in Chile, the advanced liberalization of these social
pillars helps to explain why the country is on the leading edge of the third
generation of anti-neoliberal protest in the region.
Although market reforms also began under the auspices of military dic-
tatorships in Argentina and Uruguay in the mid-1970s, neither country
consolidated the neoliberal model under military rule, leaving structural
adjustment on the agenda of new democratic regimes and their party sys-
tems as economic crises deepened in the 1980s. Alone in the region, then,
the Chilean party system was shielded from responsibility for managing the
politics of economic crisis and structural adjustment in the 1980s. Indeed,
the early timing and authoritarian imposition of structural adjustment
in Chile altered the dynamics of anti-neoliberal protest in the country.31
Fierce military repression in the aftermath of the 1973 coup largely fore-
closed any opportunity for organized resistance to the initial adoption of
structural adjustment policies, which took a sharp neoliberal turn in 1975.
Simply put, first-generation anti-neoliberal protests in Chile were heavily
suppressed by military rule; one must look elsewhere in Latin America to
identify the characteristics of this initial pattern of anti-neoliberal protest
in the region.
Paradoxically, having largely missed out on the first-generation anti-
neoliberal protests, Chile experienced second-generation protests far
before the rest of the region, as Chile alone had largely completed the
process of structural adjustment by the time of the 1980s debt crisis that
forced the rest of Latin America to liberalize. Second-generation protests
erupted when Chiles liberalized economy, following a spurt of rapid
growth in the late 1970s, was rocked by a financial crisis and severe reces-
sion during the early stages of the debt crisis.32 A call by the copper work-
ers federation for a day of protest triggered a massive three-year uprising
against the dictatorship from 1983 to 1986, reversing a decade of highly
coerced societal quiescence. Although labor unions, womens groups, and
human rights organizations played an active role in this protest cycle, the
uprising increasingly relied on shantytown youth as its principal protago-
nists as the level of political violence rose.33 This protest cycle combined
staunch criticism of the neoliberal model with opposition to the military
dictatorship and its efforts to institutionalize permanent forms of authori-

tarian rulean extreme form of the combustible mixture of material griev-
ances with political exclusion that was the hallmark of second-generation
anti-neoliberal protest in Latin America. Although the protest cycle failed
to drive Pinochet from power, it played an instrumental role in inducing
the dictatorship to implement a carefully scripted plan for the reintroduc-
tion of limited forms of democratic contestation. When Pinochet lost a
1988 plebiscite to extend his rule, competitive elections and a transition
to democracy followed in 19891990, albeit under the tutelage of military
rulers and their highly restrictive 1980 constitution.
Chiles second-generation protest movement tapered off as the econ-
omy began to recover in the late 1980s (moderating material grievances)
and electoral channels were opened to contest authoritarian rule (reducing
political exclusion). With the re-legalization of political parties in advance
of the plebiscite campaign, opposition leaders in the Concertacin sought
to calm the fears of conservative sectors and redirect popular mobilization
from protest activities toward partisan and electoral forms of participa-
tion.34 The opposition negotiated a package of constitutional reforms with
the military regime, but agreed to operate within a set of legislative and
electoral rules that overrepresented conservative forces and placed serious
institutional constraints on social and economic policy reforms. Although
the Concertacin won a solid majority of votes to capture the presidency
in 1989the first of four consecutive presidential victories that allowed
the center-left coalition to govern the country for 20 yearsconserva-
tive forces wielded a de facto legislative veto against major changes in the
neoliberal model. Policy and institutional reforms, therefore, had to be
negotiated with conservative parties that vigorously defended Pinochets
legacy. Wary of a return to the polarizing conflicts of the past, the
Concertacin prioritized elite political bargaining and technocratic poli-
cymaking, downplaying popular mobilization strategies that might have
increased leverage for deeper reforms.35
Levels of social mobilization and protest thus remained quite modest
in Chiles democracy of agreements after the Concertacin took office
in 1990. Steady economic growth and the ability of the Concertacin
to distribute some of its fruits to working and lower classes undoubt-
edly contributed to this relative quiescence. Having inherited a boom-
ing economyalbeit one with very high levels of social exclusionthe
Christian Democratic (PDC) and Socialist (PSCh) parties that anchored
the Concertacin softened their criticisms of Pinochets neoliberal model
236 K.M. ROBERTS
and steered a pragmatic course to induce business cooperation with the

regime transition. The Concertacin continued relatively orthodox fiscal,
monetary, and trade policies, but also took steps to address the social defi-
cits of the neoliberal model, including a gradual increase in the minimum
wage and a modest tax hike to pay for increased spending on targeted
poverty relief programs.36
This pragmatic course helped soften the ideological polarization
between the right and left that had marked the Allende and Pinochet
years, but it did not erase the sociopolitical cleavages and programmatic
distinctions that structured and stabilized partisan competition. Indeed,
the regime cleavage between authoritarians and democrats in the 1980s
helped to structure left-right partisan competition under the new dem-
ocratic regime, even as programmatic distinctions narrowed in the eco-
nomic domain. As such, Chiles new democratic regime retained a basic
alignment of contested liberalism, rather than the unstable neoliberal
convergence that existed in countries where market reforms had been
imposed in a bait-and-switch manner by traditional populist or center-
left parties. As the pro-Pinochet and staunchly neoliberal UDI (Unin
Demcrata Independiente) consolidated a leadership position on the
right side of the political spectrum, critics of market society continued to
have institutionalized channels of representation within the Concertacin.
Comparative studies of party systems thus identified Chile, along with
Uruguay, as the countries with the most programmatically structured
party systems in Latin America.37 A survey of national legislators in 1999
demonstrated the relatively wide range of ideological positions covered by
major parties in the national Congress: Socialist party leaders placed their
party on the left side at 2.8 on a ten-point scale, whereas those from the
UDI located their party well to the right at 7.5 and those from the PDC
positioned their party near the midpoint at 4.7.38 A similar spread was
found among voters, with supporters of the Socialist Party self-locating
slightly above 3.0 on the ideological scale and those voting for the UDI
self-locating above 8.5.39
Translating these ideological differences into meaningful program-
matic alternatives proved challenging, however, given the formidable
institutional barriers to major policy reforms and the structural leverage of
an empowered business community. When moderate Socialists displaced
centrist Christian Democrats at the head of the Concertacin, starting in
2000, they tried to whittle away at the aforementioned social pillars of
the neoliberal model, while leaving its macroeconomic orthodoxy largely
intact. In particular, the Socialists and their allied offshoot, the Party for
Democracy (PPD), began a tentative shift from neoliberalisms residual
welfare state, with its emphasis on highly targeted poverty relief programs,
toward more universal (or social democratic) forms of social citizenship
rights. Reforms adopted by the Socialist/PPD President Ricardo Lagos
moved Chile toward universal coverage of basic health-care needs, while
the first government of Michelle Bachelet established a public pension sys-
tem to provide social security for individuals who were not effectively cov-
ered by the employment-based private pension system.40 Although these
social policy reforms patched up some of the holes in Chiles porous social
safety net, they were very partial first steps in a social democratic direc-
tion, and they still left behind gaping inequalities and widespread reliance
on private market-based responses to basic social needs, especially in the
educational sphere. For many citizens in the working and middle classes,
this reliance created forms of insecurity and indebtedness that called into
question the social mobility promised by the neoliberal growth model.
Social policy reforms under the Concertacin were implemented in a
highly technocratic manner, and they were neither triggered nor accom-
panied by widespread social mobilization and pressure from below. As
Somma and Medel report in their chapter, protest activity began to pick
up during the second decade of Concertacin rule, but social mobilization
remained relatively modest in comparative terms. As late as 2010, only
4.7 percent of Chileans reported having participated in a protest event
in the previous year, the second lowest percentage in Latin America. The
social demobilization that began during the early stages of Chiles regime
transition thus became an enduring feature of the new democratic order.
Like other Latin American countries that experienced aligning critical
junctures, Chilean politics at the turn of the century was characterized by
relatively stable forms of partisan and electoral politics and modest levels
of social mobilization. The social explosions and party system turmoil
that rocked neighboring countries with de-aligning critical junctures like
Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela seemed far removed from the
Chilean experience.
Nevertheless, the relative stability of partisan and electoral politics at the
national level masked considerable evidence that parties roots in society
were withering.41 The detachment of citizens from parties and formal rep-
resentative institutions could be seen in declining levels of partisan identi-
fication and low levels of participation in election campaigns, both ranking
on the lowest rungs among Latin American countries. Paradoxically, in
238 K.M. ROBERTS
the 2010 region-wide surveys of the Latin American Public Opinion

Project, Chile ranked last in the region in the percentage of party sympa-
thizers11.6 percentdespite ranking first in the percentage of respon-
dents (73.1 percent) who approved of their governments management
of the global economic crisis.42 Only 28.6 percent of Chileans expressed
an interest in politics, the lowest percentage in Latin America, and four
percent said they had attended a meeting of their municipal government
or council, the second lowest percentage in the region.43 Voter registra-
tion and turnout also suffered steep declines, with the percentage of the
voting age population turning out to vote plunging from 86 percent in
1989 to 59.6 percent in 2009.44 The decline in electoral participation was
especially steep among young people, indicative of a growing alienation
of youth from a political establishment forged in the battles of the 1970s
and 1980s.
This social landscape of demobilization and disengagement began to
change after Bachelet took office in 2006. Crucially, however, much of the
political reactivation was channeled outside the party system and formal
representative institutions, as Chileans who were critical of deficiencies
and inequalities in the provision of public services increasingly questioned
the capacity of the Concertacins social technocracy45 to deliver struc-
tural reforms. The second Socialist president was quickly greeted with
an unexpected cycle of protests against inefficiencies in Santiagos public
transport sector, followed by widespread protests of high school students
against inequalities in the educational system. Although Bachelet tempo-
rarily quieted the students Pingino rebellion by forming a commission
to study educational reforms,46 student leaders were far from satisfied
with the tepid outcome of the reform process. The movement erupted
in full force under Bachelets conservative successor Sebastian Piera in
2011, when both high school and university students took to the streets
in unprecedented numbers under Chiles new democratic regime.
From the beginning, the student movement was a frontal assault on a
social pillar of the neoliberal modela highly privatized, decentralized,
and commodified education systemthat the four governments of the
Concertacin had left largely intact. Indeed, the movement was an unusu-
ally pure and transparent form of Polanyian resistance to market society
and its attendant inequalities and insecurities. Although reforms under
the Concertacin had increased funding for schools, expanded student
enrollments at the secondary and postsecondary levels, and provided
new forms of scholarship support, educational institutions continued to
reflect and reproduce class inequalities in Chilean society. High school

and university students protested against the low quality of municipally
based public schools, public subsidies and vouchers for private schools,
the proliferation of for-profit, fee-based private schools, and the debt bur-
dens assumed by students who pursued higher-quality private educational
alternatives. Tuition fees and rigorous academic admissions requirements
erected formidable barriers of entry to leading educational institutions for
students from public-school backgrounds and lower- or middle-income
families. To overcome highly stratified and class-segregated patterns of
educational opportunities, student organizations demanded nothing less
than free universal public education at all levels of instruction. Often with
the backing of their teachers, students held mass rallies and marches, and
their occupations of schools and universities forced the closure of many
institutions.47
Students were often joined in protests by labor unions, which chal-
lenged another social pillar of the neoliberal modela highly liberalized
labor market that the Concertacin had tried but largely failed to reform
due to conservative opposition in Congress. At the same time, as Schaeffer
points out in her chapter in this volume, a major cycle of environmental
protest against large dam projects in the Patagonian region erupted in
2011 as well. Widespread discontent with the status quo was also evident
in public opinion surveys, which found over 70 percent of Chilean citi-
zens expressing support for the student movements claims. Indeed, the
percentage of survey respondents who supported participation in protest
activities swelled from 36 percent in 2008 to 57 percent in 2012.48
On multiple fronts, then, Chiles technocratic democracy of agree-
ments was showing signs of political decay by the early 2010s, allowing
social movements to outflank the mainstream party system on the left. In
particular, the student movements social policy demands aimed at a thor-
ough transformation of the education system, going far beyond anything
ever proposed by the parties of the Concertacin. Similarly, the movements
political leadership moved in a more autonomous and leftward direction
over time, from students belonging to the parties of the Concertacin to
the Communist Party and, increasingly, independent or radical left-student
networks that were outside the traditional party system altogether.49 In
the short term, at least, this third-generation social and political mobiliza-
tion on the left flank did not translate into an electoral backlash against
the party establishment, as second-generation protests and populist mobi-
lizations eventually did in countries that experienced de-aligning patterns
240 K.M. ROBERTS
of market reform like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador. Although Socialist

deputy Marco Enrquez Ominami broke with the Concertacin to run a
dissident leftist presidential campaign in 2009, winning over 20 percent of
the first-round vote, the student movement that exploded shortly thereaf-
ter did not strengthen extra-systemic alternatives in the next election cycle.
Instead, it pulled the Socialist/PPD bloc further to the left programmati-
cally, with Bachelet returning to the campaign trail in 2013 on a platform
that supported institutional reforms of the disproportional electoral system
and a hefty tax hike to fund education programs and strengthen the pub-
lic education system. Indeed, the Bachelet campaign embraced the student
movements critique of the for-profit education system and adopted much
though not allof its reform agenda. It also induced the Concertacin
to reinvent itself as a more open and inclusive alliancerenamed Nueva
Mayora (New Majority)that incorporated the previously excluded
Communist Party and allowed a number of prominent student leaders to be
elected to Congress. Among them was Camilla Vallejo, a Communist Party
youth leader and the President of the Student Federation of the University
of Chile (FECh) during the period of peak protests in 2011, who was
named president of the Education Commission in the national Chamber
of Deputies.
In some respects, the construction of a broader center-left coalition that
incorporated the Communist Party and elected Bachelet behind a more
ambitious reformist platformstaunchly opposed by the partisan Right
and the business communityhelped to reinvigorate the basic left-right
axis of programmatic competition in Chilean democracy. Policy debates
around tax, education, and labor market reforms following Bachelets
2013 election placed issues on the political agenda that were largely absent
for more than 20 years of democratic rule, and Bachelet pushed through
a basic reform of the electoral system that replaced the binomial scheme
inherited from the dictatorship with a more proportional formula. It is far
from clear, however, whether traditional parties will continue to structure
this programmatic space and control the electoral marketplace, as they
have shown little capacity to channel the societal dissent manifested in
recent protest cycles. The parties of the old Concertacin have a marginal
presence in the student movement, and even the Communist Party lost
its leadership role in student federations as it strengthened its position in
formal institutions and joined the governing coalition. Outflanking on the
left thus continues, with new and more independent radical left currents
asserting a leadership role in student federations that challenge the legiti-

macy of established representative institutions.
Neither is it clear, however, whether these radical left currents will con-
geal into a major electoral force and thus translate societal dissent into the
forms of electoral protest that have eclipsed and reconfigured party systems
elsewhere in Latin America. With the political establishment, both left and
right, rocked by a series of campaign finance-related corruption scandals
in 2015, societal dissent assumed an increasingly antiestablishment ori-
entation that goes well beyond an anti-neoliberal outflanking on the left.
In that context, President Bachelet opened the door to a national debate
on a potential constituent assembly process to draft a new constitution,
in replacement of the one inherited from Pinochet. On all fronts, then,
Chilean politics manifests a level of institutional fluidity and uncertainty
not seen in the country since the final years of the military dictatorship.
To conclude, when placed in a region-wide comparative perspective,
the partisan configuration of the left-right cleavage that structures Chilean
politics has been remarkably stable since the late 1980s, a full political gen-
eration. Although the authoritarian/democratic regime dimension of that
cleavage has long since ceased to be a central axis of partisan competition,
the cleavage itself has been reinforced by political contention over the
dismantling of Pinochets institutional legacies, and by protest movements
that have politicized the social pillars of the neoliberal model and claimed
new social citizenship rights. That politicization, however, has largely out-
flanked the confines of the party system that dominated the post-1990
democratic regime, and it shows signs of becoming superimposed on an
establishment/antiestablishment political cleavage that pits the traditional
party systemleft, center, and rightagainst emerging but as yet organi-
zationally inchoate popular movements. Traditional parties, in short, no
longer provide effective political representation to the u
nderlying left-right
cleavage in Chilean societybut they have yet to give way to new parties
that do, and nothing guarantees that they will. Political institutions, after
all, have an inertial logic; they may become detached and uprooted from
society, but they are unlikely to be eclipsed until new ones are forged with
deeper and more inclusive societal roots. As Antonio Gramsci put it in his
Prison Notebooks, reflecting on an earlier period of political stalemate and
institutional decay, The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is
dying and the new cannot be born; in the interregnum a great variety of
morbid symptoms appears.50
242 K.M. ROBERTS
Notes
1. Polanyi, The Great Transformation; Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in
Latin America.
2. UNDP, Desarrollo Humano en Chile: Los Tiempos de la Politizacin.
3. Silva, Technocrats and Politics in Chile: From the Chicago Boys to the
CIEPLAN Monks and Doing Politics in a Depoliticised Society: Social
Change and Political Deactivation in Chile; Roberts, Deepening
Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and Peru.
4. McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention.
5. Polanyi, The Great Transformation.
6. McAdam, McCarthy and Zald, Comparative Perspectives on Social
Movements: Political Opportunities, Mobilizing Structures, and Cultural
Framings.
7. Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America; Almeida, Mobilizing
Democracy: Globalization and Citizen Protest, 1316; Spalding, Contesting
Trade in Central America: Market Reform and Resistance; Simmons,
Meaningful Resistance: Market Reforms and the Roots of Social Protest in
Latin America.
8. Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America, 1718; Roberts,
Deepening Democracy? The Modern Left and Social Movements in Chile and
Peru, 5961; Spalding, Contesting Trade in Central America: Market
Reform and Resistance.
9. Polanyi, The Great Transformation, 7980, 138139.
11. Walton and Seddon, Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global
Adjustment; Oxhorn, Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors and the
Struggle for Democracy in Chile; Murillo, Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions
and Market Reforms in Latin America; Williams, Social Movements and
Economic Transition: Markets and Distributive Conflict in Mexico; Lpez
Maya, Del Viernes Negro al Referendo Revocatorio.
12. Collier and Collier, Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the
Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America.
14. Murillo, Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions and Market Reforms in Latin
America, 2.
15. Walton and Seddon, Free Markets and Food Riots: The Politics of Global
Adjustment.
16. Filgueira and Papadpulos, Putting Conservatism to Good Use? Long
Crisis and Vetoed Alternatives in Uruguay.
17. Lpez Maya, Del Viernes Negro al Referendo Revocatorio.
18. Williamson, What Washington Means by Policy Reform.
9. Geddes, The Politics of Economic Liberalization.

1
20. Morley, Machado and Pettinato, Index of Structural Reform in Latin
America.
22. Roberts, Social Inequalities Without Class Cleavages in Latin Americas
Neoliberal Era.
23. Auyero, Routine Politics and Violence in Argentina: The Gray Zone of State
Power.
24. Yashar, Contesting Citizenship in Latin America: The Rise of Indigenous
Movements and the Postliberal Challenge.
25. In Argentina, voters rebelled against the non-Peronist parties that gov-
erned during the economic crisis of the early 2000s, but gave their support
to a left-leaning current within Peronism rather than alternatives from out-
side the traditional party system.
26. As defined by Collier and Collier (Shaping the Political Arena: Critical
Junctures, the Labor Movement, and Regime Dynamics in Latin America,
29), a critical juncture is a period of significant change, which typically
occurs in distinct ways in different countries (or in other units of analysis)
and which is hypothesized to produce distinct legacies. For an analysis of
Latin Americas transition to neoliberalism as a critical juncture in political
development with varying cross-national party system effects, see Roberts,
Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the Neoliberal Era.
27. Argentina was a partial exception, as the populist Peronist partyafter
leading the process of market liberalization in the 1990sveered back
toward the left to channel societal opposition in the aftermath of the
20012002 economic debacle and the social explosion that followed in its
wake.
28. See Roberts, Changing Course in Latin America: Party Systems in the
Neoliberal Era, for an elaboration of this argument.
29. On reactive sequences, see Mahoney, The Legacies of Liberalism: Path

Dependence and Political Regimes in Central America, 1011.
30. Durn-Palma and Lpez, Contract Labour Mobilisation in Chiles

Copper Mining and Forestry Sectors.
31. As this section suggests, the three generations of anti-neoliberal protest are
identifiable on a regional scale, but they did not necessarily appear in every
country, much less coincide in their timing across countries. Since coun-
tries went through structural adjustment at different periods of time under
different political auspices, the timing, sequencing, and content of protest
cycles varied considerably across cases. Generations of protest are thus
defined by their timing vs-a-vs the stages of the market liberalization pro-
cess in any given country, rather than the calendar year or decade in which
particular cycles of protest happen to occur. Chile, to give one example,
244 K.M. ROBERTS
missed the first generation of anti-neoliberal protest due to authoritarian

repression; experienced the second generation far before the rest of the
region, due to its early process of structural adjustment; and once again is
on the cutting edge of the third generation of protest, due to the advanced
character and social reach of market liberalization in the country.
32. See Silva, The State and Capital in Chile: Business Elites, Technocrats, and
Market Economics.
33. This protest cycle and its social bases are analyzed in Garretn, Popular
Mobilization and the Military Regime in Chile: The Complexities of the
Invisible Transition; Oxhorn, Organizing Civil Society: The Popular
Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile; and Schneider, Shantytown
Protest in Pinochets Chile.
34. See Oxhorn, Organizing Civil Society: The Popular Sectors and the Struggle
for Democracy in Chile. Outflanking the Concertacin on the left side of
the political spectrum, the Communist Party (PCCh) bitterly opposed this
strategic shift away from social protest and continued to support insurrec-
tionary forms of popular rebellion against the dictatorship. The PCCh
was increasingly isolated in this stance, however; unable to sustain high
levels of protest mobilization as more institutionalized channels of repre-
sentation began to open, the PCCh reluctantly supported the plebiscite
campaign against Pinochet in 1988, but remained outside the Concertacin.
35. Delamaza, La Disputa por la Participacin en la Democracia Chilena.
36. See Weyland, Growth with Equity in Chiles New Democracy.
37. See Kitschelt etal., Latin American Party Systems.
38. Picaxo Verdejo, Chile.
39. Luna, Zechmeister, and Seligson, Cultura Poltica de la Democracia en
Chile, 2010: Consolidacin Democrtica en las Americas en Tiempos
Difciles, 202.
40. Pribble, Welfare and Party Politics in Latin America.
41. See Luna and Altman, Uprooted but Stable: Chilean Parties and the
Concept of Party System Institutionalization.
42. Luna, Zechmeister, and Seligson, Cultura Poltica de la Democracia en
Chile, 2010: Consolidacin Democrtica en las Americas en Tiempos
Difciles, 44, 170.
43. Ibid., 135, 143.
44. UNDP, Auditora a la Democracia: Ms y Mejor Democracia para un Chile
Inclusivo, 34.
45. I am indebted to Manuel Antonio Garretn for the term.
46. Donoso, Dynamics of change in Chile: Explaining the emergence of the
2006 Pingino movement.
47. Bellei and Cabalin, Chilean Student Movements: Sustained Struggle to
Transform a Market-oriented Educational System; Espinoza and Gonzlez,
Accreditation in Higher Education in Chile: results and consequences.
48. UNDP, Auditora a la Democracia: Ms y Mejor Democracia para un Chile

Inclusivo, 34.
49. Bidegain, Autonomizacin de los Movimientos Sociales e Intensificacin
de la Protesta: Estudiantes y Mapuches en Chile (19902013).
50. Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio Gramsci, 276.
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CHAPTER 9
Post-Transition Social Movements inChile

inComparative Perspective
EduardoSilva
Introduction
The protest movements that rocked Chile in 20112012 were unex-
pected and, thus, took the nation by surprise. They raised uncomfort-
able questions for Chiles political and socioeconomic elites who believed
in a national consensus on the bounties of the nations market democ-
racy. Given stable institutional channeling of social tension since the end
of military rule, were widespread protests indicators of a political crisis
that threatened the Chilean model? More alarmist versions of the ques-
tion read: Was Chile on a road to chaos like that which had engulfed the
Andean region and Argentina a decade earlier, a road that led to the estab-
lishment of irresponsible radical left populist governments?
I presented an earlier version of this chapter entitled Polanyi in Chile? Counter-

Movements, Lags, and Other Questions, at a most enjoyable graduate student-
sponsored conference on Chiles Winter of Discontent, at Cambridge University,
May 11, 2012; my thanks to all of the participants for their insightful commentary. I
also thank Marisa von Blow and Sofa Donoso for their careful and insightful editorial
guidance and Mart Trasberg, Tulane University, for his able research assistantship.
E. Silva (*)
Department of Political Science, Tulane University,
New Orleans, LA 70118-5698, USA

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_9
250 E. SILVA
These concerns had two foundations. One was a negative interpreta-

tion of the role of social movement protest in democratic politics. The
leadership of Chiles democratic opposition to the dictatorship had taken
to heart ODonnell and Schmitters strictures on negotiated transitions
to democracy.1 Large protests might play a positive role early on in the
process as a demonstration of massive citizen rejection of authoritarian-
ism. However, once negotiations were underway it was incumbent on the
leadership of political parties to demobilize citizens. This action, among
other negotiating tactics, signaled that the democratic opposition would
respect the core interests of authoritarian forces after democratization. Of
course, once democracy was reestablished, the conditions of the pact had
to be maintained in the interest of democratic stability.2
A second reason for concern was that leftist mobilization was simply not
supposed to be happening in the context of a consolidated market economy.
The labor movement, which had been the spearhead and coordinator of
mass mobilization, was decimated. Hence, demobilization was the expected
norm.3 Movements based on identity and subjectivity, such as gender, the
environment, and consumer protection, might protest, but it was expected
that they would remain single-issue based, largely work through institutional
channels, and not coordinate.4 The consternation in Chile then was not only
out of concern for democratic stability, but that the snowballing of decid-
edly material antimarket mass protest by disparate social movement organiza-
tions, with some solidarity among them, was not supposed to be occurring.
How, then, does one explain more concerted, material, anti-neoliberal
mobilization? This is where Karl Polanyis theory of the double movement
of capitalist society is useful for understanding anti-neoliberal protest in
contemporary Latin America.5 He posited the existence of a fundamen-
tal tension between marketization and movements for protection from
marketization, to control it. Since he was an economic anthropologist as
well a political economist, Polanyi also argued that material concerns and
disquiets over meanings, identity, and culture were intertwined. Hence,
social actors with very diverse reasons for mobilizing to control markets
might act in concert or, if separately, at least toward similar ends.
Drawing from these insights, in other works I developed an explanation
for concerted anti-neoliberal mass mobilization by disparate social move-
ment organizations that contributed to the political resurgence of the left
in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.6 In this research, I also pro-
vided a framework from which to analyze the extent to which Chiles post-
transition social movement protest in the 2010s was comparable to the
POST-TRANSITION SOCIAL MOVEMENTS INCHILE INCOMPARATIVE... 251
cycles of anti-neoliberal contestation that shook the Andes and Argentina

in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The development of the argument proceeds as follows. I begin with an
exposition of the central tenants of Polanyis theory of the double movement
of capitalist society as it applies to understanding anti-neoliberal mobilization
in the region.7 I then assess the extent to which the various Chilean protests
of 20112013 were Polanyian in the sense that they were in some funda-
mental aspect seeking to counter the effects of a neoliberal economic, social,
and political model, as occurred in other Latin American cases. From there,
I examine whether the Chilean protests can be considered politically decisive
(or destabilizing) countermovements like they were in the emblematic cases
of Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. I then ask, to the extent that
there was a family resemblance between Chile and the emblematic cases of the
Andes and Argentina, what explains the lag in antimarket mobilization from
1990 to 2010? I argue that the lag is explained by post-transition social move-
ments need to reconstruct collective action and a perception of increased
threat under Sebastin Pieras conservative government. I conclude with an
argument that the Chilean Winter of Discontent and subsequent protests may
be considered a normal form of political participation in a democratic polity.
Polanyian Countermovements toContemporary

Market Society
From the 1980s to the 2000s, it seemed that market-oriented structural
adjustment and liberal democratic regimes that supported it were hegemonic
in Latin America. The left was for the most part politically insignificant for
a variety of reasons.8 In the West, global economic liberalism was on the
ascendant. This weakened sociopolitical forces that relied on state power to
control markets. Monetary stability was the prime directive, not redistribu-
tive and industrial policy. The fall of the Soviet Union sealed the ideological
triumph of the new liberalism globally. After much soul searching, a modera-
tion of the electoral left followed. In its market-friendliness, from the per-
spective of the old left, there was little to distinguish it from market boosters.
The mantra of the times was there is no alternative. Or was there? The
subsequent resurgence of the left in Latin America contributed to the elec-
tion of governments committed to reforming neoliberal political econo-
mies.9 These events raised frequent invocations to the development of a
Polanyian countermovement to the imposition of contemporary versions
of market society.
252 E. SILVA
The resurgence of the left often involved cycles of mass mobilization.

Mass protests were a symptom of party system volatility. As Roberts
chapter notes, in countries whose party systems included parties that
consistently and programmatically opposed neoliberalism the force of pro-
tests was channeled institutionally, political systems re-equilibrated, and
reforms to neoliberal political economies were modest. In countries where
principled, programmatic opposition to neoliberal adjustment was absent,
cycles of protest were more likely to contribute to political destabilization,
party system collapse, and the rise of new, more militantly anti-neoliberal
political movements and parties that, in some cases, gained office and
began restructuring their political economies.10
In Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America, I was interested in explain-
ing recurrent, expanding cycles of anti-neoliberal protest in cases that were
the leading edge of what Roberts in this volume has called second-generation
anti-neoliberal protests: Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Venezuela.11 As
part of that explanation, I adapted and applied the logic of Polanyis argu-
ment from The Great Transformation.12 I argued that sustained programs of
radical neoliberal economic, social, and political adjustment and reforms in
those countries amounted to the construction of a contemporary form of
Polanyis concept of market society, which he defined as the subordination of
social and political organization to the logic of automatic, self-adjusting mar-
ket economy. Proponents believed that opposition would be futile because
all major, established political parties supported stringent economic stabiliza-
tion and neoliberal structural adjustment programs.
Market society, Polanyi noted, was also a utopia. It could not be real-
ized because it contained the seeds of its own destruction. It sought the
commoditization of the three major sources of social organization: land,
labor, and capital. The problem was that for most people these are much
more than factors or production to be bought and sold in markets over
which individuals have no control. Labor, land, and capital embody social
relations and, therefore, Polanyi argued, they were fictitious commodities.
People need a certain amount of stability and reciprocity in social r elations
to live dignified, meaningful lives. This involves taking part in lifes rituals
and having the opportunity to pursue life chances in the context of just rela-
tions among status groups. The market, however, is too turbulent, unstable,
unjust, and hardship inducing. Unfettered, it destroys society. Therefore,
people seek to restrict the market and protect themselves from it. Because
the experience of the market generates challenges to it, commodification is
a powerful site of resistance to free-market capitalism as people mobilize to
secure social protection, civil rights, and inclusive citizenship.13
Commodification andAnti-Neoliberal Mobilization

An approach to resistance to free-market capitalism focused on commodifica-
tion has significant implications for three aspects of mobilization against neo-
liberalism from the 1990s forward. First, it leaves open the possibility that
after the decline of organized labor different classes, class fractions, ethnic
groups, and culturally or otherwise defined social groups may come to the
fore.14 Second, the locus of organization for movements also opens up from
the workplace to an increased salience of locality, community, or territory.15
Third, the emphasis on the exchange of commodities (goods and ser-
vices) for a price has consequences for the effectiveness of different types
of direct action. The de-industrialization it caused, alongside the decline
and fragmentation of the labor movement, more often than not, robbed
the strike of its erstwhile economic and political effectiveness. However,
historically older forms of contention that disrupted commerce, govern-
ment functions, public order, and the daily routines of life came to the
fore. Those were ways to hurt the vital interests of economic, social, and
political supporters of neoliberalism. Thus, we see an increase in trans-
gressive direct action like the roadblock, the town uprising, and even the
siege.16 These co-mingled with the mass demonstration ending in rallies
in front of important government buildings and that sometimes culminate
in attacks on them. The effectiveness of the mass demonstration to force
negotiation with authorities increased when accompanied by strikes from
transportation workers and public employee unions. They too disrupted
commerce and the business of government.
Neoliberal reforms in Ecuador, Bolivia, Argentina, and Venezuela
sought to construct a new order similar to Polanyis concept of market
society in that they attempted to subordinate politics and social policy to
the self-regulating market economy.17 Since those reforms were economic,
social, and political, grievances and demands rooted in all three by highly
heterogeneous social movements could be considered anti- neoliberal.
Thus, a great variety of popular sector, poor ethnic, and middle-class
groups mobilized to defend against a wide range of threats emanating
from neoliberal reforms.
These heterogeneous social sectors were organized by neighborhood,
borough, town, or village and more broad territorial geographical areas
in the countryside. They mobilized alongside unions and state workers.
Identity-based social organizations, especially indigenous peoples, and
new issue-based organizations also mobilized, such as environmentalists.18
254 E. SILVA
Demands for de-commodification stand at the heart of Polanyian resis-

tance to free-market economics. Indeed, in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador,
and Venezuela intensified commodification drove demands for de-
commodification by popular sectors, peasants, indigenous peoples, and
some middle-class groups.19 Their expressed lists of demands are unequiv-
ocal. They wanted development policies that involved socialization and
planning. For example, they clamored for state intervention to support
full employment, wage policy, and restoration of public social insurance,
health, and education. They persistently demanded a larger role for the
state in the economy, focused on re-nationalization of strategic economic
sectors and industrial policy. The absence of institutional channels for
opposition also fueled demands for participatory democracy.
The remainder of this section briefly fleshes out these four emblem-
atic cases of Polanyian anti-neoliberal mobilization. It then compares the
later Chilean experience to them. It argues that the Chilean protests were
indeed demands for de-commodification, for protection from markets,
not just a call for markets to work better.
Emblematic Examples: Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador,

andVenezuela
The leading edge of anti-neoliberal protest in Argentina was the unem-
ployed workers movement in conjunction with a new labor union con-
federation that embraced them. These were the piqueteros (picketers) and
the Central Argentina de Trabajadores (CTA).20 The piqueteros emerged
in reaction to unheard levels of unemployment following privatiza-
tion of public enterprises and labor code reforms, among other factors.
They demanded protection from markets by way of increased relief (food
baskets, emergency employment, and small cash transfers) and more for-
mal expansion of social welfare. The CTA added wage, employment, and a
larger role for the state in the economy and society in general. The piquet-
eros organized by neighborhood mainly in boroughs with large numbers
of unemployed or permanently precariously employed persons. They rec-
ognized the root of their problem to be market-oriented commoditizing
policies of the state. The roadblock to disrupt commerce and daily rou-
tines were their preferred form of protest.
In Ecuador and Bolivia, large, organized, and powerful indigenous
peoples movements spearheaded anti-neoliberal contestation.21 To be
sure, many of their claims turned on ethnic rights and political-territorial
autonomy. But these intertwined with demands driven by a desire for de-
commoditization. In both countries, highland indigenous confederations
like Ecuarunari (Ecuador) and CSUTCB (Bolivia) represented indigenous
peasants. Thus, they called for state-sponsored land reform, cheap credit,
infrastructure, and price protection for crops. They also shared many of the
socioeconomic grievances of nonindigenous popular sectors. Their list of
demands included subsidies for food, fuel, transportation, and housing as
well as price controls more generally. The basic territorial unit of organiza-
tion for the member organizations was the rural village or municipality in the
countryside or neighborhood and borough in lager urban areas, such as La
Paz, El Alto, Cochabamba, Oruro, and Potos. The roadblock, as with the
piqueteros, was a preferred tool of direct action. However, they also employed
the siege, most notably in the case of La Paz during the Gas War in 2003.
No social movement rose to lead anti-neoliberal contention in
Venezuela the way that the indigenous peoples movement did in Ecuador
and Bolivia and the piqueteros and unemployed workers in Argentina.
After the violent riot that was the Caracazo in early 1989, the main labor
union confederation initially organized mass demonstrations and a couple
of significant general strikes, but it pulled back after the two attempted
coup dtats in 1992. As we shall see below, from then to 1998 protests
roiled in near constant manner carried out by decentralized, heteroge-
neous, and uncoordinated groups.
Nevertheless, they exhibited similar characteristics. For example, many
were territorially organized, such as middle-class neighborhood associa-
tions and popular sector organizations from working-class neighborhoods,
such as the 23 de Enero, as well as self-help community associations in the
barrios, especially in Caracas that sprouted many self-help organizations
under the auspices of progressive mayors, such as Atristbulo Isturiz of the
Causa R party.22 Student organizations were also prominent alongside state
employees, public sector industrial unions, transportation workers, teachers,
professors, and doctors. They staged protests, strikes, marches, and demon-
strations almost daily, frequently employing road blockages and disrupting
government functioning. They varied in magnitude. Most were short-lived
sharp events, although some engulfed practically the whole country.
Despite the lack of an overarching organization as in the other three
emblematic cases of anti-neoliberal contention, near daily protests in
Venezuela, punctuated by general strikes, had powerful effects. They were
ever-present indicators of widespread dissatisfaction with public policy and
politicians. It emboldened military putschists and engendered new politi-
cal movements and parties, including Hugo Chavezs.23
256 E. SILVA
Their demands were a distinctly anti-neoliberal clamor for de-

commodification. They usually involved the satisfaction of immedi-
ate needs threatened by free-market economic reforms. These included
claims for wage and salary increases to counter erosion from rising prices,
employment programs, price controls, protection from labor flexibiliza-
tion, and improvement of public services, among others.24
Across all four cases, we also saw a distinctly political anti-neoliberal
demand for participatory democracy.25 The attempt to impose market
society had involved subordinating politics in service of self-adjusting
markets. This involved de-politicizing (or insulating) economic and social
policymaking. Moreover, as Roberts chapter showed, all of the major
parties aligned with the market program. Thus, people were left without
institutional political means to defend themselves from the neoliberal jug-
gernaut. Liberal representative democracy simply ignored their demands,
hence their prolonged mobilization. The demand for participatory democ-
racy was a claim for increased citizen participation in democratic decision
making. In the countries mentioned above, its realization would require
installing a constitutional assembly to craft the legal-institutional founda-
tions for such a democracy and to reassert the substantive socioeconomic
rights of citizens (meaning their de-commodification) and the states role
as guarantor of those rights.
Chilean Protesters, 20112013

To what extent were the Chilean protests of 20112013 Polanyi-like
anti-neoliberal movements, meaning that they were demands for de-
commodification? Although there had been a smattering of important
protests before, such as the Pinginos,26 here was a country seemingly
rousing itself from a 20-year period of demobilization. What was espe-
cially unusual was the intimation that Chile was on the verge of experi-
encing a full-blown cycle of mobilization. From small beginnings by the
environmental movement, a number of diverse movements emerged over
a span of some two years. The rise of these movements and their political
impact, of course, is the subject of this volume. They included the envi-
ronmental movement with their campaign against a mega-dam project in
the Aysn region; the student movement, largely but not exclusively, in
Santiago; the labor movement, especially public sector industrial unions;
the regional Aysn social movement; and, of course, the indigenous peo-
ples movement, especially the Mapuche. Because these movements and
their campaigns have received ample treatment in this volume (with the
exception of the regional Aysn movement), I will only discuss them in
relation to the question posed above.
At their core, as Roberts chapter argued, these movements rose up
against accumulated injustices that were a legacy of signature free-market
policies imposed by the military dictatorship. Students and workers pro-
tested the persistence of that eras free-market restructuring of education
and labor relations. The environmental and regional equity movements
grievances were also rooted in the retreat of the state, deregulation, priva-
tization, and the uncontested rule of liberal private property rights and
the price system, especially where land and water were concerned. They
also protested the unrivaled economic power and political influence of
large-scale Chilean and transnational economic actors that accompanied
the process. The Mapuche may have demanded autonomyand therefore
less statebut they protested that democratic governments prioritized the
interests of the timber conglomerates over their land.
All demanded de-commodification. The evidence from this volume
shows that they clamored for greater-state involvement in the economy
and society to control markets, govern capital, and protect individuals and
groups from their rigors. The student and labor movements raised these
claims in the most directly apprehensible manner. Students demanded
state-guaranteed free, quality education. They framed the issue in terms
of the inequity of the market-driven system and insisted on greater-state
responsibility. Labor demanded substantial reforms to a labor code that,
with small modifications, was little changed from the one imposed by the
civilian neoliberal technocrats of the military dictatorship. They called for
state-backed strengthening unionization and collective bargaining rights,
state support for formal over precarious labor, among other issues.
Demands for de-commodification were also present in the environmental
and Mapuche movements. They rejected unfettered private property rights
and the seemingly boundless freedom of powerful of national and transna-
tional economic actors to do pretty much as they pleased. Environmentalists
argued that the protection of nature demanded curtailment of private prop-
erty rights, and that government had a strong role to play in creating envi-
ronmentally friendly industrial policy to correct the excesses of exclusively
for-profit-driven development. Many advocated alternative, smaller-scale,
and more people-oriented or grassroots environmentally sensitive develop-
ment, which at some level required government support.27
258 E. SILVA
These demands for the de-commodification of nature stood at the core

of the Patagonia sin Represas campaign against the Hidroaysn mega-dam
hydroelectric project in Chilean Patagonia analyzed in Schaeffers chapter.
Their demonstrations in May 2011 brought 40,000 people into the streets
of Santiago marching to the presidential palace. These were unprecedented
numbers for environmental protests. They were the opening salvo in what
became a stream of mobilization that engulfed Chile over the next two years.
The first massive student demonstrations erupted scarcely a month later
in June. Chiles Winter of Discontent was underway. The student move-
ment had a distinctive Polanyian cast. The demand for de-commodification
in the demonstrations was unmistakable. Placards read no to the mar-
ket in education and end for profit education. A grouping of giant
puppets of Pinochet and Concertacin presidents Aylwin, Bachelet, and
Piera symbolized the continuity of neoliberal education policies from the
dictatorship to the present. The repertoire of contention included massive
monthly marches ending in demonstrations before the presidential palace,
student strikes, and occupation of high school and university buildings.
Labor unions began striking or mobilizing their affiliates to march
alongside the students both in solidarity and in advancing their own
demands as well. The Central Unitaria de Trabajadores (CUT) stood
with the student demonstrators. Public sector unions, including staff and
teachers unions and academic professional organizations, were the most
active. Meanwhile, the CUT emphasized demands for policies that pro-
moted formal labor over precarious subcontracting practices that were
dominating the labor market, especially in the all-important copper-min-
ing sector. That was where the tensions were coming to a head. As men-
tioned above, labors demands were clearly of a de-commoditizing nature.
In the midst of these upheavals, an entirely new protest event for Chile
burst on scene in the summer of 2012 (FebruaryMarch): the Social
Movement for Aysn (Movimiento Social por Aysn). This was a territo-
rial movement of some 20 organizations. They organized as claimants of
an entire region of the country, Aysn, one of the southern-most regions
of Chile and the most isolated. Chile had never experienced a regional-
identity-based movement such as this.
In the context of Chiles market economy, the areas remoteness and
scarce population had distinct negative consequences. Infrastructure was
underdeveloped. Because of that, prices for goods such as oil, gasoline,
and liquid gas were high and average wages had much less buying power.
For example, clothing cost almost twice in Aysn as in Santiago. Heating,
essential during most of the year, was estimated at 200 dollars/month,
almost 20 % of the average monthly wage.28 Health-care infrastructure

was inadequate and higher education was absent. Finally, large corpora-
tions from Santiago controlled extractive and commercial opportunities,
in water rights, fishing, and mining.
The Social Movement for Aysns demands emphasized state interven-
tion to protect them from the free play of market forces in their region.
They included lowering the price of gas, petroleum, liquid natural gas, and
food; regional adjustments to the minimum wage and pensions for seniors
and the handicapped; improvements to the health-care infrastructure of
the region and the creation of a university based in Aysn region; region-
alization of water, agro-ranching, and mining resources; and improved
rights and benefits for artisanal fishermen.
The repertoire of contention had characteristics in common with the
Andean cases and Argentina. The well-known mass demonstration was
one. They also staged roadblocks to disrupt commerce and daily routines.
These were especially effective on few major bridges and arteries in the
regions fractured landscape that connected the countryside to major
urban centers. Here, pitched battles with the police were fought.
In the case of the Mapuche, cultural, identity, and territorial issues
dating back to Spanish conquest intertwined with legacies of neoliberal
imposition by the military dictatorship. With the rollback of 1960s and
early 1970s era, agrarian reform, land, and its control by powerful con-
glomerates emerged as a key issue. As detailed in the chapter by Bidegain,
the dictatorships counter-agrarian reform opened land markets in the
south and on Mapuche-claimed territory. Mapuches had a quintessential
Polanyi-like interpretation of land. It was necessary for material repro-
duction but it was far more than a commodity, it was the key to cultural
survival. The movements organization was decidedly on a territorial basis.
Its repertoire of contention included demonstrations in urban zones and
roadblocks. But it also took a more transgressive turn with crop burnings
and assaults on timber company installations and trucks.
From Anti-Neoliberal Protests toPolitically

Decisive Countermovement
The distinctive feature of anti-neoliberal protests in Bolivia, Ecuador,
Argentina, and Venezuela was that they became politically decisive
Polanyian countermovements to the construction of a contemporary ver-
sion of utopian market society in Latin America.29 They were politically
260 E. SILVA
decisive in the following sense. Over 1020 years from relatively powerless,
and therefore ineffective, resistance they built heterogeneous coalitions
sufficiently powerful to destabilize governments, force the resignation of
presidents, create post-neoliberal policy agendas, and generate new politi-
cal movements capable of winning political power. This understandably
sent shivers of fear and revulsion down the spine of political establishments
in the rest of the region.
Chilean democracy after the dictatorship was characterized by a high
degree of demobilization, defined as the absence of widespread protest.30
This was a legacy of the years of the Chilean Road to Socialism, the military
regimes brutal repression, and, as Robertseloquently argues, the character-
istics of Chiles transition to democracy.31 The result has been the political
establishments rejection of social movement protest as a form of demo-
cratic political participation. Only institutional forms such as voting and
parliamentary representation are deemed legitimate. In this imaginary, pro-
tests signal public disorder, the gateway to unleashing uncontrollable forces
that may overwhelm political institutions and destabilize the political system
sending Chile spiraling down another unpredictable national misadventure.
From this perspective, the escalation of anti-neoliberal protest in
20112012 first unsettled and later sent tremors of distress through the
Chilean political and socioeconomic elites, which the media amplified.
Was the political system unraveling? Was Chile in danger of following the
radical populist road of Argentina and its Andean neighbors?
I will argue that these concerns were unfounded for theoretical reasons
that have been borne out by events. First, I very briefly review the factors
that contributed to cycles of politically decisive anti-neoliberal mobiliza-
tion in the emblematic cases of the Andes and Argentina. I then compare
Chile on those dimensions.
Episodes ofAnti-Neoliberal Contention intheAndes

andArgentina
It is true, as Roberts points out in this volume, that the mobilization of
politically decisive countermovement to the imposition of contemporary
market society in the second-generation cases occurred in reaction to the
initial imposition of economic stabilization and the difficulties of consoli-
dating a stable market economy in the context of a democratic policy.
More concretely, in Challenging Neoliberalism I posited that the presence
of five factors determined the outcome in the emblematic Andean cases

and Argentina: First, the implantation of neoliberalism as a contemporary
version of market society as previously defined. Therefore, a second factor
involved the effective political exclusion of opposition to neoliberal eco-
nomic and social reforms. Third, deepening socioeconomic exclusion
growing poverty, misery, and precarious laborwas a corollary to the
imposition of structural adjustment. Fourth, economic volatility and crisis
was an important factor in each case. Fifth, polities had to be democratic
or else the associational space for protest would have been too restrictive
for such large-scale, persistent mobilization.
Socioeconomic and political exclusion were crucial motivators of mobili-
zation. However, initially governments that supported structural adjustment
in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela possessed sufficient power to
ignore the demands of a restive population protesting rising inequalities of
structural adjustment. Each country experienced several waves of mobiliza-
tion. These waves intensified over time as the various social groups that were
protesting recognized that they had a common root to the diverse prob-
lems that aggrieved themthat root was state supported and political party
abetted comprehensive neoliberal structural adjustment of the economy and
society. Eventually, the sum of their troubles was encapsulated in the concept
of neoliberalism. This framing of the problem resonated among the diverse
organizations and helped them to build collective power in the form of het-
erogeneous coalitions of anti-neoliberal social forces. This was a key element
to the forging of a politically decisive countermovement to neoliberalism.
Economic crises played a dual role in these developments. On the one
hand, they aggravated the anger and desperation of popular sectors and
middle-class social groups. This motivated more and more protest. The
increase in numbers of people and organizations that were protesting and
coordination among them increased their associational power (organiza-
tional capacity of a movement) and collective power (coalitional capacity
across social movements). On the other hand, economic crises weakened
the political, socioeconomic, and transnational forces that supported
structural adjustment. Economic volatilityas Polanyi arguedcaused
dissention among them and the solid front in favor of neoliberal eco-
nomic policies crumbled. Dissension within the political establishment in
conjunction with country-wide, massive, and repeated mass mobilization
opened the door to political destabilization and forced the resignation or
early end of term of several presidents in all four cases. Party system
262 E. SILVA
instability was an important feature of the eventual electoral victory of

emerging party political expressions of anti-neoliberal mobilization.
It is also true, as Roberts argues in this volume, that the development of
politically decisive countermovements to neoliberal reforms in Argentina,
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela werelargely reactive and that because of
the lack of consolidation of the neoliberal project it retained reactive ele-
ments throughout. Still, in the measure that their fights dragged on, by
the early 2000s they also developed a more proactive agenda. After years
of struggle, the leadership of the major social movement organizations
articulated an agenda for a post-neoliberalbut not post-capitalistera.
Its central proposals turned on the revitalization of the states role in eco-
nomic development and socioeconomic inclusion and well-being.
The policy agenda emphasized political control of capital, economic
nationalism, and expanded social protection for poor, subordinated, dis-
criminated, and other disadvantaged individuals and groups. It raised claims
for autonomy and collective rights for indigenous peoples and, more tenu-
ously, rights for afro-Latinos and other ethnic and racially defined groups. It
called for a more participatory democracy to replace minimalist versions of
liberal representative democracy. It insistently demanded the need for a con-
stitutional assembly to recast the political-legal foundations of the polity in
support of the post-neoliberal, but not post-capitalist, agenda. In the con-
text of severe party system instability, new political movements, parties, and
party factions that eventually became government made this their agenda.
Chilean Anti-Neoliberal Mobilization

Chiles third-generation anti-neoliberal protests took place in a very dif-
ferent context in comparison to the other Latin American cases reviewed
above. Indeed, none of the conditions for the emergence of politically deci-
sive Polanyian countermovements were present in 20112013, except that
Chile was democratic, which, as we saw in the emblematic cases, facilitated
the protests taking place. Thus, while the dynamics of the 20112013 pro-
tests shared elements with them their impact and significance differed.
In Chile, a military government successfully imposed neoliberalism
as market society.32 After re-democratization in 1990, the governments
of the Concertacin moved Chile away from a market society in a strict
Polanyian sense. Instead, they consolidated the countrys market economy
but, importantly, with greater social inclusion (and some capital controls),
which required that politics not be entirely at the service of self-regulating,
automatically adjusting markets. Chiles move away from market society

strictly speaking, the lack of intensifying social exclusion, and the absence
of recurring economic crisis and/or volatility kept these movements from
becoming a full-fledged cycle of anti-neoliberal mobilization with the
capacity to challenge the political, economic, and social systems to their
core.
In the emblematic Andean cases and Argentina, the presence of those
conditions caused streams of anti-neoliberal protest to grow into raging
rivers of contention in which many different movements, organizations,
and individuals forged horizontal linkages out of frustration and anger
against arrogant political elites that callously and contemptuously dis-
missed them. In the course of their struggles, they shaped sweeping agen-
das for a post-neoliberal era that was taken up by flourishing new party
political forces. Instead, in Chile anti-neoliberal contention remained pri-
marily an expression of democratic political participation in important,
but discrete, issue areas where moderately-but-perhaps-ossifying progres-
sive governments had not reformed Pinochet-era policies and seemed
uninterested in doing so. This included a political demand for a thorough
reform of the Pinochet-era constitution.
In what ways did the governments of the Concertacin moderately move
Chile away from a market society strictly speaking? First, the Concertacin
was born in opposition to the military regime and its neoclassical eco-
nomics-inspired development model. By the time re- democratization
occurred, it accepted the market economy but pledged to pay down the
social debt accumulated during the dictatorship. As this volume shows,
they attempted but failed to reform the labor code, gave a nod to envi-
ronmental issues, sought to repair the states relationship with indigenous
nations, and implemented some of the most moderate demands of the
feminist movement.
The move away from market society accelerated with the ascendance of
the Socialist Party in the Concertacin at the turn of the twentieth cen-
tury, and the subsequent expansion of somewhat de-commoditizing social
policies in health, pensions, and disability protection as well as efforts to
integrate gender and other identity-based sensitivities.33 Politics, while
committed to the markets central role in the economy, was not com-
pletely at its service. It regulated the market for stability and was mind-
ful of needs for greater social inclusivity than the market, left to its own
workings, would allow. In other words, there was a degree of political
inclusiveness as well.
264 E. SILVA
A consequence of this was that, despite persistent levels of income

inequality, the degree of economic and social exclusion was much less
than that which befell the emblematic Andean cases and Argentina (and
Chile during the dictatorship). Steadily declining poverty rates were an
indicator of this process (in the emblematic cases, these had been increas-
ing, and dramatically so in Argentina and Venezuela). Moreover, unlike
the economic instability that wracked the Andes and Argentina, stable,
steady economic growth dampened motivation for anti-neoliberal mobili-
zation by many different popular sector and middle-class groups that had
fueled the emergence of politically decisive Polanyian countermovements
elsewhere. Chiles robust growth in the context of a stable economy also
contributed to the power of the ruling establishment that upheld the mar-
ket economy combined with the makings of a liberal welfare system.34
Because of these differences, the Chilean anti-neoliberal protests of
20112013 were about reforming issue areas where signature market-
oriented social reforms imposed by the military government remained
very much intact; where prior efforts at reform, if any, had made very little
progress; and whose cumulative negative effects were manifest. Students
wanted to re-nationalize the education system. Labor demanded strength-
ening collective bargaining and wages along with favorable unionization
rules and formal employment. The rollback of agrarian reform under the
dictatorship and subsequent strict enforcement of liberal private property
rights for land and water fed claims of environmentalists and the Mapuche.
Environmentalists valued the rights of nature, were at odds with strict
private property rights, radical individualism, and the profit motive.
This prompted the Council for the Defense of Patagonia, which ran the
Patagonia without Dams campaign, to offer an alternative ecologically
friendly energy plan. The Mapuche, for whom land was much more than
a commodity, and who still sought to protect or revive collective rights,
insisted on land reparations that also promoted cultural survival. More
radical organizations proposed a measure of autonomy. Finally, market-
related regional hardships were a significant, and brand new, issue. The
Aysn regional movement clamored for the policies that would improve
the buying power of their earnings and the availability of health and edu-
cation services. That protest movements arose in these specific issue areas,
as this volume argues, was also tightly connected to developments in the
organizational capacity of the movements themselves.
Although the Chilean protests did not reach politically decisive anti-
neoliberal countermovement force, the dynamics of protest shared important
similarities. There was cooperation among movements, they raised a policy

and political agenda, and had real policy and political impacts. For example,
the student movement protests, which unequivocally led anti-neoliberal
contention, were supported by the Patagonia without Dams campaign and
the labor movement. The latter two were present in the mass student dem-
onstrations and their issues were encapsulated in the general framing of the
protests as a question of enduring inequality in Chilean society and placed
the issue on the national policy agenda, in addition to some of their move-
ment-specific proposals.
The Patagonia Defense Council, the student movement, and the CUT
attempted more formal cooperation as well. They formed the Social Round
Table for a New Chile (Mesa Social por un Nuevo Chile) to coordinate the
organization of demonstrations and other protest events. This was similar
in intent to coordination that occurred among anti-neoliberal protest in the
emblematic cases of the Andes and Argentina.35 However, unlike in those
cases, they were unable to effectively coordinate protest events, especially
in terms of generating simultaneous protests in many cities the length of
the nation.36 Nor did they succeed in crafting a comprehensive agenda for
a post-neoliberal Chile.
That was probably an impossible task anyway because, to begin with,
they did not encapsulate nearly as a broad a cross section of mobilized
popular sector and middle-class groups as in the Andean cases and
Argentina. That was because, as I argued above, accelerants in those cases
were absent. There was no expanding social exclusion and immiseration or
deepening economic volatility or crisis. Government responses over time
also show an absence of enduring political exclusion.
Not only that, but some of the Chilean protest movements never really
joined inthey were parallel streams and did not have lasting mobiliza-
tion capacity. The Mapuche movement was sidelined for reasons amply
discussed in this volume. The Aysn regional protest was largely confined
to the region. To be sure, the Patagonia Defense Council, which orga-
nized the Patagonia without Dams campaign, was an important organizer
of the Aysn regional movement, a logical step since the mega-dams they
opposed were to be built in that region. However, the largest demonstra-
tions were limited to the region itself, far from the centers of political
power in Santiago, and in the summer months, a period of low attention
to public affairs by Chileans. Quick and positive government response to
their demands effectively ended their demonstrations, as I discuss in the
next section.
266 E. SILVA
In addition to socioeconomic demands, the students, the labor move-

ment, and environmentalists working together in the Mesa Social placed
an important political issue on the national policy agenda: constitutional
reform. The 1980 Constitution, a notorious legacy of the dictatorship,
modestly reformed a number of times since 1990, loomed as a clear obsta-
cle to achieving their demands. It placed many checks on the states role
in the economy and society, zealously protected private property, and the
electoral system overrepresented conservatives. However, they stopped
short of proposing specific content for a new constitution, and therefore
a full-blown socioeconomic and political project. Instead, they argued a
new constitution should expand gender, socioeconomic, indigenous, and
regional autonomy rights. How and to what extent should emerge from a
national deliberation. Economic nationalism was pointedly absent. This was
very different from what occurred in the emblematic cases of the Andes.
The Chilean protests of 20112013 may not have generated a politi-
cally decisive anti-neoliberal countermovement, but they had important
policy and political effects. As Roberts pointed out, they pulled the erst-
while Concertacin more to the left. With the symbolically laden addition
of the Communist Party of Chile, the Concertacin became the Nueva
Mayora with Michelle Bachelet as its presidential candidate in 2013.
Bachelets campaign, in addition to education reform and a tax reform to
pay for it, proposed electoral system reform (ending the binomial system)
and constitutional reform to overhaul the Pinochet era Magna Carta. The
new constitution, it was repeated time and again during the electoral cam-
paign, would address areas such as gender issues, socioeconomic rights,
indigenous rights, and regional autonomy. These were long-standing
aspirations of more progressive factions of the Concertacin. The social
movements scathing critiques of lingering tethers the military regime
had implanted to protect the neoliberal model bolstered those factions
as center-left political parties struggled to find a new progressive program
capable of winning them the presidency again.
In addition to agenda-setting impacts, the Chilean protests also had
important concrete policy impacts, as this volume stresses.37 Of course,
given the nature of Chilean democracy, reform has been necessarily incre-
mental. The biggest issue-specific positive effects clearly have been in the
educational system, which was also a key plank of Bachelets presidential
campaign. The Patagonia without Dams campaign ended successfully in
June 2014, when Bachelets government rejected the Hidroaysn project.
Broader energy policy effects of the Patagonia Defense Council remain to
be seen.38 The labor movement and its political allies, as has been the case
since 1991, have tried valiantly to make headway but has met with limited
results.39 This stands as a testament to the centrality of labor markets for
Chiles market economy and the power of the business lobby. Mapuche
movement organizations demanding more radical change in indigenous
policy have been met with regressive polices typical of the historic rela-
tionship between them and the Chilean state: criminalization and, more
recently, militarization.
Since 2013, Bachelets government has also moved on to the broader
political issues. In August 2014, the Congress approved with 8628
votes electoral reform toward a proportional, and more representative,
electoral system, significantly modifying the binominal system inherited
from Augusto Pinochets dictatorship.40 Tax reform to support increased
expenditures in education followed in September.41 Constitutional
change, as expected, is a contentious issue. It has become bogged down
in debates over whether it should be limited to legislative reform or
through the establishment of a constituent assembly, which would open
the process more to citizen participation.42 In December 2015, however,
President Bachelet announced that a constituent process would be
initiated in 2016.
Meanwhile, the Social Movement for Aysn also enjoyed concrete gains,
most of which were hammered out in a settlement in late March 2012.
Pieras government guaranteed the implementation of key demands: the
creation of an employment subsidy, and the establishment of a special
development zone (zona franca) in Aysn. A series of round tables were
also established to set plans for the implementation of additional issues.
Thus, many of demands of the Aysn movement were incorporated in
the Plan de Desarrollo de la Regin de Aysn (signed in April 11, 2011, by
President Pinera). Between 2012 and 2013, the government substantially
increased public goods provision in the region. Especially noteworthy
were the opening of a new hospital, university, and ships for the maritime
connection.43
In the final analysis, then, the Chilean political systems response to
the upsurge in anti-neoliberal protest stood in sharp contrast to that of
Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela. In those cases, the unwavering
support of all major established political parties for market economic and
social reforms, together with growing economic hardship, pushed counter-
mobilization to greater heights. It also contributed to the formation of a
politically decisive counter-hegemonic post-neoliberal policy agenda.
268 E. SILVA
In Chile, in addition to a stable consolidated market economy with

modest social inclusion, conservative and moderately progressive politi-
cal parties (although to varying degrees) responded more positively in
comparison to Argentina and the Andean countries. This further blunted
any impulse toward a comprehensive countermovement agenda. The par-
ties that had historically opposed the original market society project of
the military regime, which later became complacent and ossified establish-
ment parties during their 20-year rule, adjusted. Thus, in this instance
social movement protest contributed to a moderate shift to the left of the
parties that were heirs to promises of reforming market society imposed by
the military and supporting civilian forces. The Chilean case highlights the
normal function of social movement protest as a form of political partici-
pation in democratic regimes. The policy and institutional change likely to
follow will necessarily be incremental, which is also normal in consolidated
democracies.
Polanyi inChile: TheTiming ofAnti-Neoliberal

Protests
Why such a lag between re-democratization and the emergence of signifi-
cant pushback to some of the most egregious remnants of market eco-
nomic and social policy that were legacies of military rule? As the case
studies analyzed in this volume show, this time lag is partly explained by
post-transition social movements need to reconstruct collective action.
Moreover, as Somma and Medels chapter argues, it took a long time
for the social movements to realize and accept that the parties that had
opposed neoliberalism during the dictatorship, and with whom they
struggled for democratization, were no longer viable allies for reforming
the remaining pockets of economic and social policy where the market still
ruled largely unfettered. That difficult realization led to greater autonomy
from the political parties of the Concertacin and to deciding that protest
was an important option for policy change.
That still does not explain why the protests erupted during Sebastin
Pieras government. To be sure there had been protests before, but not as big
nor from so many diverse quarters, and so sustained. In addition to changes
within the movement organizations themselves, a more Polanyian sensibility
draws attention to several factors that raised the perception of threat.44
To begin with, Pieras Alianza por Chile coalition (20102014) was

the first elected conservative government in 50 years. If the Concertacin
failed to implement reforms in key areas of the development model
implanted by the military government that conservatives had whole-
heartedly supported, the chances now were even slimmer. This political
change may have facilitated a final break with attachments to institutional
strategies.
How much threat could there be, though? Pieras campaign had
emphasized that it would not rollback signature social reforms of the
Concertacin era. That brings us to a second factor: a lack of confidence in
those campaign pledges. The larger of the two conservative parties of the
Alianza, the Unin Demcrata Independiente, was literally the party of
the dictatorship. Although the democratization versus dictatorship cleav-
age was supposedly a thing of the past, it resurfaced. There was suspicion
that the new conservative government would attempt rollbacks to a more
pure neoclassical socioeconomic development model and social order.
In effect, Pieras government did attempt to chip away at the incre-
ments to public sector activity in the economy and society in the name
of efficiencyan eminently business-like approach. Public administration
was to be streamlined. State support for public services, not especially
strong to begin with, would be selectively reduced in favor of private sec-
tor delivery. There would be no question of a greater role for the pub-
lic sector in education and energy policy. Transnational corporation-led
mineral extraction would expand and the approach to indigenous peoples
would, in all likelihood, harden.
These shifts began to occur but they were not dramatic, sweeping
policy initiatives. They were contained in the fine print of seemingly
innocuous policy proposals that in effect intensified market rule.45 They
threatened public employees with more onerous working conditions
(including prosecution for malfeasance) that induced many to resign or to
take early retirement. State university staff feared cutbacks and professors
viewed administrative control with suspicion. Indigenous peoples, espe-
cially the Mapuche, could expect, and in fact experienced, a more authori-
tarian approach to their claims against corporate and individual white
landowners. Communities seeking protection from expansion in mineral
extraction could expect a cold shoulder.
Some specific fine-print triggers for the protests of 2011 included
the following. For the student demonstrations, it was changes in univer-
sity student loan administration by banks that raised interest and fees and
270 E. SILVA
shifted burdens of responsibility at a time of sharply rising student loan

indebtedness.46 Public employees, including state university employees
(staff and professors), were definitely concerned about stagnant wages and
salaries, working conditions, and layoffs. The Aysn regional movement
began on February 7, 2012, when, in the context of a reform of fishing
regulation before Congress artisan fishermen in the town of Puerto Aysen
blocked roads, alleging lack of government response to their concerns.
This was followed by a protest by fishermen on Melinka who blocked the
islands airstrip. Beginning February 17, they were also backed by truck
drivers who, by blocking roads, cut off supplies of fuel and fresh food.47
Conclusion
Polanyis great contribution to the push-pull between market rule and
the political control of markets lay in shifting the locus of tension from
the point of production to circuits of exchange.48 The principal clash was
no longer conceived to be between workers and owners of factories (or
capital in general). It lay in the insecurities and hardships created by shift-
ing prices that obeyed the logic of self-regulating market economies; the
economy had attained the status of natural law with potentially disastrous
effects for everyone in deep recessions or depressions. He pointed to a key
causal mechanism in the double movement of capitalist society in which
dominant factions of capital generally push for economic liberalization
and social groups adversely affected by the process seek to control capi-
tal (including uncompetitive factions of capital). Utopian market society
sought to commoditize land, labor, and capital. But these, he argued, are
fictitious commodities. They embody much more for people, they con-
tain social, cultural, and economic relationships on which stable reproduc-
tion of communities and life chances by which people attach security and
meaning to their lives depend. The self-regulating marketthe creative
destruction of capitalismthreatens community and personal stability.
Thus, people generally seek protection from them.
Polanyis work on the double movement of capitalist society leaves
open questions of the forms and intensity that it takes. Polanyi himself, in
his best-known publication, was concerned about great transformations,
and especially those that might explain the global catastrophic events of
fascism and World War II.He was interested in elucidating the underlying
logic not, as is repeatedly noted, putting flesh and bones so to speak on
the social actors involved in the drama.
This opens up three questions for contemporary Latin America that I

attempted to tackle in my 2009 book. What defines a Polanyi-like anti-
neoliberal movement? On a larger scale of significance, what constitutes
a contemporary Polanyian countermovement? What influences the power
of that countermovement?
What constitutes a Polanyi-like anti-neoliberal movement? I, as well
as Roberts, have argued that demands or proposals that emphasize de-
commodification qualify. Who makes these demands? If they are to be
sustained, they largely emanate from social movement organizations and
political movements or parties representing social groups who suffer from
dislocation or perceived undue hardship due to the workings of mar-
ket forces, including the corporate organizations that are their material
manifestation.
The first part of this chapter made the argument that the Chilean pro-
test movements of 20112013 had a decidedly Polanyian cast to them. In
their various ways, they demanded de-commodification. In their underly-
ing Polanyian logic, Chilean protest movementsand their repertoire of
contentionshared much in common with the movements that protested
efforts to impose a neoliberal order cum contemporary market society
in the emblematic cases of Polanyian countermovement in Argentina,
Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela.
However, important differences exist between Chile and the emblem-
atic cases, especially regarding scale, intent, and impact. The emblematic
cases experienced the development of a full-scale countermovement com-
posed of loose coalitions of heterogeneous social groups complete with an
agenda for a post-neoliberal era and new political movements and parties
that mobilized strong, and ultimately winning, electoral force. In short,
they developed politically decisive countermovement. The overall context
was one of relatively dramatic changesif not a great transformation at
least a large turnabout.
Chiles Winter of Discontent in 2011 and subsequent anti-neoliberal
protests generated nothing as dramatic. It was a form of extra-institutional
political participation to push politicians in issue areas where the
Concertacin had ceased to offer incremental reforms to neoliberal social,
economic, and political legacies of the dictatorship, and where it turned
a deaf ear to the occasional protests that flared between 1991 and 2010.
Students were the leading edge with support from labor and environ-
mentalists. In addition to de-commodification in their respective issue
272 E. SILVA
areas, they demanded constitutional reform to abrogate remaining politi-

cal tethers imposed by the military and its civilian collaborators to Chiles
democracy. This sets up an agenda for change in the respective policy
domains rather than a society-wide clamor for sweeping change of the
entire Chilean economic, social, and political order. It was about reviving
the promise of reform ushered in by democratization that had withered
over the ensuing 20 years of Concertacin governments. While signifi-
cant, it was not a call to transform everything.
I argued that these differences were due to the fact that none of the
conditions for the emergence of politically decisive anti-neoliberal coun-
termovement existed in Chile, starting with the fact that Chile had already
moved away from market society and that it was not in economic or politi-
cal crisis. An important indicator of this, and reason for containment of
protest to discreet policy domains, had to do with government response
to the protests. Pieras administration was essentially unresponsive, per-
haps pushed by hard-line Unin Demcrata Independiente, except for in
the case of the Aysn regional movement. This probably fueled growing
protest.
However, as Roberts chapter stresses, Chile had a programmatic oppo-
sition bloc to neoliberalism. Its problem, from the perspective of protest-
ing social movements, was that it had abdicated that role. From the point
of view of the parties of the Concertacin, the protests raised the problem
of how to recast their programmatic stances to regain an electoral majority
and win back the presidency. The protests pushed them more to the left
and the Nueva Mayora was born. Its program put many, but not all, of
the protesting movements demands on the policy agenda. Once in office,
the coalition formulated policies to address those demands. Education
reform winds its way through the Congress. Bachelets government intro-
duced a labor code reform bill. The binomial electoral system is gone.
Constitutional reform is on the agenda. The Hidroaysn hydroelectric
megaproject was not approved. The more radical factions of the Mapuche
movement, however, did not fare well. They were repressed.
Government response to protest demands is important for defusing
or intensifying anti-neoliberal mobilization. In the emblematic cases of
politically decisive countermovement in the Andes and Argentina, govern-
ment response was generally negative. Protesters were met with repres-
sion and rejection of their claims. They may have delayed or watered
down some neoliberal reforms, but governments consistently reneged
on their commitments and pushed for deeper market economic, social,
and political reforms. In the context of growing socioeconomic exclusion

and economic volatility and crisis official stonewalling of protest demands
contributed to expanding mobilization and, eventually, the rise of elector-
ally successful political movements whose agenda was based on sweeping
economic, social, and political changes, albeit still within the confines of a
basically capitalist economy, just not market society.
To be sure, putting issues on a political agenda and the introduction
of legislative bills are not the same as problem solved.49 The education
reform has mainly addressed primary and secondary education, although
Bachelets administration has promised free tuition for a substantial num-
ber of students in 2016. The labor code reform bill, already watered down,
is blocked in Congress due to fierce business and conservative party oppo-
sition. Nothing concrete has emerged in energy policy. Given this state of
affairs, it should not be too surprising that current protests in Bachelets
second government involve university students and various labor union
confederations trying to keep the pressure on politicians to deliver.
In conclusion, increased social protests in Chile that began in 2011, and
that have currently ebbed but not died, may be Polanyian in their logic but
they do not constitute a destabilizing danger to Chiles political system.
They are not politically decisive anti-neoliberal countermovements. They
are best thought of as forms of political participation in circumstances
where aggrieved social sectors and/or interests feel that their issue is not
recognized by authorities and lacks institutional avenues for getting on a
policy agenda. This is normal in consolidated democracies. Social move-
ments and protest contained to specific issue areas have become routin-
ized, healthy challenges and correctives to dominant political forces grown
too comfortable and complacent. The outcome, if inclusive responses fol-
low, will most likely be incremental policy and institutional reform.
Notes
1. ODonnell and Schmitter, Transitions from Authoritarian Rule: Tentative
Conclusions about Uncertain Democracies.
2. Boeninger, Democracia en Chile: lecciones para la gobernabilidad; Silva,
The State and Capital in Chile: business elites, technocrats, and market eco-
nomics; Roberts, this volume.
3. Cook, The Politics of Labor Reform in Latin America: Between Flexibility
and Rights; Murillo, Labor Unions, Partisan Coalitions and Market
Reforms in Latin America; Oxhorn, Organizing Civil Society: The Popular
274 E. SILVA
Sectors and the Struggle for Democracy in Chile; Kurtz, The Dilemmas of
Democracy in the Open Economy: Lessons from Latin America.
4. Franceschet, Women and Politics in Chile; Rhodes, Social Movements and
Free-Market Capitalism in Latin America: Telecommunications,
Privatization, and the Rise of Consumer Protest; Silva, Democracy, Market
Economics, and Environmental Policy in Chile.
5. Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of
Our Time.
6. Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America; Silva, Exchange
Rising? Karl Polanyi and Contentious Politics in Latin America.
Our Time; Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America; Silva,
Exchange Rising? Karl Polanyi and Contentious Politics in Latin
America.
8. Notable exceptions were the rise of the Workers Party in Brazil during the
1990s and the Party of the Democratic Revolution in Mexico that won
important state and municipal elections.
9. Levitsky and Roberts, eds. The Resurgence of the Latin American Left.
10. Roberts, Changing course in Latin America: party systems in the neoliberal
era; Flores-Maca, After Neoliberalism? The Left and Economic Reforms in
Latin America.
12. I also drew from Michael Manns (1986 and 1993) four sources of social
power and from social movement theory. Mann, The Sources of Social
Power, Vol. 1; Mann, The Sources of Social Power, Vol. 2; Tarrow, Power in
Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics; McAdam, Tarrow
and Tilly, Dynamics of Contention.
13. Burawoy, For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence
of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi; McMichael, Globalization; Silva,
Exchange Rising? Karl Polanyi and Contentious Politics in Latin
America; Garca-Guadilla, Civil Society: Institutionalization,
Fragmentation, Autonomy.
14. Burawoy, For a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence
of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi.
15. Of course, labor unions and strikes remain part of the mix. Burawoy, For
a Sociological Marxism: The Complementary Convergence of Antonio
Gramsci and Karl Polanyi; Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers Movements and
Globalization Since 1870.
Our Time.
18. Silva, Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America; Becker, Pachacutik!

Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador; Zamosc, The
Indian Movement in Ecuador: From Politics of Influence to Politics of
Power; Patzi-Paco, Insurgencia y sumision: Movimientos indgeno-
campesinos, (19831998); Postero, Now We Are Citizens: Indigenous
Politics in Postmulticultural Bolivia.
20. Rossi, Beyond Clientelism: The Piquetero Movement and the State in
Argentina.
21. Becker, Pachacutik! Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in
Ecuador.
22. Ciccariello-Maher, We Created Chvez; Lpez-Maya, La protesta popular
venezolana entre 1989 y 1993 (en el Umbral del neoliberalismo).
25. To be sure, the World Bank and other international institutions also pro-
moted participatory spaces. However, these were designed to support neo-
liberalism. The emphasis on decentralization and local government was
meant to insulate the national state from societal demands. Devolving
some authority to subnational governments blunted national-level mobili-
zation. Thus, citizens might gain some spaces for participation at the local
level but lose reason and means to channel demands to national govern-
ments that decided the wage, employment, land, and social policies that
afflicted the population. In short, in part, the intent was to marginalize
citizens from making effective claims for substantive socioeconomic rights,
which requires national-level politics.
26. Donoso, Dynamics of change in Chile: Explaining the emergence of the
2006 Pingino movement.
27. Silva, Democracy, Market Economics, and Environmental Policy in

Chile; Silva and Rodrigo, Contesting Private Property Rights: The
Environment and Indigenous Peoples.
28. Chile: Patagonia protests highlight inequalities. Oxford Analytica Daily
Brief Service, March 1, 2012.
30. Kurtz, The Dilemmas of Democracy in the Open Economy: Lessons
from Latin America.
31. Roberts, Changing course in Latin America: Party systems in the neoliberal
era.
32. Interestingly, its crisis in 19831986 produced a strong Polanyian coun-
terreaction for a mixed economy with social protection intertwined with a
struggle for democratization (Silva, The State and Capital in Chile: business
elites, technocrats, and market economics).
276 E. SILVA
33. Drake and Jaksic, eds. The Struggle for Democracy in Chile, 19821990;
Borzutzky and Oppenheim, eds. After Pinochet: The Chilean Road to
Democracy and the Market; Borzutzky and Weeks, eds. The Bachelet gov-
ernment: conflict and consensus in post-Pinochet Chile; Sehnbruch and
Siavellis, eds. Democratic Chile: The Politics and Policies of an Historic
Coalition, 1990-2010.
34. Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.
36. Written communication, Ana Mara Silva, Mesa Social technical coordina-
tor, November 30, 2015.
37. See, for example, the chapters by Donoso and Somma and Medel, this volume.
38. A hopeful effect may be at project level. At least one hydroelectric project
that had been held up because of the Hidroaysn flap has been given the
green light. However, it involves a system of smaller, interconnected cen-
trals that have more benign environmental footprints. This is a model that
the Patagonia Defense Council supports. In other words, perhaps govern-
ment officials will look more closely at projects before permitting them.
This would be a policy implementation effect (Silva, Social Movements,
Protest, and Policy). The Defense Council is also part of a government
commission created to develop a renewable energy policy for Chile
(Personal communication with Patricio Rodrigo, former executive director
of the Patagonia Defense Council, November 15, 2015).
39. See Gutirrez Crocco, this volume.
40. Huge Step Says Chilean President on Electoral Reform. Telesur,

August 15, 2014.
41. Chile: Tax reform makes swift progress. Oxford Analytica Daily Brief
Service, April 24, 2014; Chile politics: Michelle Bachelet marks one year
in office. EIU Views Wire, March 13, 2015.
42. Abogado constitucionalista: Debe priorizarse la reforma total de la

Constitucin a travs del Congreso. La Tercera, February 13, 2015.
43. Gobierno de Chile. Informe del Ejecutivo sobre los cumplimientos de las
demandas en Aysn, 2013. The movement recognized these advances too.
See interview with top spokesperson Misael Ruiz in La Cooperativa,
February 4, 2013. http://www.cooperativa.cl/noticias/site/artic/2013
0212/asocfile/20130212222804/informe_cumplimiento_un_a__o_
movimiento_ays__n_.pdf
44. von Blow, Building Transnational Networks: Civil Society and the Politics
of Trade in the Americas; von Blow, The Politics of Scale Shift and
Coalition Building: The Case of the Brazilian Network for the Integration
of the Peoples.
45. Concertacin pide agenda social sin letra chica, La Nacin, May 9, 2011.
6. See Donoso, this volume.

4
47. Chile: Patagonia protests highlight inequalities. Oxford Analytica Daily
Brief Service, March 1, 2012.
48. Silva, Exchange Rising? Karl Polanyi and Contentious Politics in Latin America.
49. Soule and King, The stages of the policy process and the Equal Rights
Amendment, 19721982.
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Index1
A Asamblea de Centros de Alumnos

ACAS. See Asamblea de Centros de de Santiago (ACAS), 71, 72,
Alumnos de Santiago (ACAS) 75, 76
ACES. See Asamblea Coordinadora de Asamblea de Estudiantes Secundarios
Estudiantes Secundarios (ACES) de Santiago (AES), 77
Ad Mapu, 103, 121n35. See also Assemblage
Mapuche movement McFarlanes definition, 134
AES. See Asamblea de Estudiantes Auki Wallmapu Ngulam. See Consejo
Secundarios de Santiago (AES) de Todas las Tierras
Alianza por Chile, 47, 144, 268, 269 Aylwin, Patricio, 148, 166, 195, 203,
Allende, Salvador, 13, 14, 236 258
All Lands Council. See Consejo de
Todas las Tierras
anti-neoliberal protests B
in Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador and Bachelet, Michelle, 4, 32, 65, 83, 85,
Venezuela, 256 119, 144, 161, 167, 172, 175,
first generation, 226; in Chile, 234 182, 197, 238, 240, 258, 266,
second generation, 228, 230 267, 273
third generation, 222, 234; Bachelet government, 47, 65,
in Chile, 262 77, 78, 85, 119, 171, 176,
Asamblea Coordinadora de 177, 181, 197, 207, 237,
Estudiantes Secundarios (ACES), 238, 240, 241, 266, 267,
746, 80, 83, 91n56, 92n86 272, 273
origin of, 74 Boric, Gabriel, 45, 847
Note: Page numbers followed by n denote notes.

1

DOI10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4
282 INDEX
C and labor policies, 1979, 208, 238

CAE. See Crdito con Aval del Estado and the Mapuche movement, 104,
(CAE) 106, 110, 117, 119
CAM. See Coordinadora Arauco- origin of, 14
Malleco (CAM) and right wing parties, 117
Caracazo, 18, 227, 229, 255 and social mobilization, 15, 30,
Cariola, Karol, 85 235, 237, 272
Central Unitaria de Trabajadores and social movements, 19, 30, 73,
(CUT), 192, 1947, 199201, 268, 271
203, 211n25, 211n26, 211n41, and social policies, 237
212n424, 258, 265 and the student movement, 71, 79,
CEPI. See Comisin Especial de 84, 85, 88, 240, 258
Pueblos Indgenas (CEPI) CONFECH. See Confederacin de
Chilean party system, 236, 241 Estudiantes de Chile
before the 1973 military coup, 13 (CONFECH)
Christian Democrats. See Partido Confederacin de Estudiantes de
Demcrata Cristiano (PDC) Chile (CONFECH), 81, 83,
Comisin Especial de Pueblos 92n90, 92n92, 92n93, 93n94
Indgenas (CEPI), 105 Consejo de Defensa de la Patagonia
CONADI. See Corporacin Nacional (CDP), 1425, 147, 153n51,
de Desarrollo Indgena 153n59, 153n61
(CONADI) Consejo de Todas las Tierras, 41,
Concertacin de Partidos por la 107
Democracia, 38, 42, 45, 47, 66, Convention No. 169 of the
73, 74, 77, 78, 85, 121n28, International Labor
123n70, 236, 238, 244n34, 269, Organization, 48, 104, 105,
272, 276n45 117, 118
and the economic model, 2346, Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco
262, 263, 268 (CAM), 41, 44, 108, 110
and the education system, 43, 72, Coordinadora Nacional de
73, 77, 78, 81, 238, 239 Estudiantes Secundarios
and the environment, 148, 149 (CONES), 80
and the environmental movement, Corporacin Nacional de Desarrollo
144 Indgena (CONADI), 41, 44,
and the feminist movement, 167, 100, 106, 10810, 112, 115,
182 117, 118
and gender policies, 174 Crdito con Aval del Estado (CAE),
internal power relations, 175, 236, 79
240, 263, 266 CUT. See Central Unitaria de
and the labor movement, 195, 199 Trabajadores (CUT)
INDEX 283
D F
democratization, 4, 6, 1315, 70, 71, FECh. See Federacin de Estudiantes
74, 103, 250, 268, 272 de la Universidad de Chile
dictatorship, 19731989, 14, 29, 131, (FECh)
162 Federacin de Estudiantes de la
demobilization, 30 Pontificia Universidad Catlica de
economic model, 108, 226, 233, Chile (FEUC), 71, 79
257, 259, 264 Federacin de Estudiantes de la
education model, 258 Universidad de Chile (FECh), 71,
institutional legacies, 167, 174, 240, 78, 79, 81, 90n25, 90n26,
266, 267 91n46, 91n72, 240
labor policies, 195 Federacin de Estudiantes Secundarios
opposition to the, 30, 75, 103, 149, de Santiago (FESES), 72, 75
165, 250 feminist movement
popular protests, 234 branches of, 162, 172
repression, 14, 168 Chilean 19902015 gender policies,
Direccin del Trabajo (DL), 193, 199, 179
208 demands, 180; legitimate and
DL. See Direccin del Trabajo (DL) radical, 173
differences with womens movement
in Chile, 165
E double militancy, 171
environmental movement, 42. evolution, 162
See also Patagonia Without feminist second wave in Chile, 167
Dams (PWD) fields of womens organization
Barrancones conflict, 139 during the dictatorship, 168
framing, 30 interactions with institutional actors,
interactions with institutional 162, 167, 169, 180
actors, 144; internal tensions, 182
political parties, 45 international waves of mobilization,
learning, 149 165
organizational evolution, 136 opposition to the dictatorship, 165,
organizational structure 169
arborescent and rhizomatic ways of political impact, 179, 180
organizing, 133, 135, 149 repertoires of action, 172
political impact, 139 FESES. See Federacin de Estudiantes
Ralco conflict, 43, 138 Secundarios de Santiago (FESES)
resources, 39, 145 FEUC. See Federacin de Estudiantes
strategies, 138 de la Pontificia Universidad
tactics, 138 Catlica de Chile (FEUC)
284 INDEX
Frei Ruiz-Tagle, Eduardo, 32, 148 political impacts, 266

Frei Ruiz-Tagle government, 44, repertoire of actions, 200; legal
138, 196 mobilization, 200
second generation of anti-neoliberal
protests, 228
G strategies, 200; legal mobilization,
GABB. See Grupo de Accin por el 193, 202
Bo Bo (GABB) tactics, 205
General Law of Education (Law Lagos, Ricardo, 32, 175
20.370), 47, 78 Lagos government, 115, 117, 176,
General Law of Universities, 73 198, 237
Goldstone, Jack, 10 21n22, 21n24,
21n25, 22n31, 22n33
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 34 M
Greenpeace Chile, 43, 142 Mapuche movement
Grupo de Accin por el Bo Bo autonomism, 107
(GABB), 138 demands, 104
framing, 43
interactions with institutional actors,
I 46, 116; political parties, 103,
Indigenous Law (Law 19.253), 47, 104, 106, 112
100, 1036, 108, 109, 11315, internal power relations, 101, 112
118 Lumaco conflict, 108
Izquierda Autnoma, 66, 78, 84, 87 Nueva Imperial Agreement, 1035,
110
organizational structure, 101
J political impact, 47, 100,
Jackson, Giorgio, 84, 86 118, 267
Ralco conflict, 110
repression, 48, 114
L resources, 41, 112
labor movement strategies; insider strategy, 105
demands, 196 tactics, 53, 100, 108, 110, 112
expansion of legal mobilization, 201 Mayora, Nueva, 4, 19, 30, 38, 66,
first generation of anti-neoliberal 837, 144, 197, 240, 266, 272
protests, 226 Mesa Social por un Nuevo Chile, 265,
impacts of, 203 266
interactions with institutional actors, MIR. See Movimiento de Izquierda
193, 208; labor courts, 206; Revolucionaria (MIR)
political parties, 192, 195; Movimiento de Izquierda
Supreme Court, 206, 207 Revolucionaria (MIR), 169, 171,
labor policies 19902015, 197 267
INDEX 285
Movimiento Social por Aysn, 258, and gender policies, 174

259 and SERNAM, 175
repertoire of contention, 259 and social mobilization, 38
Partido Humanista (PH), 30, 38
Partido por la Democracia (PPD), 30,
N 38, 109, 175, 237, 240
NAU. See Nueva Accin Universitaria Partido Radical, 30
(NAU) Partido Socialista (PS), 30, 32, 77,
Nueva Accin Universitaria (NAU), 174, 175, 197, 235, 236, 240
79, 83, 84 and the Concertacin, 263
Nueva Izquierda Universitaria, 78, 79 and the student movement, 41, 46
party protest
in Chile, 38
O definition of, 38
Observatorio Latinoamericano de Patagonia Without Dams (PWD), 39,
Conflictos Ambientales (OLCA), 132, 137, 150, 266. See also
43 environmental movement
OLCA. See Observatorio PC. See Partido Comunista (PC)
Latinoamericano de Conflictos PDC. See Partido Demcrata Cristiano
Ambientales (OLCA) (PDC)
Organic Law of Education (Law PH. See Partido Humanista (PH)
18.962), 47, 72, 768 Piera, Sebastin, 139, 238, 258, 268
Piera government, 37, 80, 85, 88,
148, 177, 204, 251, 2679,
P 272
Partido Comunista (PC), 30, 32, 38, Pinochet, General Augusto, 4, 14, 17,
85, 86, 240 29, 30, 47, 70, 131, 161, 162,
and the Concertacin, 66 166, 167, 170, 180, 227, 2336,
and the feminist movement, 169, 241, 258, 263, 266, 267
171 institutional legacies, 241
and the labor movement, 199 Piqueteros, 9, 10, 254, 255
and the Nueva Mayora, 86, 197, Polanyi, Karl, 2223, 242n1, 242n5,
240, 266 242n9, 249n1, 250, 252, 259,
and social mobilization, 38 261, 2701, 274n57,
and the student movement, 41, 46, 274n1315, 274n17, 277n48
72, 74, 80, 87, 239, 240 double movement, 2235, 229,
Partido Demcrata Cristiano (PDC), 250; Chile, 256
13, 14, 30, 32, 236 market society, 252; in Latin
and the Concertacin, 175, 180, America, 253
236 political impact
and the economic model, 235 second generation of anti-neoliberal
and the education system, 84 protests, 229
286 INDEX
political polarization, 1315, 236 and the economic model, 238

political process model, 34 framing, 43
popular protests, 19811985, 14 interactions with institutional actors,
PPD. See Partido por la Democracia 47, 66; government, 76;
(PPD) political parties, 84, 88
Programa Orgenes, 47, 115, 124n85, interactions with other social
124n86 movements, 265
PS. See Partido Socialista (PS) internal power relations, 80, 83
organizational structure, 75
2006 Pingino movement, 78
R political impact, 4, 46, 65, 66, 75,
Red Chilena contra la Violencia 77, 78, 80, 88, 240
domstica y Sexual, 179 repertoire of strategies, 76, 83, 87,
repertoire of contention, 10 88
repertoire of strategies, 8, 10 repression, 48
Rossis definition, 69 strategies, 66, 75, 81, 86; insider
Revolucin Democrtica, 19, 66, 84, strategies, 84, 85
85, 87, 89n1, 93n110, 94n117 tactics, 52, 71, 77, 80
S T
SERNAM. See Servicio Nacional de la Tilly, Charles
Mujer (SERNAM) polity members, definition, 32
Servicio Nacional de la Mujer polity model, 8
(SERNAM), 17, 162, 164, 170, repertoire of contention, definition,
1747, 179, 180 69
development of, 176 transformative event
social movements McAdam and Sewells definition,
definition of; as complex networks, 107
10
interactions with institutional actors;
political parties, 45, 72 U
resources, 40 UDI. See Unin Demcrata
stock of legacies Independiente (UDI)
Rossis definition, 69 Unidad Popular (UP), 13, 194
strategies of social movements, 9 Unin Demcrata Independiente
definition, 68 (UDI), 30, 38, 41, 46, 236, 269,
insider strategies, 67 272
institutional activism, 10 UP. See Unidad Popular (UP)
outsider strategies, 67
student movement
autonomism, 45 V
demands, 75, 81, 88, 238 Vallejo, Camila, 85, 86, 240

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organization,

ISBN 978-1-349-95091-1ISBN 978-1-137-60013-4(eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016956816

The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

The editors at Palgrave-Macmillan believed from the start in the

Santiago and Brasilia Sofia Donoso and Marisa von Blow

Marisavon Blow is Professor of Political Science at the Universidade

FranciscaGutirrez received her PhD in Sociology from the School for

Colombina Schaeffer is a sociologist with a PhD in Government and

Part I Social Movements in Chile1

1 Introduction: Social Movements inContemporary Chile3

2 Shifting Relationships Between Social Movements

Part II Case Studies63

3 Outsider andInsider Strategies: Chiles

4 From Cooperation toConfrontation: TheMapuche

5 Democratizing theFlows ofDemocracy: Patagonia Sin

6 Feminism andGender Policies inPost-Dictatorship

7 Coping withNeoliberalism Through Legal Mobilization:

Part III Chile in Comparative Perspective219

8 Chilean Social Movements andParty Politics

9 Post-Transition Social Movements inChile

Graph 2.1 Evolution of the number of protest events

Social Movements in Chile

Introduction: Social Movements

Marisavon Blow andSofiaDonoso

M. von Blow (*)

The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 3

who study public policies and political parties. It presents a fine-grained

The Intertwined Relations AmongSocial

alike continuously debated the key issues of autonomy and cooptation in

Of particular relevance is the creation of new political parties with a

important bureaucratic positions, and social movement organizations

Theoretical Challenges andaResearch Agenda

or will to repress dissent. By underscoring the institutional embeddedness

actors do, going beyond the emphasis on contentious politics in detri-

between contentious episodes and collaborative strategies should not be

Silva and Oliveira40 contribute to this debate by analyzing the important

Shifting Relationships BetweenSocial Movements

To introduce our analysis of the rise of protest politics in Chile, it is nec-

history. During the decade of increased mobilization that swept many

The electoral success of Socialist Salvador Allende in the 1970 presi-

Structure andContents oftheBook

In Chap. 4, Germn Bidegain examines the Mapuche movement case.

Servicio Nacional de la Mujer (SERNAM). The Chilean states gender

neoliberal orthodoxy (i.e., Argentina, Ecuador, and Bolivia at the turn of

A second similarity worth noting in this introduction is that all are

Challengers, and Amenta et al., The Political Consequences of Social

2006, 2014), Ecuador (2006, 2009), El Salvador (2009, 2014), Nicaragua

32. E.g. Pettinicchio, Institutional Activism: Reconsidering the InsiderOutsider

Houtzager, Peter P. 2003. Introduction. From Polycentrism to the Polity. In

Shifting Relationships Between Social

N.M. Somma (*) R. Medel

The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017 29

Chile transitioned to democracy in 1990, there were strong ties between

in this chapter, by the mid-2000s, collective protest had boomed. While

Two Theses ontheRelations Between Social

Growing Collective Protest inChile

All Educational Environmental

Indigenous Labor Regionalist

All Educational Environmental

Indigenous Labor Regionalist

Santiago and Brasilia Sofia Donoso and Marisa von Blow

Part I Social Movements in Chile1

1 Introduction: Social Movements inContemporary Chile3

Part II Case Studies63

Part III Chile in Comparative Perspective219