A Conflict in Chile Over Minerals Needed for Clean Energy
A mining venture that improves the environment? That’s the image Aclara Resources, a Peruvian mining company seeking to extract rare earth elements in the BioBio region of Chile, tries to project....
View ArticleChile, a Left Without the People Is Doomed to Fail
Nearly two weeks after the election of the Convention of Conventions, with an overwhelming victory for the Chilean ultra-right, I share six reflections with the aim of contributing to the analysis of...
View ArticleKissinger’s Bloody Paper Trail in Chile
As Henry Kissinger reaches 100 years of age on May 27, Chileans are preparing to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the bloody military coup that the former US national security adviser helped...
View ArticleSouth America’s War Criminals Face a Growing Clamor for Justice
Thousands of people took to the streets across Uruguay on May 20 to participate in the March of Silence, a yearly event that commemorates those who were disappeared during the military dictatorship...
View ArticleHanding Power Over to Those Who Defend Pinochet’s Constitution
(Image: Gobierno de Chile – CC BY 3.0 CL) The results of the election on May 7th to form the 51 members of the Constitutional Council who will finalize the drafting of the new Constitution represent a...
View ArticleIn Chile, Having A Good Constitution Doesn’t Guarantee Social Change
A conversation with Bárbara Navarrete, secretary-general of the Communist Youth of Chile. “We are a generation totally interested in taking power,” says Bárbara Navarrete, the new secretary-general of...
View ArticleHow An Eccentric English Tech Guru Helped Guide Allende’s Socialist Chile
Stafford Beer pioneered ‘cybernetic management principles’ but Pinochet’s coup saw technology turned to nefarious ends In the autumn of 1971, an ambitious young engineer from Talca, central Chile,...
View ArticleDuring the 2019 Chilean Protests, the Walls of Santiago Dreamed of a...
October 2019 is a month of paramount importance in Chile’s current political imagination. On Friday, October 18, while millionaire-turned-president Sebastián Piñera celebrated the birthday of one of...
View ArticleDefending Allende
On September 4, 1973, an enormous multitude of Chileans—I was one of them—poured into the streets of Santiago to back the besieged government of Salvador Allende. Ever since he had won the presidency...
View ArticleThe Tragedy of Allende-Era Chile: A Strong Start Countered by Imperialist...
The 50th anniversary of the first 9/11 — the military coup that overthrew the democratically elected government government headed by Socialist Party leader Salvador Allende — is this month. Chilean...
View ArticleLearning from Chile: Navigating Complexities of Political Crises
Chileans were unable to turn a national uprising into transformation of the social order. For the US there is much to learn about relationships between left government, movements, and popular...
View ArticleChile Is Still Bitterly Divided by the Legacy of Augusto Pinochet’s Dictatorship
Over thirty years after the end of the Pinochet dictatorship in 1990, the government of Chile has formally admitted responsibility for the disappearance, and presumed deaths, of over two thousand...
View Article“The Other 9/11”: Ariel Dorfman on 50th Anniversary of U.S.-Backed Coup in...
We look at the 50th anniversary of what is sometimes called the “other 9/11” — the U.S.-backed coup in Chile, when General Augusto Pinochet ousted President Salvador Allende and inaugurated almost two...
View ArticleSalvador Allende: “I Am Essentially a Man of Action”
After being elected Chile’s president in 1970, Salvador Allende discussed his background and political outlook with the French writer Régis Debray. In this excerpt from their conversations, he also...
View ArticleRemembering Salvador Allende and the Chilean Counterrevolution
When I heard that Salvador Allende won the Chilean presidential elections in September 1970 and sought to bring his country to socialism by peaceful means, I decided to do my doctoral dissertation on...
View ArticleStruggle for Memory Continues 50 Years After Chile Coup
This Monday marks 50 years since the civil-military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet in Chile. Fifty years since the bombing of the seat of government at “La Moneda,” fifty years since air force...
View ArticleChile, AFL-CIO & The 50th Anniversary of The US Backed Coup
On the 50th anniversary of the US AFL-CIO backed coup in Chile, an educational meeting sponsored by Labor Education Project On International Operations Of The AFL-CIO was held on September 10, 2023 in...
View ArticleDuck!
This year marks the anniversaries of two drastically different events that loomed all too large in my life. The first occurred a century ago in Hollywood: on October 16, 1923, Walt Disney signed into...
View ArticleMapuche Hunger Strike Reaches Crisis Point: Political Prisoners Fight for...
The renewed hunger strike of fifteen political prisoners of the Mapuche resistance movement in Chile has reached a highly critical stage. The prisoners are members of the Coordinadora Arauco-Malleco...
View ArticleFeminist and Mutual Aid in the Wake of Chilean Wildfires
“The most important thing is to take care of the place where you’re from. If you don’t, who else will?” asks Ana Paula Fuentes. She’s sitting in a deck chair surrounded by the ashes of what was her...
View ArticleLearning from Chile
In his 2021 book Time for Socialism French economist Thomas Piketty urgently made the call for “participatory socialism.” He envisioned it as a system that would preside over a fairer distribution of...
View ArticleWorkers Can Halt the War Machine
History is often understood through the stories of “great men,” reflecting capitalism’s encouragement of the individual and suspicion of the collective. Socialists, understandably, have traditionally...
View Article8M in Santiago de Chile Blooms Again
It is no exaggeration to say that this year’s International Women’s Day march, called by Santiago’s Coordinadora Feminista 8M, began with an underground rumble. Line 1 of the metro, which crosses the...
View ArticleChile “The working classes have dropped out”
As head of state since March 2022, elected with the hope of reorienting his country on the path of progressivism, Chile’s young president Gabriel Boric (38) seems rather to have refocused his politics,...
View Article“The Working Classes Have Dropped Out”
As head of state since March 2022, elected with the hope of reorienting his country on the path of progressivism, Chile’s young president Gabriel Boric (38) seems rather to have refocused his politics,...
View ArticleWhy Chile Has a Palestinian Football Team – the Bigger History
Club Deportivo Palestino, a football team, play in a uniform of white, green and red. Their stadium flies Palestinian flags and their social sports club boasts an open-air pool in the shape of pre-1948...
View ArticleFrom Privatization To Communal Water Management in Chile
One of the key demands of the movement to de-privatize water in Chile is that water should be recognized as a human right, which requires infrastructure that ensures clean water and access to it. In...
View ArticleFighting for Freedom in Wallmapu
The autonomous Mapuche community of Lof Rofue lies at the end of a tree-lined gravel road off the side of the highway, a ten-minute bus ride from the town of Temuco, the capital of the Araucanía region...
View ArticleFeminist mobilizations weave intersectional resistance in Chile
At 8:30 in the morning feminists and activists gathered to offer seeds, sopaipillas (fried flour dough), and fruit to a tree in Cerro Huelén, a hill in the center of Santiago de Chile. Their offerings...
View Article“Solidarity, Coordination, and Collective Power” — An Interview with Chile’s...
Intro: Starbucks workers in Chile have been on strike for 20 days. On Friday, March 21, members of the Starbucks Workers Union held their second national assembly, meeting in person in Santiago and...
View Article