Journal of Social History

Casals,, Marcelo

doi: 10.1093/jsh/shz110pmid: N/A

Abstract This article studies the political trajectory of the Chilean middle class under the Popular Unity government (1970–1973) through its representative social organizations, especially small merchant, trucker owner, and professional associations. In the context of increased political polarization, the middle class—after a brief “honeymoon” with the government—radicalized for counterrevolution. Along with political, media, and business opposition, these middle-class groups formed a powerful counterrevolutionary social bloc that challenged the Popular Unity through massive strikes and protests, including a major one in October 1972. I argue that this process was a result of the breakdown of the channels of participation and negotiation that had existed between these groups and the state since the 1930s. These channels broke down with the Left’s implementation of a revolutionary, socialist project, which led both to the state’s unprecedented attention to the working class and to a major economic crisis. At the same time, the very idea of the middle class was redefined in counterrevolutionary terms. While the internal contradiction of the Left prevented it from engaging with the middle class, the opposition succeeded in defining that social identity as inherently anti-Marxist. Consequently, the organizations studied here assumed a leading role in the increasingly insurrectional opposition to the Popular Unity, which culminated in enthusiastic middle-class support for the September 11, 1973, coup d’état. Introduction In March 1971, a few months after Salvador Allende initiated the so-called “Chilean road to socialism,” the Professional Association of Engineers (Colegio de Ingenieros) convened its most important event, the National Conference. The engineers supported the government’s decision to nationalize the copper mines, and they agreed to cooperate with Allende, in light of the foreign technicians’ eventual departure from the country.1 Two and a half years later, the situation was radically different. On September 11, 1973, as the Armed Forces overthrew the Popular Unity government, besieged La Moneda Palace, and initiated a long military dictatorship, a group of leaders installed themselves at the headquarters of the Professional Association of Engineers in Santiago, led by their national president, the Christian Democrat Eduardo Arriagada. There, they drafted a brief and simple declaration that noted that “[t]he Order’s Leaders and colleagues who remained at the Association’s headquarters on September 11 are ready to provide the Order’s services that may be required by the moment the country has lived through.”2 The intention was clear: in light of the military movement, one of the most important professional associations had supported and legitimized the coup d’état. Even though the engineers were unaware of the nature of the nascent dictatorship, they offered their services to the new authorities. The engineers’ trajectory from collaboration with the Popular Unity government to sharp opposition to it was not unique. Many social organizations followed that same path, including other professional associations, especially those of lawyers and physicians, small merchants, truck owners, small- and medium-sized business owners, public and private employees, and even groups without direct links to the workforce, such as the Freemasons and Rotary Clubs. These organizations shared two commonalities. First, until the Left came to power in 1970, they had, for the most part, remained within their realm of associative action; they did not mobilize their forces to destabilize the government. During the Popular Unity government, facing what they considered a direct existential threat to social hierarches, freedom, family stability, and national unity, they marshaled their forces and allied with big business and the political opposition to block the transition to socialism in the streets through strikes and protests. Second, these organizations and their spokesmen identified themselves as the legitimate representatives of the middle class, an ambiguous and disputed category that, nonetheless, achieved great social prestige in the middle decades of the twentieth century. Beginning in late 1971, and gaining greater force from mid-1972 on, the idea of the middle class served as a mechanism for legitimizing the anti-government mobilizations as spontaneous social reactions and representing them as removed from narrow political interests. Despite the well-known differences among them, these groups represented the fundamental base of a counterrevolutionary bloc that, when faced with the threat of the revolution, did not hesitate to destroy the existing democratic political regime that had been in place in Chile since the 1930s. This article studies the organized middle class and its social and political reaction to the project of revolutionary change set in motion by the Marxist Left in Chile. The main objective is to understand the historical dynamics that led an important social segment to mobilize and radicalize against the attempt to establish socialism in Chile. In that regard, this article both differs from, and complements, classic interpretations of this intense period in recent Chilean history. A significant part of that historiographical production has focused on traditional political actors—political parties and their main leaders—to explain the advent of military authoritarianism in 1973.3 Another line of research has highlighted the role of social actors immersed in the political struggle, emphasizing the popular sectors that adhered to general socialist principles.4 Finally, recent studies have foregrounded the symbolic and cultural struggles between the Popular Unity’s supporters and opponents,5 along with the place of the Chilean experience within the broader dynamics of the Latin American Cold War.6 While all of these elements, and the interactions among them, are key to understanding this period, those who embraced the counterrevolutionary mobilization beyond big business and the political opposition have received scant attention in the scholarly literature.7 In other words, we still do not adequately understand the social actors who formed the bulk of the opposition against the construction of socialism in Chile, their strategies for action, and the reasons that led them to abandon the democratic regime in order to thwart the revolutionary process. This void in the scholarship is even more disconcerting when one considers the centrality of these social actors in the political struggle unleashed against the Popular Unity government. This study proposes that the social identity of the middle class—its use, differences, and redefinitions—allows us to access and explain the process of social radicalization without resorting to mechanistic and essentialist models of the expected behavior of certain historical subjects. Thus, we cannot reduce the middle-class social counterrevolution to the political opposition’s strategies, nor to structural determinations in the context of accelerated social change. To the contrary, I argue that the middle class mobilized against the Popular Unity because the long-standing norms that had governed the relationship between these groups and the state over the course of Chilean democracy broke down under Allende. Since the 1930s, the organized middle class had been at the center of state concerns, facilitating the creation of several channels for negotiation and participation in government decision-making processes, which, in turn, helped to consolidate this social sector’s high cultural and moral valuation. The middle class’s social standing changed dramatically under Salvador Allende. The government’s political and discursive focus on the working class combined with real and imagined threats to middle-class social status, such as the expansion of state property, inflation, massive shortages of basic goods, and street violence, ended up closing those channels. In turn, this breakdown of its privileged relationship with the state radicalized middle-class groups toward the right and destabilized the Popular Unity coalition. In this contingent and fluid process, the notion of the middle class was redefined in counterrevolutionary terms through the efforts of the political, business, and media opposition; the radicalization of middle-class organizations; and the Left’s inability to include it politically and symbolically in the transition to socialism. All this helped to create what I have referred to here as the counterrevolutionary social bloc, which crystallized during the strike in October 1972. From that moment on, this bloc achieved the consistency and strength necessary to successfully challenge the Left and hastened the Allende government’s political and military defeat, which came the following year. This article is divided into five sections. The first section presents a practical definition of the middle class, briefly analyzes the formation of the social and institutional relationships between the state and the middle class since the 1930s, and identifies the main social organizations involved in these relationships. The second section studies the beginning of the breakdown of the relationship between the organized middle class and the Popular Unity government within the context of political radicalization, social mobilization, and generalized economic transformation. The third section focuses on the October 1972 strike, the moment in which the counterrevolutionary social bloc was consolidated with the middle class at its core. The fourth section analyzes conceptual changes in the notion of the middle class and its role in the political and social opposition’s counterrevolutionary media campaign against Allende. Finally, the fifth section details the path that the radicalized middle-class organizations followed in their efforts to destabilize the government and provoke military intervention. The Middle Class and the Chilean Democracy Most historical studies on the middle class begin by noting the concept’s problematic nature. Unlike other “classes” that are firmly rooted in the economic sphere (“worker,” “industrialist,” “landowner,” etc.), the middle class occupies an imaginary space “above” and “below” other groups. This conceptual ambiguity has allowed dissimilar social actors, such as a humble merchant and a reputable lawyer, to both identify as part of the middle class. For this reason, rather than demanding consistency and homogeneity, we must study the middle class as a social identity, framed by concrete material and institutional conditions.8 For the purposes of this article, then, I use the term “middle class” to refer to a set of social actors who identified with a virtuous ideal of citizenship that would achieve great prestige in Chile and Latin America during the twentieth century and who organized to demand resources and influence from the state to ensure their social reproduction. However, this approach has not always informed the intellectual production on the Latin American middle class. In the 1950s and 1960s, scholars first understood the middle class as the positive consequence of economic modernization; later, influenced by dependency theorists, studies of the middle class saw it as a factor that delayed social change.9 Despite these differences, there was some consensus that the “objective” existence of the middle class could, in fact, be determined by measuring indicators, such as income, education levels, or occupation, from which social scientists could then identify the boundaries and logics of the middle class.10 Since the late 1990s, new contributions in social and cultural history have renewed this field of study. The middle class is now understood as a discursively constructed identity, employed by both organized social actors and the political system; these social actors aspired to recognition and distinction based on the moral prestige that stemmed from their place and visibility in large, modernizing Latin American cities.11 Implicitly or explicitly, these studies have recovered E. P. Thompson’s notion of class as a “process,” that is, as the historical construction of a common consciousness based on a collective “experience,” not an automatic reflection of economic structures.12 As seen from its collective discursive elaboration, the middle class represents a flexible and constantly disputed category. The boundaries of this class are not rigidly delimited by observer-chosen variables but are understood instead as historical categories that shift in the endless struggle to establish “symbolic boundaries” between the groups positioned “above” and “below” it.13 Thus, a middle-class identity requires a strong moral discourse to consolidate and differentiate it from “lower” classes, typically through consumption practices, dress, place of residence, accent, taste, and education, etc. For this reason, the study of the middle class cannot be completely separated from the concrete material conditions in which the actors who identify as such live and act. In that regard, the idea of the middle class is also the consequence of structural changes. Segmented economic modernization in Chile and Latin America produced fractures in the social structure, creating new spaces of distinction between the oligarchic groups and popular sectors. As the main recipient of demands from middle-class groups in formation, the state played an active role in these displacements, especially through employment and education initiatives.14 In the first decades of the twentieth century, Chilean social groups that identified with the middle-class ideal formulated a cultural project with strong anti-oligarchic, nationalist, and reformist overtones. The rise of these sectors to spaces of power benefited from the tumultuous 1920s, occurring amid the rise and fall of the populist and reformist governments of Arturo Alessandri and Carlos Ibáñez. The reformulation of the relationship between the state and society during that period, formalized in the Constitution of 1925, aligned with middle-class demands for the professionalization of state administration, economic and labor regulations, political regeneration, and social stability.15 In the 1930s, many of these demands gained legal force with new legislation. The Labor Code of 1930 legally recognized the distinction between white-collar employees (empleados) and blue-collar workers (obreros), granting privileges and exemptions to the former. In his second administration (1932–1938), Arturo Alessandri pushed for the passage of Law 6.020, which created the notion of a living wage (sueldo vital) that would automatically be adjusted for inflation, in order to guarantee the stability of white-collar incomes.16 At the same time, the state created and partially funded mutual aid institutions (cajas de previsión) along class lines. There were several cajas reserved exclusively for middle-class groups based on their occupations (professionals, empleados, etc.), which were separate from agencies such as the Workers’ Insurance Fund (Caja de Seguro Obrero).17 The triumph of the Popular Front (Frente Popular) in 1938 initiated a political cycle that consolidated and intensified these processes: the state expanded social services, simultaneously increased public employment and the labor integration of middle-class women,18 and responded to the social demands of the organized middle class. These practices and reforms had concrete material effects: between 1940 and 1953, those classified as the “middle bureaucratic sectors” and “independent middle sectors” saw their income increase by 46 percent and 60 percent, respectively, while the income of those classified as “workers” rose by only 7 percent.19 The prestige of the notion of the middle class also impacted the political system. The Radical Party (Partido Radical; PR), a pillar of the party system between 1938 and 1952, assumed an explicit middle-class identity and opened the state to its rank-and-file members and supporters. At the same time, the PR’s political culture helped to create and reinforce the sociability and behavioral practices that social observers associated with the middle class (such as meetings at “Radical clubs” and informal contacts to obtain state employment20). Moreover, the PR sought to act as the exclusive political voice of the middle class, which the party depicted as the foundation for democratic stability and economic progress.21 Partly as a consequence of the political centrality of middle-class identity, during the 1950s, a number of writers and researchers published articles and books on the middle class, demonstrating that this notion now formed part of the common vocabulary.22 After the electoral decline of the PR in the 1950s, the Christian Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata Cristiano; PDC), founded in 1957, sought to replace the former party as both the main centrist party and the political representative of the middle class. Helped by the progressive turn in both the United States, reflected in the “Alliance for Progress,” and the Catholic Church during the Second Vatican Council, the PDC grew as a reformist, multiclass party, winning the presidency in 1964 and obtaining a formidable 43.6 percent in the 1965 legislative elections. Despite focusing on the “marginalized,” the PDC also sought out the middle class as a source of political legitimacy. On the one hand, many Christian Democrat–led social organizations identified with the middle class. On the other hand, the government spent a great deal of energy and resources to confront the right-wing accusation that the party had “abandoned” the middle class. For example, the PDC prepared propaganda material to highlight all of its relevant state policies, which included the expansion of university enrollment, state loans for small industrialists and farmers, increased production of home appliances, and low inflation. According to the PDC, the middle class would support the government because it “is fundamentally a class of work, a sober class, without vanities. Its goal is Chile, and it cooperates in fighting for its progress.”23 The responsiveness of an important part of the political system to middle-class prestige facilitated (and often propelled) the creation of associations with explicitly middle-class identities. These organizations were the protagonists of the political and institutional design of twentieth-century Chilean democracy, which relied on fluid channels of negotiation and participation in government decision-making bodies. Fiscal and private employees expressly deployed their middle-class status to secure distinctive positions in both the state and private sector through organizations such as the National Alliance of Fiscal Employees (Agrupación Nacional de Empleados Fiscales; ANEF) and the Confederation of Private Employees (Confederación de Empleados Particulares; CEPCh), both created in the 1940s.24 For their part, professionals promoted the creation of the so-called colegios, organizations established by law to represent and defend their members and to monitor the ethical exercise of each profession. The Professional Association of Lawyers (Colegio de Abogados), founded in 1925, provided the legal and organizational model that pharmacists, architects, and agronomic engineers followed in subsequent years. Between the end of the 1940s and the beginning of the 1960s, associations were established for most university-educated professions, including dentists, physicians, nurses, developers, engineers, midwives, psychologists, and many others. Such organizations secured resources through the legal obligation to join and pay dues to the relevant colegio in order to practice a profession, as well as by exercising the parastatal functions of overseeing professional job markets and advising state agencies.25 Other middle-class groups, especially small merchants, small- and medium-sized manufacturers and haulers, were similarly important. The Confederation of Small Merchants (Confederación de Comercio Detallista) was established in 1938, while the National Confederation of Truck Owners (Confederación Nacional de Dueños de Camiones) and the Confederation of Small Manufactures and Craftsmen (Confederación Única de Pequeños Industriales y Artesanos; CONUPIA) were founded in 1953 and 1966, respectively.26 In many cases, membership in these groups was required to obtain licenses, permits, credits, and labor inputs, which the respective association leaders managed. In turn, these leaders actively participated in discussions with the executive branch about sectoral policies and with the National Congress about legislation. For their part, the Freemasons and Rotarians, social groups not directly related to the workforce, also explicitly identified with the middle class. Freemasonry, for example, had a long history in Chile, dating back to the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the twentieth century, professionals, merchants, and military personnel who did not belong to oligarchic circles populated Freemason lodges. The political hegemony of the PR dovetailed with the Freemasons’ enlightened and secular republican ideology and membership in the two groups overlapped. As a result, Freemasons often rose to positions of power and influence. In addition to hundreds of congressmen, ministers, and other authorities, between 1920 and 1973, seven Chilean presidents were Freemasons.27 These organizations played a central role in the institutional design of the Chilean democratic system between the 1930s and 1970s. Leaders of these organizations sought to be—and were—recognized in the public sphere as the representatives of the middle class. Moreover, these organizations’ proximity to the party system and the political value of middle-class identity afforded them access to the state through formal and informal channels of participation and negotiation. That model of political practices would begin to fracture with the election of Salvador Allende and the Popular Unity in 1970. From the “Honeymoon” to Breaking with the Government In contrast to the political Right and businessmen, middle-class organizations did not react with particular alarm to Allende’s election and the advent of the Popular Unity government in 1970. In fact, none of these associations openly endorsed any of the presidential candidates. For example, a few days after the left-wing victory at the polls, the small merchants’ association indicated that the “entrepreneurial middle class” (clase media empresarial) they represented “confirms its position of not getting involved in political controversies.”28 Broadly speaking, this collaborative spirit—the “honeymoon” period between the government and middle-class organizations—lasted through the Popular Unity’s first year in power. For many leaders of middle-class organizations, Salvador Allende sufficiently guaranteed institutional normalcy. Indeed, in many ways, Allende represented the ideal of a leftist middle-class politician. His understanding of politics had been forged during the Popular Front years, and he combined his commitment to reformist, democratizing, and redistributive policies with a transactional willingness to bargain in political institutions. Moreover, in the late 1940s, he supported the founding of the Medical Association (Colegio Médico) and even presided over the organization between 1951 and 1952. Allende was also well-known as a Freemason; he had been a long-standing member of socialist lodges in Valparaíso and Santiago, and his grandfather, Ramón Allende Padín, led the Chilean Freemasons in 1884. Thus, Allende’s middle-class bona fides helped establish a general climate of trust among middle-class institutions. Further, some of these organizations even expressed support for Allende. The Medical Association signaled that “Allende can be trusted,” while Mason groups, such as the Freemason Friends for Allende (Masones Amigos por Allende) and “República” Female Command (Comando Femenino “República”) organized for campaign work.29 Other organizations that identified with the middle class reacted similarly. Rafael Cumsille, the young leader of the Confederation of Small Merchants, eloquently expressed his association’s attitude toward the government during “merchant day” activities on June 5, 1971: “Active collaboration, constructive criticism, sense of community and association participation, and frank dialogue.”30 For their part, the truck owners accepted the change of government without major apprehensions. Following the discussion and approval of pension laws for truck owners, the professional association’s magazine did not hesitate to recognize the work of Communist deputy Luis Guastavino and the minister of economy, Pedro Vuskovic; nor did the association refrain from publishing full-color photographs of a smiling León Vilarín—the organization’s president—with Salvador Allende.31 There were also cases in which redistributive policies and wage increases favored middle-class groups. In order to calm the anxious employees of newly nationalized banks, the government accepted a salary readjustment of close to 70 percent, well above the initial projection.32 Finally, the leaders of the professional colegios were generally satisfied that they could easily meet with government authorities, including Allende himself. The leadership of the Professional Association of Lawyers, for example, was gratified that the president specifically emphasized both the importance of the rule of law and the central role of professional associations during a meeting at La Moneda Palace in January 1971.33 In sum, despite the unprecedented Marxist political coalition that came to power, middle-class associations continued to enjoy fluid circuits of negotiation and participation vis-à-vis the state; if they did not explicitly support the new government, they at least expressed some level of conformity with it. In mid-1971, the first conflicts between the government and middle-class organizations began to emerge, particularly in the professional world. The leaders of the Medical Association were suspicious of the government’s plan to create a universal healthcare system (sistema único de salud), which implied the complete bureaucratization (funcionarización) of healthcare without giving doctors the opportunity to exercise the lucrative profession freely. A large group of leftist physicians had supported these ideas in previous years, and they attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to sway the Colegio’s leadership in favor of the new plan. At the beginning of May 1971, in fact, doctors who supported the Popular Unity organized the Convention of Popular Unity Physicians (Convención de Médicos de la Unidad Popular). There, the leftist doctors harshly rebuked the leadership of the Medical Association, describing the latter as a “reactionary body that plays on the [same] field and by the ruling class’s rules of the game.”34 At the same time, the leftist press began to allow space for criticizing professional colegios. For example, the Communist newspaper El Siglo referred to the Professional Association of Lawyers as “one of the strongholds of Chilean reaction,” after the lawyers failed to elect a single left-wing councilman, even though the unified list of leftist candidates won a total of 31 percent of the votes.35 For its part, the opposition press amplified some professionals’ anxieties about their social status after the authorities dismissed professionals from the state’s administration and replaced them with officials who lacked university degrees.36 Nevertheless, these conflicts were not yet serious; their public visibility mostly reflected the oppositional media’s ideological filter rather than a real break between these groups and the government. Indeed, Allende still had ample room for action, as demonstrated by his meetings with the leaders of the Medical Association in November 1971, which the president explicitly intended to restore the physicians’ confidence in the government. The severity of the conflicts between the Allende government and middle-class associations would increase sharply by the end of the year as serious economic problems emerged. The Popular Unity’s economic strategy included the rapid nationalization of the copper mining, banking, and monopolistic industries; the escalation of agrarian reform; and a sharp increase in workers’ wages to encourage the use of “idle” industrial capacity. The first year of the policy yielded good results. The domestic product grew by 7.7 percent and unemployment fell to 3.8 percent. As a result, the government’s coalition received almost 50 percent support in the April 1971 municipal elections. Nonetheless, the first economic problems became evident toward the middle of that year, especially in the face of an incipient shortage of basic goods, inflationary pressures, and the depletion of the government’s foreign-exchange reserves.37 Small merchants were the first to react to these initial signs, mainly because the left-wing press accused them of hoarding products. Minister Vuskovic personally visited the headquarters of the small merchants’ association, where he conceded that the shortages stemmed from the popular sectors’ expanding purchasing power. The government also highlighted the importance of the “private property sector” in the transition to socialism by guaranteeing its continued existence in the future and providing state aid through credits and subsidies.38 These political gestures would soon prove insufficient. Beginning in August 1971, the Supply and Price Boards (Juntas de Abastecimiento y Precios; JAP), state-sponsored local units for monitoring retail sales and reporting hoarding practices, started to organize. Initially, Cumsille supported the idea, but when the organizational fabric of the JAPs spread in popular neighborhoods, he changed his mind. The confederation began to denounce the “abuses” of the JAPs and of the ad honorem inspectors recruited by the Directorate of Industry and Commerce (Dirección de Industria y Comercio; DIRINCO), the state body responsible for price control and oversight. More than objecting to price control itself, which had a long history in Chile, the merchants resented what they regarded as ideological persecution by popular-sector inspectors who lacked the necessary technical qualifications. None of this intimidated the government. It decided to keep these distributional policies, which the Allende government had designed to fulfill its promises to improve the popular sectors’ material conditions through new consumption policies. As recent research has shown, consumption played a central role in political conflict during the Popular Unity government, largely because these practices defined and contested the class identities, social demands, and anxieties of those who feared for the stability of their social status and distinction.39 Cracks in the relationship between several middle-class organizations and the government became visible in December 1971. That month, Fidel Castro visited Chile on a long official visit, provoking a hostile reaction from the center and right-wing political opposition. This visit, and the increasing shortage of basic goods, inspired a group of conservative women from the affluent sectors of Santiago to organize the March of the Empty Pots and Pans (marcha de las cacerolas vacías), a heavily attended event with widespread media coverage.40 The next day, on December 2, several middle-class associations participated in the Private Sector Meeting (Encuentro del Área Privada), which took place in Santiago’s Caupolicán Theatre. Motivated by what the organizers perceived as a chaotic economic situation, the meeting included the participation of large-scale business associations—Orlando Sáenz, the president of the Society for Industrial Development (Sociedad de Fomento Fabril; SOFOFA), served as a representative—alongside the truck owners, small merchants, and small business organizations. The work commissions reflected the main anxieties of the participants: “shortage[s],” “work discipline,” “labor anarchy,” “violence,” and “pricing policy.” In his speech, Cumsille vigorously defended the small merchants’ reputation, pointing out the presence of “activists” and “agitators” who “poison the mind of the homemaker to distract from the truth about the issues.” At the same time, the association’s magazine clarified the purpose of the meeting, describing it as a “violent irruption of the powerful merchants’ association into official public life, of the immensely majoritarian middle class in Chile, of an enormously independent body that has been trained on the job, which lives from its personal efforts.”41 Weeks later, these associations founded the National Front of the Private Sector (Frente Nacional del Área Privada; FRENAP) and quickly expanded to the provinces. One of its first tasks was to organize a campaign with paid inserts in newspapers, in which they denounced the “state inefficiency” affecting the archetypal figures of the middle class: the grocer, the homemaker, the small manufacturer, and employees, among others.42 The mobilization and radicalization of middle-class organizations began to quicken. A similar phenomenon began to take place in the world of professionals. Lawyers criticized what they perceived as the failure of the rule of law in the radicalization of the Agrarian Reform.43 The accelerated pace of industry nationalization through so-called “legal loopholes” (resquicios legales), in the form of applying forgotten laws from the 1930s to put industries under state control, exacerbated the criticism. Industry nationalization also unsettled the engineers. Their association condemned the government’s displacement of many members from their duties by government auditors, whom the engineers alleged lacked technical training. They also explicitly rejected the subversion of labor hierarchies (and by extension social hierarchies) in large nationalized factories for political reasons.44 Physicians went even further. Following the beating of a young doctor in the south of the country, the Santiago Regional Council of the Medical Colegio organized an official meeting in solidarity with the assaulted physician, in which they hurled harsh epithets at Allende. A few weeks later, in May 1972, the association’s base pressured the organization to call a strike, which was only suspended because of inclement weather in the capital.45 This mobilization of professionals led to the creation of new organizations, such as the Confederation of Professional Associations (Confederación de Colegios Profesionales), which focused on defending the social status of professionals as the “symbol of the enlightened middle class”; the small National Federation of Professionals (Federación Nacional de Profesionales); and the most important and confrontational of them all, the Confederation of Professionals of Chile (Confederación Única de Profesionales de Chile; CUPROCh).46 The creation of coordinating groups of middle-class organizations, such as the FRENAP and the CUPROCh, evidenced a process of rapid political mobilization and radicalization. In a matter of months, what seemed to be the continuation of a relatively harmonious relationship between the government and the middle class became an increasingly hostile opposition. Economic variables do not fully explain this phenomenon, especially because it occurred during months of relative economic tranquility, at least in comparison to what would happen later. Rather, perceived threats to middle-class social status, private-sector autonomy, and the social order triggered these responses, which, in turn, led to a breakdown in the customary participation and negotiation that had previously characterized these organizations’ relationships with the state. The notion of the middle class served to provide meaning and harness that reaction, which expanded and radicalized in October 1972. The October Strike As in the case of the professional organizations, the association of small merchants, and other middle-class organizations, the truck owners rapidly became radicalized by the problems that stemmed from the shortages and anxieties caused by the Popular Unity’s program for transitioning to socialism. In particular, the truck owners resented the shortage of spare parts and other inputs as a direct consequence of the state’s growing presence in the production apparatus. Far from being a “normal” economic issue, then, the truck owners interpreted this situation as a vital threat to their existence by an immoral regime. In this way, the government went from a regular interlocutor in matters of transportation public policy to an enemy that had to be forced to capitulate. Acting on that perspective, the truck owners’ association initiated a strike movement that gained the support of most middle-class organizations, businessmen, the anti-Allende media, and the political opposition. With the truck owners on the frontlines, the 1972 “October strike” catalyzed the demands and needs of a mobilized and radicalized middle class and produced a counterrevolutionary social alliance that would rock the government. By August 1972, the relationship between the Confederation of Truck Owners and the government had deteriorated to the point of a virtual rupture. Allende publicly denounced a “September plan” to paralyze the country, prompting indignation from the truck owners’ leadership.47 Nonetheless, the government’s information was at least partly accurate because the strike began a few weeks later after a minor event: the project to create a state transportation company in Aysén, in the far south of the country. On October 9, the confederation announced that it was shutting down operations between the provinces of O’Higgins and Malleco. The government reacted harshly; it accused León Vilarín of violating the Internal State Security Law (Ley de Seguridad Interior del Estado) and ordered his arrest. As the association’s president sat in jail, the truck owners declared a national strike. Opposition politicians, business leaders, and journalists from conservative media outlets visited Vilarín in prison. Chile’s most important newspaper, the conservative El Mercurio, explicitly supported the strike, announcing that “association solidarity is the only effective tool left against the Popular Unity’s march towards absolute control of the country’s sources of subsistence.”48 Government authorities, for their part, accused the truck owners of “political” motives unbecoming of a professional association (gremio). For that reason, the government ordered the confiscation of trucks to maintain the distribution of goods throughout the country. On October 12, the truck drivers’ leadership declared that the strike would last “indefinite[ly] and until the ultimate consequences.”49 That association’s willingness to fight was complemented by the material and social resources necessary to maintain the strike. The headquarters of the Truck Owners’ Association of Santiago became the epicenter of the movement, especially because the receipt and distribution of resources, food, and clothing from voluntary donations were organized there, as the truck drivers’ leadership claimed.50 However, although we still do not have solid evidence, it is possible that the strikers received funds from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whether directly or through other Chilean private associations, in order to cause the greatest possible damage to the government.51 Nonetheless, this potential CIA involvement does not fully explain the October strike’s radicalism and massive size. The demands that the strikers made to the government responded to the earlier breakdown of the institutional and cultural frameworks of the organized middle class. For that reason, these organizations were the ones that committed most firmly to the movement. Indeed, the small merchants already had experience fighting the Popular Unity. In August, two months earlier, a merchant from Punta Arenas had died of a heart attack while he was resisting a requisition by DIRINCO officers and Carabineros (as police officers are known in Chile). His death provoked a one-day mourning strike (paro de duelo), in which approximately five thousand CUPROCh professionals participated.52 The minister of economy, Carlos Matus, threatened to apply the Internal State Security Law and even the Law of Residence (Ley de Residencia, which gave the executive the authority to expel foreigners). Patricio Palma, the head of DIRINCO, continued to declare the forced openings (desrrajamientos) of commercial stores that refused to open.53 For many, the war against the government had already been declared. Thus, once the truck owners’ strike began, the small-merchant bases pressured their leaders into joining the strikers. Once the decision had been made to strike, Cumsille—as in the case of Vilarín—was arrested on the government’s orders. He received visits in jail from several opposition politicians, including Jorge Alessandri and Eduardo Frei, Allende’s predecessors as president of Chile. With their backing, the small merchants kept their establishments firmly closed despite warnings from the government. Furthermore, they adopted an oppositional ideological discourse, which was fueled by the conservative press. For example, El Mercurio asserted that small merchants would disappear in a socialist regime, along with the “freedom” of all “businessmen.”54 Professional associations also joined the strike, largely as the result of pressure from the bases of their respective colegios. The General Council of the Professional Association of Lawyers was flooded with letters and telegrams from the provinces, demanding an open assembly to join the strike. Indeed, on October 17, in the middle of a tumultuous session in the Lawyers’ headquarters in Santiago, news reached the capital that the provincial councils in Talca and Valparaíso had decided to join the strike without waiting for the General Council’s resolution.55 For their part, the physicians and engineers decided to join the strike with the enthusiastic approval of the majority of their members. Arriagada, the president of the engineers’ association, asserted that he had support from 75 percent of his members, implying that this enthusiasm was a response to the systematic undermining of their professional status, the displacement of technical knowledge in favor of political considerations, and the lack of dialogue with the government. He deployed middle-class identity as a tool for agitation. In a speech at a CUPROCh mass rally, Arriagada urged his base to harden its position because “the fate and future of the Chilean middle class are at stake, the country’s democratic backbone may be destroyed.”56 Even though most middle-class organizations supported the strike, and their leaders had explicit support from politicians and the opposition press, there were factions of these groups that joined the Popular Unity and its social bases. For example, the remaining 25 percent of the Professional Association of Engineers organized as a left-wing faction that unsuccessfully attempted to prevent the strike’s approval.57 Similarly, truck owners who supported the government created a dissident organization called the Patriotic Renewal Movement (Movimiento Patriótico de Renovación; MOPARE), the express objective of which was to keep as many trucks moving as possible. Countless local actions followed a similar course by attempting to seize trucks and accuse small merchants of hoarding merchandise.58 Although these efforts were insufficient for defeating the strike, they do show that not everyone who identified with the middle class was necessarily critical of the government; rather, their representative organizations—and a majority of the membership—assumed this confrontational attitude. The informal alliance among truck owners, small merchants, and professionals gave way to more stable forms of coordination, including the National Association Defense Command (Comando Nacional de Defensa Gremial). This association drafted a list of demands, which it called “Chile’s Demands” (Pliego de Chile). Among other things, the document demanded respect for association rights, an end to nationalization, the incorporation of associations into state-planning institutions, and suppression of the JAPs.59 The government rejected the petition as “political.” However, noting that the movement was wearing down, Allende compromised on a few minor points and proposed a major ministerial change—the incorporation of commanders-in-chief of the Armed Forces into Allende’s Cabinet—to guarantee the agreements that the government reached with the middle-class organizations. On November 5, the strikers agreed to return to work.60 The Counterrevolutionary Middle Class The end of the strike did not mean that the hostilities ceased. From that moment on, there would be a struggle over the meanings of the movement and the social actors who participated in it. The government and left-wing parties interpreted this situation as the organized reaction of a bourgeoisie linked to big business and imperialism, that is, a large employer lockout (paro patronal) in which middle-class groups were mere pawns on a chess board dominated by the big business.61 For its part, the opposition rushed to recognize the middle-class character of the movement: “the association strike (paro gremial) is, therefore, the ‘no’ of the middle layers, which is the ‘no’ of the majorities,”62El Mercurio proclaimed on its editorial page. The battle for the middle class was an important ideological struggle during the Popular Unity years, and the social bloc opposed to socialism would eventually win it. The radicalization of the social struggle would hasten this result and reinforce the counterrevolutionary alliance’s ideological consistency. The Marxist Left did not reach a consensus on what they called the “middle layers” (capas medias). During the 1950s and 1960s, several left-wing intellectuals had criticized this sector, perceiving it as inherently reactionary.63 Strategically, this perspective was a problem: while the Communist Party believed that an eventual transition to socialism should include an alliance with the middle class and its political expressions (the PR and the PDC’s progressive wing), the Socialist Party (PS) proposed a strategic line that focused exclusively on the working class, thereby rejecting all alliances beyond the left. Salvador Allende, however, still managed to articulate a more inclusive discourse than the rest of his party. In his first public address before Congress, on May 21, 1971, he presented the middle class as a necessary condition for the “Chilean road to socialism.” He went on to note that “[t]he unity of the people’s forces and the common sense of the middle sectors give us indispensable superiority so that the privileged minority cannot easily resort to violence.” As political and social polarization intensified, Allende increasingly insisted on the discursive inclusion of the middle class. A year later, in his second address before Congress, he averred that “my government is firmly committed to establishing the conditions that allow the middle sectors to have a better future than their present and their past.”64 None of this, however, guaranteed the Left’s agreement on this issue. In January 1972, following the Popular Unity candidate’s defeat in a by-election in the provinces of O’Higgins and Colchagua, Communist representatives and the ultra-leftist Revolutionary Left Movement (Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria; MIR) held a heated public debate about the middle class. José Cademártori, from the Communist newspaper El Siglo, blamed the “ultra-left” for the electoral defeat, claiming that it had frightened the middle class, and suggested that the Popular Unity should fulfill its program, which implied isolating the “primary enemy,” the oligarchy and imperialism. The MIR journalist Manuel Cabieses rejected that position and noted that circumscribing the revolutionary process to middle-class needs was an unacceptable capitulation. Understanding these “middle layers” as essentially undefined and devoid of distinctive characteristics, Cabieses stated that, “to the extent that the proletariat gains strength and controls political power, these middle layers should tilt in favor of the most powerful, in this case, the pueblo (people).”65 Moreover, this controversy occurred amid the meeting of the Popular Unity parties in El Arrayán, near the capital. These opposing positions remained constant throughout the Popular Unity government. The Communist leaders defended the strategy of “win[ning] over” the middle class. However, under Carlos Altamirano’s leadership, the Socialist Party experienced rapid ideological radicalization, and it flatly refused a friendly approach toward the middle sectors. As a result, the meeting’s official statement was ambiguous on this point.66 The middle class and its meanings lay at the center of the ruling left’s strategic contradictions. Allende’s original strategy for winning over the middle classes meant including their political expressions in different ways. On the one hand, Allende expected the Radical Party to represent the middle class from within the government. Nonetheless, disagreements over the pace of socialist change caused a wing of the party to splinter off in 1971, forming the Left Radical Party (Partido de Izquierda Radical; PIR). At the meeting in El Arrayán, the PIR was invited to join the government, while at the same time its main leaders—Luis Bossay and Alberto Baltra—warned that the course of events went against middle-class interests.67 Shortly afterward, the PIR left the government and joined the opposition. In Baltra’s view, the Popular Unity had betrayed its program by depriving the nation of “the great intellectual and moral values, and the capabilities and efforts that encompass the extensive and powerful Chilean middle class.”68 A similar process was occurring within Freemasonry, an institution with deep social and doctrinal links to the PR. In a series of articles published in Occidente magazine, Julio Sepúlveda Rondanelli warned about the “spillover” of the Popular Unity, a phenomenon that would undermine the survival of the middle class. For the author, the middle class was, by nature, rationalist, secular, democratic, and progressive; therefore, any organized protest movement constituted a legitimate reaction to the social instability that the revolutionary process had created.69 In his view, the estrangement of centrist political allies—who claimed to represent the middle class—from Allende’s government reflected a deeper process of redefining the meanings of that social sector. On the other hand, Allende continuously sought to negotiate with the PDC in order to gain both a congressional majority and the support of the middle classes that had previously backed Frei’s government. During the Popular Unity’s first year in power, it seemed possible for the two to reach an agreement on the size of the state-owned share of the economy. However, once the Allende government’s popular base—joined by radicalized left-wing MIR and PS militants—began to pressure the government to accelerate the revolutionary process in the face of counterrevolutionary mobilizations, the possibilities for engaging in productive dialogue diminished dramatically. By 1973, the most conservative groups—represented by Frei himself—dominated the PDC, and they sabotaged all attempts to reach an agreement with the government, including those sponsored by the leader of the Catholic Church, archbishop Raúl Silva Henríquez.70 The political opposition’s relationship with the middle class was far less ambivalent. In September 1972, the leader of the right-wing National Party (Partido Nacional; PN), Sergio Onofre Jarpa, claimed that his party did not seek to defend the “plutocrats.” To the contrary, the PN would be “essentially a middle-class party” because it would defend “the right to work”—that is, “their well-being, their household, and amenities earned through hard work.”71 Moreover, in Onofre Jarpa’s view, the political opposition that had united under the Democratic Confederation (Confederación Democrática; CODE) in July 1972 represented the largest manifestation of the middle class because of the social composition of its militants. He also asserted that “democracy and the middle class are two aspects of the same mentality, which does not allow for privileges nor support dictatorial attempts.”72 The biggest CODE member, the Christian Democratic Party, reinforced those ideas from the halls of the National Congress. Senator Patricio Aylwin declared that only “sectarianism and hatred against everything that is a middle-class man and independent worker” could explain the government’s approach during the October strike.73 Claudio Orrego Vicuña, a well-known Christian Democrat analyst, wrote a short book on the October strike, depicting it as a legitimate “rebellion of the democratic majorities and the middle sectors” against the “Popular Unity’s totalitarian attempts to impose its hegemonic leadership on the country.” His narrative characterized the strike as a spontaneous movement that had not been centrally coordinated but rather had occurred as a result of the intolerable accumulation of offenses against Chile’s “men of work.” Led by the PDC, he claimed, the political activation of the middle class had incorporated the most “important reserve divisions into the great war for democracy and against the destruction of Chile.” 74 In this way, National Party members and Christian Democrats based part of their oppositional discourse on defending the middle class in the battle between “democracy” and “freedom,” on the one hand, and the revolution’s destructive hatred, on the other. From this perspective, the middle class assumed an unequivocally counterrevolutionary meaning. The CODE was not alone in its effort to embrace the middle class. Ultra-rightist groups, such as the Catholic, Hispanist Guild Movement (Movimiento Gremialista)—which was led by Jaime Guzmán and enjoyed the strong support of Catholic university students—classified the phenomenon in terms of the birth of associative power (poder gremial). Indeed, Guzmán predicted that this associative power would “be a fundamental and permanent channel for national reconstruction in the future.”75 Large-scale businesses also proceeded in that direction. Benjamín Matte, the president of the National Agricultural Society (Sociedad Nacional de Agricultura; SNA), called for the creation of a “new Chile based on the working man and the ‘average man’ to return to the ‘roots of nationality’ through an unprecedented associative power.”76 Other business leaders, including Orlando Sáenz, used the middle-class ideal in their favor. Sáenz presented himself as a middle-class man, the son of modest Spanish immigrants, who “does not look at all like the picture of serious gentlemen with sideburns and beards whose daguerreotypes are preserved in the meeting room” at SOFOFA, as Ercilla magazine put it.77 In a meeting of steel industry businessmen, Sáenz alleged that the government’s objective was the “dismantling of the middle class,” which would result in an “equalization from below” and an “equitable division of misery.”78 The point was clear: big business sought to be recognized as part of the national and democratic middle-class response, which had allegedly mobilized instinctively in the face of an existential danger. The press also played a role in the counterrevolutionary redefinition of the middle class. On the one hand, the opposition media, through dozens of articles and editorials, portrayed the middle class as the bulwark of society’s moral foundation. Thus, the government could not have been sincere about its true intentions. Its statements in favor of the middle sectors were mere “tactical accommodations” that hid Popular Unity’s true objective of destroying the middle class as an indispensable step in establishing a totalitarian dictatorship. From that perspective, the middle class represented the repository of reason, democracy, republicanism, progress, moderation, and equilibrium. Indeed, the conservative media frequently referred to the middle class as society’s “linchpin” (el fiel de la balanza), implying that the country would fall apart without it. On the contrary, “Marxism,” understood as the suppression of public and private freedom, fundamentally threatened the ideals and even the physical existence of the middle class. Hence, the conservative press recognized the unprecedented middle-class mobilization in the streets as a legitimate and heroic reaction that was necessary for the nation’s survival.79 On the other hand, for the press associated with the most radicalized factions on the Left, the middle class had an unequivocally negative connotation. According to the ultra-leftist magazine Punto Final, the middle class lacked a historical project, which condemned it to defer to either the proletariat or the bourgeoisie in the struggle over the future, neither of whom could be granted concessions.80 In a similar vein, the radicalized Christian Left (Izquierda Cristiana) regarded the middle class as “morally despicable” because it lived on the “borrowed values” of the upper-class bourgeoisie, which the former admired but could never reach. This was “behavior typical of a class that has the vocation of an imbecile, which confuses servility with dignity and feels rewarded for its sacrifices when it receives the bourgeoisie’s paternalistic praise.”81 The expulsion of the middle class from this ultra-leftist imaginary world also shaped the former’s counterrevolutionary redefinition. Middle-class organizations echoed these debates. Small merchants, truck owners, professionals, and others assumed that class identity to legitimize their mobilization against the Popular Unity government. Association leaders consistently presented themselves as austere figures who eschewed political ambitions and motivations. By then, León Vilarín and Rafael Cumsille had become well-known figures at the national level, which helped amplify the idea that they were social defenders of work, sacrifice, dignity, and morality. The consonance between the self-perception of the mobilized middle class and the ideological interpellations of the media, political, and business opposition cemented a coherent and powerful counterrevolutionary social alliance. A counterrevolutionary notion of the middle class, which interpreted the political conflict as the struggle between social virtue and a corrupt, totalitarian, and immoral left, guided the mobilization and radicalization of these sectors in the final months of the socialist experience. Toward the Coup From October 1972 to September 1973, middle-class organizations engaged in street mobilizations and waged a campaign in the opposition media to delegitimize the government, which made it impossible to rebuild their channels of negotiation with the state. The worsening of shortages, inflation, and the expansion of the state in the economy decisively contributed to the radicalization and politicization of these groups. Consequently, the left-wing factions within middle-class organizations lost badly in successive internal elections, as CODE representatives won strong majorities.82 In this context, nearly everyone recognized the March 1973 parliamentary elections as a key point for resolving the conflict, mainly because the opposition needed to obtain two-thirds of the seats in Congress to remove Allende legally. Small merchants, taxi drivers, professionals, employees, and others participated directly in the electoral campaign; the fact that many leaders were either PDC militants or members of PR rightwing groups facilitated this involvement.83 The inconclusive election results paved the way for an even larger mobilization, this time in the absence of any prospect for an institutional solution to the situation. The discourse of middle-class groups assumed unequivocally anti-Marxist overtones and reinforced the associations’ previous complaints. The engineers and physicians interpreted the arrival of Soviet and Cuban technicians as an attack on both professionals and national sovereignty.84 Other events also contributed to hardening the discourse. For example, a bomb exploded at the entrance of the Medical Association in Santiago, an attack attributed to an allegedly ultra-leftist group called Fatherland or Death (Patria o Muerte). The purported attackers left papers with messages that threatened the physical existence of the middle class, for example, by “hanging the last bureaucrat with the guts of the last bourgeois.”85 At the same time, the October strikers continued to move toward united action. The National Association Defense Command became the Movement for Guild Action (Movimiento de Acción Gremial), which was explicitly defined as an organization of apolitical “working men” preparing for the ensuing process of “national regeneration.”86 Truck owners, CUPROCh professionals, CPC businessmen, and small merchants made up the core of the organization, which found more success in provincial cities than in the capital. In fact, outside Santiago, spontaneous counterrevolutionary organizations, including the “multi-guild federations” (multigremios), served as meeting spaces for local, middle-class civil groups to coordinate their struggles against the government. Both the command, based in the capital, and the provincial multigremios adopted strongly anti-Marxist discourses, in which they unequivocally outlined the insurrectional possibilities for resolving the political situation. Indeed, in July 1973, the leadership of many middle-class associations drafted a “declaration of principles” that it delivered privately to the military. The declaration broached the need to reestablish the nation through an authoritarian regime that guaranteed a place for private initiative and relegated the state to a subsidiary role.87 The counterrevolutionary bloc expanded its base by intensifying the political struggle and dividing society into two irreconcilable factions. The Freemasons struggled with strong internal tensions that arose from galvanized anti-Marxist majorities in several of their lodges. Despite the Freemasons’ culture of secrecy, many of these disputes reached the press. The opposition media published anonymous letters and columns that emphasized the essential contradiction between the Freemasonry’s libertarianism and the threat of Marxist totalitarianism. At the same time, Grand Master René García Valenzuela toughened his tone against the government.88 New sectors from beyond the traditional limits of the middle class also joined them. In April 1973, the El Teniente copper miners—who played a vital role in the country’s economy—initiated a long strike that received immediate solidarity from the opposition parties and press as well as from radicalized middle-class organizations. In July 1973, the truck owners started a new strike, which their leaders promised would not end “until the ultimate consequences.” Improvised camps were set up at several locations near the capital where thousands of drivers stopped their trucks. In Leyda, near the San Antonio port, state police shot bus driver Mario Montuscky dead amid the smoke of tear gas bombs. His funeral became a major political event. With a “martyr” among its ranks, the association’s mobilization was complete. The movement also included the truck owners’ wives, who organized as the Trucker Wives’ Coordinating Committee (Comité Coordinador de Mujeres Transportistas). This group’s most audacious actions included the occupations (tomas) of radio stations to spread anti-government messages and the National Congress gardens to pressure parliamentarians. The truckers’ wives legitimized their actions as a desperate defense of their families’ source of employment, which was threatened by a “despotic government” that sought to subjugate “working men.” In turn, the confederation’s leadership called for the construction of a strongly corporatist authoritarian social system in which the nation’s “driving forces” would play a prominent role in offering “technical, documented, and mathematical solutions” for each economic sector’s problems.89 The counterrevolutionary radicalization of the organized middle class led many of its representatives to take critical stances, even against liberal democracy.90 Professionals joined the rest of the middle-class organizations in a total confrontation with the government. Just as in October 1972, the base’s radicalization and audacity surpassed that of its leadership, which occasionally attempted to maintain its openness to negotiation or at least the appearance of it. Lawyers, for example, pressured their organization’s general council to take drastic measures in the face of what they considered the total breakdown of the rule of law.91 For their part, the physicians went even further. On September 8, at a crowded assembly, the doctors censured their association’s leadership for taking a moderate stance and immediately replaced it with what they called a war board (mesa de guerra), over which Ernesto Mundt presided.92 In the government’s final days, several middle-class organizations took direct action against Allende. Lawyers, physicians, and engineers demanded his resignation, while a multi-gremial Congress in Concepción openly agitated for military intervention.93 Other groups sought to expel the president from the symbolic world of the middle class. A group of southern lodges called for Allende’s prosecution “for having repeatedly and ostensibly transgressed Masonic principles,” while the O’Higgins Provincial Council of the Medical Association pursued his expulsion “for the responsibility that falls on this professional in the development of the political, economic and social chaos in which the country unravels.”94 At this point, the middle class opposed Allende and Popular Unity head-on and resolutely. For its representatives, only the organized use of military force could provide the solution. Conclusions On September 11, 1973, the Armed Forces and Carabineros perpetrated a military coup that ended both the Popular Unity government and Chilean democracy. Although the military led the conspiracy that made the coup possible, it was the earlier polarization and political and social radicalization that enabled such an outcome in the first place. The social organizations discussed in this article played a central role in laying the groundwork for the military overthrow of the Popular Unity government. They not only accounted for a significant part of the social base that mobilized against the Left in power, but they also embodied the morality and virtue that was culturally associated with the middle class. In this way, middle-class organizations legitimized the political opposition against the Popular Unity and facilitated the military coup. The organized middle class assumed a counterrevolutionary aspect in two ways. On the one hand, the breakdown of the model that had characterized its political and social relationships with the state since the 1930s served to politically activate its representative organizations. In that schema, middle-class groups had played a central role in defining public policies and allocating fiscal resources. Furthermore, these organizations were supported by special laws and could consolidate the resources and prestige necessary to represent each sector. The Popular Unity and its project for a peaceful transition to socialism signified the temporary redirection of the state’s attention toward working-class sectors. This was an explicit and implicit challenge to the labor and social hierarchies on which the middle class predicated its claims of distinction. The economic crisis and political polarization worsened the situation, pushing these organizations to confront the government directly. On the other hand, the political, business, and media opposition, alongside the radicalized middle-class organizations, redefined the idea of the middle class in counterrevolutionary terms by insisting on representing it as inherently antithetical to socialism. From that perspective, the former meant freedom and democracy and the latter connoted statism and tyranny. These dynamics reinforced the political trajectory of middle-class organizations. After the March 1973 parliamentary elections, many of their representatives openly called for military intervention and an authoritarian regime. Studying the middle class allows us to examine the particularities of the intense experience of the Popular Unity and subsequent military dictatorship. The breakdown of the relationship between the middle class and the government occurred amid revolutionary and democratic efforts to construct socialism. The forces unleashed in this context accelerated the course of events and rapidly radicalized middle-class organizations against the government. These associations moved from tepidly supporting Popular Unity to enthusiastically embracing the September 11, 1973, military coup, as the engineers quoted at the beginning of this article demonstrate. Despite this turbulent and complex scenario, it is possible to offer a historical explanation for the political behavior of the organized middle class without resorting to mechanistic models—that is, by rejecting historical fatalism and instead assuming the contingency of social actors’ behavior. In that vein, this article sheds light on the formation of the social bases of support for the counterrevolutionary dictatorship that began with the military coup. Ultimately, the experience of the middle class during the Popular Unity’s one thousand days of radical democracy strongly conditioned the trajectories and tensions of this support. Footnotes 1 “El Colegio de Ingenieros a todos los integrantes de la Orden,” El Mercurio, March 22, 1971, 45; “Ingenieros buscan su participación en nacionalización del cobre,” La Prensa, April 22, 1971, 2. 2 Colegio de Ingenieros de Chile, Libro blanco de la Ingeniería chilena (Santiago, 1974), 62. 3 The best representatives of this line of analysis are Arturo Valenzuela, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes. Chile (Baltimore, MD, 1978); and Manuel A. Garretón and Tomás Moulian, La Unidad Popular y el conflicto político en Chile (Santiago, 1983). 4 A classic study of the “revolution from below” is that of Peter Winn, Weavers of Revolution: The Yarur Workers and Chile’s Road to Socialism (New York, 1986). More recent authors include those such as Franck Gaudichaud, Chile, 1970–1973. Mil días que estremecieron al mundo. Poder popular, cordones industriales y socialismo durante el gobierno de Salvador Allende (Santiago, 2016); Cristóbal Bize Vivanco, El otoño de los raulíes: poder popular en el complejo forestal y maderero panguipulli (Neltume, 1967–1973) (Santiago, 2017); Heidi Tinsman, Partners in Conflict: The Politics of Gender, Sexuality, and Labor in the Chilean Agrarian Reform, 1950–1973 (Durham, NC, 2002); and Marian Schlotterbeck, Beyond the Vanguard: Everyday Revolutionaries in Allende’s Chile (Oakland, CA, 2018), among others. 5 For example, see Camilo D. Trumper, Ephemeral Histories: Public Art, Politics, and the Struggle for the Streets in Chile (Oakland, CA, 2017). 6 Tanya Harmer, Allende’s Chile and the Inter-American Cold War, (Chapel Hill, NC, 2011). 7 With the notorious exception, for the case of conservative women, from Margaret Power’s study, Right-Wing Women in Chile: Feminine Power and the Struggle against Allende, 1964–1973 (University Park, PA, 2002). 8 Ezequiel Adamovsky, Historia de la clase media argentina: Apogeo y decadencia de una ilusión, 1919–2003 (Buenos Aires, 2009), 13. For recently published research along these lines, see Louise E. Walker, Waking from the Dream: Mexico’s Middle Classes after 1968 (Stanford, CA, 2013); and Sebastián Carassai, The Argentine Silent Majority: Middle Classes, Politics, Violence, and Memory in the Seventies (Durham, NC, 2014). 9 Regarding the first line of interpretation, the classical studies are John J. Johnson, Political Change in Latin America: The Emergence of the Middle Sectors (Stanford, CA, 1958); Theo R. Crevenna, ed., Materiales para el estudio de la clase media en la América Latina (Washington, DC, 1950); Gino Germani, Estructura social de la Argentina (Buenos Aires, 1955). In the second group are Fredrick B. Pike, “Aspects of Class Relations in Chile, 1850–1960,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 43, no. 1 (1963): 14–33; and José Nun, “The Middle-Class Military Coup,” in The Politics of Conformity in Latin America, ed. Claudio Véliz (London, 1967). 10 For more complete bibliographic syntheses on these debates, see Sergio Visacovsky and Enrique Garguin, “Introducción,” in Moralidades, economías e identidades de clase media: Estudios históricos y etnográficos, ed. Sergio Eduardo Visacovsky and Enrique Garguin (Buenos Aires, 2009); and David S. Parker, “Introduction: The Making and Endless Remaking of the Middle Class,” in Latin America’s Middle Class: Unsettled Debates and New Histories, ed. David S. Parker and Louise E. Walker (Lanham, MD, 2013). 11 David S. Parker, The Idea of the Middle Class: White-Collar Workers and Peruvian Society (University Park, PA, 1998); Brian Philip Owensby, Intimate Ironies: Modernity and the Making of Middle-Class Lives in Brazil (Stanford, CA, 1999); Patrick Barr-Melej, Reforming Chile: Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class (Chapel Hill, NC, 2001); Adamovsky, Historia de la clase media argentina; and Azun Candina, Por una vida digna y decorosa: Clase media y empleados públicos en el siglo XX chileno (Santiago, 2009). 12 E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (New York, 1964). For an excellent analysis of the theoretical consequences of Thompson’s proposals, see Ellen Meiksins-Wood, “The Politics of Theory and the Concept of Class: E. P. Thompson and His Critics,” Studies in Political Economy 9, no. 1 (1982): 45–75. 13 In this regard, see the classic study of Michèle Lamont, Money, Morals, and Manners: The Culture of the French and the American Upper-Middle Class (Chicago, 1992). 14 In this regard, see the complete study of Marianne González Le Saux, De empresarios a empleados: Clase media y estado docente en Chile, 1810–1920 (Santiago, 2011). Regarding the importance of the material culture in the construction of differentiated social and political identities, see the suggestive study of Jesus Cruz, “Building Liberal Identities in 19th Century Madrid: The Role of Middle Class Material Culture,” The Americas 60, no. 3 (2004): 391–410. 15 See Rodrigo Henríquez Vásquez, En “Estado Sólido”: Políticas y politización en la construcción estatal Chile 1920–1950 (Santiago, 2014); Verónica Valdivia Ortiz de Zárate, Subversión, coerción y consenso: Creando el Chile del siglo XX (1918–1938) (Santiago, 2017); and Patricio Silva, En el nombre de la razón: Tecnócratas y política en Chile (Santiago, 2010). 16 J. Pablo Silva, “The Origins of White-Collar Privilege in Chile: Arturo Alessandri, Law 6020, and the Pursuit of a Corporatist Consensus, 1933–1938,” Labor 3, no. 1 (2006): 87–112. 17 Francisca Rengifo, “Desigualdad e inclusión: La ruta del estado de seguridad social chileno, 1920–1970,” Hispanic American Historical Review 97, no. 3 (2017): 485–521. 18 María Soledad Zárate and Elizabeth Q. Hutchinson, “Clases medias en Chile: Estado, género y prácticas políticas, 1920–1970,” in Historia Política de Chile, 1810–2010, ed. Iván Jaksic and Juan Luis Ossa, vol. I. Prácticas políticas (Santiago, 2017); Karin Alejandra Rosemblatt, Gendered Compromises: Political Cultures & the State in Chile, 1920–1950 (Chapel Hill, NC, 2000). 19 César Cerda Albarracín, Historia y desarrollo de la clase media en Chile (Santiago, 1998), 128. 20 Both phenomena have been studied in Larissa Adler de Lomnitz and Ana Melnick, La cultura política chilena y los partidos de centro: Una explicación antropológica (Santiago, 1998); and Larissa Adler de Lomnitz, “El ‘compadrazgo’: Reciprocidad de favores en la clase media urbana de Chile,” in Redes sociales, cultura y poder: Ensayos de antropología latinoamericana (Ciudad de México, 1994), 19–46. 21 A similar phenomenon to what happened with radicalism in Argentina. See Ezequiel Adamovsky, “Acerca de la relación entre el radicalismo argentino y la ‘clase media’ (una vez más),” Hispanic American Historical Review 89, no. 2 (2009): 209–51. 22 For example, Amanda Labarca, “Apuntes para estudiar la clase media en Chile,” Atenea XCIX: 305–6 (1950): 255–56; Raúl Alarcón Pino, La clase media en Chile: Orígenes, características e influencias, (Santiago, 1947); and Julio Vega, “La clase media en Chile,” in Materiales para el estudio de la clase media en la América Latina, vol. III. 23 Partido Demócrata Cristiano, El gobierno y la clase media (Santiago, 1967). 24 Regarding the ANEF, see Azun Candina, Clase media, Estado y sacrificio: La Agrupación Nacional de Empleados Fiscales en Chile contemporáneo (1943–1983) (Santiago, 2013). 25 Flora Collantes Espinoza, Los colegios profesionales (Santiago, 1962). 26 Rafael Cumsille Zapapa, Recordando . . . mi vida. De Don Arturo Alessandri Palma a Don Ricardo Lagos Escobar (Santiago, 2005), 15; “El camionero: Un soldado siempre alerta en defensa de los intereses de nuestro gremio,” El Camionero. Órgano Oficial de la Confederación de Sindicatos de Dueños de Camiones de Chile (henceforth El Camionero), año I, no. 8 (December 1971): 20. 27 On the political importance of the Freemasonry, see Fernando Pinto Lagarrigue, La masonería, su influencia en Chile: Ensayo histórico, político y social (Santiago, 1966). 28 Cited in Guillermo Campero, Los gremios empresariales en el período 1970–1983: Comportamiento sociopolítico y orientaciones ideológicas (Santiago, 1984), 42. 29 Azun Candina, “Studying Other Memories: The Colegio Médico de Chile under Socialism, Dictatorship, and Democracy, 1970–1990,” Latin American Perspectives 43, no. 6 (2016): 75–87; Vida Médica. Publicación Oficial del Colegio Médico de Chile, vol. XXIII, no. 1 (January 1971): 19 (henceforth Vida Médica); Juan Gonzalo Rocha, Allende, masón: La visión de un profano (Santiago, 2000), 65. 30 “Discurso pronunciado por el Presidente de la Confederación del Comercio Detallista y la Pequeña Industria de Chile, don Rafael Cumsille Z.,” Revista Oficial del Comercio Detallista y de la Pequeña Industria de Chile, no. 8, June–July 1971, 1–2 (henceforth Revista Oficial del Comercio Detallista). 31 El Camionero, no. 1, May 1971, 44; “Se nos hizo justicia,” El Camionero, no. 3, July 1971, 1. 32 Walden F. Bello, The Roots and Dynamics of Revolution and Counterrevolution in Chile (Princeton, NJ, 1975), 412–13. 33 “Sesión en 22 de enero de 1971,” Actas del Consejo General, 1971. Archivo del Colegio de Abogados (henceforth ACAb). 34 “Se realizó Primera Convención nacional de Médicos de Izquierda,” Vida Médica (Santiago), vol. XXIII, no. 5, mayo 1971, 24. 35 “Contubernio DC-PN en elecciones Colegio Abogados,” El Siglo, April 2, 1971, 3. 36 “El caso de los ingenieros,” La Prensa, March 14, 1973, 3. 37 Peter Winn, La revolución chilena (Santiago, 2014), 100; Sergio Bitar, Transición, socialismo y democracia: La experiencia chilena (Ciudad de México, 1979), 67–127. 38 “Comerciantes plantearon inquietudes a Vuskovic,” La Tercera de la Hora, October 28, 1971, 6; “Ministro de Economía en la Confederación,” Revista Oficial del Comercio Detallista, no. 10, November 1971–January 1972; and “La pequeña industria y el gobierno popular,” La Tercera de la Hora, October 31, 1971, 21. 39 Francisca Espinosa Muñoz, “‘La batalla de la merluza’: Política y consumo alimenticio en el Chile de la Unidad Popular (1970–1973),” Historia 51, no. I (2018): 31–54; and Joshua Frens-String, “Communists, Commissars, and Consumers: The Politics of Food on the Chilean Road to Socialism,” Hispanic American Historical Review 98, no. 3 (2018): 471–501. 40 For detailed accounts of that event, see Joaquín Fermandois, La revolución inconclusa: La izquierda chilena y el gobierno de la Unidad Popular (Santiago, 2013), 519–36; and Power, Right-Wing Women in Chile, chapter 5. 41 “Discurso del Presidente Nacional Don Rafael Cumsille en el Teatro Caupolicán”; and Enrique Neiman, “Los parias se rebelan,” Revista Oficial del Comercio Detallista, año IV, no. 10, November 1971–January 1972, 24. 42 “El almacenero no tiene la culpa,” La Tercera de la Hora, May 18, 1972, 7, among many others. 43 “Sesión extraordinaria de 9 de mayo de 1972,” Actas del Consejo General, 1972, ACAb: 1–2. 44 “Comentarios a una carta pública” and “Amparo al Ingeniero Enrique Barriga,” Ingenieros. Revista del Colegio de Ingenieros, no. 60, año XII, June–July 1972: 4–5, 14 (henceforth Ingenieros); “Profesionales de Sindelen afectados por ocupación,” La Tercera de la Hora, May 18, 1972, 2. 45 “Médicos cansados de agresiones,” Las Últimas Noticias, May 4, 1972, 4; “La protesta médica,” El Mercurio, May 7, 1972, 41; “Bases respaldan decisión de postergar el paro médico,” El Mercurio, May 9, 1972, 17. 46 “Escalada contra los profesionales,” El Mercurio, July 20, 1972, 17; “Los colegios profesionales tendrán más respaldo legal,” La Tercera de la Hora, August 14, 1972, 7; and “Se fundó la Confederación Única de Profesionales,” El Mercurio, December 8, 1971, 20. 47 “S.E. denunció que se gesta conspiración contra el gobierno,” El Mercurio, September 15, 1972, 1. 48 Cited in “Primer Paro Nacional en 19 años,” El Camionero, año II, no. 18, October 1972, 18. 49 “Así se generó el paro que conmocionaría al país,” El Camionero, año II, no. 18, October 1972, 40. 50 Moisés Pastrián, a truck driver leader from Santiago and national president of the confederation only while Vilarín was in prison, claimed this at the time and maintains this until today. Author’s interview with Moisés Pastrián, Santiago, September 22, 2016. 51 See the 1975 report issued by the “Church Committee” in the United States Senate, titled Covert Action in Chile, 1963–1973. Staff Report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, in https://www.tni.org/en/archives/act/4113 (viewed on July 15, 2019.) Relying on anonymous sources, some US journalists claimed the CIA did massively funded the October strike. “C.I.A. Is Linked to Strikes in Chile That Beset Allende,” New York Times, September 20, 1974, 1. On the massive US intervention in Chile during the 1960s and 1970s from an analytical, historiographical perspective, see Kristian Gustafson, Hostile Intent: U.S. Covert Operations in Chile, 1964–1974 (Washington, DC, 2007). 52 “Duelo Nacional del Comercio,” Revista Oficial del Comercio Detallista, año IV, no. 13, August 1972–January 1973, 9. 53 “La guerra de las cortinas,” Ercilla, August 23–29, 1972, 9–12. 54 “Desplazamiento del Comercio Detallista,” El Mercurio, October 7, 1972, 3. 55 “Sesión extraordinaria en 17 de octubre de 1972,” Actas del Consejo General, 1972, ACAb, 2–3. 56 “Crónica de un paro,” Ingenieros, año XII, no. 61, August–December 1972, 8. 57 “Ingenieros apoyan al Gobierno Popular,” Noticias de Última Hora, August 10, 1972, 3; “Los ingenieros de la UP le dan duro al Colegio,” Puro Chile, August 12, 1972, 5. 58 In small towns such as Loncoche, in the south of the country, left-wing merchant groups organized to support and oversight work of the JAPs, receiving, in return, the support of regional authorities. “Carta de Eduardo Brito Salas, Gobernador del Departamento de Villarrica, a Daniel Vergara Bustos, subsecretario del Ministerio del Interior,” Loncoche, October 31 1972, Intendencia de Cautín, vol. 442, Archivo Regional de la Araucanía (henceforth, ARA). 59 “Para que Chile reanude su marcha,” Tribuna, October 23, 1972, 6. 60 “Suspendido el paro nacional,” El Camionero, año II, no. 19, November 1972, 1. 61 Patricio García, Los gremios patronales (Santiago, 1973), 9. 62 “Protesta la mayoría,” El Mercurio, October 29, 1972, 21. 63 In this regard, see J. Pablo Silva, “Rethinking Aspects of Class Relations in Twentieth-Century Chile,” in Latin America’s Middle Class, 176–91. 64 “Primer Mensaje del Presidente Allende ante el Congreso Pleno, 21 de mayo de 1971” and “Segundo Mensaje del Presidente Allende ante el Congreso Pleno, 21 de mayo de 1972,” both available at: https://www.bcn.cl/historiapolitica/congreso_nacional/cuentas_publicas/detalle?tipo=presidentes (viewed on January 5, 2016). Allende repeated these concepts on multiple occasions, guaranteeing the existence of a “private property sector” for the middle sectors and promised subsidies and aid for their development. See, among others, “Salvador Allende: Entrevista concedida a Radio Portales. 10 de septiembre de 1972,” in La izquierda chilena (1969–1973): Documentos para el estudio de su línea estratégica, ed. Víctor Farías, vol. III (Berlin, 2000). 65 Manuel Cabieses, “Izquierda inicia debate sobre los métodos para ganarse a las capas medias,” Las Noticias de Última Hora, January 18, 1972, 3. Other important articles on this extensive controversy are: José Cademártori, “Cómo ganarse a las capas medias,” El Siglo, January 24, 1972, 2; Isaías Montero, “Una polémica a pedido,” El Siglo, January 28, 1972, 2; Manuel Cabieses, “Proposiciones para ganar capas medias,” Las Noticias de Última Hora, February 7, 1972, 5; and “Manuel Cabieses: Primero hay que ganarse a la clase trabajadora,” Punto Final, February 1, 1972, 23. 66 “Unidad Popular (Comité Nacional): la Declaración de El Arrayán (9 de febrero de 1972),” in La izquierda chilena (1969–1973), vol. III, 1988. 67 “El partido de Baltra,” Punto Final, no. 151, February 15, 1972, 6. 68 Alberto Baltra, “Traición a la clase media,” Qué Pasa, no. 84, November 23, 1972, 18–19. 69 The articles published in Occidente, between the numbers 234 and 244, were later published as a book: Julio Sepúlveda Rondanelli, La clase media o “pequeña burguesía” (Santiago, 1973). 70 For two divergent interpretations on these failed negotiations, see Fermandois, La revolución inconclusa, chapter XXV; and Ian Roxborough, Jacqueline Roddick, and Philip J O’Brien, Chile: The State and Revolution (London, 1977), chapters 8–9. 71 “La gran tarea: Responder a la prepotencia del marxismo en absolutamente todos los terrenos,” Tribuna, September 25, 1972, 9. 72 “Fortalecer la Confederación Democrática,” El Mercurio, September 26, 1972, 6. 73 Intervención de Patricio Aylwin, Sesión Especial No. 25, Sesiones del Senado, 26 October 1972. Available at: www.bcn.cl (viewed on December 11, 2018). 74 Claudio Orrego Vicuña, El paro nacional: Vía chilena contra el totalitarismo (Santiago, 1972), 11 and 22. 75 “Jaime Guzmán y el desafío gremial,” Qué Pasa, October 26, 1972, 39. 76 Campero, Los gremios empresariales en el período 1970–1983, 74–75. 77 “El hombre de la empresa privada,” Ercilla, April 19–25, 1972, 8. 78 “Un discurso de coraje,” PEC, January, 14, 1972, 10. 79 These ideas may be found in the following articles: “El riñón de la clase media,” Ercilla, September, 13–20, 1972, 9–12; “¿Quién se queda con las capas medias?” Qué Pasa, February 10, 1972, 7–8; “El destino de la clase media,” El Mercurio, February 4, 1972, 3; “La clase media: Fiel de la balanza,” El Mercurio, February 15, 1972, 3; “No dan cabida a la clase media,” El Mercurio, November 20, 1972, 17; “Trabajadores y Profesionales,” La Segunda, December 12, 1972, 4; “La moral profesional,” El Mercurio, November 1, 1972, 3; and “La gran clase media,” El Mercurio, March 3, 1972, 3, among others. 80 “¿Cambió o no el gobierno popular?” Punto Final, November 21, 1972, 2; Manuel Cabieses, “La insurrección de la burguesía,” Punto Final, October 24, 1972, 2–5; “El cristianismo de la pequeña burguesía,” Punto Final, July 31, 1973, 19. 81 “La clase media: Tonta útil de la burguesía,” Testimonio, September 15, 1972, 9. 82 To mention one example, in the April 1973 elections of the Engineers Professional Association, CODE candidates obtained 92.3 percent of the vote. “Nueva derrota UP en Colegio de Ingenieros,” La Prensa, April 29, 1973. 83 For example, Luis Zanzi, Juan Jara, Alejandro Silva Bascuñán and Eduardo Arriagada, presidents of small manufacturers, taxi drivers, lawyers and engineers respectively, were Christian democrats. “Chile tiene destino,” Qué Pasa, December 21, 1972, 22–23. 84 “Gobierno cambia ingenieros chilenos por rusos,” La Prensa, July 16, 1973, 4; “Médicos y auxiliares extranjeros,” Vida Médica, no. 7, July 1973, 31. 85 “Atentados,” Vida Médica, no. 7, July 1973, 11. This was probably a made-up attack since there were no left-wing groups with this name at that time. 86 “Comando nacional de acción gremial,” La Tercera de la Hora, March 5, 1973, 16. 87 Campero, Los gremios empresariales en el período 1970–1983, 77. 88 “Francmasonería y Fuerzas Armadas,” Tribuna, October 20, 1972, 4; “Carta a la Gran Logia de Chile,” Sepa, November 30, 1972, 7; “Incompatibilidad entre masonería y marxismo,” La Segunda, May 28, 1972, 3; “Marxismo y masonería,” La Tercera de la Hora, June 2, 1972, 3; “Entrevista de Federico Willoughby al Gran Maestro de la Gran Logia de Chile, René García Valenzuela,” Las Últimas Noticias, June 9, 1973, 6. 89 “Las autoridades nos llevan por el camino de octubre,” “Confederación apela a la Contraloría por requisición ilegal de camiones,” “Tomadas cinco radioemisoras,” “Carta de las mujeres transportistas a presidentes de ambas ramas del Congreso,” all of which may be found in El Camionero, no. 23, June–July–August, 1973, 1–80; and “Baleados transportistas de campamento ‘La Marquesa’ de Leyda por Carabineros” and “Funerales del mártir de Leyda, Mario Montuscky Brito,” in El Camionero, no. 24, September–October–November, 1973, 10–13. 90 Tomás Moulián coined the term “fascistization of the middle layers” to refer to this phenomenon. Tomás Moulian, “Las relaciones entre la Unidad Popular y las capas medias,” in Democracia y Socialismo (Santiago, 1983), 61. 91 “Sesión en 3 de septiembre de 1973,” Actas del Consejo General, 1973, ACAb, 2. 92 “Histórica intervención del Colegio Médico de Chile,” Vida Médica, no. 9, September 1973, 17. 93 Campero, Los gremios empresariales en el período 1970–1983, 86. 94 “Carta de Mario Videla, Logia ‘Evoluciona’ No. 46, Osorno, a Eduardo Plaza de los Reyes, Gran Secretario General de la Gran Logia de Chile,” September 10, 1973, Correspondencia Gran Secretario General, 1972 a 1973, box 57, Archivo de la Gran Logia de Chile (AGLCh); “Los médicos expulsan al Dr. Allende,” Tribuna, August 16, 1973, 20. © The Author(s) 2019. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. 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