Review: Has Chile changed since Pinochet?

Robert Austin Henry, Viviana Canibilo Ramírez, Edgars Martínez Navarrete (eds.), Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, Volumes 1 and 2, Verso, 2024

Marx wrote that capitalism comes into the world “dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt”.^[1] He could have been describing the birth of neoliberalism in Chile. Chile was made into a laboratory for reviving capitalist profits through violence – torture, murder and the disappearances of thousands of workers and socialists who dared to imagine a society organised for human need rather than private profit. This book assembles essays and memoirs by people who studied and took part in the struggle against the counter-revolutionary dictatorship and the neoliberal orthodoxy consolidated during the “transition to democracy”. It challenges the official story of Chilean prosperity, bringing forward the experiences of workers and the oppressed in the neoliberal laboratory. For that, the editors deserve credit. We need more projects like this.

The project contains a range of contributions which cannot all be considered in this short review. Here, I focus on chapters that offer valuable insights and lessons for the left today, organised around three themes: the links between Chile’s counter-revolution and global imperialism, especially Israel; Chile as a neoliberal laboratory that outlived the dictatorship; and the ongoing struggle against that order in the 2010s, and what the left can learn from it.

The counter-revolution’s nefarious connection to Israel

It should surprise no-one that Augusto Pinochet’s regime had close ties with Israel. Rodrigo Kamy Bolton details how, after the US Congress imposed an arms embargo in 1976, Israel became the regime’s major supplier.^[2] Even after Chile’s return to democracy, local police continued receiving training from Israeli personnel; trade in weapons and surveillance tech also continued. Pablo Jofré Leal explains that Israel was chosen because it attached no political conditions to weapons trade, and because Pinochet personally admired the Israeli army.^[3] Whether or not Washington wanted to be seen openly backing Pinochet’s brutality, it could do so indirectly through its close ally. As German Chancellor Friedrich Merz recently summarised (in response to Israel’s attacks on Iran):“[t]his is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us”.^[4]

State repression in Chile is especially directed toward the indigenous Mapuche population fighting for land rights in the south. Mapuche activist and political prisoner, Matías Leviqueo Concha, describes the ongoing dispossession of indigenous land.^[5] Land reforms won before and during the Popular Unity government in the early 1970s were reversed under the dictatorship. The “transition to democracy” only accelerated dispossession, with land taken over by private forestry and hydroelectricity corporations. When Mapuche communities resist these land grabs, they are met with police raids and arrests. There is also an ongoing state of emergency in the region, heavily curtailing civil liberties in these communities. These policies are supported by right-wing and centre-left governments alike, with police equipment and training linked to Israel.

The neoliberal laboratory

The election of Salvador Allende and Popular Unity in 1970 was the result of a radicalisation, particularly among workers, throughout Chile. The new government was met with sabotage from the capitalist class and this launched a revolutionary process in Chile. Workers began building an alternative power at the point of production through the Cordones Industriales, which coordinated the distribution of food and other goods and ran workplaces under workers’ control. They formed workers’ armed defence committees and built networks to coordinate their strategy to fight the bosses. Chile’s ruling class understood that to restabilise society in their favour, they had to smash working-class organisation and the population’s hopes for a better world. That was the political logic behind Pinochet’s violent coup – to make the idea of mass, democratic control over society unthinkable for generations to come.

They also wanted to reshape the economy. At the time, the global economy was entering into recession, and the capitalist class demanded a hard free-market program, based on aggressive privatisation. Garazi Zalbidea López and Estíbaliz Cuesta Burgueño show how dismantling social security during the Pinochet regime anchored the neoliberal restructuring.^[6] Chile’s private pension system slashed retirement incomes and entrenched inequality. Because “savings” are thrown into the stock market, pensions rise and fall with speculation. For instance, during the global financial crisis, a third of funds evaporated, devastating those near retirement. Women, who typically earn less and retire earlier, are hit hardest. Decades after the transition to democracy, the core of this system remains intact.

Nicolás Ortiz and Rodrigo Torres analyse the neoliberal transformation of education.^[7] Student federations were dissolved, university administrators replaced with military officers, and education was turned into a market. Higher education became a debt trap for poor students. The centre-left governments that followed did not dismantle this architecture but deepened it. They introduced co-financing that allowed public schools to charge tuition and enabled private banks to issue student loans with exorbitant interest rates.

Today Chile is the most unequal country in Latin America, with some estimating that the top 1 percent of the population own 50 percent of the wealth, while the bottom 50 percent own a negative share due to household debt.^[8] This is the model the neoliberal laboratory produced and exported around the world.

The struggle against neoliberalism

Ordinary Chileans did not accept all this quietly. Students were among the first to regroup, rebuilding organisations under the late dictatorship and in the 1990s. Ortiz and Torres trace a movement arc from the 2006 “Penguin Revolution” of high school students demanding funding for public education, to the 2011 cycle for free university and an end to the marketisation of education.^[9] The student movement politicised society, inspiring further struggle around the pension system and state violence against women.

While some concessions were made, the student movement was unable to change the neoliberal education system fundamentally. Ortiz and Torres suggest that this was partly due to the movement’s integration into the political system. As many of its leaders, such as Gabriel Boric, entered into institutional politics, the focus of the movement shifted from the streets into the halls of Congress. Many student participants in the mass protests distrusted this turn, feeling they had more power in the streets.

Even so, student power and street protests have limits. Unlike workers, students cannot halt profit at the point of production. They can inspire and broaden people’s horizons – which they did – but to confront neoliberalism decisively requires the mass industrial power of workers. For years, union leaderships, tied to centre-left parties, restrained that power. But as Chileans’ economic situation worsened, pressure built beneath the surface until, in October 2019, it erupted.

A 30 peso metro fare hike was the spark. High school students occupied stations, jumped turnstiles, and opened the gates for everyone. Within days, hundreds of thousands had taken to the streets, paralysing major cities. Alondra Peirano Iglesias captures the mood during the protests:

We recognized ourselves in an embracing and overwhelming collective force in which profound yearnings for a just society and a dignified life germinated. We became massively involved in the uncertain and astonishing political process that was unfolding. We knew and felt we had awakened. (p.610)^[10]

This was the most fundamental challenge to Chilean neoliberalism since the dictatorship. But, despite the explosiveness of the revolt, and some set-piece general strikes, it did not deepen into a coordinated strike movement capable of toppling Sebastián Piñera’s government, let alone neoliberal capitalism. In the impasse, a secret deal was hatched behind closed doors between the parties of the left and right (including Boric and his Broad Front party). This agreement would channel the uprising into an institutional process to rewrite the constitution in exchange for demobilising the streets.

Ximena de la Barra describes the agreement as a betrayal of the movement that set in motion a years-long process that left the neoliberal core intact and even hardened.^[11] At the time people were not fooled, and there were huge protests in the streets against the deal initially. But the movement lacked an alternative leadership, rooted in workplaces and neighbourhoods, capable of turning mass anger into a plan for sustained strikes, occupations and self-organisation. Piñera’s government remained in power and the struggle shifted once again from the streets into institutional processes designed to neutralise it. The constitutional process was a failure, leaving the old Pinochet era constitution intact, pushing the movement into retreat, and ultimately shifting politics to the right. This was glaringly demonstrated by Boric’s presidential campaign in 2021 which emphasised fiscal responsibility in the face of attacks from the right, in an attempt to win over the centre and business class.^[12]

The lesson is that the capitalist state is not a neutral tool we can seize and wield for our purposes. Just as 1973 showed, its function is to protect the interests of property and profit; it will not permit fundamental challenges to those interests from the inside. Reformists, whose vision of change is limited to winning and holding state power, inevitably end up compromising with the ruling class in practice.

De la Barra is sharply critical of the movement’s co-optation, but stops short of drawing the strategic conclusion the record demands. The constitutional process was not just mishandled, as she suggests; it was the mechanism for defusing a revolt whose power lay outside the state. Society cannot be transformed through a better-written constitution. We should see our task as organising the force capable of challenging the state’s power: the working class.

In both the 1970s and the recent round of struggle, the force that was lacking was revolutionary socialists who looked to the working class to take power at the point of production, and who were capable of leading at decisive moments. The moment in Chilean history that came closest to challenging the structures of capitalism was during the revolution under Allende’s rule, but then, as now, the reformist forces had a much greater influence over politics and the working class and this held workers back from developing and exercising their power to the fullest. The Chilean ruling class and its pro-capitalist backers internationally recognised the threat of workers’ power and used this lack of clarity in the working class to make their decisive attack, setting in motion a period of aggressive class war that workers are still suffering under today.

Conclusion

Chile 1973–2023: Counter-revolution and Resistance is rich with history and lessons. It shows the capacity of the downtrodden and oppressed to rise up and challenge the capitalist system. The project offers myriad takeaways for the left in our fight against capitalism today. We owe it to the courage of the Mapuche, the student radicals, the participants who faced down state violence in the October 2019 revolt, and the revolutionaries of the 1970s to learn the lessons of their defeats so we can be better prepared for the next rounds of struggle and defeat this rotten system for good.

Clara da Costa-Reidel is a socialist based in Sydney and has written on Latin American politics for Red Flag.

References

“Chile’s president-elect Boric meets with outgoing leader Pinera”, Al Jazeera, 20 December 2021. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/12/20/chile-president-elect-boric-meets-with-outgoing-leader-pinera

Connor, Richard, Timothy Jones and Kate Hairsine 2025, “Germany’s Merz says Israel doing ‘dirty work for us’ in Iran”, Deutsche Welle, 17 June. https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-merz-says-israel-doing-dirty-work-for-us-in-iran/live-72939104

Marx, Karl 2013, Capital, Wordsworth Editions Limited.

Sanchez, Jose 2024, “Percentage distribution of wealth in Chile in 2022, by wealth percentile”, Statistica, 24 July. https://www.statista.com/statistics/1294731/distribution-wealth-by-percentile-chile/

1. Marx 2013, p.533.
2. Bolton 2024, in Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, Vol. 1, pp.105–16.
3. Leal 2024, in Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, Vol. 2, pp. 207–26.
4. Connor, Jones and Hairsine 2025.
5. Concha 2024, in Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, Vol. 2, pp.165–178.
6. López and Burgueño, in Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, Vol. 1, pp.199–218.
7. Ortiz and Torres, in Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, Vol. 1, pp. 603–20.
8. Sanches 2024.
9. Ortiz and Torres, in Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, Vol. 1, pp.603–20.
10. Iglesias, in Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, Vol. 2, pp.605–20.
11. de la Barra, in Chile 1973–2023: Contrarrevolución y Resistencia, pp.367–88.
12. “Chile’s president-elect Boric meets with outgoing leader Pinera” 2021.