Tiempo y Espacio

The 1973 Military Dictatorship in Chilean history school textbooks 1990-2012

2025-12-18T18:30:30+00:00

The study analyzes the treatment of the 1973 Military Dictatorship in Chilean History textbooks published between 1990 and 2012. The research emphasizes the importance of textbooks as tools for transmitting knowledge and values, and how these can influence the understanding of controversial historical events by new generations. The research focuses on conceptualization by examining the terminology used to refer to the 1973-1990 period. The most frequent terms are "Military Government" and "Military Regime," while "Dictatorship" is used less frequently. Three main currents are identified: conservative (right), liberal progressive (center), and left wing, where the conservative approach predominates in most of the analyzed texts. This is observed both explicitly (in titles, narratives, images, historical sources, activities, and suggested readings) and implicitly (in the favorable or neutral treatment of certain topics), as well as in the significant variations of sources that exist between different publishers. The study concludes that, despite some progress towards a more plural presentation of the period, biases and omissions persist in school textbooks. This poses challenges for teaching recent history in Chile and the formation of a critical historical consciousness in students.

How operational asymmetry catalyzed polarization: foreign intervention in Chile, 1970–1972

2026-02-10T12:28:49+00:00

The study analyzes foreign intervention in Chile during 1970-1972 using a multilevel framework that integrates general Cold War structures, catalyzing mechanisms, and cognitive-motivational processes. The central question examines why the United States succeeded in destabilizing the government of President Salvador Allende while the Soviet Union failed to provide equivalent stabilization, despite nominally comparable credits.

The analysis develops the concept of operational asymmetry, that is, qualitative differences in available possibilities of action according to geopolitical zones of influence. The United States simultaneously deployed seven intervention mechanisms (economic pressure, party financing, media control, union support, strike support, military operations, institutional penetration), while the Soviet Union limited itself to two (commercial loans and party subsidies).

Three causal mechanisms are identified through which the intervention catalyzed internal polarization: activation of salient political identities, intensification of intergroup alienation through economic scarcity, and shifts in power that generated commitment problems. The truckers' strike in October 1972 is identified as a turning point where temporalities of varying durations converge. Based on reflective documentary analysis, the study contributes a generalizable framework for understanding interventions during the Cold War.

Duality of power and hegemonic tensions

2025-12-18T18:29:52+00:00

This research analyzes the hegemonic tensions and strategic contradictions that characterized relations between the Revolutionary Left Movement (MIR) and the Popular Unity during the government of Salvador Allende (1970-1973). Through an interpretive historical analysis based on qualitative methodology, it examines the MIR's implementation of Leninist dual power theory, which took the form of promoting popular power structures such as Cordones Industriales (Industrial Belts) and communal committees. The research uses primary sources from the MIR, government documents, and specialized literature, applying specific conceptual frameworks on dual power, hegemonic tensions, and political polarization as analytical categories for the systematic examination of historical evidence. The analysis reveals that the differences between the institutional path advocated by the UP and the popular power strategy promoted by the MIR expressed antagonistic conceptions of the nature of the state and the mechanisms of social transformation. These tensions, rather than tactical differences, constituted fundamental hegemonic contradictions that reflected the complexity of building socialist projects in democratic contexts during the Cold War. The study concludes that the coexistence of multiple left-wing political projects generated contradictory dynamics which, together with external factors, contributed to the crisis of the Chilean socialist experiment, offering insights into the dilemmas inherent in the processes of democratic transformation in Latin America.