LATIN AMERICAN POLITICAL ECONOMY

Social Protest and

Conflict in Radical
Neoliberalism
Chile, 2008–2020

Edited by
Alfredo Joignant
Nicolás M. Somma
 Latin American Political Economy

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Alfredo Joignant · Nicolás M. Somma
Editors

Social Protest
and Conflict
in Radical
Neoliberalism
Chile, 2008–2020
Editors
Alfredo Joignant Nicolás M. Somma
School of Political Science Instituto de Sociología
Diego Portales University Pontificia Universidad Católica de
Centre for Social Conflict Chile
and Cohesion Studies (COES) Centre for Social Conflict
Santiago, Chile and Cohesion Studies (COES)
Santiago, Chile

ISSN 2945-7076 ISSN 2945-7084 (electronic)

Latin American Political Economy
ISBN 978-3-031-58131-1 ISBN 978-3-031-58132-8 (eBook)
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 Contents

Introduction: Making Sense of Collective Action and Protests 1

Alfredo Joignant and Nicolás M. Somma
References 7
Conflict in Chile: Frequency, Magnitude, and Evolution
of Contentious Politics, 2008–2020 9
Alfredo Joignant, Nicolás M. Somma, Matías Garretón,
and Felipe Olivares
An Overview of Contentious Actions 12
What Protesting Means: The Demands 17
Who Mobilizes and Protests? 19
Repertoires of Collective Action 27
References 30
The Singularity of the Social Uprising 33
Alfredo Joignant, Nicolás M. Somma, Matías Garretón,
Felipe Olivares, and Tomás Campos
When the Uprising is More Than a Protest: Frequency 35
Protagonists of the Uprising 38
Magnitude of the Uprising, Repertoires of Collective Action,
and Police Control 41
Conclusion 44
References 47

v
vi CONTENTS

Labor Organizations and Protest: Reflections

on the Fragmentation of Unions, Union Pluralism,
and Strikes 49
Pablo Pérez-Ahumada and Francisca Gutiérrez-Crocco
Social Organizations and the Increase in Social Protest in Chile 52
Models of Labor Union Organization and Strikes 56
Union Pluralism, Fragmentation of Workers’ Organizations,
and Strikes: An Exploratory Empirical Analysis of the Chilean
Case 59
Conclusion 64
Appendix 65
References 66
Conflict About Pensions in Chile: Construction
and Development of a Social Movement 71
Ignacio Díaz and Felipe Olivares
Recent History of Chile’s Pension System 73
Development of the Pension Movement in Chile 75
First Milestone of the Conflict: Creation of an Organization
Against AFPs 77
Second Milestone: Politicization of the Conflict 80
Third Milestone: Spread of Demands 84
Conclusions 91
References 92
Varieties of Student Protests in Chile 95
Nicolás M. Somma
Introduction 95
The Student Movement as a by-Product Movement 97
How Have Student Protests Changed Over Time? 99
Which Tactics Do Students Prefer? 101
What Do Students Want? 103
Do Students Support Non-Educational Demands? 105
Do Other Groups Support Student Demands? 107
Targets, Size, and Organizations 108
The Secondary School vs. University Cleavage 109
Want a Big Protest? 112
Conclusions 113
References 115
 CONTENTS vii

Socio-Territorial Mobilization in Chile in Light

of the Analysis of Protest Events, 2008–2020 119
Antoine Maillet, Mathilde Allain, Sebastián Carrasco,
Gonzalo Delamaza, and Joaquín Rozas
Introduction 119
Socio-Territorial Mobilization and Conflict: Conceptual
Clarifications About the Chilean Case 121
Some Conceptual Clarifications 122
The Study of Socio-Territorial Mobilization in Chile 122
Methodology and Data 125
The Importance of Socio-Territorial Protests in Mobilization
in Chile, 2008–2020 127
Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Socio-Territorial Protests 127
Characteristics of Socio-Territorial Protests: Targets and Tactics 131
Socio-Territorial Mobilization and the Political Context:
Contributions of the Study of Protests 134
Socio-Territorial Protests in the October 2019 Uprising 134
Conclusion: Socio-Territorial Conflicts in the Framework
of Mobilization in Chile 139
References 140
Gender Protests and Transgressive Tactics 145
Rodolfo Disi Pavlic, Valentina Paredes,
and Catherine Reyes-Housholder
Determinants of Transgressive Tactics in Protests Motivated
by Gender Issues 150
Demands 150
Groups Involved 153
Research Design 156
Results 160
Conclusions 165
References 166
The Sociohistorical Dynamics of the Conflict Between
the State of Chile and the Mapuche People in Gulumapu 173
Sergio Caniuqueo and Claudio Fuentes
Historical Context: Structural Changes, Development
Expectations, and Conflicts with the Mapuche People 174
Post-dictatorship Public Policies 176
Recent Contentious Dynamics 180
viii CONTENTS

Contentious Events, 2008–2020 184

Conclusions 193
References 194
A Decade of Memories in Conflict: The Irruption of New
Temporalities in Human Rights Protests in Chile 197
Carolina Aguilera and Manuela Badilla Rajevic
Social Movements, Protests, and Memory Processes 200
The Past That Does Not Pass: Dictatorship and Memory
of Neoliberal Violence 203
Memories of Police Violence in Democracy: Human Rights
as a Framework for Recent Protests in Chile 208
Attacks on Monuments: Multidirectional Displacement Towards
the Colonial Past 211
Conclusions 214
References 215
Conclusions: What We Know and What We Don’t
Know—Dynamics, Cycles, Contentious Mechanisms,
and Future Agendas 221
Nicolás M. Somma and Alfredo Joignant
General Dynamics of Contentious Actions 223
Protest Connections 225
Contentious Mechanisms 230
Future Agendas 233
References 234
 List of Contributors

Carolina Aguilera Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Estudios

Urbanos, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile & Centre for Social
Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
Mathilde Allain Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris, France
Manuela Badilla Rajevic Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile & Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies
(COES), Santiago, Chile
Tomás Campos Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo/
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Santiago, Chile
Sergio Caniuqueo Centre for Intercultural and Indigenous Rights
(CIIR) & School of Political Science, Universidad Diego Portales,
Santiago, Chile
Sebastián Carrasco School of Government, Universidad San Sebastián,
Santiago, Chile
Gonzalo Delamaza CEDER, Universidad de Los Lagos & Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Osorno, Chile
Rodolfo Disi Pavlic Escuela de Gobierno, Universidad Adolfo
Ibáñez & Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES),
Santiago, Chile

ix
x LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Ignacio Díaz Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES),
Santiago, Chile
Claudio Fuentes Centre for Intercultural and Indigenous Rights
(CIIR) & School of Political Science, Universidad Diego Portales,
Santiago, Chile
Matías Garretón Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
Francisca Gutiérrez-Crocco Universidad Austral de Chile & Centre
for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
Alfredo Joignant School of Political Science, Diego Portales
University, Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES),
Santiago, Chile
Antoine Maillet Faculty of Government, Universidad de Chile,
Santiago, Chile;
Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago,
Chile
Felipe Olivares Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies
(COES), Santiago, Chile
Valentina Paredes Departamento de Economía, Universidad de
Chile & Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES),
Santiago, Chile
Pablo Pérez-Ahumada Universidad de Chile & Centre for Social
Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
Catherine Reyes-Housholder Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia
Universidad Católica & Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies
(COES), Santiago, Chile
Joaquín Rozas Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
Nicolás M. Somma Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile, Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies
(COES), Santiago, Chile
 List of Figures

Conflict in Chile: Frequency, Magnitude, and Evolution of

Contentious Politics, 2008–2020
Fig. 1 Frequency of contentious actions in Chile by year,
2008–2020 13
Fig. 2 Frequency of contentious actions by region, 2008–2020 15
Fig. 3 Frequency of contentious actions per 100,000 inhabitants
by region, 2008–2020 16
Fig. 4 Frequency of contentious actions by type of demand,
2008–2020 18
Fig. 5 Frequency of demands aggregated into four types,
2008–2020 20
Fig. 6 Frequency of target of protests, 2008–2020 21
Fig. 7 Frequency of unique social groups in mobilizations
and protests, 2008–2020 22
Fig. 8 Frequency of combined social groups in mobilizations
and protests, 2008–2020 24
Fig. 9 Proportion of mobilizations by number of social
organizations behind them, 2008–2020 25
Fig. 10 Estimated size of mobilizations, 2008–2020 Note Out
of the 22,605 protest events, there is information
about the number of participants (number or estimate)
for 14,906 events. For 7,699 events (34%), this information
could not be found 26

xi
xii LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 11 Repertoires of collective action and police tactics

for restoring order, 2008–2020 Note Considering
the theory of protest control (Earl, 2003; Earl & Soule,
2006; Soule & Davenport, 2009), police conduct is divided
into that implying violent action (direct clashes, use of tear
gas and water cannons, use of fire arms) and that which
sought to establish negotiated control of public order
(only arrests and a police presence during the demonstration) 28
Fig. 12 Proxy variables for violence: people injured and deaths
in contentious events, 2008–2020 Notes 1. The frequency
of injuries and deaths considers: (1) demonstrators; (2)
third parties not involved in the protest; (3) police. 2.
The frequency of injuries and deaths refers to contentious
actions in which there were injuries or deaths, not the total
number of injuries or deaths in those protests 29

The Singularity of the Social Uprising

Fig. 1 Frequency of contentious actions in Chile by fortnight,
July 1, 2019–March 13, 2020 36
Fig. 2 Comparison of frequency of protests pre- and post-uprising,
2018–2019/2019–2020, by fortnight 37
Fig. 3 Frequency of contentious actions, October 18, 2019–March
13, 2020 40
Fig. 4 Estimated size of mobilizations, by fortnight, October 18,
2019–March 13, 2020 42
Fig. 5 Evolution of repertoires of collective action and police
control, by fortnight, July 1, 2019–March 13, 2020 43
Fig. 6 Evolution of repressive and police control repertoires,
by fortnight (18 October 2019–13 March 2020) Note
Considering the theory of protest control (Earl, 2003;
Earl & Soule, 2010; McPhail & McCarthy, 2005; Soule &
Davenport, 2009) and for the purposes of analysis, police
conduct is divided into that implying violent action (direct
clashes, deployment of tear gas and water cannons, use
of fire arms) and that which sought to establish negotiated
control of public order (only arrests and a only police
presence during the demonstration) 45
 LIST OF FIGURES xiii

Fig. 7 Proxy variables for violence: people injured and deaths,

by fortnight (18 October 2019–13 March 2020) Notes
1. The frequency of injuries and deaths considers: (1)
demonstrators; (2) third parties not involved in the protest;
(3) police. 2. The frequency of injuries and deaths
refers to contentious actions in which there were injuries
or deaths, not the total number of injuries or deaths
in those protests 46

Labor Organizations and Protest: Reflections on the

Fragmentation of Unions, Union Pluralism, and Strikes
Fig. 1 Number of contentious actions, 2008–2020 (Source
Compiled by authors based on data from the Observatory
of Conflicts, COES) 53
Fig. 2 Organizational density of contentious actions,
2008–2020 (Source Compiled by authors based on data
from the Observatory of Conflicts, COES) 55
Fig. 3 Percentage of contentious actions by number
of organizations present, 2008–2020 (Source Compiled
by authors based on data from the Observatory
of Conflicts, COES) 56
Fig. 4 Number of active unions and number of strikes
(average values), 2011–2019 (Note The figures represent
the following economic sectors: 1. Agriculture, animal
farming, silviculture, and fishing; 2. Mining and quarrying;
3. Manufacturing; 4. Electricity, gas, and water supply; 5.
Construction; 6. Commerce; 7. Hotels and restaurants; 8.
Transport, warehousing, and communications; 9. Financial
intermediation; 10. Real estate, business, and rental
activities; 11. Public administration and defense; 12.
Teaching; 13. Social and health services; 14. Private homes
with domestic service; 15. Extra-territorial organizations
and bodies; 16. Other service activities) 60
xiv LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 5 Size of unions and number of strikes (average values),

2011–2019 (Note The figures represent the following
economic sectors: 1. Agriculture, animal farming,
silviculture, and fishing; 2. Mining and quarrying; 3.
Manufacturing; 4. Electricity, gas, and water supply; 5.
Construction; 6. Commerce; 7. Hotels and restaurants; 8.
Transport, warehousing, and communications; 9. Financial
intermediation; 10. Real estate, business, and rental
activities; 11. Public administration and defense; 12.
Teaching; 13. Social and health services; 14. Private homes
with domestic service; 15. Extra-territorial organizations
and bodies; 16. Other service activities) 61
Fig. 6 Labor union density and number of strikes (average values),
2011–2019 (Note The figures represent the following
economic sectors: 1. Agriculture, animal farming,
silviculture, and fishing; 2. Mining and quarrying; 3.
Manufacturing; 4. Electricity, gas, and water supply; 5.
Construction; 6. Retail; 7. Hotels and restaurants; 8.
Transport, warehousing, and communications; 9. Financial
intermediation; 10. Real estate, business, and rental
activities; 11. Public administration and defense; 12.
Teaching; 13. Social and health services; 14. Private homes
with domestic service; 15. Extra-territorial organizations
and bodies; 16. Other service activities) 66

Conflict About Pensions in Chile: Construction and

Development of a Social Movement
Fig. 1 Percentage of contentious actions of protest about pensions
and frequency of total protests in Chile, 2008–2020 76
Fig. 2 Presence of other demands in protests about pensions,
2008–2020 79
Fig. 3 Percentage of contentious actions in conflict over pensions
in which the No+AFP Coordinator was present, 2013–2020 81
Fig. 4 Frequency of participants in protests about pensions
by year, 2008–2019 (up to October 17, 2019) 85
Fig. 5 Frequency of tactics used in contentious actions
in the pension conflict, 2008–2020 86
Fig. 6 Frequency of the presence of demands in contentious
actions, October 18, 2019–March 13, 2020 88
 LIST OF FIGURES xv

Fig. 7 Percentage of protests about pensions in which the No +

AFP Coordinator was present, 2013–2019 (up to October
17) and 2019 (as from October 18)–2020 90

Varieties of Student Protests in Chile

Fig. 1 Evolution of student protests in Chile (Source Observatory
of Conflicts, COES) 100
Fig. 2 Tactical repertoire of student vs. non-student protests,
2008–2020 (Source Observatory of Conflicts, COES.
The bars show the percentage of student events using
the corresponding tactic [thus, they do not add up to 100%]) 102
Fig. 3 Principal demands in student protests, 2008–2020 (Source
Observatory of Conflicts, COES) 104
Fig. 4 Predicted probabilities of presence of demands in protests,
by student wing, 2008–2020 (Source Observatory
of Conflicts, COES) 110
Fig. 5 Predicted size of student protests with different student
wings, demands, and tactics, 2008–2020 (Source
Observatory of Conflicts, COES) 114

Socio-Territorial Mobilization in Chile in Light of the

Analysis of Protest Events, 2008–2020
Fig. 1 Distribution of socio-territorial protests vs. other
protests, 2008–2020 (** The differences in the number
of socio-territorial protests over time are statistically
significant [test X 2 , p-value < 0.01]. Source Compiled
by authors based on data from the COES Observatory
of Conflicts [2008–2020]) 129
Fig. 2 Distribution of socio-territorial protests by region,
2008–2020 (** The differences in the proportion
of socio-territorial protests by the region in which they
occurred are statistically significant [one-way Anova test,
p-value < 0.01]. Source Compiled by authors based on data
from the COES Observatory of Conflicts [2008–2020]) 130
xvi LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 3 Distribution of the principal targets of socio-territorial

protests and other protests, 2008–2020 (** The differences
in the proportion of each of the targets of protests
by socio-territorial protest (=1) are statistically significant
(test X 2 , p-value < 0.01), with the exception of protests
targeting a foreign government or state. Source Compiled
by authors based on data from the COES Observatory
of Conflicts [2008–2020]) 133
Fig. 4 Percentage distribution of the presence of political parties
in socio-territorial protests and other protests, 2008–2020
(** The differences in the proportion of political parties’
presence in socio-territorial protests are statistically
significant [test X 2 , p-value < 0.1]. Source Compiled
by authors based on data from the COES Observatory
of Conflicts [2008–2020]) 135
Fig. 5 Percentage distribution of socio-territorial and other
protests during the social uprising (** The differences
in the number of socio-territorial protest events (=1)
by month of 2019–2020 are statistically significant (one-way
Anova test, p-value < 0.01). Source Compiled by authors
based on data from the COES Observatory of Conflicts
[2008–2020]) 137

Gender Protests and Transgressive Tactics

Fig. 1 Frequency of protests with gender demands, 2008–2020 148
Fig. 2 Gender protests: sub-group type and transgressive rates 149
Fig. 3 Predicted probabilities by demands, gender demands,
and groups, with 95% confidence intervals 164

The Sociohistorical Dynamics of the Conflict Between the

State of Chile and the Mapuche People in Gulumapu
Fig. 1 Contentious events related to indigenous peoples,
2008–2020 (Milestones: [1] Catrileo case, [2] application
of Anti-Terrorism Law, Mendoza case, [3] hunger strike
and government commission, [4] Luchsinger-Mackay case,
[5] Tralcal case, [6] Catrillanca case) 186
Fig. 2 Contentious events by geographical zone, 2008–2020 187
Fig. 3 Importance of Araucanía Region with respect to southern
zone 188
 LIST OF FIGURES xvii

Fig. 4 Average number of participants in contentious events,

2008–2020 189
Fig. 5 Protest tactics (percentage of total in each year) 190
Fig. 6 Selected protest tactics, 2008–2020 191

A Decade of Memories in Conflict: The Irruption of New

Temporalities in Human Rights Protests in Chile
Fig. 1 Memory protest events: commemoration of September 11
and the Day of the Young Combatant (DYC), 2008–2020 204
Fig. 2 Commemorations of September 11 and the Day
of the Young Combatant, by region 204
Fig. 3 Violent and non-violent tactics to commemorate September
11 and the Day of the Young Combatant, 2008–2020 206
 List of Tables

Labor Organizations and Protest: Reflections on the

Fragmentation of Unions, Union Pluralism, and Strikes
Table 1 Unionization by economic sector (average values),
2011–2019 62

Gender Protests and Transgressive Tactics

Table 1 Descriptive statistics 157
Table 2 Gender protests and transgressive tactics 161
Table 3 Gender protests, progressive demands, and transgressive
tactics 163

The Sociohistorical Dynamics of the Conflict Between the

State of Chile and the Mapuche People in Gulumapu
Table 1 Institutional and public security milestones 183
Table 2 Tactics, critical junctures, and institutional response 191

xix
xx LIST OF TABLES

A Decade of Memories in Conflict: The Irruption of New

Temporalities in Human Rights Protests in Chile
Table 1 Commemorations of victims of human rights violations
in democracy, 2008–2020 209
Table 2 Colonial and nineteenth-century national monuments
altered during the uprising 212
 Introduction: Making Sense of Collective
Action and Protests

Alfredo Joignant and Nicolás M. Somma

For a long time, the social sciences have known that conflicts explain
much of what moves societies and their transformations and dynamism.
Marx saw it: the class struggle is the engine of history, a fundamental
assertion that, however, fails to capture all the groups that, in the twenty-
first century, complain and protest. Conflicts involving different social
groups and what we refer to here as the “contentious actions” that take
place in the public space can have different expressions: from protests
within a country’s laws through to disturbances and different orga-
nized manifestations of discontent and the almost volcanic eruptions
that convulse daily life and overspill the state. The notion of “reper-
toire” of collective action (Tilly, 2007) captures and clearly describes

A. Joignant (B)
School of Political Science, Diego Portales University, Centre for Social Conflict
and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
N. M. Somma
Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_1
2 A. JOIGNANT AND N. M. SOMMA

this phenomenon by associating certain repertoires with certain groups,

implying that not all groups protest equally or in the same way. In other
words, each group protests in its own way, often appealing to traditions
that imply a memory of what protesting means for that group as well as
the reactivation of certain ways of expressing demands in public. This is
why, during the first two-thirds of the twentieth century, the working class
was able to protest (and, at the same time, represent itself as a group with
a strong identity) in analogous ways in different national settings. Take,
for example, the extraordinary similarity of commemorations of May 1
across different countries, which means that the notion of repertoire refers
to the working class’s culture of protest.
With the rise of new social movements since the end of the 1960s and,
after them, social movements with their origin in causes and identities
rather than in class, the specialized literature has been able to observe
the invention of previously relatively unknown repertoires of collective
action. Although, faced with the originality of these repertoires, some
social scientists succumbed to the spell of the forms of protest (from the
circus-like charivari to the heavily theatrical performance), it seems unde-
niable that there is something unprecedented in how social movements
are expressing and manifesting themselves.
The contentious events in Chile between 2008 and 2020 are part
of a broader continental context. They share common causes, such as
general discontent due to inequality or poverty (though causality is diffi-
cult to prove). Mobilizations are also driven by identities of historically
marginalized groups, like ethnicity or sexual minority status. Disaffec-
tion with institutional politics and a vague malaise with democracy
also contribute (Joignant et al., 2017). As a result, the continent has
experienced substantial social upheavals and mobilizations for the past
decade.
In this regional context, the protests and social movements that
occurred in Chile captured the attention of the public in 2006, when
thousands of high school students mobilized for several weeks, occu-
pying their own schools to demand better conditions for public education.
Although the 2006 mobilizations are not included in our dataset (they
will be so in 2024), we know they triggered a process of conflict in
the country that periodically gives rise to sequences of mobilizations
(Donoso, 2013). An indicator of the significance of the 2006 ‘pingüino’
movement is that some of its leaders eventually became party leaders
or local and government authorities. Thus, César Valenzuela became
 INTRODUCTION: MAKING SENSE OF COLLECTIVE ACTION … 3

the Vice President of the Socialist Party and an elected member of the
first Constitutional Convention in May 2021. Julio Isamit served as the
Minister of National Assets during Piñera’s second government. Karina
Delfino is now the mayor of Quinta Normal. Accordingly, following
waves of social movements led by students, in 2006 and also in 2011
(by university students), a cycle of elite circulation emerged: after the
student mobilizations of 2011–2012, five former student leaders were
elected as deputies (among them, Gabriel Boric, now Chile’s President
for the 2022–2026 term).
But this did not ensure an institutionalization of the subsequent
waves of protest. The 2019 social uprising, which shook the country
and once again put Chile in the international spotlight, did not lead
to an elite circulation comparable to the previous student mobiliza-
tions. The uprising—whose protest dynamics we examine in detail in
chapter The Singularity of The Social Uprising—triggered a renewed
effort to replace the Chilean constitution. However, the leaderships that
emerged from there mostly dispersed from the national political scene
when the proposed constitution was rejected in a national plebiscite in
September 2022.
Certainly, behind all contentious action, there are interests. They are
the main source of motivation of those who mobilize, running risks and
investing resources, time, and effort. They may be individuals or groups:
ordinary people, associations and social movements, or elementary infras-
tructure of different types, such as a group of friends, work colleagues, or
neighbors. A great diversity of groups is reflected in the different chapters
of this book, along with their “repertoires” of collective action, the scale
of their mobilizations, and their causes.
For reflecting this complexity, this book uses the dataset of protest
events developed by the Observatory of Conflicts of the Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), a Chilean inter-university
research center that brings together some one hundred researchers.
Following the pioneer effort of Charles Tilly for European protests, the
database has been constructed using press reports about contentious
actions that occurred in the public space and were covered by different
media (national and regional) around the country. We draw on previous
studies and experiences, such as the Dynamics of Collective Action
project, the Political Analysis and Prospective Scenarios Project (PAPEP)
of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and the
4 A. JOIGNANT AND N. M. SOMMA

COES’s Observatory of Labor Strikes. Based on these works, the Obser-

vatory of Conflicts analyzes in detail the conflicts (conceptualized as “con-
tentious actions”) that occurred between 2008 and 2020, as recorded by
the Chilean print media.
The unit of analysis of the data is the “contentious action” or protest
event, defined as an expression of collective malaise at a specific time
and place (Garretón et al., 2018, p. 6). The database comprises news
from the media that corresponds to the appearance in the press of the
contentious action. In a bid to ensure the widest possible territorial
coverage, 18 media outlets (five national and 13 regional) were used.
A team of researchers, specially trained to code protest events reported
by these 18 media outlets, categorized them according to a codebook
containing around 80 variables. These variables guide the researchers in
their daily analysis of each event, including its location, date, types of
organizing groups, tactics, number of participants, and more. Of course,
the events reported by the media rarely include information on all vari-
ables, as they result in descriptions based on journalists’ and media’s
observations. This leads to varying levels of precision in the descriptions.
The dataset contains more than 28,000 events that occurred between
2008 and 2020, along with over 80 variables. The dataset, codebook and
other methodological details can be accessed here: https://dataverse.har
vard.edu/dataverse/OC.
As is often the case with datasets of protest events, this database
permits systematic mapping of a large number of protests over time,
along with their place of occurrence and connection to national events
and local contexts. However, it also has an additional strength. A recur-
ring criticism of protest datasets is bias in the selection of their sources
and the geographical bias that can exist when capturing protest events
(Barranco & Wisler, 1999; Hutter, 2014; McCarthy et al., 1996; Olzak,
1989). Protest datasets are often based on one or two national newspa-
pers and, thus, underestimate contentious activity outside their territorial
framework, particularly outside regional capitals. To address this common
problem, as mentioned above, the Observatory reviews 18 media outlets
daily, enriching the database’s structure. This enables it to provide
regional information of greater complexity and to capture news not
recorded by the national media.
Before summarizing the book’s chapters, it is essential to provide
brief conceptual clarifications on the key terms used throughout the
book: social conflict, social movements, and contentious actions. Drawing
 INTRODUCTION: MAKING SENSE OF COLLECTIVE ACTION … 5

from Oberschall’s (1978) conception of social conflict, which synthesizes

various definitions in the literature, a social conflict involves interac-
tions among social aggregates (groups, organizations, communities, etc.)
competing for the distribution of material and/or symbolic rewards in a
society—rewards that are typically scarce. In these interactions, groups
recognize their adversaries, acknowledge that the attainment of their
objectives would undermine the other party’s goals, and often employ
repertoires of action that may inflict harm on the opposing side. Multiple
social aggregates can engage in conflict, such as political parties, interest
groups, state authorities, religious groups, municipal governments, or
rural communities, among others. The motivations behind conflicts can
encompass economic, ethnic, religious, or gender-related factors, to
mention the most obvious.
Social movements are just one of the several types of actors involved
in social conflicts in modern societies. According to Snow (2022), social
movements are collective actions that display a certain degree of temporal
stability and a minimum level of organization, through which discon-
tented groups pressure authorities to address their demands. These
movements, therefore, act as protagonists in conflicts that pit them against
political authorities, businesses, and other civil society groups, although
they are not universally present in all social conflicts.
On the other hand, contentious actions refer to what the literature
operationally labels as “protest events.” They can be observed and system-
atized using newspaper articles, as we did for constructing our database.
Although social movements often underlie protests, not all protests are
orchestrated by movements. For instance, a football fan group or a
transient group of public transportation users may engage in protests.
Moreover, the Chilean uprising of 2019 cannot be solely understood as
the result of actions by social movements (see Chapter The Singularity
of The Social Uprising). Naturally, social movements do more than just
protest (e.g., supporting political candidates, fundraising, or conducting
awareness campaigns on specific issues). However, given the centrality of
protest in the tactics of social movements, they hold a privileged place in
the book’s chapters. We close with chapter summaries.
In Chapter Conflict in Chile: Frequency, Magnitude, and Evolution
of Contentious Politics, 2008–2020, the authors offer a general analysis
of contentious activity in Chile between 2008 and 2020. They examine
the frequency of different contentious actions, the magnitudes involved
6 A. JOIGNANT AND N. M. SOMMA

(types and numbers of protesters), and the historical evolution of all these
episodes, identifying regularities and discontinuities.
Chapter The Singularity of The Social Uprising analyzes the social
uprising of October 2019 in all its singularity. The metrics are impres-
sive and reflect a true break with the patterns of contentious action that
had prevailed until then.
Chapter Labor Organizations and Protest: Reflections on the Fragmen-
tation of Unions, Union Pluralism, and Strikes examines the contentious
activity of workers in its most specialized expression, the strike, and,
particularly, union fragmentation and pluralism. In this chapter, the reader
can discover the ratio between the number of active unions and the
number of strikes that have taken place in both the public and private
sectors, the effect of the size of the unions, and the rate of unionization
by economic sector.
Chapter Conflict About Pensions in Chile: Construction and Devel-
opment of a Social Movement addresses mobilizations about pensions,
a specific demand that led to the emergence of a specialized social
movement, the “No + AFP Movement”, and contentious activities of
significant dimensions.
Chapter Varieties of Student Protests in Chile focuses on the great
variability of student protests, first describing their historical evolution
(with three “peaks”) before examining the type of “tactical repertoires”
used as compared to non-student repertoires, the demands expressed, and
the size of the contentious actions.
Chapter Socio-territorial Mobilization in Chile in Light of the Anal-
ysis of Protest Events, 2008–2020 analyzes socio-territorial mobilizations,
contrasting them with general protests. To this end, it examines their
distribution by region of occurrence and their relative importance during
the social uprising.
In Chapter Gender Protests and Transgressive Tactics, the authors
analyze protests in support of gender demands and their relationship
with transgressive tactics. After analyzing the frequency of these protests
using descriptive statistics, the authors identify the different repertoires of
action, looking at whether the demands are progressive or conservative
or, for example, associated with LGBT demands.
In Chapter The Sociohistorical Dynamics of the Conflict Between the
State of Chile and the Mapuche People in Gulumapu, the authors address
the thorny “Mapuche conflict” or, in other words, the mobilizations led
 INTRODUCTION: MAKING SENSE OF COLLECTIVE ACTION … 7

by the Mapuche ethnic group in Chile, particularly in the Gulumapu terri-

tory. After analyzing the conflictive relationship between the Mapuche
and the Chilean state, this chapter examines the contentious actions that
occurred between 2008 and 2020, highlighting their steady increase (in
terms of geographical distribution) and their magnitude as well as the
prevalence of certain protest tactics.
In Chapter A Decade of Memories in Conflict: The Irruption of New
Temporalities in Human Rights Protests in Chile, the authors analyze
the fascinating conflictive history of memory of human rights violations.
A stubborn memory, which persists despite the passage of time, it does,
nonetheless, mutate in the heat of contentious actions. The protests that
take place every September 11 (commemoration of the coup d’état) and
every March 29 (Day of the Young Combatant, a geographically local-
ized day of protest that commemorates the assassination of two brothers
during the dictatorship) reflect not only the inertia of memory of two
traumatic events, but also the concentration of contentious activity in
Santiago.
In the conclusions, the book’s editors highlight some recurrent
elements in general contentious activity in Chile.
This book would not have been possible without the intellectual
support of a vibrant academic community such as that of COES. At
this Centre, the two editors have learned countless things, almost daily,
thanks to contact and complicity with researchers who work with data on
protests, mobilizations, and contentious actions or, in other words, “con-
flicts” in a broad sense. In some way, what is reflected in this book is also
part of the history of COES. Hence, the importance of thanking it for its
support through the project that has made it possible: ANID/FONDAP
Project 1523A0005.

References
Barranco, J., & Wisler, D. (1999). Validity and Systematicity of Newspaper Data
in Event Analysis. European Sociological Review, 15(3), 301–322.
Donoso, S. (2013). Dynamics of Change in Chile: Explaining the Emergence
of the 2006 Pingüino Movement. Journal of Latin American Studies, 45(1),
1–29.
Garretón, M., Campos, T., Joignant, A., & Somma, N. (2018). Introducción.
Informe anual observatorio de conflictos 2018 (pp. 4–7). COES.
8 A. JOIGNANT AND N. M. SOMMA

Hutter, S. (2014). Protesting Culture and Economics in Western Countries. New

Cleavages in Left and Right Politics. University of Minnesota Press.
Joignant, A., Morales, M., & Fuentes, C. (Eds.). (2017). Malaise in Repre-
sentation in Latin American Countries: Chile, Argentina, and Uruguay.
Palgrave.
McCarthy, J. D., McPhail, C., & Smith, J. (1996). Images of Protest: Dimen-
sions of Selection Bias in Media Coverage of Washington Demonstrations,
1982 and 1991. American Sociological Review, 61(3), 478–499.
Oberschall, A. (1978). Theories of Social Conflict. Annual Review of Sociology,
4, 291–315.
Olzak, S. (1989). Analysis of Events in the Study of Collective Action. Annual
Review of Sociology, 15, 119–141.
Snow, D. A. (2022). Social Movements. In The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of
Social and Political Movements (pp. 1–8). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Tilly, C. (2007). Regimes and Repertoires. The University of Chicago Press.
 Conflict in Chile: Frequency, Magnitude,
and Evolution of Contentious Politics,
2008–2020

Alfredo Joignant, Nicolás M. Somma, Matías Garretón,

and Felipe Olivares

Democracy was restored in Chile in March 1990 after a long dictator-

ship under the iron fist of General Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). The
new democratic government, which took office on March 11, 1990, was
marked by difficult coexistence between the elected authorities (Pres-
ident of the Republic, 120 deputies, and 47 senators, of whom nine
were designated, rather than elected) and, on the other hand, the conti-
nuity of the commanders-in-chief of the armed forces (including General

A. Joignant (B)
School of Political Science, Diego Portales University, Centre for Social Conflict
and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
N. M. Somma
Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 9

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_2
10 A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

Pinochet) and the burden of a constitution (introduced in 1980) that

kept democracy under military tutelage.
In this political and institutional context, the new government inten-
tionally aimed to demobilize civil society to stabilize the transition to
democracy. This is evident in Joignant’s analysis (2012) of confidential
reports exchanged between President Aylwin and his ministers, produced
by experts combining academic and political capital (“technopols”).
These reports agreed that (1) the 1973 coup resulted from the polar-
ization, maximalism, and ideological inflation of political actors; and
that (2) there was a risk of a return to authoritarianism if polarization
increased between the far-left (which had assassinated right-wing senator
Jaime Guzmán in 1991) and the conservative bloc composed by the
military, businessmen and the political right. Therefore, it was essen-
tial to temper the expectations of human rights groups (“justice to the
extent possible”), discourage maximalist demands from workers (espe-
cially communist unions), and prevent any popular overflow whenever
possible.
The demobilization policies derived from this diagnostic weakened the
social organizations that had played a leading role in the 1980s, particu-
larly at the height of the protests against the dictatorship (1983–1986). As
noted above, these policies can be traced back to the first day of the tran-
sition in crude memos prepared by advisers to President Patricio Aylwin
(1990–1994).1 Together with the normalization of a transitional process,
there was a tacit consensus about what could be negotiated on a small
number of institutional matters. This resulted in a democracy limited by
authoritarian enclaves and with very low levels of mobilization and social

M. Garretón
Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Centre for Social Conflict and
Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
F. Olivares
Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

1 These memos are available in the archive of the Alberto Hurtado Univer-
sity: https://archivospublicos.uahurtado.cl/index.php/presidente-patricio-aylwin-azocar-
1989-1994. For an analysis of the strategic objectives pursued by the Aylwin government
and the type of knowledge requested in the memos, see Joignant (2012).
 CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE … 11

protest. This created the perception that few things were negotiable or
could be questioned publicly which, in turn, led to lasting passivity on the
part of Chilean society, making it possible for the conditions of reproduc-
tion of the development model to operate through reforms of a marginal
nature. The result was that, for around 15 years, Chile was characterized
by very low rates of mobilization and social protest, delegating the role of
guiding and leading reforms of the Chilean model to political struggles
institutionally limited by the 1980 Constitution.
This stands in sharp contrast with the situation in the rest of the conti-
nent. As Silva (2009) argues, during the 1990s and the first half of the
2000s, significant social movements emerged in Argentina, Bolivia, and
Venezuela, challenging neoliberal policies and bringing left-wing govern-
ments with transformative aspirations to power. Most other countries
also drafted new constitutions for the emerging democratic era, some
incorporating highly innovative multicultural elements (Fuentes, 2020).
In cases like Argentina and Uruguay among others, the military govern-
ments became heavily discredited, reducing their influence during the
democratic period and allowing for the reconstitution of organized civil
society without fear of authoritarian setbacks. None of this seemed to be
happening in Chile, but that was about to change.
The first great collective action occurred in 2006 in the form of mass
protests by secondary school students in demand for changes in the insti-
tutional conditions of their education: this is the origin of demand for
high-quality public education, which began to gain ground as from this
“Penguin Revolution”2 (Donoso, 2013, 2017; von Bülow & Bidegain
Ponte, 2015). In our view, it marked the start of a cycle of mobiliza-
tions, social protests, and collective action that, with ups and downs,
has continued since. The data at present available does not include the
2006 protests (a gap currently being remedied) but the observation of
contentious “actions”, “episodes”, and “processes” since 2008 provides
valuable information about subsequent waves of mobilization.

2 This odd name for the first social mobilization of importance in Chile after the
restoration of democracy is derived from the popular view that the uniform of secondary
students makes them resemble penguins.
12 A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

An Overview of Contentious Actions

In broad terms, the data of the COES Observatory of Conflicts (Fig. 1)
shows that, in 2008, social mobilizations showed a “peak” (defined as
such in light of subsequent years).3 Although quantitative comparison of
the frequency of protests in 2008 and 2006 is not possible, there is a clear
relationship between the two years because the main motivation for the
2008 protests was the discontent of student organizations with the lack
of fulfillment of the promises that had quelled the mobilizations of the
Penguin Revolution. In particular, the proposed new General Education
Law, debated by Congress in 2008, did not introduce substantive change
in the existing legal framework for education in Chile.
If we assume that the peak of 2008 was in some way an “aftershock”
of the “earthquake” of 2006 and that, together, they mark the start of an
intensification of social mobilization in the following years (Fig. 1), this
raises the question of a relationship with two other “peaks”, observed in
2011 (university student movement) and 2019 (the social uprising). It is
important to bear in mind that President Gabriel Boric, who took office in
March 2022, was a councilor of the Student Federation of the University
of Chile in 2008 and one of the most important leaders of the 2011 mobi-
lization, along with Giorgio Jackson and Camila Vallejo, both of whom
became ministers in his government, which came to power in an elec-
tion strongly influenced by the 2019 social uprising. Interestingly, after
each peak, collective action ebbs significantly in absolute terms. These
ebbs differ in length: two years after 2008, five years after 2011, and only
one year after 2019, although this latter figure should be interpreted with
caution since our database only goes up to 2020.
Figure 1 suggests a certain inter-annual rhythm of years of intense
mobilization followed by years of relative calm. This may be because
of the effects of exposure on the social actors who lead the protests or
exhaustion on the part of the demonstrators. In particular, there was
a period of relative stability, with only a moderate annual frequency of
protests, between 2012 and 2017, coinciding with the incorporation of
the principal leaders of the 2011 mobilizations into institutional politics
through the creation of political parties and election to Congress. During
this period, there were a total of 9,025 mobilizations, giving an annual
average of 1,504 and a median of 1,528, with a minimum of 1,078, a

3 This book’s introductory chapter details the methodological aspects of our dataset.
 4,000
3,390
3,500
3,000
2,500 2,247
2,023 1,941
2,000 1,833 1,795
1,467 1,588
1,421 1,405
1,500 1,153 1,264
1,078
1,000
500
0

Fig. 1 Frequency of contentious actions in Chile by year, 2008–2020

CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE …
13
14 A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

maximum of 1,833, and a standard deviation of 1.63. However, the 2019

uprising brought a dramatic increase in all these metrics (Chapter The
Singularity of the Social Uprising).
From a territorial perspective, the frequency of contentious actions
in the period studied has a heterogeneous distribution. The largest
numbers of actions are observed in the three most populous regions (the
Valparaíso, Concepción, and Santiago Metropolitan Regions). Does this
mean that these three regions are more contentious or “conflictive” than
other regions? The answer is that they are not; instead, the figures reflect
Chile’s heavy centralization. As well as absolute differences, the figures
for mobilizations and protests shown in Fig. 2 reflect a demographic and
political situation in that these three regions account for a little over half
the country’s population and are the seat of its main political institutions
(for example, the legislature in Valparaíso and the executive in Santiago).
This has a “mechanical” effect on mobilizations, due to the greater prob-
ability that protests will be organized where the population is larger and
because many of the mobilizations target political institutions in which
the power of the state is concentrated and which are located precisely in
these three regions.
Considering the demographic differences between Chile’s regions,
Fig. 2 reveals a strong propensity for mobilization in small and remoter
regions: Tarapacá and Atacama in the north (each with around 300,000
inhabitants and 1,603 and 1,491 contentious actions, respectively) and
Aysén and Magallanes in the far south (with 715 and 1,021 contentious
actions for a population of 102,000 and 165,000 inhabitants, respec-
tively).
The number of contentious actions per 100,000 inhabitants, shown in
Fig. 3, shows more clearly the intense contentious activity observed in
these four regions. Measured in this way, the most populous metropolises
emerge as relatively passive to the point that the Santiago Metropolitan
Region has the country’s lowest frequency of protests per inhabitant.
A number of plausible hypotheses may explain the contentious inten-
sity of the four more remote regions. One is that their geographical
distance from the center of the country also implies remoteness from
central political and administrative power, favoring extra-institutional
drivers of decentralized protest. In addition, these regions have specific
governance and development problems that, in a centralized country
like Chile, are not adequately addressed from the capital (Davis, 1999).
 4,000
3,685
3,500

3,000

2,500 2,309
2,126
2,000
1,701
1,603
1,491 1,491
1,500 1,357 1,339
973 987 950 1,021
1,000 823
715

500

Fig. 2 Frequency of contentious actions by region, 2008–2020

CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE …
15
 16

800
693
700
613
600
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

521
485
500
430 442

400

300 245 241

200 179 162

117 108
100 79 61
52

Fig. 3 Frequency of contentious actions per 100,000 inhabitants by region, 2008–2020

 CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE … 17

Another hypothesis refers to the low-quality jobs and important environ-

mental impacts generated by an extractive economy, whether reflected
in mining issues in the north, the rejection of hydroelectric projects in
Aysén, or the rise in fuel prices in Magallanes in 2011. The level of conflict
in these remoter regions may also be related to a contentious memory that
is reactivated and consolidated by each successive mobilization. Finally,
several or all of the above reasons may act together.
This initial approach shows that the phenomenon of mobilizations in
Chile is very unequally distributed over time and space, raising the ques-
tion of whether it is possible to identify patterns in the contentious actions
observed.

What Protesting Means: The Demands

To understand the rationale behind the social mobilizations that have
occurred since 2008, we have data about the types of demands by which
they were motivated. In Fig. 4, we distinguish between demands that
are of an educational and labor nature (not including demand for better
pensions), those of indigenous peoples (particularly, the Mapuche), terri-
torial demands (organized around causes linked to specific territories,
such as the struggles led by MODATIMA in the Valparaíso Region to
make water a public good), feminist demands, and demands we classify
as “political” (such as public denunciation of corruption, protests against
laws viewed as negative at the local or regional level, and demand for the
resignation of President Piñera).
Somewhat counterintuitively, labor demands predominated
throughout the period studied and were only exceeded in terms of
the volume of contentious actions by the student mobilizations of 2011
and, to a lesser extent, 2012 (Fig. 4). According to data not presented
here, the number of events involving public-sector workers approximately
doubled those involving private-sector workers, even though the former
account for only a minority of the country’s workforce. This is consistent
with the stronger organizational tradition of public-sector workers and
Chile’s very low rates of unionization.
Compared to the important variations in the annual frequency of labor
and educational protests, variations in protests for other demands are
more modest. In the period analyzed, feminist mobilizations were gener-
ally quite regular compared to other demands, but increased significantly
after 2017.
 18

1,200

1,000
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

800

600

400

200

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Education Labor(excluding pensions) Indigenous peoples Territorial Housing Political Feminist Health care

Fig. 4 Frequency of contentious actions by type of demand, 2008–2020

 CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE … 19

When protests are regrouped into four large blocks of demands, labor
demands continue to predominate and are only surpassed by the mobi-
lizations related to “welfare services” (health care, housing, and others) in
2011 and by non-classifiable protests in the context of the 2019 uprising.
As Fig. 5 shows, the explosion of protests of a “not classified” type—or,
in other words, in which a specific motivation cannot be identified—in
2019 is very striking, underlining both the magnitude of the process and
the enormous heterogeneity of the demands it catalyzed.
Figure 6 shows that the main “targets” of the mobilizations were the
central/national authorities, followed at a great distance by regional/local
authorities, companies, and education and health agencies. It is impor-
tant to avoid the temptation to interpret this data as indicating that the
mobilizations were anti-state or hostile to centralism. Our interpretation
is exactly the opposite: we consider that it reflects collective lucidity or
a hyper-realism on the part of demonstrators in recognizing the exces-
sive power of the central authorities, which positions them as an almost
inevitable target of any protest or social mobilization in Chile. This trend
is also apparent in other Latin American countries where citizens seek
“more state” (Foweraker, 1995)—more access to its resources and aid—
precisely because of the historical weakness of the development of the
state compared to Europe (Centeno, 2002).

Who Mobilizes and Protests?

We next look at the groups that participate in mobilizations, which do not
necessarily coincide with the type of demand involved. Figure 7 shows the
groups identified as “unique” by the Chilean written press (Hughes &
Mellado, 2016) in the sense of being the only group participating in a
collective action. As expected, it is workers who mobilize most during this
period, only surpassed in 2011 by students. It is striking that, among the
actors identified by the press during the 2019 uprising, workers mobilized
(in absolute terms) even more than students, women, indigenous peoples,
neighbors, and hooded protesters.
When two groups are identified by the press as the protagonists of
a mobilization (Fig. 8), workers-students predominate without counter-
weight throughout the period analyzed, except in 2020 (when students
lose all prominence because of the pandemic-related closure of schools
and universities). Interestingly, neighbors-workers are relatively important
throughout the period, with an important peak in 2019. This is striking as
 20

1,400

1,200
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

1,000

800

600

400

200

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Welfare services Political and other Not classified Labor

Fig. 5 Frequency of demands aggregated into four types, 2008–2020

 3,500

3,000

2,500

2,000

1,500

1,000

500

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Central/national authorities Regional/local authorities Companies Education Health care

Fig. 6 Frequency of target of protests, 2008–2020

CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE …
21
 22

1,200

1,000
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

800

600

400

200

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Hooded protesters Workers Students Women Indigenous peoples Neighbors

Fig. 7 Frequency of unique social groups in mobilizations and protests, 2008–2020

 CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE … 23

a counterpoint to the spectacular nature of the mobilizations of students

and women.
Figure 9 shows social mobilizations from the standpoint of whether
or not there were organizations behind them, distinguishing between the
cases where there was one organization, two or more organizations, or
“without organization” (as reported by the press). The blue line indicates
the extent to which the protest was nationwide (hence the importance of
noting that the vertical axis is measured in percentages).
In the years with a peak in the frequency of contentious actions,
the percentage of protests “without organization” increases markedly
(2011, 2019, and 2020), contributing powerfully to the (mistaken) thesis
that the protests were spontaneous (Wilkinson (2009) refutes precisely
the relevance of spontaneous approaches). In other words, at certain
moments of extreme contentious activity, mobilizations include not only
citizens linked to organizations—more accustomed to street protests, as
borne out by several studies (such as Moseley, 2018)—but also masses of
individuals with few organizational ties or not identifiable as part of an
organization, engulfing traditionally constituted social movements. This
should not lead us to forget that, behind all collective action, there is
always hidden “infrastructure”, ranging from a group of friends or school
or university classmates to all kinds of intermediate infrastructure such as
neighbors (McAdam, 1982; McCarthy & Zald, 1977; Tilly, 1978).
The magnitude of protests is difficult to estimate precisely and the
figures shown in Fig. 10 are estimates based on media reports. The
vertical axis indicates the relative proportion (percentage) of collective
actions by size, revealing a general predominance of social mobilizations
with no more than 100 participants. In other words, the most frequent
contentious dynamics are not the large mobilizations that dominate the
front pages of national newspapers and produce a response from the polit-
ical elite, but rather small acts of a local nature (to which the Observatory
of Conflicts has access precisely because it systematically monitors local
media, the interest of which is also seen in other studies that rely on local
media with framing capacity, such as 16 written media in Texas: Kilgo &
Harlow, 2019). In any case, it should be noted that, in some years, such
as 2011, 2015, and 2019, small events (with 100 or fewer participants)
accounted for barely half of all events. The other side of this coin is the
mass nature of mobilizations in these years, shown by the three upper
parts of each column. For example, in 2011, over a fifth of events were
estimated to have had over 1,000 participants while, in 2019, this was the
case of a quarter of the total, with a large concentration of mass events
during the months of the social uprising.
 24

300

250
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

200

150

100

50

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Workers-students Feminists-students Indigenous peoples-students Neighbors-workers Neighbors-students

Fig. 8 Frequency of combined social groups in mobilizations and protests, 2008–2020

 80

70

60

50

40

Percentage
30

20

10

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Without organization 1 organization 2 organizations Nationwide protests

Fig. 9 Proportion of mobilizations by number of social organizations behind them, 2008–2020

CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE …
25
 26

100 1 1 1 1 3 3
1 4 1 2 1 4 2
10 11 10 11 10 9 9 7
90 14 12 14
17
21
80 25
24 23 25 22 25
22
32
70 28
37 30
30
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

25
60
19 18 19
20 23 22
50 26
18
23

Percentage
40 18 25 18
26
30

45 48 47 47
20 44 43
38 39
34 31 31
28
10 23

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

1-49 participants 50-100 101-999 1,000-9,999 10,000 +

Fig. 10 Estimated size of mobilizations, 2008–2020 Note Out of the 22,605 protest events, there is information about
the number of participants (number or estimate) for 14,906 events. For 7,699 events (34%), this information could not
be found
 CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE … 27

Repertoires of Collective Action

Finally, we have data on the forms adopted by social mobilizations since
2008, that is, the types of repertoire, including the practices and tactics
through which they express their demands (Ennis, 1987). Figure 11
distinguishes between pacific collective action and its disruptive4 or
violent expression, and whether the police responded with repression or
by negotiating without using force. It shows that demonstrators’ tactics
regularly take the form of disruption (percentage on the vertical axis),
accompanied by violence, albeit on a moderate scale. The importance of
tactics of this type increased considerably (just over doubling during the
2019 uprising which, in turn, coincided with the enormous repression
seen in 2019 before declining in 2020, albeit remaining above its “nor-
mal” level in previous years). Does this mean that the police deployed
their coercive power regardless of the magnitude and, above all, the tactics
of the mobilization, or was it a response to the collective action? In a
previous panel data study in Chilean cities (through the Observatory of
Conflicts), we found a reciprocal relationship: violent protest produces a
violent police response a few days later while police repression produces
violent protest the next day (Garretón et al., 2020). This results in a spiral
of violence that is difficult to contain, barring a global cataclysm such as
the Covid-19 pandemic, with the restrictions on movement it implied in
Chile as from March 2020.
Figure 12 shows the violence associated with collective and police
action through two of its effects: injuries and deaths. The numbers
reported by the press are almost certainly underestimates because, in the
last few months of 2019 alone, some 500 people suffered eye injuries
caused by projectiles. However, Fig. 12 also shows that violence is not
intrinsic to cycles of mobilization and social protests: as clearly seen in
2019 and 2020, the number of people injured is proportional to the
magnitude of the collective action.
In this chapter, we have presented a broad outline of contentious
dynamics in Chile, raising questions and citing findings that we see as
interesting, but without looking at the answers in depth or analyzing the

4 We understand disruptive actions as those practices that cause a discontinuity in daily

life, interrupting its routines: the flow of vehicles and pedestrian traffic (barricades); protest
actions by workers that interrupt their own work or that of others (sector-specific or
general strike); stoppages (for example, by students, which may or may not involve the
occupation of establishments); etc.
 28

25

20

15
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

10

Percentage
5

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Bachelet 1 Piñera 1 Bachelet 2 Piñera 2

Pacific Disruptive Violent Police violence Negotiated control

Fig. 11 Repertoires of collective action and police tactics for restoring order, 2008–2020 Note Considering the theory
of protest control (Earl, 2003; Earl & Soule, 2006; Soule & Davenport, 2009), police conduct is divided into that
implying violent action (direct clashes, use of tear gas and water cannons, use of fire arms) and that which sought to
establish negotiated control of public order (only arrests and a police presence during the demonstration)
 350
291
300

250

200 185

150
113 109
100 70
62 53 55 45 37 43
50 29 18 18
5 1 1 3 2 2 4 1 2
0
2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

People injured Deaths

Fig. 12 Proxy variables for violence: people injured and deaths in contentious events, 2008–2020 Notes 1. The
frequency of injuries and deaths considers: (1) demonstrators; (2) third parties not involved in the protest; (3) police. 2.
The frequency of injuries and deaths refers to contentious actions in which there were injuries or deaths, not the total
number of injuries or deaths in those protests
CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE …
29
30 A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

data more exhaustively. So far, the data shows that contentious actions in
Chile are diverse, dynamic, and intricate, with multiple actors employing
protest repertoires for disparate causes, potentially aligning Chile with
what Meyer and Tarrow (1998) termed a “movement society”. The next
chapters try to uncover and explain more fine-grained patterns, organized
by issue or the nature of the contentious activity.

References
Centeno, M. A. (2002). Blood and Debt: War and the Nation-State in Latin
America. Pennsylvania State University Press. https://www.psupress.org/
books/titles/978-0-271-02165-2.html
Davis, D. E. (1999). The Power of Distance: Re-theorizing Social Movements
in Latin America. Theory and Society, 28(4), 585–638.
Donoso, S. (2013). Dynamics of Change in Chile: Explaining the Emergence of
the 2006 “Pingüino” Movement. Journal of Latin American Studies, 45(1),
1–29.
Donoso, S. (2017). “Outsider” and “Insider” Strategies: Chile’s Student Move-
ment, 1990–2014. In S. Donoso, & M. von Bülow (Eds.), Social Movements
in Chile: Organization, Trajectories, and Political Consequences (pp. 65–97).
Palgrave Macmillan US. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-60013-4_3
Earl, J. (2003). Tanks, tear gas, and taxes: Toward a theory of movement
repression. Sociological Theory, 21(1), 44–68.
Earl, J., & Soule, S. (2006). Seeing blue: A police-centered explanation of protest
policing. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 11(2), 145–164.
Ennis, J. G. (1987). Fields of Action: Structure in Movements’ Tactical Reper-
toires. Sociological Forum, 2(3), 520–533. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF0110
6624
Foweraker, J. (1995). Theorizing Social Movements. Pluto Press.
Fuentes, C. (2020). La transición inacabada: El proceso político chileno 1990–
2020. Editorial Catalonia.
Garretón, M., Somma, N. M., Campos, T., & Joignant, A. (Eds.). (2020).
Informe Anual. Observatorio de Conflictos 2020. Centro de Estudios de
Conflicto y Cohesión Social (COES).
Hughes, S., & Mellado, C. (2016). Protest and Accountability without the Press:
The Press, Politicians, and Civil Society in Chile. The International Journal
of Press/politics, 21(1), 48–67.
Joignant, A. (2012). La razón de Estado: Usos políticos del saber y gobierno
«científico» de los «technopols» en Chile (1990–1994). In T. Ariztía (Ed.),
Produciendo lo social (pp. 311–348). Santiago, Ediciones Universidad Diego
Portales.
 CONFLICT IN CHILE: FREQUENCY, MAGNITUDE … 31

Kilgo, D. K., & Harlow, S. (2019). Protests, Media Coverage, and a Hierarchy of
Social Struggle. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 24(4), 508–530.
McAdam, D. (1982). Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency,
1930–1970. University of Chicago Press.
McCarthy, J. D., & Zald, M. N. (1977). Resource Mobilization and Social
Movements: A Partial Theory. American Journal of Sociology, 82(6), 1212–
1241.
Meyer, D. S., & Tarrow, S. (Eds.). (1998). A Movement Society: Contentious
Politics for a New Century. Rowman & Littlefield.
Moseley, M. W. (2018). Protest State: The Rise of Everyday Contention in Latin
America. Oxford University Press.
Silva, E. (2009). Challenging Neoliberalism in Latin America. Cambridge
University Press.
Soule, S., & Davenport, C. (2009). Velvet glove, iron fist, or even hand? Protest
policing in the United States, 1960–1990. Mobilization: An International
Quarterly, 14(1), 1–22.
Tilly, C. (1978). From Mobilization to Revolution. Addison-Wesley.
von Bülow, M., & Bidegain Ponte, G. (2015). It Takes Two to Tango: Students,
Political Parties, and Protest in Chile (2005–2013). In P. Almeida, & A.
Cordero Ulate (Eds.), Handbook of Social Movements across Latin America
(pp. 179–194). Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-
017-9912-6_13
Wilkinson, S. L. (2009). Riots. Annual Review of Political Science, 12, 329–343.
 The Singularity of the Social Uprising

Alfredo Joignant, Nicolás M. Somma, Matías Garretón,

Felipe Olivares, and Tomás Campos

The social mobilizations that broke out in October 2019, following the
announcement of an increase in fares on the Santiago subway1 were
surprising in their mass scale, duration, and radicality. The eruptive,
almost volcanic, nature of this social unrest—hence, the name estallido
social (literally, “social outburst”)—as well as the political slogan by which
it was rapidly accompanied (“It wasn’t 30 pesos, it was 30 years”), its
visual and creative expression in numerous graphic representations on

1 In this, it was not unlike the start of the movement of the yellow vests (gilets jaunes )
in France a year earlier, which was sparked by the government’s announcement of an
increase in fuel prices (due paradoxically to the introduction of a green tax).

A. Joignant (B)
School of Political Science, Diego Portales University, Centre for Social Conflict
and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
N. M. Somma
Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 33

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_3
34 A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

walls around Santiago (Ojeda & Marilaf, 2020; Montoni Rios, 2022),
and the devastation it wreaked (including the burning of dozens of
subway stations2 ) give the phenomenon its singularity and, hence, the
vast literature devoted to it.
This literature3 has explored multiple aspects of the social uprising.
It has not settled for the common-sense explanation that attributes the
uprising solely to discontent and socioeconomic inequality in Chile.
Instead, it has delved into the role of political representation deficits,
the cultural and symbolic dimensions of performances, their connections
with feminist mobilizations, organizational aspects, and the relationship
between repression and protest, among other topics.
To complement this burgeoning literature, in this chapter we seek
to describe the exceptional nature of this uprising, assessing their most
notable and, in some cases, spectacular expressions. For this we use the
data from the Observatory of Conflicts of the Center for Social Conflict
and Cohesion Studies (COES), and contrast it with the long prior period
of social mobilizations of far lower intensity. In the conclusion of this
chapter, we will inquire about the potential mechanisms that were found
at the origin of this particular outbreak. This will lead us to distance

M. Garretón
Universidad Tecnológica Metropolitana, Centre for Social Conflict and
Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
F. Olivares
Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
T. Campos
Programa de Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo/United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

2 https://www.pauta.cl/factchecking/el-contestadog/metro-costos-estaciones-estallido-
social-18-octubre-255-millones-dolares.
3 Without attempting to be exhaustive, we can mention the following articles and books:
Aguilera and Espinoza (2022), Pommier (2020), Sasse (2021), Navarrete and Tricot
(2021), Somma et al. (2020), Scherman and Rivera (2021), Somma (2021), Somma and
Sánchez (2021). The following research reports are also interesting: NUDESOC (2019),
Mac-Clure et al. (2020), Paredes (2021).
 THE SINGULARITY OF THE SOCIAL UPRISING 35

ourselves from hypotheses related to both its predictability (‘they did not
foresee it’) and its apparent spontaneity.

When the Uprising is More

Than a Protest: Frequency
The data gathered provides a picture of the uprising’s magnitude, charting
its dynamics and the frequency of contentious events over periods of
15 days as from July 1, 2019 (Fig. 1). The results are eloquent: an increase
in contentious actions is apparent as from October 1 (N = 139) but,
a fortnight later, the increase becomes explosive. In the first two weeks
of the uprising (October 18–31, 2019), there were 1,217 contentious
actions (just over half of all those recorded in 2011 during the student
movement: Fig. 1, Chapter Conflict in Chile: Frequency, Magnitude,
and Evolution of Contentious Politics, 2008–2020). The next two weeks
brought a further 1,145 protests, giving a total for just the month of
October (N = 2,362) that exceeded any year between 2008 and 2018.
Over the whole of 2019, there were 3,390 mobilizations. The data also
reflects the agreement reached on November 15, 2019, after which mobi-
lizations showed a dramatic decline to a low of 64 contentious events in
the first fortnight of February 2020 (the summer holidays for a large part
of the Chilean population, usually implying generalized demobilization).
If the idea of an “institutional solution” or “channeling of discontent”
makes any empirical sense, the reduction in the frequency of protests after
the agreement of November 15 serves as evidence, although its effect
could have been short-lived—we have no way of knowing—were it not
for the arrival of Covid-19 (Figs. 1 and 2).
Figure 2 shows the escalation of contentious events from fortnight to
fortnight, starting with the fortnight prior to the uprising, as well as the
mobilizations’ explosive nature compared to the same fortnights in 2018
and 2019. From 60 protests in the second fortnight of October 2018, the
number increased by 20 times in the same fortnight of 2019, eight times
in the subsequent fortnight, and 2.9 times in the fortnight of November
16–30, before returning to a frequency similar to that of 2018 in the first
half of December (N = 147 in 2018 and N = 171 in 2019).
Even so, Fig. 2 suggests that the uprising left a medium-term legacy
of more frequent protests in January, February, and the first fortnight of
March of 2020, when, compared to the same months in 2019, protests
were up 2.5 times (January), 2.9 times (first fortnight of February),
 36

1,400
1,217
1,200 1,145
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

1,000

800
653
600 483
400
171 216 171
200 136 107 139 140 108
73 50 95 62 64
0

Fig. 1 Frequency of contentious actions in Chile by fortnight, July 1, 2019–March 13, 2020
 1,400

1,200

1,000

800

600

400

200

2018-2019 2019-2020

Fig. 2 Comparison of frequency of protests pre- and post-uprising, 2018–2019/2019–2020, by fortnight

THE SINGULARITY OF THE SOCIAL UPRISING
37
38 A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

4.7 times (second fortnight of February), and 7.0 times (first fortnight
of March). Indeed, at the end of February, the press anticipated large
demonstrations in March4 (a kind of “return” of the uprising) but
they were abruptly and unexpectedly aborted in the second fortnight of
March by the appearance of Covid-19 and the resulting restrictions on
movement.
Regarding the latter, it is essential to emphasize that new protest
hotspots emerged during the pandemic due to novel grievances, such as
issues related to the distribution of food by municipalities or the over-
whelming workload of healthcare workers (Somma & Sánchez, 2021).
However, the quarantines did have a strong deterrent effect on protests
associated with the supposed revitalization of the social outbreak in March
2020. One potential explanation is related to the means of dissemi-
nating calls for protests. The larger protests during the outbreak relied
on circulating calls to protest through digital social media platforms. In a
pandemic and quarantine context, issuing such calls would have meant
violating health regulations, which could have reduced the inclination
of protest organizers to do so. Even if such calls did occur, there were
naturally significant fears among the population about participating in
any form of mass gathering. Conversely, the protests that did take place
during the pandemic generally had a more localized and contained nature,
allowing them to more easily bypass restrictions on gatherings in public
spaces.

Protagonists of the Uprising

Figure 3, which shows the participation of the main social groups in
protests during the uprising, provides valuable information. Indepen-
dently of the number of contentious actions registered, “neighbors”
predominated in the first fortnight of the uprising before, in the next
fortnight, showing a decline in their participation and being surpassed by
“workers”. In the first fortnight (October 18–31), neighbors were the
protagonists of just over a third of contentious actions but, in the second
fortnight (November 1–15), workers predominated, followed by hooded
protesters (encapuchados, who use hoods and other clothes to disguise
their identity). This is important because, in contrast to the dynamics of

4 https://www.latercera.com/nacional/noticia/estallido-social-remota-fuerza-en-
marzo/1018229/.
 THE SINGULARITY OF THE SOCIAL UPRISING 39

collective action in all previous years, workers were not the main actor in
the protests.
The high initial participation of mobilized neighbors, who were iden-
tified during the first fortnight of the uprising as the protagonists of
almost 400 protests, underlines its decentralized and local nature as well
as its broad distribution around Chile. Does this mean that neighbors
triggered the uprising? The data does not provide a categorical answer,
but it does suggest that its dynamics were initially local and decentralized
before changing with the appearance of more organized groups, such as
workers, and others more prone to violence, like hooded protesters. The
conflict’s decentralized nature was not new in Chile, as shown by the map
of socio-environmental conflicts published by the National Human Rights
Institute (INDH),5 which records some 92 active or latent conflicts
around the country.
As from the second fortnight of November 2019, the role of neighbors
showed a further sharp decline in the face of the predominance of hooded
protesters and, secondly, workers. Students, who had been the emblematic
actors in the protests of previous years, regained sporadic prominence in
the first fortnight of January 2020 and the first fortnight of March 2020.
In the latter case, they were supported by feminist organizations in the
context of commemoration of International Women’s Day on March 8.
A notable and singular feature of these months was the unusually
high participation of hooded protesters. For most of the time, they
were the most visible actors and maintained a relatively high frequency
of contentious events during the summer when most other actors were
largely absent.
In short, the groups that led the mobilizations of 2006 (the “Pen-
guins” and their subsequent effects) and those of 2011 (university
students), providing organization and leadership and acting as spokesper-
sons, were not at the origin of the 2019 uprising.

5 https://mapaconflictos.indh.cl/#/.
 40

400

350

300

250

200
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

150

100

50

0
18Oct-31Oct 1Nov-15Nov 16Nov-30Nov 1Dec-15Dec 16Dec-31Dec 1Jan-15Jan 16Jan-31Jan 1Feb-15Feb 16Feb-29Feb 1Mar-13Mar

Hooded protesters Workers Students Feminist Neighbors

Fig. 3 Frequency of contentious actions, October 18, 2019–March 13, 2020

 THE SINGULARITY OF THE SOCIAL UPRISING 41

Magnitude of the Uprising, Repertoires

of Collective Action, and Police Control
As suggested in Chapter Conflict in Chile: Frequency, Magnitude, and
Evolution of Contentious Politics, 2008–2020, the estimated size of
mobilizations during the first month of the uprising was considerable:
74% of collective actions in the second fortnight of October and around
51% in the first fortnight of November had between 100 and over 10,000
participants (Fig. 4). In line with the hypothesis that the agreement of
November 15, 2019, served to channel the protests, it marked the start
of a steady decline in the size of the mobilizations, particularly in those
with 1,000 participants or more. The latter did, however, increase slightly
in the first fortnight of March 2020, probably reflecting the reorganiza-
tion of student and feminist organizations around emblematic dates that
coincide with the start of Chile’s academic year.
The fortnights of November 1–15 and November 16–30 mark a signif-
icant change compared to all the previous period (Chapter Conflict in
Chile: Frequency, Magnitude, and Evolution of Contentious Politics,
2008–2020) as regards the increase in the frequency and percentage of
events in which violent and, above all, disruptive tactics were observed.
Figure 5, where the vertical axis is in percentages, shows that a violent
repertoire tended to prevail in January and February, albeit over a smaller
total number of contentious actions. This is related to the role of hooded
protesters during these two months (supra, Figs. 2 and 3). As seen in
Fig. 5, the proportion of events with a police presence initially increased
sharply, but then dropped through to February 2020 before rising again
in March, together with the start of secondary schools after the summer
break. A pattern related to the magnitude of the protests is apparent,
but with a certain correlation with the percentage of violent protests,
particularly at the beginning of the uprising.
Unlike Fig. 5, which shows the police’s presence at protests indepen-
dently of the nature of their response, Fig. 6 distinguishes between two
types of control strategies—negotiation or repression—showing how the
aggressiveness of police response increased or decreased depending on the
level of threat posed by acts of protest during the uprising. Both forms
of control evolved in parallel, except at two points: in the second half of
November, when negotiation showed a slight predominance over police
violence (perhaps as a consequence of the agreement of November 15)
and, to a lesser extent, in the first half of March 2020, when students
 42

100 2 3
4 1 7
9 3 12 11 8
14
90 16 13
21 21
15
80
22 24 29
37 23
70 24 23
23 27
26
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

60
17 16
18
50 25
21
19 13

Percentage
40 28 23

30 58
46 49 49
20 11 37 37 38
36
27
10
15
0

1-49 participants 50-100 101-999 1,000-9,999 10,000 +

Fig. 4 Estimated size of mobilizations, by fortnight, October 18, 2019–March 13, 2020
 30

25

20

15

Percentage
10

Pacific Disruptive Violent Police presence

Fig. 5 Evolution of repertoires of collective action and police control, by fortnight, July 1, 2019–March 13, 2020
THE SINGULARITY OF THE SOCIAL UPRISING
43
44 A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

begin to occupy schools around Chile and there was a relative increase in
violent police control. Interestingly, both these cases corresponded to a
period when disruptive, rather than violent, protest tactics predominated.
Finally, Fig. 7 shows the violence of demonstrators and the police as
a function of the number of protests that resulted in injuries and deaths.
As indicated in Chapter Conflict in Chile: Frequency, Magnitude, and
Evolution of Contentious Politics, 2008–2020, these metrics should be
treated with caution since, given the enormous number of people who
suffered eye injuries the figures for injuries published by the press are, in
all likelihood, significantly underestimated.6
Bearing in mind this proviso, the figure suggests that the number of
injuries showed an important drop towards the summer, albeit with a
slight increase in the second fortnight of February (28 people injured)
and, above all, the first fortnight of March (41). The latter is consistent
with increased activity in the “new version of the uprising” that began in
March but faltered in the face of measures related to Covid-19. Impor-
tantly, the percentage of protests in which people were injured and, in the
second fortnight of January, died was very high, given the summer drop
in contentious actions. Together with Fig. 3, this suggests that, unlike
other actors, hooded protesters did not take holidays.

Conclusion
The data presented regarding the social outbreak is highly compelling as
it highlights various dimensions, from the types of participating groups
to their scale, and the extraordinary frequency of contentious activity,
not only compared to previous weeks but also to the preceding year.
Nonetheless, we aim to focus on one specific point in order to refute
two hypotheses that have been present in the public discourse.
The first hypothesis, labeled as the “predictive” one, asserts that some
intellectuals had already argued about the inevitability of the outbreak.
According to this hypothesis, the outbreak would be foreseeable due
to constitutional constraints on modifying the Chilean development
model, significant levels of inequality, and the increasing politicization of
inequality based on an influential study by PNUD (2015). While these

6 See https://www.indh.cl/indh-entrega-balance-a-un-ano-de-la-crisis-social/; https://

www.indh.cl/indh-entrega-nuevo-reporte-de-cifras-a-cuatro-meses-de-iniciada-la-crisis-soc
ial/.
 80

70

60

50

40

30

Percentage
20

10

0
18Oct-31Oct 1Nov-15Nov 16Nov-30Nov 1Dec-15Dec 16Dec-31Dec 1Jan-15Jan 16Jan-31Jan 1Feb-15Feb 16Feb-29Feb 1Mar-13Mar

Pacific Disruptive Violent Police violence Negotiated control

Fig. 6 Evolution of repressive and police control repertoires, by fortnight (18 October 2019–13 March 2020) Note
Considering the theory of protest control (Earl, 2003; Earl & Soule, 2010; McPhail & McCarthy, 2005; Soule &
Davenport, 2009) and for the purposes of analysis, police conduct is divided into that implying violent action (direct
clashes, deployment of tear gas and water cannons, use of fire arms) and that which sought to establish negotiated
control of public order (only arrests and a only police presence during the demonstration)
THE SINGULARITY OF THE SOCIAL UPRISING
45
 46

140
119
120

100
A. JOIGNANT ET AL.

84
80

60 51
41
40 28
25
15 17 19
20 14
4 8 6
1 1 1 1 3
0
18Oct-31Oct 1Nov-15Nov 16Nov-30Nov 1Dec-15Dec 16Dec-31Dec 1Jan-15Jan 16Jan-31Jan 1Feb-15Feb 16Feb-29Feb 1Mar-13Mar

People injured Deaths

Fig. 7 Proxy variables for violence: people injured and deaths, by fortnight (18 October 2019–13 March 2020) Notes
1. The frequency of injuries and deaths considers: (1) demonstrators; (2) third parties not involved in the protest; (3)
police. 2. The frequency of injuries and deaths refers to contentious actions in which there were injuries or deaths, not
the total number of injuries or deaths in those protests
 THE SINGULARITY OF THE SOCIAL UPRISING 47

aspects hold truth, it appears that none of them could predict, a decade or
more in advance, the triggering of this impressive phenomenon of collec-
tive action, both in terms of its massiveness and the daily frequency of
expressions of discontent. Thus, predicting such an event many years in
advance is not truly a prediction or the result of systematic data analysis
by intellectuals. Rather, it resembles a prophecy relying on speculations
about the people’s discontent. Furthermore, this prophetic stance over-
looks the fact that history has taught us otherwise. Chile has witnessed
similar events before, such as the “Battle of Santiago” on April 2 and 3,
1957, resulting in around twenty deaths (Milos, 2007).
The second hypothesis goes against a mechanism that is evident in
the data presented here. In this regard, Fig. 2 is relevant as it depicts
the contentious activity of an amorphous group, the “neighbors,” whose
prominence during the initial two weeks of the outbreak caught our
attention. The neighbors mobilized in their neighborhoods, relying on
a simple yet efficient infrastructure of recognizing common threats
or grievances among those living together. It is likely that concerns,
and perhaps fear of looting (which indeed occurred on several occa-
sions during the outbreak), played a role in this predominantly local
mobilization. Importantly, being neighbors inherently involves a local
coordination mechanism that cannot be ignored. This refutes the fanciful
hypothesis of a spontaneous revolt (mischaracterizing it as riots rather
than collective actions with some degree of organization). The hypothesis
of spontaneity forgets that every mobilization involves not just individuals
but some form of social infrastructure.

References
Aguilera, C., & Espinoza, V. (2022). Chile Despertó: los sentidos políticos en
la Revuelta de Octubre. Polis. Revista Latinoamericana. https://doi.org/10.
32735/S0718-6568/2022-N61-1707
Earl, J. (2003). Tanks, Tear Gas, and Taxes: Toward a Theory of Movement
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Labor Organizations and Protest: Reflections
on the Fragmentation of Unions, Union
Pluralism, and Strikes

Pablo Pérez-Ahumada and Francisca Gutiérrez-Crocco

The social uprising in Chile in October 2019 revealed the weakness of

the country’s development model. Millions of people took to the streets
around the country to protest against persistent inequalities, abuse, and
the indifference of the political authorities (Araujo, 2020). The strength
and magnitude of these mobilizations caused bewilderment. The growing
individualism of society was widely believed to have laid to rest the specter

This research was partly financed by FONDECYT Project Nº 1230056 “Social

class, labor movements, and conflict in times of crisis: a comparative study of
Argentina and Chile” (Principal researcher: Pablo Pérez Ahumada) and by
FONDECYT Project Nº 1210338 “The process of work in the ‘gig’ economy:
the case of delivery platforms in Chile and Argentina” (Principal researcher:
Francisca Gutiérrez).

P. Pérez-Ahumada
Universidad de Chile & Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies
(COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 49

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_4
50 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

of the great social movements that preceded the 1973 military coup and
later opened the way to the end of the dictatorship (Joignant, 2003;
Moulian, 1997). In the 2000s, this view was tempered by the irruption
in the public space of a series of movements, including students, femi-
nist groups, and the No+ AFP Coordinator (Bülow & Donoso, 2017).
However, contentious actions increased only slightly and remained at a
“baseline level” until October 18, 2019, when the situation changed radi-
cally (Joignant et al., 2020). The unrest that broke out then brought
together different demands, giving the protests visibility and a mass scale.
In addition to understanding the social malaise that prompted the
uprising, it is important to consider the latent processes behind the
revaluation of protest as a means of collective action. The international
literature on social movements has shown that organizations play a
fundamental role in the generation of disruptive collective actions. For
example, resource mobilization theory questions the idea of the irra-
tionality of these actions, demonstrating that organizations provide a
base and key resources for the emergence and development of social
movements (McCarthy & Zald, 1977; McAdam, 1982). Organizations
not only provide economic, technical, and human resources, but also
contribute to social movements’ characteristic framing process. In other
words, they intervene in the definition of the problem that gives rise
to a mobilization, contribute to the articulation of its demands, identify
opportunities, and provide it with a discourse, among other tasks that are
conducive to the participants’ commitment and the cause’s dissemination
(Gamson & Meyer, 1996; Snow & Benford, 1988).
However, organizations differ and their level of formality or institu-
tionalization has a significant impact on the emergence of protests, the
form they take, and the results (Tarrow, 1998; McCarthy & Zald, 1977).
For example, more formalized organizations may have better access to
established political channels while more informal organizations tend to
adapt more quickly to emerging situations (as discussed by Caniglia &
Carmín, 2005).

F. Gutiérrez-Crocco (B)
Universidad Austral de Chile & Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies
(COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND PROTEST: REFLECTIONS … 51

In this chapter, we contribute to debate about social organizations

and collective action by focusing on labor unions and worker protests.
More specifically, we look at how the structure of labor unions, delim-
ited by the institutional framework that regulates their operation, allows
us to understand the dynamics of worker protest and strike activity in
Chile during the past decade. Unlike most other social organizations that
have participated in protests in recent years, unions have a long history
and are heavily regulated. They were first officially recognized under the
early legislation that was consolidated into the Labor Code of 1931.
Currently, their operation is regulated by Law Nº 20.940 (2016). In line
with the decentralization and fragmentation sought by the 1979 Labor
Plan, imposed by the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, this law
promotes decentralized company-level collective bargaining, which must
follow a series of highly bureaucratized stages that, in practice, exclude
an important part of the labor force (particularly outsourced and part-
time workers) (Pérez Ahumada, 2023). It also restricts the right to strike,
which can only be exercised during a regulated collective bargaining
process, and facilitates a series of mechanisms that render a legal strike
largely ineffective as a means of union pressure (Gutiérrez Crocco, 2020;
Pérez Ahumada, 2023). However, more than a third of strike activity
in Chile is not regulated or legally recognized by this regulatory frame-
work (OHL, 2020). More importantly for the purposes of this chapter,
Chilean labor laws favor a structure that weakens unions. By fostering the
formation of unions that bargain collectively only at the company level
and generally have few members, they are conducive to union fragmen-
tation (Pérez Ahumada, 2023a). In addition, they foster union pluralism
or, in other words, the existence of multiple unions within a company,
all with the same powers to represent workers and bargain collectively.
Union fragmentation and pluralism are closely related and are an integral
part of the Chilean labor relations model (Gutiérrez Crocco, 2013; Pérez
Ahumada & Ocampo, 2023).
How has the structure of union organization produced by this institu-
tional framework affected strike activity? More specifically, to what extent
has the existence of a decentralized model of collective bargaining that
promotes fragmentation and pluralism contributed to the proliferation of
worker protests in the country? In this chapter, we seek to answer these
questions through an exploratory analysis of the relationship between
union fragmentation and pluralism and strike activity across the private
sector between 2011 and 2019. In the analysis, we use information from
52 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

the Observatory of Labor Strikes (OHL), a joint initiative of the Alberto

Hurtado University and the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion
Studies (COES). Drawing on the press reports compiled by the COES
Observatory of Conflicts, the OHL classifies contentious actions related
to labor demands into events, referred to as strikes, which can last several
days and occur in several places simultaneously.
By complementing the OHL data with other sources of information
(for example, data on unions from the state’s Directorate of Labor), we
show a positive correlation between union fragmentation/pluralism and
the number of strikes in different economic sectors. For example, we
present evidence that strikes are more frequent in sectors where there
are more unions and where smaller unions predominate.
The chapter is divided into three sections. In the first, we describe
the reactivation of social protest since 2010, discussing the participation
of social organizations in this process and how they influence the emer-
gence and development of contentious actions. In the second and third
sections, we examine the role of unions and, more specifically, the effect
of their organizational fragmentation on the occurrence of strikes. Finally,
we conclude the chapter by summarizing the central argument and iden-
tifying lines of research that could help to better understand the role
played by organizations and their division in the increase in social protest
in Chile.

Social Organizations and the Increase

in Social Protest in Chile
From the restoration of democracy in 1990 through to the middle of the
first decade of this century, protests were infrequent in Chile and were
not on a mass scale. This demobilization reflected a depoliticization of
Chilean civil society that was accompanied by reduced interest in polit-
ical activity and participation in public affairs (Joignant, 2003). In 2006,
a wave of mobilizations by secondary school students, popularly known
as the “Penguin” movement, interrupted the apparent political apathy
of civil society, showing that protest remained part of its repertoire of
action. However, it was not until 2011 that there was a real change in
the tendency towards demobilization (Mayol & Azócar, 2011). Starting
in 2011, various social movements erupted in the public space around the
country, raising issues such as an end to for-profit education, the need to
change the pension system, the state’s indolence in the face of abuse and
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND PROTEST: REFLECTIONS … 53

gender inequality, and poor standards of living in the country’s regions.

Figure 1 shows the evolution of the number of contentious actions since
the Observatory of Conflicts began recording this data, indicating that
the new cycle of social protest that began in 2010 was characterized by
frequent mobilizations that increased significantly in 2019.
How did social organizations influence this revitalization of protest?
Due to the lack of official data on social organizations, the empirical
research on this subject has been scarce in Chile. However, some studies
provide clues to tentative explanations.
The first explanation relates to organizations’ participation in the emer-
gence of contentious actions. The available evidence suggests that social
protest has been driven less by growth in the number of organizations
than by a change in the orientation of some organizations and/or the
strengthening of those focusing on the defense of rights. The Human
Development Report on Chile shows that, notwithstanding the visible
depoliticization of society, an important degree of “associative density”
persisted in the 1990s (UNDP, 2000). Moreover, according to a recent
study by the Center for Public Policy of the Catholic University of Chile
(UC), the number of organizations grew constantly as from 1990, doing
so at a far higher rate than the population or the number of companies

Fig. 1 Number of contentious actions, 2008–2020 (Source Compiled by

authors based on data from the Observatory of Conflicts, COES)
54 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

(Irarrázaval & Streeter, 2020). Indeed, the demobilization observed in

the first decade after the restoration of democracy seems to have been
explained not by a drop in the number of organizations but by the weak-
ening of the labor unions and other traditional organizations that had
played a key role in the mobilizations that led up to the end of the military
dictatorship (Jara Ibarra, 2019). According to the UC study, the number
of organizations has not changed significantly since 2010 and has, indeed,
grown more slowly than in the 1990s. Other studies suggest also that the
organizations are generally small because the percentage of the popula-
tion participating in them has decreased progressively since the 1990s
(Somma, 2015). This would indicate that the new wave of contentious
actions may have more to do with changes in the organizations’ orienta-
tion, increasing the weight of those devoted to the defense of rights and/
or more prone to disruptive action.
A second explanation has to do with the role that social organiza-
tions have played within protests or in their development, rather than
their emergence. The 2019 uprising involved numerous organizations
with different levels of institutionalization and trajectories. Some, like
labor unions, have a long history and are heavily regulated while others
emerged over the past decade in the heat of the social movements that
preceded the uprising of 2019. In this uprising, in contrast to previous
mobilizations, none of these organizations managed to take a leadership
role. Its participants rejected not only traditional political leadership, but
also any type of social leadership (Aguilera & Espinoza, 2021; Aguilera
et al., 2023). This does not mean that the organizations did not fulfill
other roles during the uprising (Aguilera et al., 2023) or that they were
not important in the longer-term process of society’s re-enchantment with
collective action.
The Observatory of Conflicts data helps to identify the role that orga-
nizations have played in the protests. Figure 2 shows the organizational
density of contentious actions between 2008 and 2020, measured as the
average number of organizations present in them. The black line shows its
evolution in absolute terms and the dotted line the polynomial trend. It
is important to note that the Observatory records the presence of formal
organizations in contentious actions when this is explicitly reported in
the press. Organizational density should, therefore, be interpreted as a
measure of organizations’ visibility in the protests. For example, a value
of 1 indicates that, on average, one organization was present (that is,
reported in the press) per contentious action in a specific year.
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND PROTEST: REFLECTIONS … 55

Fig. 2 Organizational density of contentious actions, 2008–2020 (Source

Compiled by authors based on data from the Observatory of Conflicts, COES)

Figure 2 suggests that, over the past decade, social organizations have
not always been visible or taken a leadership role in protests. Indeed, orga-
nizational density is below 1 throughout almost all the period studied,
except for 2015. However, the role of these organizations seems to have
been more evident in the first half of the cycle than in the most recent
stage. In broad terms, two different trends can be observed in the period
in question. Between 2008 and 2014, organizational density held steady
at around 0.9, with only minor fluctuations. This was followed, in 2015,
by an exceptional year with an organizational density of 1.8, a figure well
above that for other years. This is explained mainly by the large number
of organizations that participated, and had media visibility, in the demon-
strations against abortion that took place in 33 cities around the country
in September of that year. As from 2015, organizational density declines
almost constantly, albeit with particular intensity after the 2019 uprising.
Another analysis using Observatory of Conflicts data suggests that
heterogeneity of organizations in the leadership of contentious actions
is relatively infrequent. Figure 3 shows the percentage of contentious
actions in which the presence of two or more organizations, one orga-
nization, or no organization was explicitly reported. In just over half of
56 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

Fig. 3 Percentage of
contentious actions by
number of organizations
present, 2008–2020
(Source Compiled by
authors based on data
from the Observatory of
Conflicts, COES)

Zero One Two or more

actions between 2008 and 2020, no organizations were reported and, out
of the other half, two-thirds corresponded to actions in which one orga-
nization was reported while a third corresponded to actions with two or
more organizations.
This raises the question of the particular dynamics that affect the
different fields of conflict. As indicated above, organizations differ in
their degree of institutionalization and this may affect the contentious
dynamics. Below, we analyze the particular case of labor unions and labor
strikes.

Models of Labor Union Organization and Strikes

As discussed above, Chile’s institutional framework means that labor
unions are characterized by their fragmentation and pluralism. How does
this affect strike activity?
In international empirical research, there is abundant evidence that, to
understand labor conflict, it is key to study the role of unions (Freeman &
Medoff, 1984; Ringqvist, 2021; Pérez Ahumada, 2023b). According to
some of this research, regulation that promotes or limits union fragmen-
tation and pluralism has important effects on strike action (Akkerman,
2008; Dobson, 1997; Jansen, 2014). In it, the concept of union pluralism
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND PROTEST: REFLECTIONS … 57

(also known as multi-unionism) is used to denote those institutional

models that, like the Chilean model, permit the existence of multiple
unions within the same bargaining unit (company or economic sector,
depending on the prevailing collective bargaining scheme). In some insti-
tutional models, union pluralism is designed to recognize the existence
of unions that separately represent different categories of workers (for
example, blue-collar or white-collar workers). In others, like that of Chile,
union pluralism not only recognizes the coexistence of unions of workers
of different types, but also allows multiple unions to represent the same
type of workers within the same bargaining unit (Dobson, 1997, p. 549;
Jansen, 2014, pp. 68–69).
In general, union pluralism tends to predominate in “pluralist” or
liberal models of labor relations. In these models, institutional mecha-
nisms for coordinating labor relations “from above”, through interaction
between the state, unions, and centralized business associations, are weak.
Indeed, collective bargaining is decentralized at the company level and
union and business organizations are fragmented into multiple associa-
tions that usually compete with each other for members (Humphries,
1990; Kenworthy, 2003; Paloheimo, 1984). Consequently, unions lack
monopolistic representation, and the existence of multiple unions within
the same economic sector—or company, as in the case of Chile—is the
norm (Jansen, 2014). By contrast, in “corporatist” models (for example,
those commonly associated with Nordic and continental European coun-
tries), labor relations are “coordinated” through centralized collective
bargaining schemes at the sector or national level, as well as through
highly institutionalized union and business organizations that generally
have a monopoly on representation in their economic sector (Kenworthy,
2003; Paloheimo, 1984).
Empirical research has shown that these institutional differences have
a significant impact on patterns of strike activity. In countries with
corporatist labor relations models, the level of strikes is lower than in
countries with pluralist or liberal regulation (Brandl & Traxler, 2010;
Humphries, 1990; Korpi & Shalev, 1979; Paloheimo, 1984). According
to the comparative evidence, the greater coordination and centraliza-
tion of corporatist labor relations facilitate negotiation between unions
and business associations, producing stable patterns of exchange and
communication between the two parties and reducing uncertainty during
the negotiation process. This, in turn, reduces the probability of strikes
(Brandl & Traxler, 2010; Calmfors & Driffill, 1988; Paloheimo, 1984).
58 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

The centralization of unions also reduces the level of labor conflicts

because they tend to moderate their economic demands in exchange for
better wages and increased participation in instances of tripartite dialogue
(Brandl & Traxler, 2010; Calmfors & Driffill, 1988). According to Calm-
fors and Driffill (1988), corporatist unions also tend to be more moderate
because their leaders, representing a larger number of workers, are more
aware of the negative effects of excessive wage increases (for example,
inflation and unemployment).
In the case of business associations, centralization of the organiza-
tion of interests has also been observed to have similar effects. The
greater centralization of corporatist business associations gives them
greater capacity to “oblige” companies to respect agreements reached in
collective bargaining processes (Traxler et al., 2001). Therefore, although
agreements usually result in greater economic benefits for workers than
those reached under decentralized schemes, they are supported by busi-
ness associations, not only because they reduce labor conflict through
the signing of “peace clauses”, but also because the setting of wages and
working conditions across the sector limits competition for labor between
companies (Bulfone & Afonso, 2020; Martin, 2014; Wallerstein et al.,
1997).
By contrast, in models where decentralized negotiation, fragmented
relations and, therefore, union pluralism predominate, the likelihood of
strikes tends to be greater notwithstanding the effect of union pluralism
in weakening workers’ collective power (Dobson, 1997, p. 550). Empir-
ical research has shown that union pluralism is associated with a higher
level of contentious labor activity because the existence of multiple unions
complicates the collective bargaining process and makes it more difficult
to reach agreements with employers (Dobson, 1997; Jansen, 2014). Some
authors attribute this to union pluralism’s effect in fostering competi-
tion for members among unions at the company or sector level. This, in
turn, encourages unions to adopt less conciliatory attitudes towards the
company in order to achieve economic improvements and, thus, increase
their membership (Dobson, 1997; Humphries, 1990; Paloheimo, 1984).
In recent decades, different studies have, indeed, found that strike activity
is significantly greater in companies, economic sectors, and countries with
union plurality or a higher level of union fragmentation (Akkerman, 2008;
Brandl & Traxler, 2010; Jansen, 2014).
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND PROTEST: REFLECTIONS … 59

Based on evidence of this type, the central hypothesis of the rest of

this chapter is that economic sectors with greater union pluralism and
fragmentation will have a higher level of labor conflict.

Union Pluralism, Fragmentation of Workers’

Organizations, and Strikes: An Exploratory
Empirical Analysis of the Chilean Case
To test this hypothesis, this section presents the results of a statistical
data analysis that explored the relationship between union pluralism/
fragmentation and labor strikes. For this analysis, we constructed a
database with information from the Observatory of Labor Strikes (OHL-
UAH/COES), the Statistical Yearbooks of the Directorate of Labor
(Dirección del Trabajo, 2021), and the National Employment Survey
of the National Statistics Institute (INE). This database, available on
request from the authors, contains information about the number of
strikes and the number of unions (2011–2019), their members, and their
average size in 16 economic sectors, measured according to a modified
version of the International Standard Industrial Classification (ISIC, Rev.
3). The dependent variable was the number of strikes per year in each
economic sector. The data available allowed us to construct two indepen-
dent variables through which to estimate the level of union pluralism and
fragmentation: (1) the number of unions per 1,000 salaried workers1 and
(2) the average size of unions. As indicated above, our hypothesis was
that the larger the number of unions, the greater union fragmentation
and union pluralism and, therefore, the higher the level of labor conflict
and, conversely, that the larger the unions, the less fragmentation and,
therefore, the lower the level of labor conflict.
The analysis considered only the private sector because the special
regulatory framework for public sector workers does not recognize the
right to strike or union organization.
The results of this analysis are presented in Figs. 4 and 5. Figure 4
shows the Pearson correlation coefficient (r) between the average number

1 We calculated the number of unions per 1,000 salaried workers in order to control
for the potential impact of the size of each economic sector. In this way, we could analyze
the relationship between the number of unions and strikes controlling for the fact that
larger sectors (such as commerce) may have more strikes simply because they have more
workers.
60 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

of unions per 1,000 salaried workers and the average number of strikes
in each sector in 2011–2019, while Fig. 5 shows the correlation between
average union size and the number of strikes for the same period.
In line with the international evidence, Fig. 4 suggests a positive
correlation between the number of unions per 1,000 salaried workers
and the number of strikes (Pearson’s r = 0.19). The correlation coef-
ficient indicates that economic sectors with more unions (for example,
the transport, warehousing, and communications sector and, to a lesser
extent, the manufacturing sector) tend to exhibit more strike activity than

Fig. 4 Number of active unions and number of strikes (average values), 2011–
2019 (Note The figures represent the following economic sectors: 1. Agriculture,
animal farming, silviculture, and fishing; 2. Mining and quarrying; 3. Manu-
facturing; 4. Electricity, gas, and water supply; 5. Construction; 6. Commerce;
7. Hotels and restaurants; 8. Transport, warehousing, and communications;
9. Financial intermediation; 10. Real estate, business, and rental activities; 11.
Public administration and defense; 12. Teaching; 13. Social and health services;
14. Private homes with domestic service; 15. Extra-territorial organizations and
bodies; 16. Other service activities)
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND PROTEST: REFLECTIONS … 61

Fig. 5 Size of unions and number of strikes (average values), 2011–2019 (Note
The figures represent the following economic sectors: 1. Agriculture, animal
farming, silviculture, and fishing; 2. Mining and quarrying; 3. Manufacturing;
4. Electricity, gas, and water supply; 5. Construction; 6. Commerce; 7. Hotels
and restaurants; 8. Transport, warehousing, and communications; 9. Financial
intermediation; 10. Real estate, business, and rental activities; 11. Public admin-
istration and defense; 12. Teaching; 13. Social and health services; 14. Private
homes with domestic service; 15. Extra-territorial organizations and bodies; 16.
Other service activities)

sectors with few unions, such as construction, hotels and restaurants, and
financial intermediation.
Figure 5 confirms this finding. As hypothesized, it shows a negative
correlation between average union size and the number of strikes, (Pear-
son’s r =−0.19). In other words, economic sectors with larger unions
(for example, financial intermediation) tend to have fewer strikes, while in
sectors where smaller unions predominate (for example, transport, ware-
housing, and communications, manufacturing, and teaching), the number
of contentious actions is higher.
62 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

One possible explanation for these results is that they reflect differences
between sectors in terms of unions’ power or, in other words, that it is
not union pluralism or fragmentation that explain their fewer strikes, but
rather the weakness of their unions. To test this alternative interpretation,
we estimated differences in union power in the different sectors by calcu-
lating their average rate of unionization in 2011–2019 (Table 1). This
calculation was based on the assumption that unionization is an indicator
comparable to the level of power and collective organization of workers
(Brandl & Traxler, 2010; Pontusson, 2013).
Complementary analysis indicated a positive correlation between
unionization and the number of strikes (Pearson’s r = 0.19) (Appendix
1). This shows that, in line with the alternative interpretation above,
the level of union power and organization does influence the number
of strikes: the greater union organization/power, the higher the number
of contentious labor actions. However, detailed analysis of differences

Table 1 Unionization by economic sector (average values), 2011–2019

Unionization
rate

01. Agriculture, animal farming, silviculture, and fishing 13.6

02. Mining and quarrying 26.9
03. Manufacturing 18.8
04. Electricity, gas, and water supply 19.8
05. Construction 11.9
06. Commerce 21.0
07. Hotels and restaurants 13.6
08. Transport, warehousing, and communications 33.2
09. Financial intermediation 30.6
10. Real estate, business, and rental activities 15.6
11. Public administration and defense 11.5
12. Teaching 16.8
13. Social and health services 26.4
14. Private homes with domestic service 0.1
15. Extra-territorial organizations and bodies 22.2
16. Other service activities 54.8

Source Compiled by authors based on data from the Directorate of Labor (Dirección del Trabajo,
2021) and the National Employment Survey of the National Statistics Institute (INE). The rates
were calculated taking only payroll workers in each sector (that is, excluding self-employed persons)
and, therefore, overestimate real union membership in each sector. They should only be used for the
purposes of comparison between the economic sectors indicated
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND PROTEST: REFLECTIONS … 63

in unionization rates between sectors calls into question the hypothesis

that the correlations observed in Figs. 4 and 5 are simply an effect of
differences in union power. When comparing Figs. 4 and 5 with the data
in Table 1, which shows each sector’s unionization rate, it can be seen
that some sectors with low levels of labor conflict, such as hotels and
restaurants and financial activities, have dissimilar unionization rates (31%
for financial activities but only 14% for hotels and restaurants). Similarly,
some sectors with high levels of conflict, such as transport, warehousing,
and communications and manufacturing, show important differences in
unionization (33% for transport, warehousing, and communications, but
19% for manufacturing).
In short, while not excluding the existence of a positive correlation
between unionization and the level of strike activity, an analysis of Table 1
reaffirms the conclusions derived from Figs. 4 and 5. In other words, our
analysis indicates not only that there is a positive relationship between the
level of union pluralism and fragmentation and the occurrence of strikes,
but also that this relationship is not explained, at least not totally, by
differences in union power between sectors.
How then can we explain this relationship between union pluralism/
fragmentation and contentious labor activity? As noted above, interna-
tional studies have argued that the existence of multiple unions tends
to produce more “chaotic” collective bargaining processes with higher
levels of uncertainty than when unions are less fragmented (Akkerman,
2008; Brandl & Traxler, 2010; Jansen, 2014). Some studies have even
affirmed that, in such contexts, conflict increases because unions compete
for members by adopting confrontational attitudes towards companies
(Dobson, 1997; Jansen, 2014). Our data does not allow us to test this
specific hypothesis. However, recent research suggests that, in Chile,
competitive relations between unions do not significantly increase the
probability of strikes in companies (Pérez Ahumada & Ocampo, 2023).
This might imply that union pluralism’s positive correlation with the level
of labor conflict may be explained less by “competition” between unions
than by its effect in complicating negotiations with employers. Unions’
limited negotiating capacity was at the core of the 1979 Labor Plan and
has not been modified by any of the labor reforms of subsequent demo-
cratic center-left governments (Pérez Ahumada, 2023a). The persistence
of laws created to restrict unions’ bargaining power is, according to the
evidence presented in this chapter, key in explaining the proliferation of
strikes in Chile.
64 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

The explanation proposed here is consistent with that developed in

other studies which have suggested that the excessive “bureaucratiza-
tion” of collective bargaining and “over-regulation” of the right to strike
in Chile have tended to favor the appearance of labor mobilizations
“outside” the legal margins of collective bargaining (Gamonal, 2011;
OHL, 2017). Some of these studies have also asserted that, over the
past decade, Chilean unions have become politicized in their demands
since the percentage of strikes for reasons other than workplace issues
has increased (Medel et al., 2021). This could be another factor in the
increase in labor mobilization seen in the country.

Conclusion
Research on social movements has shown that social organizations play a
fundamental role in the generation of disruptive actions. They not only
provide resources that facilitate the action of social movements, but also
help to articulate demands, discourses, and identities that reinforce the
collective nature of disruptive actions (Caniglia & Carmín, 2005). Based
on arguments of this type, recent research has attempted to explain how,
and through which mechanisms, social organizations have influenced the
process of social mobilization observed in Chile over the past decade.
Although there is scant empirical evidence about social organizations’
internal structure, recent studies suggest that there has not been a correla-
tion between the proliferation of social organizations and increased social
protest (Jara Ibarra, 2019).
What happens in the particular case of contentious collective actions
in the labor sphere? How has the structure of unions’ organization and,
specifically, their level of fragmentation and pluralism affected the devel-
opment of strikes in Chile? In this chapter, we have answered these
questions by providing evidence that, in economic sectors with greater
union fragmentation and pluralism, there is more strike activity. Thus,
our evidence reinforces the argument according to which labor regulation
conducive to fragmentation and the coexistence of multiple unions favors
the emergence of contentious labor actions (Akkerman, 2008; Dobson,
1997; Jansen, 2014).
We believe that this finding is important because it complements the
evidence presented in other recent studies, which assert that the growth
of strike activity can be explained by unions’ politicization or their adop-
tion of disruptive tactics in an institutional context that overregulates
 LABOR ORGANIZATIONS AND PROTEST: REFLECTIONS … 65

and limits the right to strike (Medel et al., 2021; OHL, 2017). In line
with these studies, the evidence presented here indicates that regula-
tion that promotes union fragmentation is also key for understanding
strike activity in Chile, even though it may, at the same time, weaken
union bargaining power. As noted above, contrary to the literature on
the subject, recent evidence suggests that the positive correlation between
union fragmentation/pluralism and strike activity is not explained by the
existence of competitive relationships between unions (see, for example,
Pérez Ahumada & Ocampo, 2023). Future studies should explain in
depth why this is the case and why companies and economic sectors with
a higher level of union fragmentation are more prone to strikes. Future
studies should also look at the extent to which the findings of this research
apply, or not, to other actors and social conflicts. The rise in social protest
observed in Chilean society over the past decade makes answering ques-
tions of this type a necessary task, which has theoretical, methodological
and, above all, political implications.

Appendix
See Appendix Fig. 6
66 P. PÉREZ-AHUMADA AND F. GUTIÉRREZ-CROCCO

Fig. 6 Labor union density and number of strikes (average values), 2011–
2019 (Note The figures represent the following economic sectors: 1. Agriculture,
animal farming, silviculture, and fishing; 2. Mining and quarrying; 3. Manufac-
turing; 4. Electricity, gas, and water supply; 5. Construction; 6. Retail; 7. Hotels
and restaurants; 8. Transport, warehousing, and communications; 9. Financial
intermediation; 10. Real estate, business, and rental activities; 11. Public admin-
istration and defense; 12. Teaching; 13. Social and health services; 14. Private
homes with domestic service; 15. Extra-territorial organizations and bodies; 16.
Other service activities)

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 Conflict About Pensions in Chile:
Construction and Development of a Social
Movement

Ignacio Díaz and Felipe Olivares

Chile’s so-called estallido social began in October 2019. It differed from

the social movements of the previous decade in that it was inorganic, on
a mass scale, and without clear leaders. However, despite its inorganic
nature, certain demands emerged from among the numerous expressions
of citizen discontent. They included, prominently, an end to the country’s
pension system.
Like other demands that the uprising brought to the fore—such as
higher wages and a change in the health care model—demand for a
change in the pension system had been preceded by years of mobiliza-
tions on the part of different actors. They dated back over two decades
across different cycles of mobilization, at times convening hundreds of
thousands of people in different cities around a variety of tactics and
repertoires. In this process, the No+AFP Coordinator, created in 2013

I. Díaz (B) · F. Olivares

Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
F. Olivares
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 71

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_5
72 I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

as a union tool for putting an end to the pension model, played a crucial
role.
As a result of this questioning, controversy over the pension system
had dragged on for several years, becoming one of the country’s most
hotly debated political issues. Reform of the system had been part
of the presidential platforms of different political sectors in the two
previous presidential elections,1 ,2 ,3 and, in the face of the Covid-19 crisis,
Congress had passed laws allowing workers to withdraw part of their
pension savings.4
Although the conflict remains open and the desire for a radical trans-
formation of the model has not been satisfied, the framework of the
discussion has undeniably shifted in the direction of profound reform.
Importantly, the pension system plays a fundamental role in sustaining the
Chilean economic model and, through investment by the pension funds,
the country’s capital markets. Its modification or maintenance, therefore,
has implications for many of the interests of actors in positions of power.
In less than 10 years, since its first great mobilization in 2013, the
pension movement has positioned its demands among citizens and moved
towards a structural change in the system. This chapter this chapter
provides a narrative of the trajectory of this conflict using data about
contentious actions between 2008 and 2020 from the Observatory of
Conflicts of the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES).
Its central argument is that demand for a change in the pension system
served as the basis for the successful construction of a social movement
able to spread the demand among other citizens.

1 Pension proposal of Beatriz Sánchez (Frente Amplio, center-left): https://www.dia

rioconcepcion.cl/economia-y-negocios/2017/08/29/propuesta-previsional-de-beatriz-san
chez.html.
2 Pension proposal of Alejandro Guillier (Nueva Mayoría, center and center-
left): https://www.t13.cl/noticia/politica/guillier-presenta-iniciativa-materia-reforma-al-
sistema-pensiones.
3 Pension proposal of Ignacio Briones (Evopoli, center-right): https://juntosporbriones.
cl/pensiones/.
4 Withdrawals of 10%: https://www.chileatiende.gob.cl/fichas/81027-retiros-del-10-
de-los-fondos-de-afp#:~:text=El%20primer%20retiro%20rige%20desde,a%C3%B1o%20para%
20solicitar%20cada%20retiro.
 CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION … 73

Recent History of Chile’s Pension System

Chile’s current pension system was introduced in 1981 during the
Augusto Pinochet dictatorship to replace a previous pay-as-you-go
system. It is entirely funded by contributors who must pay 10% of the
part of their monthly income subject to social security deductions into
an account managed by a Pension Fund Administrator (AFP). These
private for-profit institutions charge a percentage commission and invest
the contributors’ savings in financial instruments in order to obtain a
return on them. At the end of a contributor’s working life (65 years for
men and 60 for women, although in some cases it may be earlier), these
savings are then used to pay a retirement pension. Under this model,
pensions are an individual matter in that the future pension each worker
will receive depends on their capacity to save. Contributors can only
choose in which of several different funds, classified according to the risk
of the instruments in which they invest, they prefer to save (Betancor,
2020).
In 2008, the first government of President Michelle Bachelet intro-
duced a reform to improve the pensions of low-income segments of the
population and those whose savings did not suffice to finance a pension
capable of satisfying their needs. This reform created a state-funded Soli-
darity Pillar for old-age and disability pensions, and state resources were
allocated to improve the pensions of the poorest 60% of the population
(Sojo, 2014).
The initial promise of the pension model was that it would increase
pensions, thanks to workers’ individual efforts. In 2000, pension experts
forecast that, in 2020, Chileans would be receiving a pension equivalent
to 100% of their working income.5 However, over the years, the pension
model began to show cracks and suffered a profound loss of legitimacy,
positioning it as requiring structural reform.
The system’s legitimacy problems include, crucially, the low pensions
received by a large proportion of contributors. In 2015, the Bravo

5 Manager who announced pensions of 100% of working income responds to critics:

https://www.cooperativa.cl/noticias/economia/sistema-previsional/afp/gerente-que-anu
ncio-pensiones-del-100-del-sueldo-responde-a-criticas/2016-07-15/153146.html#:~:text=
Fernando%20%C3%81vila%2C%20hist%C3%B3rico%20gerente%20de,durante%20m%C3%
A1s%20a%C3%B1os%20para%20lograrlo.
74 I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

Commission6 found that 50% of contributors who retired between 2007

and 2014 were received pensions of no more than 83,000 pesos (approx-
imately USD136 at the exchange rate of December 2014) (Mejías &
Panes, 2018). By 2019, when the social outburst occurred, according to
data from the Superintendence of Pensions, the system delivered about
1.4 million pensions, of which about a third of them correspond to
old-age pensions in the programmed withdrawal modality (that is, an
amount is delivered monthly to each pensioner), which averaged an
amount of 128,000 pesos (173 USD approximately at October 2019
prices) (Andrade, 2020).
In January 2022, the average for all the system’s pensioners was
254,000 pesos (approximately USD314; exchange rate of January
2022).7 This was equivalent to just 73% of the then legal minimum
wage.8 These inadequate pensions are explained in part by low wages,
the gap between workers affiliated to the system and those who have
actually paid contributions, and the Chilean labor market’s high level of
informality (Sojo, 2014; Valdebenito & Meneses, 2018).
Regarding this last point, the completely individual nature of the
system has the effect of reproducing the inequities of the labor market
in the amount of members’ pensions. Those who have access to formal
and stable jobs have a lower risk of having pension gaps that mean a
lower pension for the period of non-contribution. On the other hand,
those who work informally or in precarious jobs where contributions are
not paid have gaps that result in lower pensions.
Another inequity reproduced by the pension system is gender
inequality. As Andrade (2020) points out, pension amounts are defined
based on years of contribution, type of employment and income level,
three aspects in which the female population is worse off than the male
population. This is mainly due to domestic and care work, which is mostly
performed by women, is not taken into account.

6 Presidential Advisory Commission established in 2015 under the second Bachelet

administration to analyze the situation of the pension system and possible reforms.
7 Superintendency of Pensions: https://www.spensiones.cl//inf_estadistica/afipen/men
sual/2022/02/m00.html.
8 Directorate of Labor: https://www.dt.gob.cl/portal/1628/w3-article-60141.html#:
~:text=A%20partir%20del%2001%20de,%24225.606%20para%20fines%20no%20remuneraci
onales.
 CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION … 75

In addition, as described in a report by the UN Economic Commission

for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) (Sojo, 2014), the system’s
loss of legitimacy has increased for two reasons: first, because of the lack
of effective mechanisms to mitigate the risks posed by economic cycles for
the funds, which are invested in instruments subject to the logic of the
capital market, and, secondly, the contrast between the pensions received
by the bulk of the population and the profits of the AFPs, which reached
over USD426 million in 2021, up by 15% on the previous year.9
This lack of legitimacy also has its roots in the system’s implementation
by a dictatorship, without democratic opportunities for workers to express
their points of view (Sojo, 2014). In line with this, as of mid-2022, Chile’s
Constitutional Convention was discussing the principles of the pension
model with a view to its reformulation in the near future.
In the face of the Covid-19 crisis that began in 2020, legislation was
passed to allow the system’s contributors to withdraw part of their savings.
These withdrawals were a response not only to the effects of the contrac-
tion of employment and reduction of working hours caused by the closure
of companies in some economic sectors, but also reflected the loss of legit-
imacy of the AFP model as a means of protecting Chilean’s social security
in the future.

Development of the Pension Movement in Chile

The AFP system’s inability to provide adequate pensions and its lack of
legitimacy among citizens paved the way for the creation of a social move-
ment that has had an important public presence for at least nine years. It
currently has a transversal and citizen character, with territorial and labor
union expressions, led by the No+AFP Coordinator. As shown in Fig. 1,
contentious conflict over pensions in Chile dates back to at least 2008,
the earliest year for which data is available, and has continued, irregularly
but uninterruptedly, through to 2020, the latest year with data available.
Conflict over pensions has been one of the most important elements
in social conflict in Chile, accounting for a significant percentage of the
total number of protests per year at different points in the past decade.
Over the course of demonstrations about pensions, three key moments
stand out as structuring the cycles of mobilization. As Tarrow (1998)

9 Diario Financiero: https://www.df.cl/mercados/pensiones/ganancias-de-las-afp-

suben-15-en-2021-ante-recuperacion-del-empleo-y.
 76

4,000 12%

3,500
10%

3,000
8%
2,500
I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

2,000 6%

1,500
4%

1,000
2%
500

0 0%
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Total protests Pensions

Fig. 1 Percentage of contentious actions of protest about pensions and frequency of total protests in Chile, 2008–2020
 CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION … 77

points out, a significant increase in contentious actions indicates the start

of a cycle of protest. The first of these occurred in 2013 when the
No+AFP Coordinator was founded and questioning the pension system
as a whole first acquired public relevance. Then, in 2016, a second great
milestone occurred when the conflict ceased to be linked exclusively with
labor unions, becoming a mass movement of a citizen nature. Finally, in
2019, pension demands acquired prominence in the context of the social
uprising that began in October 2019.

First Milestone of the Conflict: Creation

of an Organization Against AFPs
At the beginning of the 2000s, workers first began to react to the low
pensions paid by the individual capitalization system. The first record of
workers’ complaints was a proposal presented by the National Association
of Government Employees (ANEF) and other public sector organizations
for reparation of the damage that the difference in their income subject
to social security contributions, due to the switch to the AFP system, had
caused to their pensions.
In a second social security conflict between 2002 and 2006, port
workers, led by the Chilean Port Union (UPCH), demanded that the
state regulate their right to early retirement because of the nature of
their work. During this process, they proposed a pension model for the
sector that represented a return to the principles of the previous model,
with contributions by both the state and the employer, including other
aspects of social security. Although none of these mobilizations was very
successful in achieving legal changes to the pension system or specific
reforms for their sector, they were a sign, albeit still at the union and local
level, of workers’ opposition to a pension model whose shortcomings
were already apparent (Mejías & Panes, 2018).
In this period, the incipient movement was joined by an organiza-
tion of bank employees. This strengthened its mobilization infrastructure
through their technical knowledge of the pension system. Given the
complexity of financial markets for most people, the Confederation of
Banking and Allied Unions gradually took on an important role in
defending workers’ interests in the conflict.
As from the mid-2000s, different groups of workers around the
country gradually established coordinators and platforms in opposition to
the AFP system. This process culminated on June 5, 2013, when some 30
78 I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

organizations and 80 union leaders, convened by ANEF, health workers’

unions (CONFUSAM and FENPRUSS), and the Banking Confederation,
established the National No +AFP Coordinator (Mejías & Panes, 2018).
From the beginning, its central objective was to replace the existing social
welfare model with a national pension fund under a pay-as-you-go system,
based on the principles of solidarity and universality and financed by
workers, employers, and the state.10
Following Somma (2017), the conflict over pensions can be seen as
part of a “master framework” of social conflict in Chile, bringing together
a series of demands and movements against what could be broadly
referred to as inequality and abuse of power. This framework is largely
based on the political cycle opened by the 2011 student movement, which
drew attention to the impact of the commodification of education as
seen in the high cost of higher education and the existence of for-profit
institutions. It is manifested in demands for change directed against the
democratic political elites that have allowed these inequalities, with their
origin in the neoliberal system, to persist. In the context of this general
consensus across social movements in Chile, the pension movement found
fertile ground for its questioning of the individual capitalization model.
Protests about pensions had their origin in the workers’ movement.
This is borne out by Fig. 2, which shows mobilizations that, in addition to
pension demands, expressed other demands related to labor, educational,
political, and health care issues. In the first cycle of the movement, when
labor unions predominated, labor demands were present in over 70% of
pension protests in all years between 2008 and 2014, except for 2009
and 2010 (68.8% and 66.7%, respectively). This relationship is clearest in
2013 when 90% of contentious actions related to the pension model also
included demands of a labor nature, such as an increase in the minimum
wage or a reform of the labor relations model.
The Coordinator’s creation in 2013 marked a crucial milestone in
the movement’s consolidation in two senses. First, it strengthened it
programmatically since this union space not only convened mobilizations
and grouped organizations together, it also developed technical proposals
and tactical responses. From its inception, the Coordinator established a
technical team to propose economically viable alternatives to the existing
system. During its early years, it organized national congresses at which

10 Press release on the creation of the No +AFP Coordinator: https://bancariachile.

cl/nace-amplia-coordinacion-sindical-para-terminar-con-las-afp/.
 100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Educational Labor Political Health care

Fig. 2 Presence of other demands in protests about pensions, 2008–2020

CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION …
79
80 I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

the participating organizations expressed their opinions and the profes-

sionals linked to the movement used these definitions to formulate a
proposal for a new pension system. The definitive proposal, “A New
Pension System for Chile”, was presented on November 28, 2016,11 and
was updated in February 2021.
Secondly, the Coordinator was fundamental for the consolidation of
mobilizations against the AFP system and the articulation of the move-
ment against pensions. As shown in Fig. 3, it was only in 2015 that the
Coordinator did not play an important role in the conflict in terms of
calling protests. In all the other years and, particularly, as from 2016,
it was present in the bulk of the protests in demand for a new pension
system.

Second Milestone: Politicization of the Conflict

The Coordinator’s central role in articulating the movement is the prin-
cipal thesis of this chapter. In turn, the politicization of the conflict refers
to how the demands related to the pension system and the “No + AFP”
coordinator became an important political issue in the country. In this
sense, the coordinator managed to put the pension issue on the national
political agenda and mobilize various sectors of society to join the demand
for a change in the pension system.
From its purely labor union origins, the Coordinator matured into
an organization with a diversified repertoire of mobilizations. It did not
abandon the strikes and stoppages that are the traditional tools of labor
protests (for example, it called a day of protest and a national strike on
November 4, 2016)12 but, as from 2016, it deployed different economic,
institutional, and mass tactics.
According to Miranda (2021), this was principally the result of cross-
fertilization between two activist cultures of a different origin. On the
one hand, the labor union-movementist culture, which is at the basis and
origin of the movement, gave it great capacity for articulation and a strong
and well-developed structure as well as the technical and political tools to
plan strategically and intervene in the institutional arena in line with its

11 “Un Nuevo Sistema de Pensiones para Chile”: https://coordinadoranomasafp.cl/

wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Propuesta-2021-Diagramacio%CC%81n-Final.pdf.
12 Day of protest and national strike called by the No+AFP Coordinator on November
4, 2016: https://radio.uchile.cl/2016/11/03/chile-se-paraliza-y-exige-fin-de-las-afp/.
 250 100%
90%
200 80%
70%
150 60%
50%
100 40%
30%
50 20%
10%
0 0%
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Protests about pensions Presencia Coordinadora

Fig. 3 Percentage of contentious actions in conflict over pensions in which the No+AFP Coordinator was present,
2013–2020
CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION …
81
82 I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

interests. On the other hand, the “indignant” culture, typical of recent

decades and very different from the militant tradition that characterized
social movements in the previous period, contributed its ability to manage
the language of social networks, which have become an arena of dispute
for social movements. In addition, this culture is made up of ordinary
citizens and, in the context of the political disaffection Chile has experi-
enced over the past decade, this enabled the movement to connect with
an important part of the population.
The coexistence of these two activist cultures caused tensions and
disputes in the Coordinator but, at the same time, gave it tactical breadth
and technical strength. In 2016, the movement’s public actions changed
in two ways that were to be of great importance for the success of
its demands. As discussed above, it diversified its repertoire of actions,
extending them beyond stoppages and national strikes. The tactics that
arose from this crossing of cultures included the call to change to the AFP
system’s E Fund, national protests, mass tweets, a national plebiscite on
the AFPs, a people’s law initiative, and different territorial activities. In the
second change, the Coordinator modified its use of the classic repertoire
of social movements, particularly marches and demonstrations, shifting to
broader and more pacific events that reached sectors of society not linked
to unions and giving them a family and citizen character. This process
of politicization of the conflict, that is, the action of bringing political
issues to the forefront and mobilizing citizens around them, was crucial
to strengthen the cause of the “No + AFP” coordinator and amplify its
message in Chilean society.
In the previous decade, workers’ pension savings had suffered enor-
mous losses as a result of movements in the financial markets where they
had been invested by the AFPs. From the beginning, therefore, the Coor-
dinator urged the system’s contributors to move their savings into the E
Fund. This is the fund that shows the least variation and was recom-
mended as workers’ only tool to protect their savings against possible
adverse international economic cycles that would act as a form of finan-
cial expropriation (Lapavitsas, 2016). However, this defensive tactic had
significant costs for the movement since markets moved in a way that
meant losses for the E Fund (Rozas Bugueño & Maillet, 2019).
In the context of Chile’s 2017 national elections, the Coordinator,
together with allied territorial, social, and political organizations, called a
national plebiscite on the AFPs (Mejías & Panes, 2018). Although this
took place in the context of a presidential election and without legal
 CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION … 83

mechanisms to institutionalize the plebiscite, almost a million people

voted virtually and in-person at hundreds of voting points around the
country,13 giving the movement a media and social boost.
In 2017, given this high participation and the movement’s technical
development, the Coordinator also decided to launch a campaign to draw
up a people’s law initiative, even though this mechanism does not exist
under Chilean law. The process was used as a tool for union articula-
tion, looking ahead to a future general strike (Mejías & Panes, 2018),
but was also envisaged as a way of increasing citizen awareness and
putting pressure from civil society on the legislature in the framework of
the autonomy from political parties that the Coordinator has maintained
(Rozas Bugueño & Maillet, 2019).
In another strategy, the movement made permanent use of social
networks, particularly Twitter. Through the hashtag “NoMasAFP”, it
positioned demands and questioned the system. According to Knipp et al.
(2018), it began to use online publications in 2011, but it was not until
2013 that it intensified and systematized this strategy, with a peak in
2016 that coincided with the two most important moments in the conflict
(apart from the 2019 mobilizations). In addition, there was a transition
in the accounts that promoted slogans in social networks from those of
activists and organizations to accounts linked to ordinary citizens without
active social militancy.
This change in the composition of those sharing the movement’s
online content reflects a change in the composition of the movement
itself in the cycle that began in 2016. Changes in participants are typical
of the cycles of social movements and, in the particular case of the pension
movement, are explained principally by its mix of activist cultures of
different origins and its incorporation of organizations other than labor
unions.
In line with theories of resource mobilization and the political process
(McAdam et al., 1999), the movement’s internal strengthening appears to
have been key in the proliferation of calls to mobilization and the broad-
ening of its range of tactics to include, for example, the plebiscite. The
Coordinator’s structure comprises an executive body, a regional council
with regional and union representatives, a union front, and regional coor-
dinators. The latter, in turn, comprise municipal and zonal heads, many

13 A million votes in the No+AFP Plebiscite: https://radio.uchile.cl/2017/10/04/ple

biscito-de-noafp-convoco-a-casi-un-millon-de-personas/.
84 I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

of them with a strictly local presence, in which local organizations and

ordinary people participate (Rozas Bugueño & Maillet, 2019).
As indicated above, the breadth of the movement’s tactical repertoire,
fostered by the integration of other groups and the movement’s terri-
torialization, occurred together with a change in the types of protest
used previously. During this second cycle, calls for strikes and marches
expanded markedly, not in number (Fig. 1), but in their mass scale
and pacific and “family” nature (Knipp et al., 2018; Rozas Bugueño &
Maillet, 2019).
As shown in Fig. 4, there were 236 protests about pensions with
fewer than 1,000 participants in 2008–2015 while, in 2016–2019 (up to
October 17), there were 139 protests with fewer than 1,000 people. By
contrast, the number of protests with an average of 1,000–9,999 partici-
pants increased from 62 to 78 and those with 10,000 or more participants
almost doubled (from 11 in the previous cycle to 21). The number
of participants peaked on July 24, 2016, when more than 100,000
people in Santiago and as many as 750,000 around the country gathered
simultaneously.14
This increase in the magnitude of the protests was accompanied by
a change in their nature. As discussed above, they were initially held by
public and private labor unions, grouped together in associations, and
disruptive tactics, such as strikes, stoppages, and the blocking of access
to workplaces (a marked characteristic until 2013) predominated. This
changed with the creation of the Coordinator in 2013 and the conflict’s
territorialization, after which pacific tactics predominated, with demon-
strations taking the form of marches (principally in 2016) or public acts
of a family nature with artistic performances (Fig. 5).

Third Milestone: Spread of Demands

As seen above, the conflict over pensions escalated from a union and
localized demand, with proposals on reparation from unions and specific
organizations, into a transversal movement of unions and other orga-
nizations, grouping together some 30 organizations in the No+AFP
Coordinator around a common proposal, before becoming an important

14 Report in El Mostrador: https://www.elmostrador.cl/noticias/pais/2016/07/24/

marcha-contra-las-afps-congrega-a-mas-de-100-mil-personas-en-la-capital-y-750-mil-en-
todo-el-pais/.
 120 112

100

80

60 52
43
35 34 37
40
28 25 25
24
20 17 18
20 13 11
4 7 5 6 7 6
0 3 3 241 1 2 2
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019

1-999 1,000-9,999 10,000 y más

Fig. 4 Frequency of participants in protests about pensions by year, 2008–2019 (up to October 17, 2019)15
CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION …

15 In 2019, only contentious actions up to October 17, 2019, are included because of the uprising that began on October 18.
85
 86

200
180
160
140
I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

120
100
80
60
40
20
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Pacific Disruptive Violent

Fig. 5 Frequency of tactics used in contentious actions in the pension conflict, 2008–2020
 CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION … 87

social movement in conflict in Chile, incorporating new activist cultures,

diversifying its tactics and expanding the nature of its manifestations to
reach more people in a process referred to as citizenization of the conflict.
This second cycle ended on October 18, 2019, when a set of demands
exploded in a massive, inorganic, and territorialized manner throughout
the country. The so-called Chilean October radically changed all social
movements’ previous cycles of mobilization, drawing on their demands
and common meanings in line with the “master framework” proposed
by Somma (2017). It also represented an unprecedented shock to the
institutional arena. The clearest consequence of this was the agreement
reached on November 15, 2019, by parliamentarians from across the
political spectrum (part of the Frente Amplio, the Nueva Mayoría, and
Chile Vamos) to call a plebiscite as a first step of a process to replace the
1980 Constitution.
This was the context for what we consider the dissemination of demand
for an end to the AFP system. This new cycle was shaped by two
phenomena. In the first, the inorganic nature of the October uprising,
without leaders to guide the protests in the framework of a general dele-
gitimization of the institutional political spectrum and the population’s
scant knowledge of the leaders of social movements, pension demands
emerged spontaneously from among all the other demands voiced in this
period.
As Fig. 6 shows, pensions were the third most frequent demand, after
labor and health care demands between October 18, 2019, and March
13, 2020 (when Covid-19 health measures were introduced around the
country). However, the greater frequency of health demands is explained
by parallel demonstrations by health unions on matters different from
those behind the uprising. In the case of labor demands, these were prin-
cipally for higher wages in a context of weakening household economies.
Demands related to pensions were as frequent as those related to the
political system or for more profound changes, such as the demand for a
Constituent Assembly, that, to some extent, characterized the course of
the conflict. Moreover, they outnumbered demands related to the trigger
for the explosion of protests: student demonstrations against a proposed
increase in public transport fares. In other words, pension demands stand
out as one of the most frequent demands that emerged spontaneously
during the protests.
The second phenomenon that shaped this new cycle is that, despite
the importance of pension demands, the form that collective action took
 88

Health care

Labor

Pensions
I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

Political

Education

Feminist

Housing

Environmental

0 50 100 150 200 250 300

Fig. 6 Frequency of the presence of demands in contentious actions, October 18, 2019–March 13, 2020
 CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION … 89

during the uprising, largely dispensing with formal organizations and

political parties, meant that the presence of the No +AFP Coordinator
in calling protests about pensions was proportionally much lower than in
the previous cycle when it had a played a preponderant and unifying role.
Figure 7 shows the difference between the pre-uprising 2013–2019 cycle
and the cycle that began with the uprising. Although the Coordinator
participated in a significant number of demonstrations, the magnitude
of the uprising was such that it lost importance in positioning pension
demands. In this new cycle, they appear to become independent of the
movement, which ceases to be necessary in calling for collective action
against the pension system.
This seems to occur mainly due to the proliferation of small simul-
taneous demonstrations called by neighbors or local organizations that
exceeded the speed with which organizations such as the No+AFP Coor-
dinator could convene and participate. Following Rozas-Bugueño et al.
(2022), the significant presence of new demonstrators, i.e., people who
had not usually participated in mobilizations before October 2019, may
account for the loss of relevance of longer-established social movement
organizations. This, because according to their analysis, new protesters
participate less in organizations and have less adherence to leftist ideas. In
this sense, the mobilization capacity of organizations such as the No+AFP
Coordinator loses relevance in the face of protesters who do not share
the modes of action of older protesters, who are more likely to follow
organizations.
On the one hand, these two phenomena reveal the success of a process
of demand construction. From its emergence as a labor union demand to
its positioning as a mass demand by an organization dedicated exclusively
to its promotion and, later, its appropriation by an important part of the
mobilized population, the pension conflict serves as an example of how to
achieve influence and hegemony through the articulation of organizations
and groups and tactical innovation in protest, giving it independence and
embedding it in Chilean society.
On the other hand, however, this latter situation implies a risk for the
movement. The demand’s dissemination among the population and the
Coordinator’s proportional loss of presence weaken organized groups’
control over the conflict and, therefore, increase the possibility that other
sectors take up the demand and give it a direction different from that
sought by the movement until then. The debate about pensions has since
taken an institutional turn because, in 2020, members of the Chamber
 90

100

90 22.63

80 38.89

70 59.57 61.22

60
I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

87.5 89.99
50 99.44 100 97.92

40 77.37

30 61.11

20 40.43 38.78

10
12.5 10.11
0.56 2.08
0
2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 (17 sept) 2019 (18 sept) 2020
With presence of Coordinator Without presence of Coordinator No+AFP

Fig. 7 Percentage of protests about pensions in which the No +AFP Coordinator was present, 2013–2019 (up to
October 17) and 2019 (as from October 18)–2020
 CONFLICT ABOUT PENSIONS IN CHILE: CONSTRUCTION … 91

of Deputies from different political sectors promoted and obtained the

approval of bills that allowed contributors to withdraw part (or in some
cases all) of the savings held in their individual pension accounts. These
sectors considered that the economic relief measures provided by the
government of President Sebastián Piñera did not suffice to address the
needs arising from the pandemic, the effects of lockdowns, and the decline
in economic activity (and, therefore, income and employment). Although
activity has since increased and employment is clearly recovering (INE,
2022), some political sectors have continued to press for authorization of
further withdrawals (and, even, their total withdrawal by all contributors)
as a means of providing households with economic support.
In parallel, one of the key points on the current government’s agenda is
a gradual reform of the pension system,16 moving to a solidary, tripartite
system whilst maintaining the role of pension savings in the country’s
capital market, given their importance for the economy.

Conclusions
This chapter has sought to provide a narrative about the history of a
social movement, born around a decade ago, whose central demand is
now part of a government program and a matter of permanent public
debate between political actors and civil society.
The pension movement arose from the articulation of public and
private-sector unions. This amalgamation of the solid organizational
infrastructure of the associations of government employees and the tech-
nical knowledge of financial sector unions permitted its emergence as a
movement with its own character within the Chilean union movement.
After a first cycle of mobilizations with disruptive characteristics by groups
of workers, the movement changed and, in 2016, acquired a broader
form, calling for more massive protest actions with a predominance of
pacific tactics, whilst modifying its internal organization to accommodate
social and neighborhood groups and organizations. Finally, as from the
uprising of October 2019, the No+AFP Coordinator, the movement’s
main organization, lost its key role in calling for protests in support of a
new pension system as the demand spread more broadly among citizens.

16 Pension reform: https://www.dw.com/es/las-afp-en-chile-la-reforma-urgente-que-

enfrenta-gabriel-boric/a-60608864.
92 I. DÍAZ AND F. OLIVARES

Finally, it is important to note there are a number of aspects related to

the movement that fall outside the scope of this chapter: they include in-
depth analysis of its internal relations, the role of the press and the media
in the conflict, and technical analysis of the different proposals for the
pension system as well as matters related to the protests as such, including
the dynamics between protesters and the police, the territorial nature of
the conflict, and a detailed description of the types of tactics grouped
here as pacific, disruptive, or violent, notwithstanding differences between
them that could be of interest.

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 Varieties of Student Protests in Chile

Nicolás M. Somma

Introduction
The student movement is the national movement in Chile that has likely
garnered the most attention in the last fifteen years, both from the polit-
ical sphere and academia (e.g., Bellei et al., 2014; Donoso, 2013, 2017;
Donoso & Somma, 2019; Guzmán-Concha 2012; Ponce Lara, 2020;
Somma & Olguín, forthcoming; Villalobos, 2019; von Bülow & Bide-
gain, 2015; von Bülow et al., 2019). And rightfully so. The current
President of Chile, Gabriel Boric, was leading student demonstrations
on the Alameda (in the center of Santiago) just over a decade ago. A
significant portion of the current national government comes from the
student organizations of around that time. The critique raised by the
student movement against the strongly commodified educational system
in Chile had far-reaching effects on other areas of society, such as health-
care, pensions, the environment, water, and mining. Various social and
political forces began to question market mechanisms in these areas and

N. M. Somma (B)
Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 95

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_6
96 N. M. SOMMA

emphasized the need for a stronger role of the state, to a considerable

extent thanks to the initial push of students.
Part of this momentum was consolidated in the proposed constitu-
tional draft which was rejected by voters in September 2022. Although
students were key players only initially in the 2019 social uprising,
the constitutional process that resulted from the upheaval would have
been different without the previous student mobilizations since around
2006. In summary, the student movement was perhaps the main chal-
lenger to the societal model inherited from Pinochet’s dictatorship and
managed—albeit with some significant changes—by successive democratic
governments.
This chapter seeks to challenge two common assumptions about the
Chilean student movement. The first is its unity. In Chile, analysts and
scholars (myself included) often talk about “the” student movement as if
it were a homogeneous entity. It was “the” student movement that staged
a large demonstration, pressed for this or that reform, or gained the
sympathy or disapproval of public opinion. However, like any other move-
ment, the student movement is a network of individuals and organizations
(Diani, 1992) with less uniformity of behavior and attitudes than implied
by the pronoun “the”. Although I use this expression throughout the
chapter, I explore one obvious source of heterogeneity among students:
the cleavage between secondary school and university students.
The second assumption is that the Chilean student movement is mostly
about large protests, especially large demonstrations in cities. The massive
protests of 2006 and 2011 created the impression that students have a
great capacity for mobilization. Of course, this is sometimes the case.
However, only a minor fraction of student protests is large enough to
make the newspaper headlines and trouble the political elites or public
opinion. The database of the Observatory of Conflicts of the Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES) is ideal for challenging this
assumption because it tracks small protests around the country.
In short, this chapter is about the different varieties of student protest.
Specifically, it shows their heterogeneity in demands, tactics, targets, and
mobilization capacity, looking at the most important changes that have
occurred over time. It also uses protest data to explore the links between
students and other groups.
The chapter’s aims are modest: to describe in some detail the varieties
of student protest in Chile, establishing preliminary relationships among
their main characteristics. This will pave the way for further research
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 97

looking to explain their heterogeneity. A descriptive exercise is neces-

sary given the surprisingly scarce literature that uses protest event data
to research student movements (for Chile, see Villalobos, 2019; for Latin
America, see Disi, 2020 and 2021; for the United States, see Alonso &
Mische, 2016; Soule, 1997; Van Dyke, 2003).

The Student Movement as a by-Product Movement

The student movement is a clear example of “by-product movements”
(Somma & Medel, 2024). These are social movements that emerge from
the mobilization of individuals who are already in regular contact through
common activities in an institutional arena such as the economy, educa-
tion, religion, or the law (Turner, 2003, for a classical treatment of
social institutions). Akin to fields (Bourdieu et al., 1992), institutional
arenas are human collectivities located in space and time (not “systems”)
that undertake certain recognizable activities to address recurrent human
problems (Abrutyn, 2015) and are governed by norms, ideologies, roles,
and organizational arrangements (Eisenstadt, 1993).
Education is one of the institutional arenas that have grown most in
modern societies, reflecting the expansion of mass education systems and
modern science (Turner, 1997). As countries embarked on modernization
processes, the number of children and young people enrolled in educa-
tional institutions as their primary daily activity increased. Governments
defined mandatory education schemas, whose duration increased across
time, boosting the number of specialists—such as teachers, professors, and
educational managers—and the resources that states devote to the educa-
tional arena in forms that include schools, infrastructure, scholarships, and
teacher careers (Turner, 1997, 2003).
In Chile, as elsewhere in Latin America, modern state-builders devel-
oped a network of public schools where children learned civic values
and acquired literacy and other skills required of workers in capitalist
economies (Ponce de Léon et al., 2013). In the latter decades of
the twentieth century, the educational arena specialized as it expanded.
Educational institutions proliferated (especially in higher education since
the 1980s), offering more varied curricula and increasing the size of
the student body at all levels (Brunner, 2005). Educational credentials
increasingly came to be perceived as a key determinant of social mobility
and status. Thus, access to the educational arena and the quality, content,
98 N. M. SOMMA

and governance of education became issues of contention around which

student movements coalesced.
Recent social movement theories have emphasized how movements
emerge in the interstices of institutional activities and fields (Armstrong &
Bernstein, 2008; Goldstone, 2004). In this case, a by-product of the
expansion of compulsory education was the creation of a mass of students
who regularly interacted in educational institutions and created a multi-
level network of student organizations at the school and higher levels.
Once constituted as networks of individuals, groups, and organiza-
tions with common leaders and goals, students developed demands and
deployed tactics geared to the targets of the demands. Currently, the
two most notable umbrella organizations in Chile are ACES (secondary
students) and CONFECH (university students). These organizations
could be more readily activated for protest activities than groups needing
to build these structures from scratch such as environmentalists or
women’s groups. This served as the basis for the student movement, a
central player in Chile’s “social movement sector” (McCarthy & Zald,
1977).
The Observatory of Conflicts differentiates between protests staged by
secondary school and university (or more broadly, tertiary) students. Both
segments are of sufficient age for autonomous action and collective mobi-
lization. Studies of the student movement in Chile have also identified
other cleavages such as ideological and organizational cleavages, differ-
entiating between autonomous, libertarian, and more institutionalized
student groups (Donoso, 2017; Donoso & Somma, 2019; von Bülow
and Bidegain Ponte, 2015). The secondary school/university cleavage,
while more obvious, has received less systematic attention.
The empirical analysis presented below begins with five working
hypotheses:

• Student protest activity is not stable over time but follows protest
cycles (Tarrow, 1993a) with peaks and lows during the period
studied and within the calendar year.
• Although students have a diverse tactical repertoire (comprising both
peaceful and disruptive tactics), their demands are heavily focused
on educational issues. However, the salience of different educational
demands varies over time and can be traced to specific waves of
protest.
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 99

• Students occasionally support the demands of other movements and

vice versa.
• Choice of the claims (or demands), tactics, and targets of student
protests is not random and they are related to each other. Specifi-
cally, students will choose certain tactics and targets for presenting
certain claims. The secondary school/university cleavage is reflected
in different tactics, targets, and claims, which can be traced to the
two segments’ struggles and organizational characteristics.
• The size of student protests varies (in terms of the estimated number
of participants) and certain variables—such as demands, tactics, and
student segment—seem to affect it.

In this chapter, I refer to a wealth of results. Due to space limitations,

I only show supportive evidence for the most important findings.

How Have Student Protests Changed Over Time?

Here I identify “student protests” as those protest events where news
reports indicate the presence of “students” as a category. Of course, many
individuals who are students may show up in all kinds of protests. But, if
they are not recognized as a category by the news reports, the event is
not coded as a student protest. However, it is reasonable to assume that
if reports mention that “students” protested, they had a salient role in
convoking or staging the protest, and/or in shaping the claims displayed
in it.
The first finding is that the volume of student protests in Chile is not
stable. It grows in some years and declines in others. As shown in Fig. 1,
the number of student protests reached a peak of 1,129 events in 2011
before declining steadily to a low of 160 in 2017 and again increasing in
the next three years.1 This is completely normal. Tarrow (1993a, 1993b)
has shown that protest occurs in cycles that comprise periods of increase,
a short peak, and periods of decrease followed by lows. Scholars usually

1 When the results in this chapter indicate changes over time as in Fig. 1, I exclude
those protests reported exclusively by radios (Cooperativa and Bío Bío). Since radios have
been considered in the Observatory of Conflicts dataset only since 2012, their inclusion
would create comparability problems for the whole 2008–2020 period. However, when
presenting information not disaggregated by the date of the event, I include radios to
maximize the number of student protests.
100 N. M. SOMMA

interpret these cycles as the result of “political opportunities”. However,

other factors—such as reaching a threshold of organizational strength
after which protest erupts (Granovetter, 1978) or synergic connections
with other movements (Meyer & Whittier, 1994)—may also be at play.
Curiously, a closure of political opportunities can also trigger protests.
The 2011 student peak may have been a result of a lack of commitment
to educational reforms on the part of President Sebastián Piñera’s govern-
ment, prompting students to take to the streets to press for changes
(Bellei et al., 2014; Donoso, 2017; Guzman-Concha, 2012; Somma,
2012). Whatever the case, the huge yearly variations in student protests
indicate that students have a great capacity to react to external or internal
changes.
Figure 1 also shows the “student share” of the protest landscape, that
is, the percentage of student protests out of the whole set of annual
protests. As expected, the curves are strongly correlated. For instance,

Fig. 1 Evolution of student protests in Chile (Source Observatory of Conflicts,

COES)
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 101

during the very active 2011, about half of all protests in Chile had a
student presence. However, this depends on the context of protest in
general. For instance, many student protests took place in 2019 (415
events, the fourth largest annual number in the period studied) but,
because 2019 was by far the most contentious year of the decade due
to the “social uprising” (Chapter 2), they accounted for only a modest
share of total protests (12%, the second lowest year).
Student protests are also strongly seasonal across the year. According
to analyses not shown here, 61% of all student protests in 2008–2020
took place between May and August. June alone accounts for 25% of all
student protests while July (the winter holidays) accounts for only 6%.
Similarly, they show a marked decline during the summer holiday months
(2% in December and January and less than 1% in February). This is
consistent with the argument that the student movement is a by-product
movement. The rhythms of the academic calendar, with its periods of
holidays and exams, shape student protests by intensifying or weakening
students’ interpersonal contact and concerns. Thus, student protests have
two temporal dynamics: protest cycles with strong yearly fluctuations and
regular seasonality within each year.

Which Tactics Do Students Prefer?

The tactical repertoire is a central ingredient of collective protests (Tilly,
1993). Although the Observatory data reveals that protest groups in
Chile use a wide repertoire of tactics, students choose just a few that
they use recurrently. Marches—groups of people moving across the public
space—is the most frequent tactic and is observed in 33% of student
events (Fig. 2). The second most frequent tactic is occupying or seizing
buildings (mostly schools in the case of students), which occurs in 30% of
student protests. Other tactics are also common such as demonstrations
(static gatherings of people in the public space, 18%) and blocking roads
(15%). Thus, students combine “peaceful” tactics (marches and demon-
strations) with “disruptive” ones (occupying buildings and blocking
roads; see Medel & Somma, 2016; Taylor & Van Dyke, 2004).
Attacks on the police, army, or security personnel occur in 11% of
student events. Although protest event analyses often record violent
behavior, at least in Chile, such behavior cannot properly be conceptu-
alized as a student protest tactic. I prefer to view it as the unintended
outcome of other tactics such as marches and demonstrations which,
102 N. M. SOMMA

Fig. 2 Tactical repertoire of student vs. non-student protests, 2008–2020

(Source Observatory of Conflicts, COES. The bars show the percentage of
student events using the corresponding tactic [thus, they do not add up to
100%])

particularly when they are mass events, attract violent individuals, who
typically conceal their identity with hoods and engage in violence against
the police. Student leaders have traditionally attempted to contain those
acting violently since this creates a negative public image of students,
and disproportionately attracts media attention away from the protest’s
demands.
Most student events (75%) employ only one tactic. In the remaining
25%—with two or more tactics—some tactics cluster together. For
instance, marches tend to be accompanied by chants and slogans (tetra-
choric correlation = 0.45) and attacks on the police (0.42). The blocking
of roads also often unleashes attacks on the police (0.59). However,
violence is not frequent in the occupation of schools: students typically
abandon the building peacefully when the police order their eviction.
Interestingly, although the volume of student protests varies over time
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 103

(Fig. 1), analyses not shown reveal that students’ tactical repertoire is
very stable over time.
Figure 2 also compares students’ tactical repertoire with that of non-
student events. The vertical bars representing each tactic are arranged
according to the ratio between student and non-student events, with
the lowest ratio on the left and the highest on the right. Students
more frequently occupy buildings (which is rare for non-students, 4%
of events) and stage marches but use demonstrations, the blocking of
roads and, particularly, strikes less often. Ancillary analyses suggest that
different protest groups specialize in their preferred disruptive tactic,
according to their differing opportunities and capabilities: workers disrupt
through strikes in the workplace, neighbors disrupt by blocking roads,
and students disrupt by occupying buildings, typically schools. Tactical
choices are not random.

What Do Students Want?

The collective claims—or demands—that social movements voice in their
protests are central for defining the signals they send to the authorities,
their members, and the public at large (Wouters & Walgrave, 2017). As
expected, most student demands are related to educational issues which
are, however, diverse and may have varied implications for society.
As Fig. 3 shows, the most frequent demand (present in a third of
student protests) is against profit in education, corruption, bribery, and
other ethical and/or legal issues. These complaints were directed against
educational institutions, their managers, and the political authorities who
did not enforce the corresponding legislation, did not regulate education,
or colluded in the irregularities. Chilean law requires that universities be
non-profit and one of the students’ flags in 2011 was precisely widespread
violation of this law. This was a “modular” demand (Tarrow, 1993b), that
is, adaptable to other policy sectors. Thus, in criticizing profit-making in
education, the students posed a moral challenge that applied not only to
a commodified and segmented educational arena, but also to the provi-
sion of health, housing, and pensions. In Chile, these activities depend
heavily on market exchanges and produce profit for private companies.
Importantly, 26% of events demanded “free and public education”, a
more purposeful claim. Together, the claim against profit and irregular-
ities and the claim for free and public education were salient in student
104 N. M. SOMMA

protests during this period. This broader concern with the “political econ-
omy” of education—how it is designed and managed and its relations
with economics and law—is a distinctive aspect of the mature Chilean
student movement. It is not seen in other movements more exclusively
concerned with obtaining specific benefits.
Other demands are less universalizable and reveal concerns about the
particular situation of students, such as student benefits (9% of events),
issues with teachers or educational managers (5%), or problems with “spe-
cific institutions” (29%), making them too broad a category to interpret.
Explicit protests about the high cost of education and student debts are
surprisingly rare (4%). They were probably subsumed into the problems of
profits or ethical status (33%), rather than being expressed as a problem
in itself. Protests about educational curricula and content are also rare
(5%). Since 2018, this issue has been partly related to student struggles
to incorporate a gender perspective in curricula and raise awareness about

Fig. 3 Principal demands in student protests, 2008–2020 (Source Observatory

of Conflicts, COES)
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 105

violence against women and non-binary people, hinting at potential areas

of convergence between students and other movements.
Do these demands remain stable over time? Analyses not shown here
reveal some interesting changes in the relative salience of demands. This
could be interpreted within an “issue evolution”—or, rather, “claim
evolution”—framework (Carmines & Stimson, 1981). First, the demand
for free and public education has been frequent since 2008. This was
particularly the case in 2011 and 2012 when it was present in 57% and
38% of student protests, respectively. However, since 2018, its frequency
has decreased, remaining at around 6% or less. Another demand that
declines over time is student benefits. Although it appears in 9% of events
in the period studied, it is concentrated in 2008, 2010, and 2011 when it
remains in the 17–19% range. After 2011, it drops to less than 5% (except
for a revival in 2019, with 9%). Conversely, claims about educational
curricula and content, which appear in only 5% of events considering the
whole period, were heavily concentrated in 2018 (37% of events) and
2019 (12%).
Further research could explain these temporal variations, which suggest
that student organizations react dynamically to the political environment
or changes and needs within student bodies. This contrasts with students’
tactical repertoire, which, as noted above, is more static.

Do Students Support Non-Educational Demands?

Do students participate in protests with non-educational claims? Given
that the literature has emphasized the organic connections between the
student movement and other movements (Bellei et al., 2014; Somma,
2012; von Bülow and Bidegain Ponte, 2015), it would be reasonable
to expect that they do so. However, at least according to the Observa-
tory data, which only refers to protest activities and does not cover other
forms of connections, they do so infrequently. Only two categories of
non-educational demands appear in more than 5% of student protests and
are difficult to interpret: “specific laws”, which appears in 13% of student
protests, and “others”, which appears in 23% of protests and refers to
different disparate claims that do not neatly fall into any other category.
Although future studies could delve into this point, students seem to
be primarily concerned about educational demands, even if these have
broader implications for other policy areas.
106 N. M. SOMMA

However, if the 5% criterion is relaxed, some non-educational claims

do appear at specific junctures in student protests. They relate to work,
gender, and constitutional change. In 2018, when a feminist protest
wave surprised Chile and other countries, student organizations addressed
this demand, with university campuses and schools becoming hotbeds of
feminist mobilization (Ponce Lara, 2020). Accordingly, student protests
massively incorporated the struggle against violence towards women: 34%
of all student protests voiced this claim in 2018. However, this was
a conjunctural support: in 2019, this demand declined to only 7% of
student events and, in 2020, to 4%. Other feminist demands were very
rare. Thus, the case of 2018 shows how students can swiftly join a general
struggle such as denunciation of gender violence (a demand that had been
almost completely absent in previous student protests since 2008) but
become unable or unwilling to sustain it over time.
Students also supported the demands of the labor movement in
specific years, namely, 2014 and 2015. Demands for higher wages
and bonuses and against workers’ indebtedness were very infrequent
in student protests during the period studied (3%). Similarly, demands
related to labor conditions, work schedules, accidents, and occupational
risks appeared in few student protests (2%). However, in 2014, the former
rose to 11% and, in 2015, the latter to 11%. These were the years of
preparation and discussion of President Michelle Bachelet’s labor reform,
approved in 2016. After 2014–2015, student protests rarely voiced these
labor demands. Finally, in 2019, 6% of student protests were about consti-
tutional change. During the 2019 uprising, the political class agreed to
begin a process to draft a new constitution.
In other words, while mostly focused on educational issues, student
organizations joined other social struggles—gender, work, constitutional
change—at specific junctures without remaining tied to them after these
struggles receded. These were the three main issues in which this was the
case. For other non-educational demands—indigenous peoples’ and envi-
ronmental demands, sexual diversity, local grievances, and abortion—the
data shows little or no student involvement (although, of course, many
supporters of these claims may be students themselves). However, it is
important to keep in mind that protest event datasets do not capture
the less visible or less central demands in protests. Other methods, such
as interviews or archival material, could reveal more collaboration across
movements.
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 107

Do Other Groups Support Student Demands?

Given that students sometimes participated in protests about non-
educational demands and defended the interests of other groups, one
would expect that other groups would sometimes support student
demands. However, it is unclear whether these “exchanges” would be
symmetrical—group A supports group B and vice versa—or not. Simi-
larly, it is unclear whether the timing of reciprocal support (if any) would
coincide. To address these issues, I report the main findings of a descrip-
tive analysis of the participation of other groups in protests with student
demands.
Workers were the group that supported student demands more consis-
tently, particularly in 2011. For instance, claims for public and free
education appear in 24% of worker protests that year as well as complaints
about educational corruption (14%) and educational coverage and quality
(9%). In 2008 and 2012, there was some support for student demands
in worker protests, but less than in 2011. Moreover, support then dwin-
dled over the rest of the decade. Considering all educational demands, the
peak years of worker support before the 2019 uprising were 2011 (when
39% of worker events had at least one educational demand), 2008, and
2012 (both with 16%). After 2012, the figure fluctuated at around 8–9%,
with an increase in 2019 (19%). Interestingly, these years do not coincide
with those in which students most supported worker claims (2014–2015),
suggesting deferred “exchanges” (Somma, 2021).
Several other groups also supported student demands but less than
workers. Interestingly, this occurred mostly in 2011 when 12% of indige-
nous protests included the demand for free and public education. In
2011, 14% of squatter protests and 14% of neighbor protests also included
student claims. In the case of neighbors, this rose to 24% in 2012 but
dropped to 7% in 2019. Similarly, support for public and free educa-
tion appeared in 10% of environmental protests in 2011, and educational
coverage and quality in 13% of them in 2012.
The story is slightly different for feminist and sexual diversity groups
(unfortunately, the dataset collapses both groups into a single category).
In 2011, 13% of the events of these groups raised educational demands
(mostly free and public education). This rose to 39% in 2018 when
students voiced their opposition to violence against women. In 2018,
feminist and sexual diversity groups began pressing for changes in educa-
tional curricula, rather than free and public education. Pending study of
108 N. M. SOMMA

the corresponding news articles, these protests probably sought the inclu-
sion of gender issues in student curricula. In other words, feminist and
sexual diversity groups may have perceived educational changes as a means
of advancing both their claims and those of students. This convergence
of movements merits further study (but see Ponce Lara, 2020).

Targets, Size, and Organizations

Finally, it is important to consider three additional aspects of student
protests: their targets, their size (in terms of the estimated number of
participants, see Somma & Medel, 2019), and the presence of orga-
nizations (analyses not shown). In the case of targets (Martin et al.,
2009; Van Dyke et al., 2004), these were mostly the national authori-
ties (70%), ahead of local or regional authorities (15%). This is relatively
similar to non-student protests (55% and 18%, respectively). However,
student protests differ in their frequent targeting of educational insti-
tutions, which appear in 22% of events (compared to 2% of other
protests), and the infrequency with which they target private compa-
nies (3%), which is far lower than for other protests (16%). This is
obvious since student complaints often arise from problems with their
schools or universities (for example, regarding infrastructure or teachers).
However, the predominance of national authorities requires exploration:
many educational institutions in Chile are managed not by the central
government but by municipalities, religious institutions, corporations, or
private owners. National authorities in the form of the powerful Educa-
tion Ministry or the President (who is very important in a presidential
country like Chile) are still seen by students as having the responsibility,
attributions, and resources for addressing their grievances.
Organizations are central ingredients of collective protest (Fisher et al.,
2005). Still, their relevance has been questioned recently due to the prolif-
eration of decentralized ways for coordinating protests and the spread
of digital technologies (Bennett & Segerberg, 2013; von Bülow et al.,
2019). On the presence of organizations, there are slight differences
between student and other protests: in 53% of student protests, there is no
evidence of organizational presence (compared to 50% of other protests),
but student protests are more likely than others to have two or more orga-
nizations (17% vs. 11%). The Observatory provides information about the
specific organizations participating in protests. A future project will be to
map them and explore the determinants of their presence or absence.
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 109

Considerable differences emerge in the estimated size of protests:

student protests appear to be larger than others. For instance, a quarter
of student protests have an estimated 500 participants or more, compared
to one-eighth of non-student protests. Thus, while organizations are
not overly present, students nonetheless manage to stage larger protests
(more on this below). This speaks of students’ capacity to frame demands
that resonate with non-organized publics and bystanders. Students have
successfully built a very seductive image of universality in contemporary
Chile, addressing general problems of market societies such as indebted-
ness, profit, and inequality, which elicit sympathy and solidarity among
broad sectors of the population.

The Secondary School vs. University Cleavage

Organized students are strategic actors who adapt their tactics, targets,
and claims to the context and opportunities they face. Their choices
depend on their resources and linkages to other movements and insti-
tutional actors and the constituencies they represent (Somma, 2021). As
a by-product of an institutional arena structured by educational levels,
the student movement replicates these levels. It has a secondary school
wing and a tertiary (mostly university) wing. Each has different organiza-
tional bases and their leaders represent different constituencies, which are
sharply differentiated by their stage of life: the former formed by teenagers
(approximately 14–18 years old) and the latter by young adults (18 to
approximately 25 years old). Given these differences, it is not surprising
that some protest waves were staged mainly by secondary students (the
2001 “backpack” protests and the 2006 “penguin” protests, see Donoso,
2013) while others were led by university students (the 2011–2012
cycle). However, both wings sometimes cooperate and participate in
common campaigns. But how much?
I classified all student protests into four categories: only secondary
students (49% of events); only university students (30%); joint events,
which are a minority (16%); and indefinite (events with student partic-
ipation but lacking information about which wing, 6%). In other words,
both wings tend to protest separately and infrequently join forces. Also,
secondary school students stage more events than university students.
Do secondary school and university students have different claims?
To answer this question, Fig. 4 shows the predicted probability of the
presence of different educational demands by the student “wing”. After
110 N. M. SOMMA

running binary logistic regression models, I computed predicted proba-

bilities for each demand as the dependent variable (values of 0–1) and, as
independent variables, the wing of the movement, the year of the protest,
and a dummy location variable (Santiago Metropolitan Region vs. the rest
of the country). Demands are arranged from those comparatively more
prevalent among university students (at the top) to those more prevalent
among secondary students (at the bottom).
The figure shows that the two wings differ in their demands. For
instance, the predicted probability of university students protesting about
the high cost of education or student debts is 9% (in Chile, higher educa-
tion is very expensive). However, secondary students rarely raise this claim
in their sole protests, partly because they do not generally pay fees or these
are more affordable. University students also protest more against corrup-
tion and profit in education and are more concerned about curricula and
educational content. Conversely, secondary students give more impor-
tance to student benefits and the coverage and quality of education (for

Fig. 4 Predicted probabilities of presence of demands in protests, by student

wing, 2008–2020 (Source Observatory of Conflicts, COES)
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 111

example, bad teachers). On other demands, the profiles of the two wings
are more similar. Interestingly, two “big” demands—against for-profit
education and in support of free and public education— with potentially
broader implications for other protest groups, are far more likely to be
expressed when both wings protest together.
Additional bivariate analyses (not shown) reveal other interesting
differences and similarities between the two student wings. For instance,
their tactical profile is relatively similar and it is only in joint events that
both peaceful and violent tactics are observed, probably because these
are large events that attract violent civilians and/or infiltrated police offi-
cers. Specifically, when both wings are present, there is almost always
(95%) a peaceful tactic and, in 35% of cases, there are also violent tactics.
However, when the two wings act together, they are less likely to engage
in disruptive protests (which often occur in mid-sized settings such as
educational institutions). It is also interesting to note that claims seem
to shape tactics. For instance, when students protest against corruption
and profit in education, they tend to combine peaceful and violent tactics
more frequently than when this claim is absent (71% and 28% vs. 57% and
15%, respectively).
Secondary school and university students have different targets. The
former target the national authorities a little more frequently than the
latter (68% vs. 58%) and local governments far more frequently (23%
vs. 6%), possibly because municipalities manage Chilean public schools.
On the other hand, university students target educational institutions
far more frequently than secondary students (42% vs. 17%). This makes
sense since higher education institutions often have more autonomy than
secondary schools in managing their affairs. Thus, each wing of the move-
ment targets preferentially those actors with more capacity to address their
problems (local governments vs. educational institutions).
Moving beyond the secondary vs university cleavage, students also
adapt their target to their claims. For instance, students prefer to target
the national authorities when addressing big national issues like public
and free education (98% of such claims target the national authori-
ties), coverage and quality (91%), student benefits (88%), and corruption
(88%). However, they target the national authorities less frequently in
the case of problems with teachers or managers (19%) and issues linked
to specific institutions (35%). Conversely, local governments are more
frequently targeted in cases of problems in specific institutions (33%),
problems with professors and managers (23%), and student benefits
112 N. M. SOMMA

(16%). However, local governments appear in less than 10% of events

with demands of other types.
Likewise, students target educational institutions for problems with
managers and teachers (73% of events with demands of this type),
demands related to specific institutions (61%), and those about curricula
and content (50%). The latter was a major topic in the 2018–2019 femi-
nist protest wave, which pressed for the inclusion of curricula and content
with a gender perspective and the creation or reform of sexual abuse
protocols. However, educational institutions rarely appear as targets when
demands are about issues decided at the national level, such as the high
cost of education and student indebtedness (4%).
In a nutshell, these results show coherence between targets, claims, and
tactics. Seen from a different perspective, student organizations ponder
their resources and claims and choose their targets and tactics according
to what makes more sense for them.

Want a Big Protest?

Contrary to the common media portrayal of students as leaders of mass
mobilizations, the Observatory data reveals that almost half of student
protests (47%) are relatively small (31% with 50 participants or fewer;
16% with between 51 and 100 participants). The proportion of large
protests—those estimated to have more than 3,000 participants—is not
negligible (13%), but they are far from the norm. In other words, student
protests vary in size, from a small concentration of students at a particular
school demanding better infrastructure to thousands of people marching
along the artery of Santiago’s Alameda Avenue.
What factors shape the size of student protests? Since the capacity of
students—or any other group—to influence politicians and public opinion
often depends on staging large protests, this is an issue with important
practical consequences (Somma & Medel, 2019). To address this point, I
ran an OLS model with the log of protest size as the dependent variable
(to reduce the effect of outliers) and the following independent vari-
ables: student wing, eight dummy variables of demands, three dummy
variables of tactics, year of the protest, and location of the event (Santiago
Metropolitan Region vs. the rest of the country). In this way, I obtained
predicted values of protest size under different conditions of selected
independent variables and exponentiated the logged value of the depen-
dent variable to get the “real” event size. It is important to remember
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 113

that estimating crowd size is a very difficult exercise, particularly when

using news articles as in protest event datasets. What follows should be
taken as a rough approximation to be improved by further research (for
example, using drone pictures).
Figure 5 shows the predicted size of student protests under different
conditions. There are important variations depending on the student
wing(s) coordinating the protest, the demand, and the tactic used. For
instance, protests organized only by university students are somewhat
larger than those organized by secondary students (an estimated 177 vs.
133 participants, respectively) but the size increases to an estimated 719
participants when both wings cooperate. In addition, student protests
more than double in size (from 120 to 289 participants) when they use
peaceful tactics (like marches or demonstrations). Finally, demands vary
in their capacity to convene protesters. When protests are in demand for
changes in curricula and content or for free and public education, they
gather well over 300 participants on average. On the other hand, protests
about issues linked to teachers or managers and those on economic
aspects of education attract far fewer participants (fewer than 200). These
results suggest that there are understandable reasons behind the extreme
variability in the size of student protests.

Conclusions
This chapter has described the variety of student protests in Chile. Its
purpose has been to challenge two implicit assumptions about the student
movement (conceptualized as a by-product of the expansion of the educa-
tional arena): that student protest mostly takes the form of mass marches
in capital cities; and that the student movement is a homogenous actor.
Instead, the chapter shows that students resort to a variety of tactics—
including disruptive ones—and that almost half of student protests have
an estimated size of 100 participants or fewer (protests with several thou-
sands of people are uncommon). Moreover, the extraordinary 2011–2012
peak has been followed by an enduring period of lower mobilization, with
another minor peak during the 2019 uprising. Finally, student demands
range from criticism of a market model of education (a claim poten-
tially generalizable to other public goods) to more specific issues such
as problems with teachers and managers.
Students have occasionally supported non-educational demands
(mostly about the conditions of workers and the rights of women).
114 N. M. SOMMA

Fig. 5 Predicted size of student protests with different student wings, demands,
and tactics, 2008–2020 (Source Observatory of Conflicts, COES)

This occurred during identifiable protest campaigns by other move-

ments. Conversely, several groups, particularly workers, supported student
demands in 2011 while, in 2018, there was a convergence of interests and
mobilization spaces between the student and feminist movements (and
possibly also a heavy overlap in activists). The chapter also reveals some
differences in the claims raised by secondary and university students, but
similar tactical repertoires across the two wings of the movement. Apart
from the wing of the movement, the choice of tactics and targets seems
to depend on the particular claim in question, revealing coherence in the
organization of student protests.
The descriptive results presented here open several avenues for further
research of which I will just mention four. First, one could explore
student protests’ national and local political determinants. For example,
do leftist governments (like the Nueva Mayoría or Apruebo Dignidad
administrations) encourage fewer, or less disruptive, student protests than
 VARIETIES OF STUDENT PROTESTS IN CHILE 115

right-wing governments (like those of Sebastián Piñera)? Do municipal-

ities (or regions) with a historically larger share of the leftist vote create
more favorable conditions for student protest? Second, by combining data
from the Observatory of Conflicts and the COES Longitudinal Social
Survey (ELSOC), one could examine the impact of student protests
on citizens’ attitudes towards the student movement or on university
enrollment rates (see Disi, 2020, 2021). Third, for studying protest diffu-
sion, one could create a municipal-level panel of protest events over
time and explore whether more student protests in time 0 encourage
(or discourage) protests by other groups in time 1. Fourth, the specific
organizations staging student protests could be studied in more detail
(the Observatory provides the names of organizations), exploring how
networks of allied organizations vary across different stages of the 2011
protest cycle (see Somma & Medel, 2024).
Finally, because protest event datasets like that of the Observatory
of Conflicts have limitations for studying some issues, they should be
complemented with other data sources. For instance, interviews with
movement leaders could provide a more refined picture of the coordi-
nation of actions between the student and other movements, an issue the
Observatory data only touches on superficially. Similarly, qualitative tech-
niques could shed light on the framing processes and meanings attached
to the student claims that the Observatory captures statistically.

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 Socio-Territorial Mobilization in Chile
in Light of the Analysis of Protest Events,
2008–2020

Antoine Maillet, Mathilde Allain, Sebastián Carrasco,

Gonzalo Delamaza, and Joaquín Rozas

Introduction
The largest cycle of protests seen in Chile since the restoration of democ-
racy began in Santiago in October 2019 and rapidly spread to the rest
of the country (Chapter 2), with slogans in support of different causes,
including protection of the environment and decentralization. A month

A. Maillet (B)
Faculty of Government, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
M. Allain
Sorbonne Nouvelle University, Paris, France
e-mail: [email protected]
S. Carrasco
School of Government, Universidad San Sebastián, Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 119

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_7
120 A. MAILLET ET AL.

later, agreement was reached on a constituent process in a bid to give

the mobilization an institutional channel. It included the election in May
2021 of delegates to a Constitutional Convention in which candidates
with a prior history of mobilization in territorial or environmental orga-
nizations were particularly successful, forming a group of at least 27
delegates (17% of the total) (Maillet & Martínez, 2021; Rozas et al.,
2022). The mere election of these delegates is an invitation to study
socio-territorial mobilization in greater depth.
Socio-territorial mobilization, by our definition, encompasses demands
related to the preservation of the environment together with demands
that highlight inhabitants’ relations with their surroundings, whether
rural or urban (Delamaza et al., 2017, pp. 25–26) In terms of opera-
tionalization, we consider together the “ecologist-environmentalist” and
“regionalist-local” categories from the database of the Observatory of
Conflicts of the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES).
Research on environmental and socio-territorial mobilization in Chile has
mostly taken the form of case studies of a specific conflict or mobilization
(Maillet et al., 2021) while work taking a national perspective and exam-
ining the political implications has been rather scant. To contribute to the
study of environmental and territorial policy, this chapter seeks to char-
acterize socio-territorial protest in Chile (2008–2020), its relationship
with other types of protest, and its possible specificity and to explain the
behavior of this type of protest during the social uprising that began on
October 18, 2019. Our hypothesis is that socio-territorial mobilization is
a central component of the dynamics that characterized the 2010s, which
were termed “the times of politicization” by the United Nations Devel-
opment Program (UNDP, 2015). As a component, it shares some of the
characteristics of mobilization in general, such as its distance from political

G. Delamaza
CEDER, Universidad de Los Lagos & Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion
Studies (COES), Osorno, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
J. Rozas
Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain
e-mail: [email protected]
 SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT … 121

parties. However, it also has its own characteristics, such as its territo-
rial distribution and the diversity of targets of its protests. To develop
this hypothesis, we carried out a descriptive and comparative analysis of
aggregated and annualized socio-territorial protest in relation to internal
and contextual elements of the contentious action. We focused on those
defined as central by the specialized literature—spatial aspects, targets,
protest tactics, and the presence of parties—using the database of the
Observatory of Conflicts of the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion
Studies (COES).
The results show that there are, indeed, aspects in which socio-
territorial protest differs from other forms of protest. They include its
situated nature, with a local component in terms of the targets of protests,
its presence in regions and more remote geographical areas, and its
deployment in rural territories (although their participation at the aggre-
gate level is low). In the case of relations with influential political allies,
the political parties have a low presence in both socio-territorial protests
and protests by other sectors, which is in line with the thesis of the
autonomization of social mobilization in Chile.
By taking an approach that covers the country as a whole over a rela-
tively long period of time, this chapter is able to fill some of the gaps
described in studies of protest and socio-territorial conflict. In this way,
it refines existing knowledge, advancing towards a characterization of
socio-territorial protest in dialogue with a dynamic literature on social
mobilizations in general.
The chapter has five sections. We first present the theoretical discus-
sion of which it forms part before describing the methodology and data
treatment used in the analysis. We then go on to analyze events of socio-
territorial protest in 2008–2020, examining in greater depth the 2019
social uprising. Finally, we reflect on the phenomenon of socio-territorial
protest in Chile and suggest future lines of research in dialogue with the
political context in 2022, marked by the constituent process.

Socio-Territorial Mobilization and Conflict:

Conceptual Clarifications About the Chilean Case
If the analysis of data about socio-territorial protest events is to contribute
to the study of mobilization in general, it must be framed within a review
of some key concepts and trends already observed in the literature.
122 A. MAILLET ET AL.

Some Conceptual Clarifications

In relation to the literature on environmental mobilization, it is first
necessary to distinguish conceptually between conflict and protest (Dela-
maza, 2019). This chapter studies protest but its dynamics also enable
us to visualize indirectly some of the characteristics of conflicts. Protest
is a contentious action carried out in a space (physical or virtual) at a
specific time and may employ different tactics (Tilly & Tarrow, 2015).
It is a component of the conflict, but the strategies used by organiza-
tions and individuals involved in a conflict go far beyond this component.
This interest in protest is articulated with the distinction established in
the Observatory of Conflicts database between contentious “actions”,
“episodes”, and “processes” (Chapter 1). Conceptually, based on a review
of the literature on socio-territorial mobilizations in Latin America, we
consider it important to analyze demands related to the preservation of
the environment together with demands that highlight inhabitants’ rela-
tions with their surroundings. Thus, the word “socio-territorial” refers to
the link that exists between people and a territory, whether rural or urban,
while the word “territory” is used to refer to a space that is lived in and
appropriated and includes a sense of belonging (Aliste & Stamm, 2016;
Beuf, 2017; Di Méo, 1998). This definition of “socio-territorial” protest
is also based on recent studies of conflict in Chile, which reveal the inter-
relation between different motives, the diversity of sectors convened, and
the centrality of the territory for the protest (Maillet et al., 2021).
In addition, environmental or ecological demands cannot always be
isolated from other aspects such as attachment to a place, concern for
health and biodiversity, a sense of community, or concern about the conti-
nuity of an economic activity based on resources from the surroundings.
Moreover, protest is often linked to other dynamics that make them part
of socio-territorial conflicts. These are complex phenomena that, as well
as protests, frequently have various other manifestations, such as negoti-
ation, agreements, political platforms, alliances, judicialization, and other
forms of managing controversies and differences by the actors in dispute
(Delamaza, 2019).

The Study of Socio-Territorial Mobilization in Chile

Case studies in Chile have identified a clear local component, support
outside the territory in which the demand originates or the object of
 SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT … 123

the protest is located, and multipurpose demands as the central char-

acteristics of protests related to environmental issues. Examples of this
include the protests led by the Patagonia Without Dams platform (Scha-
effer, 2017) and the No to Alto Maipo movement (Cortez, 2019) as
well as the mobilizations in response to the crisis in Chiloé (Bustos &
Román, 2019; Bustos et al., 2021), against the Pascua Lama mining
project (Cortez & Maillet, 2018; Paredes, 2018), and in response to air
pollution in the Quintero-Puchuncaví area (Bolados & Sánchez, 2017).
This study seeks to dialogue with this literature, drawing on data from
the COES Observatory of Conflicts.
The classic differentiation between the internal and contextual
elements of protest (Snow et al., 2019) serves to structure our anal-
ysis. The former includes aspects related to the types of actions that
predominate in the protest and its objectives. The theoretical and empir-
ical development of protests’ repertoires of collective action has shown
that the actors involved in contentious actions opt for one type of action
or another depending on their objectives and the type of actor they seek
to confront (Tilly, 2006). As a result, repertoires of collective action are
often a materialization of the strategy of the actors—whether social move-
ments, organizations, or individuals—involved in the contentious action
(Rossi, 2015; Rozas & Maillet, 2019) whilst also depending on the actors’
accumulated experience.
Different types of protests can be distinguished depending on the
actions present in them. A simple, but highly operative, distinction is
that between violent and non-violent protests. This reduces reflection
on the types of repertoire of collective action (pacific, disruptive, or
violent) to a dichotomy around violence (Clenoweth & Stephen, 2013).
Other studies have been more specific in their categorization of protest
tactics. For example, Medel and Somma (2016) divide protest events in
Chile (2000–2012) into conventional, cultural, disruptive, and violent. In
other words, they take a more complex approach to non-violent actions,
differentiating between them depending on the extent to which they
affect daily life and the institutional order: conventional tactics are the
most common and non-confrontational actions, such as demonstrations,
marches, or petitions to the authorities, while cultural tactics consist in
non-confrontational artistic actions and disruptive tactics, which are trans-
gressive, but not violent, involve actions such as sit-ins and the occupation
of private and public places. These categories were used to construct the
124 A. MAILLET ET AL.

COES database (with a change in nomenclature from “conventional” to

“pacific”) and form part of our analysis.
The place where a protest takes place may be defined strategically.
Indeed, it may be closely related to the demands behind the protest and
its objectives. This is particularly important in the case of socio-territorial
protests since, by definition, they are anchored in their space. However,
numerous studies have shown that some socio-territorial demands with a
local origin tend to escalate to other spheres, whether regional, national,
or international (Bolados & Sánchez, 2017; Bustos & Román, 2019;
Cortez, 2019; Cortez & Maillet, 2018; Madariaga et al., 2021; Paredes,
2018). To be more precise, although socio-territorial protests arise in
specific local contexts, they often affect multiple levels and, in some cases,
project their dynamics to these other levels as well.
In the case of external elements, the contextual conditions of the
protest are mainly related to its institutional context and to political,
social, or economic shocks. On the political context (McAdam & Tarrow,
2019), we focus on the availability of influential allies. The evidence indi-
cates that social mobilizations have a better outlook when they have fluid
and solid relationships with political actors with a similar ideology and
worldview, such as left-wing or liberal parties. When these political actors
gain power—by forming a government, increasing their parliamentary
representation, or obtaining other spaces of power at, for example, the
local level—this creates political opportunities of which the mobilized
actors can take advantage in favor of their demands (Meyer, 2005).
However, in the Chilean case, this relationship appears to be different.
Since the restoration of democracy, social movements and protest have
experienced a growing process of autonomization from the traditional
political parties (Bidegain, 2017; Garretón, 2016; Somma & Bargsted,
2015; Tricot, 2021) and this is also reflected in participation in protests
at the level of individuals (Rozas & Somma, 2020; Roberts, 2016). This
phenomenon of rupture is related to the thesis of governability adopted
by Concertación governments (1990–2010). Particularly in the 1990s,
they sought to keep society demobilized in order to guard against the
risk of a return to authoritarianism (Garretón, 2016). This gradually bred
mistrust on the part of social movements related to different issues such
as the Mapuche people, education, and the pension and social security
system as well as feminist and socio-territorial movements, which gradu-
ally distanced themselves from the parties which, between the beginning
 SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT … 125

of the last century and the democratic breakdown of 1973, had tradi-
tionally had organic roots in the movements. This raises the question of
whether political parties have little presence in socio-territorial protests as
well as in other types of social mobilizations in Chile.

Methodology and Data

The database of the COES Observatory of Conflicts comprises a total of
28,236 observations for the period between 2007 and 2020. The unit
of analysis is protest-day-month-year. For our analysis, we aggregated the
data by year. To analyze the trend in protests over time, we subtracted the
protest events reported by radio stations (5,628) and cases in 2007 (3)
from the total observations, giving 22,605 observations to be analyzed.
In this way, we could standardize the data collection sources and control
for a possible selection bias, given that radios were used as sources only
from 2012 onwards. Similarly, the three cases from 2007 were eliminated
so as not to unbalance the analysis of the distribution of socio-territorial
protests over time.
With the remaining protest events, we generated a dichotomous vari-
able to distinguish socio-territorial protest events (=1) from protest
events in general (=0). This variable was constructed based on an indi-
cator, reported by the Observatory, that classifies the main demands
present in a protest event into the following categories: educa-
tion, indigenous peoples, labor, ecologist-environmentalist, feminist,
health, values, regionalist-local, sexual minorities, anti-immigration-ethnic
groups, against and in favor of the military regime, housing, political
system, and other non-sectorized demands. In line with the conceptual-
theoretical development described in the previous section, ecologist-
environmentalist and regionalist-local demands were considered socio-
territorial demands. This gave a total of 1,737 socio-territorial protest
events.
Since this chapter’s main objective is to identify the characteristics
that distinguish socio-territorial protests from other protests in Chile, we
analyzed how different internal and contextual conditions for contentious
action were associated with protests with principally environmental and
territorial demands. As indicators of internal conditions, we used the
protest’s spatial location (region, geographical area, and urban/rural
nature), its targets, and the main tactic deployed while, to operationalize
126 A. MAILLET ET AL.

influential allies, we used the presence of actors linked to political parties

at an event.
The methodology also considered some elements related to the
production of the data reviewed. Using the database, it is possible to study
episodes of protests (different protests on the same issue on the same day)
and contentious processes (a series of episodes over several days). Unlike
other studies in Chile so far, this Observatory of Conflicts tool provides
a national overview and permits the study of trends by type of protest as
well as the comparison of protests across different sectors.
However, like any methodological tool, this type of data collection
procedure has biases that must be taken into account. This is particularly
the case of two types of bias: more general biases related to the protest
event analysis method, based on the gathering of information from the
press, and more specific biases that have to do with the Chilean press and
the characteristics of socio-territorial protests.
In the former case, the literature generally mentions accuracy, selec-
tivity, and systematicity (Fillieule, 2007; Fillieule & Jiménez, 2003;
Marchetti & Champagne, 2005). Given that information gathered from
the press is second-hand, it is necessary to consider the work of journalists
and media companies, how they select the news they regard as relevant,
the presence of journalists throughout the country, and their preference
for more visible, larger protests and/or previously identified and known
events. Journalists’ selectivity is related both to their media company and
its editorial line and to the events themselves, the type of protest, and
against whom it is directed. To avoid the biases of protest event analysis,
the role of media attention cycles and competition between the media
must be taken into account. Unlike researchers interested in observing
a social phenomenon over time, journalists do not seek to be exhaustive
or systematic in their coverage. The attention the media pay to a protest
depends on the more general context and the occurrence of other events
at the same time. For example, a small, pacific protest in a medium-sized
city, with several demands, is less likely to appear in the press than other
more controversial, visible (and sometimes violent) events.
In the case of the second, more specific type of bias, we can hypothesize
that socio-territorial protests are under-reported due to their character-
istics and the structure of the Chilean media. Socio-territorial protests
may be less visible and go unnoticed because they occur in places too far
from traditional coverage. We also assume that the media under-evaluate
conflicts in urban areas of the Santiago Metropolitan Region because they
 SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT … 127

cover events of a more national scope (Aliste & Stamm, 2016). The media
may also identify protests without understanding them or characterizing
them as socio-territorial, given the usual polyphony and complex artic-
ulation of environmental, social, and economic issues. In addition, the
concentration of media in Chile, particularly the written press, implies
a political bias that has to do with editorial lines. We hypothesize, as
has been demonstrated in other contexts (McManus, 1994), that certain
socio-territorial protests against particular companies and economic inter-
ests may be invisibilized because their reporting would be at odds with
the communications strategy of these economic groups, which are also
media owners.
With these biases in mind, this chapter now presents an analysis of
socio-territorial protests, addressing their characteristics and comparing
their distribution to that of other protests.

The Importance of Socio-Territorial

Protests in Mobilization in Chile, 2008–2020
In this section, we analyze socio-territorial protests as one of the various
components of mobilization in Chile, identifying their characteristics
compared to social mobilization in general during the same period.
We review different aspects: the spatial and temporal distribution of
these protests, their internal characteristics, their relation to the growing
autonomy of social mobilization in Chile, and some specific features that
emerged during the October 2019 uprising.
While we utilize the database as a central component for analysis, our
reflection encompasses a broader perspective by incorporating the corpus
of literature that has emerged in recent years concerning the dynamics of
protests and socioterritorial conflicts in Chile. Generally, the existing liter-
ature on socioterritorial dynamics in Chile has primarily focused on qual-
itative case studies (Maillet et al., 2021). Thus, this chapter contributes
to advancing a more integrated and multidisciplinary approach, engaging
in a dialogue among various methodologies to explore a phenomenon of
growing interest in the country.

Spatial and Temporal Distribution of Socio-Territorial Protests

Socio-territorial protests account for 7.68% of the protest events regis-
tered by the Observatory of Conflicts between 2008 and 2020. As
128 A. MAILLET ET AL.

shown in Fig. 1, they showed less variation over time than protests
in general, albeit increasing in 2011 and 2012. Protests in general, on
the other hand, had three clear peaks that coincide with student mobi-
lization against the Constitutional Organic Education Law (LOCE) in
2008 (Bidegain, 2017), student mobilization in demand for free educa-
tion in 2011 (Donoso, 2021), and the uprising that began in October
2019 (Somma et al., 2020). Only the peak of 2011 is shared with
socio-territorial protests.
At the same time, the spatial distribution (region and type of locality)
of socio-territorial protests differs from that of protests in general. A larger
proportion of socio-territorial protests occur in regions other than the
Santiago Metropolitan Region. They are also more common in rural loca-
tions, regardless of whether the comparison is made with reference to the
Santiago Metropolitan Region or any of the country’s other regions.
Socio-territorial protests are concentrated in the Valparaíso Region
(196), the Aysén Region (172), the Santiago Metropolitan Region (157),
and the Araucanía Region (151) (Fig. 2). The occurrence of protests is
not related to the regions’ population density, but to other factors. The
pattern identified is consistent with the different cycles of environmental
and local protests seen during the past decade: extractivist conflicts over
access to drinking water in the Valparaíso Region and, particularly, water
scarcity in Petorca (Madariaga et al., 2021); mobilizations related to gas
and local demands in the Aysén Region in 2012 (Silva, 2018); citizen
opposition to energy projects (for example, the Alto Maipo project) and
landfills in different parts of the Santiago Metropolitan Region (Map of
Socio-environmental Conflicts, National Human Rights Institute, S/F);
and protests against the forestry industry and energy projects that affect
the environment in the Araucanía Region, as well as the environmental
dimension of the Mapuche conflict that has escalated in recent years
(Cuadra, 2021).
Similarly, an important number of socio-territorial protests have been
observed in the Antofagasta, Atacama, and Coquimbo Regions. This is
consistent with mobilizations against extractivist projects related, in this
case, mostly to mining. Examples include the protests in the Atacama
Region against the Pascua Lama project of Canada’s Barrick Gold
(Cortez & Maillet, 2018) and, in the Coquimbo Region, the Dominga
mining and port project, which would heavily affect the Humboldt
archipelago. Interestingly, central Chile (from the O’Higgins Region to
the Biobío Region) is the area with the least socio-territorial protests.
Fig. 1 Distribution of socio-territorial protests vs. other protests, 2008–2020 (** The differences in the number of
socio-territorial protests over time are statistically significant [test X 2 , p-value < 0.01]. Source Compiled by authors
based on data from the COES Observatory of Conflicts [2008–2020])
SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT …
129
 130
A. MAILLET ET AL.

Fig. 2 Distribution of socio-territorial protests by region, 2008–2020 (** The differences in the proportion of socio-
territorial protests by the region in which they occurred are statistically significant [one-way Anova test, p-value < 0.01].
Source Compiled by authors based on data from the COES Observatory of Conflicts [2008–2020])
 SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT … 131

Among the regions with the largest number of observations (the

Valparaíso, Aysén, Santiago Metropolitan, and Araucanía Regions), the
Araucanía and Santiago Metropolitan Regions have a relatively constant
distribution of events. However, the behavior of the Aysén and Valparaíso
Regions is different. As indicated above, there was a marked peak in the
Aysén Region in 2012, but this was followed by a considerable reduction
in the number of events. In Valparaíso Region, on the other hand, there
were two peaks, in 2011 and 2018, while, in the rest of the period, the
number of protests remained relatively constant.
From a spatial perspective, socio-territorial protests tended to be
concentrated in southern and northern Chile in 2008–2020. In the south,
there was a marked peak in 2012, which coincided with the mobilizations
in the Aysén Region discussed above. In the north, there was a greater
concentration of mobilizations in 2013 but they then showed a steady
decline over the rest of the period. Meanwhile, central Chile and the
Santiago Metropolitan Region are the geographical areas with the least
number of protests per year.
However, it is important to note that, when comparing the proportion
of socio-territorial protests per year in each geographical zone, all show a
concentration of protests in 2011, except for southern Chile, and a slight
rebound in 2019 (discussed below).

Characteristics of Socio-Territorial Protests: Targets and Tactics

As well as the spatial and temporal distribution of socio-territorial
protests, their characteristics are also important. There are certain differ-
ences between socio-territorial protests and protests in general as regards
their targets. In both cases, protests target principally national, local, or
regional governments and companies. However, in the case of socio-
territorial protests, approximately 51% target local or regional govern-
ments while over 60% of protests in general have the national government
as their main target. In addition, 31.1% of socio-territorial protests target
companies compared to 10.9% of protests in general. Both types of
protest are, however, quite similar in that only a minority of events target
foreign governments or states, educational institutions, health institu-
tions, or civil society actors. In other words, the figures shown in Fig. 3
as regards the targets of protests are consistent with the particular and
situated nature of socio-territorial protests, many of which have to do
132 A. MAILLET ET AL.

with conflicts related to the territory, local environmental problems, and

extractivist projects (Delamaza et al., 2017).
Another important aspect is the type of tactics that protests employ.
Compared to protests in general, socio-territorial protests are character-
ized by a greater presence of pacific tactics (63.7%), a lower proportion of
disruptive tactics (32.5%) and violent tactics (1.0%), and an almost equally
low proportion of artistic tactics (2.8%). This is interesting because Medel
and Somma (2016) note that protest events against private companies
have a greater propensity to use disruptive and violent tactics so it would
be reasonable to expect a greater use of violent tactics and a more similar
proportion of disruptive tactics compared to protests in general. However,
this is not borne out by the data.
Even though there is a difference in the sharing of pacific, violent, and
disruptive tactics between socio-territorial protests and other protests, it
is worth noting that the general participation of violent tactics is low in
Chile—it represents only 8% of the protest during the period analyzed.
Thus, it would point out a situated condition of the protest dynamics
in the country. At the same time, the comparative literature on protests
and social movements has marked that the scholarship is not conclu-
sive on the factors and evidence of why some protests tend to be more
peaceful than others, and particularly how pacific and violent tactics deal
together in same protest events (Shock and Demetriou, 2019). Comple-
mentary to social movements studies, other scholars have stressed the
effect of mass media coverage—that often insist on violent actions—and
the consequences of political institutions that deal with protesters, espe-
cially the policing strategies of control and repression of protests (della
Porta & Reiter, 1998; Maroto et al., 2019). For example, the State’s
choice to use police or military forces to intervene in protests is key to
understand the evolution of activists’ tactics. The literature shows that
it can rather smooth the protest or push protesters to use more violent
tactics (Combes & Fillieule, 2011). As protest events are a product of
different actors’ interactions, the State’s posture and its evolution during
a protest cycle is critical. For instance, opening a dialogue channel or, on
the contrary, framing protest as criminality, are, in broad outline, the two
opposite types of response. Moreover, the combination of protest tactics
is part of a wider repertoire of collective action, where the protests are
only some of the possible actions that activists can employ to achieve their
goals. In this line, the case of the mobilizations against water scarcity in
Petorca province exemplify the exposed above. Mobilizations in Petorca,
Fig. 3 Distribution of the principal targets of socio-territorial protests and other protests, 2008–2020 (** The differences
in the proportion of each of the targets of protests by socio-territorial protest (=1) are statistically significant (test X 2 ,
SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT …

p-value < 0.01), with the exception of protests targeting a foreign government or state. Source Compiled by authors
based on data from the COES Observatory of Conflicts [2008–2020])
133
134 A. MAILLET ET AL.

headed by the Movement for the Defense of Access to Water, Land,

and Environmental Protection (MODATIMA), began being disruptive
and relatively violent in some episodes but, over time, the protest tactics
shifted toward pacific actions, in addition of combining protests with legal
actions, legislative advocacy and disputing the political-institutional arena
(Madariaga et al., 2021; Panez et al., 2017). In 2021, MODATIMA won
the regional governor election in Valparaíso Region and achieved repre-
sentation in the Constitutional Convention (2021–2022) and the local
council of some communes, demonstrating that organizations can use a
large array of tactics.

Socio-Territorial Mobilization and the Political Context:

Contributions of the Study of Protests
As indicated in previous sections, protest in Chile has undergone a process
of autonomization from political parties since the 1990s (Bidegain, 2017;
Garretón, 2016; Somma & Bargsted, 2015). It is, therefore, interesting
to analyze the extent to which the parties are present in socio-territorial
protests (Fig. 4). In general, their presence is marginal and there is only
a small difference between socio-territorial protests and other protests
(p < 0.1). Counterintuitively, however, there are variations over time.
Theoretically, a constant decrease in the presence of parties would be
expected, particularly in socio-territorial protests since they have a more
important local component. However, their greatest presence in socio-
territorial protests was in 2014, 2015, and 2017 when it was also at its
highest in protests in general. Although the figures are low, this suggests
a need for further research to understand how, in certain circumstances,
socio-territorial protest can be articulated with the presence of parties.
Like the participation of organizations in the election of delegates to
the Constitutional Convention and the experience of the MODATIMA
in legislative and regional elections, this may indicate that autonomiza-
tion is not irreversible or, at least, has become more complex than mere
distancing.

Socio-Territorial Protests in the October 2019 Uprising

To complete the analysis, we examine the distribution of socio-territorial
protests during the uprising that began on Friday, October 18, 2019.
Given that the country experienced successive protests until the start of
Fig. 4 Percentage distribution of the presence of political parties in socio-territorial protests and other protests, 2008–
2020 (** The differences in the proportion of political parties’ presence in socio-territorial protests are statistically
significant [test X 2 , p-value < 0.1]. Source Compiled by authors based on data from the COES Observatory of Conflicts
[2008–2020])
SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT …
135
136 A. MAILLET ET AL.

the Covid-19 health emergency (March 2020), we also incorporated the

first two months of 2020. During the period considered as the uprising,
there were 2,673 protest events of which 41 corresponded to socio-
territorial protests. Their low level must be viewed in light of an important
characteristic of this period: only 34.8% of events had a recognizable
demand according to the methodological criteria of the Observatory of
Conflicts.
This may be related to various aspects that are part of the analysis
of this cycle of mobilization in particular (Chapter 2). Especially at the
beginning, the uprising was characterized by its spontaneity, its expressive
nature (barricades, pot banging), and its lack of explicit content (without
posters, banners, flags, or discursive production in the demonstrations) as
well as by the transversal nature of its criticism, which makes it difficult to
situate the protests in specific sector demands (Somma et al., 2020) and,
instead, suggests a confluence of different motives and causes. Moreover,
the start of the protests cannot be attributed to particular social move-
ments. Indeed, Chapter 2 shows how, in the first few days, neighbors
were the main protagonists throughout the country, suggesting a highly
decentralized start to the protests.
This characteristic of the phenomenon made it particularly difficult
to monitor using the data collection instrument of the Observatory of
Conflicts. Journalistic routines were also overwhelmed by this cycle of
multipurpose protest, making it impossible for press reports to cover all
the diversity of the demands expressed. As well as reviewing the Obser-
vatory’s database, we, therefore, complemented it with observations and
other sources, in order to avoid creating a mistaken impression that the
uprising did not have a socio-territorial component.
According to the available data, socio-territorial protests did not
increase during the uprising while other protests increased sharply in
October and November (Fig. 5).
Does this mean that socio-territorial demands were almost absent in
these mobilizations, overshadowed by demands linked to classic welfare
policies (pensions, education, and health)? Our answer is that it does not:
the environmental and territorial component can overlap with demands
on different scales, such as those for a change in the economic develop-
ment model or related to welfare sectors and indigenous peoples.
The socio-territorial protests observed in this period were concentrated
in regions other than the Santiago Metropolitan Region (the Valparaíso,
Fig. 5 Percentage distribution of socio-territorial and other protests during the social uprising (** The differences in the
number of socio-territorial protest events (=1) by month of 2019–2020 are statistically significant (one-way Anova test,
p-value < 0.01). Source Compiled by authors based on data from the COES Observatory of Conflicts [2008–2020])
SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT …
137
138 A. MAILLET ET AL.

Maule, Araucanía, and Los Lagos Regions), reaffirming the local compo-
nent of protests of this type. In addition, in terms of geographical area,
they were concentrated in central Chile and, particularly, the south.
In the Santiago Metropolitan Region, for example, the data does not
show the numerous instances of mobilization that took place during the
uprising, such as the many cabildos on environmental issues (Larocque
et al., 2021; Ureta et al., 2021) or the common presence of posters
alluding to environmental issues in the mass marches. One example of
this is the slogan “It is not the drought, it is looting”, which circulated
transversally, beyond any particular sector-specific demand (Maillet et al.,
2021). The deep territorial embedment expressed during this period
directly links the protests to a territorial demand for decentralization,
although it does not appear in the classification of the protests.
The urban–rural distribution of protests during the uprising shows
that protests with socio-territorial demands were far more common in
rural areas where, in percentage terms, they accounted for almost six
times more events than protests of other types. However, the presence of
protests in rural areas was low in both cases. This must also be problema-
tized because it may reflect the difficulty of covering all the events that
were taking place simultaneously. However, this does not detract from
the validity of comparing the different types of protest since the issue of
coverage in rural locations potentially affects them all, regardless of the
type of demand.
In the case of the targets of the protests and the main tactics employed,
it can be argued that the uprising in general focused on three targets:
the national government, local governments, and private companies.
However, there were important differences between socio-territorial and
other protests. In the former, the main target was the local govern-
ment while, in the latter, it was the national government. By contrast, no
important differences are observed in the distribution of tactics between
socio-territorial and other protests. During the social uprising, a pacific
repertoire predominated, followed by disruptive tactics and, to a lesser
extent, violent and artistic tactics. However, socio-territorial protests
tended to be slightly less violent than other protests.
Finally, the analysis shows that political parties were not present in
socio-territorial protests during the uprising and were present in only
2.4% of the other protests (X2 test > 0.1). This is particularly inter-
esting because, out of all the period analyzed, the uprising was one of the
moments when the presence of political parties was lowest. In the case
 SOCIO-TERRITORIAL MOBILIZATION IN CHILE IN LIGHT … 139

of socio-territorial protest, it was comparable only to 2018 and 2020.

This shows that the social uprising maintained the general pattern of
autonomization of protest.

Conclusion: Socio-Territorial Conflicts

in the Framework of Mobilization in Chile
This chapter shows that the study of social mobilization originating in the
territories and arising from territorial problems permits a novel approach
to analysis of “social movements”. Socio-territorial protest has common
features with contemporary trends in social mobilization, particularly
regarding its autonomy. However, it is broader geographically, includes
the rural sector, is eminently pacific in nature, and targets mainly the
regional and local spheres.
Socio-territorial mobilizations were an important component of the
mobilization cycle of the 2010s. They were initially less visible than
student mobilizations, but they were concomitant and, from other territo-
ries outside urban centers, contributed to a new politicization that led to
the 2019 uprising. During this period, cabildos and territorial and issue-
specific meetings took place around the country A total of 16,424 events
of this type -previously registered in different data bases- were recorded
through to January 2022, involving 154,541 people (Secretaría de Partic-
ipación Popular, 2022a, p. 28). After social rights—education, health
care, housing, and pensions—the thematic emphasis of these meetings
was on environmental demands, highlighting their place in the process.
This importance of socio-territorial actors was also clear in the
constituent process through which the political system attempted to
channel the uprising. Indeed, as indicated in the introduction, organi-
zations that had worked for years in their respective territories took the
opportunity afforded by a modification of the electoral system to present
numerous candidates for the Convention (Carrasco et al., 2022). More-
over, they were particularly successful, electing 27 delegates who were
able to install their demands and finally influence the constitutional text,
which emphasized decentralization and environmental protection. In this,
they received strong support from the vehicles of participation designed
by the Convention itself.
The Convention’s thematic commissions held public hearings and the
Environment Commission received the most requests for a hearing (1,703
requests). The Convention also received Popular Initiatives on Norms
140 A. MAILLET ET AL.

(IPN) and the Environment Commission, with 299 initiatives presented

(12% of the total), ranked second after the Fundamental Rights Commis-
sion (998 initiatives). In a measure of citizen support, environmental
IPNs accounted for 18% of all IPN signatories (Secretaría de Partici-
pación Popular, 2022b, p. 27). Some 5% of the 299 IPNs (15) received
by the Environment Commission obtained more than the 15,000 signa-
tures required for their discussion by the Convention. This represented
the highest percentage of “success” among all the IPNs presented to
the Convention’s different commissions, accounting for 19% of the IPNs
debated. Nine of the initiatives were totally or partially approved in their
first general debate (Secretaría de Participación Popular, 2022b, p. 5).
This reflects both widespread citizen support for environmental causes
as well as their growing degree of articulation in the context of the consti-
tutional debate. Within the Convention, their representatives formed a
Collective of Constituent Social Movements, which obtained the presi-
dency of the Convention during its second six months, as well as a group
known as “eco constituents”, with strong ties to the issues discussed here.
In other words, at least in the constituent political arena, socio-territorial
mobilization showed its relevance and capacity for articulation, that has
largely influenced the constitutional norms approved by the Convention.
However, the massive rejection of the proposal in the 2022 referendum
has been a major blow for social mobilization in general, and its socio-
territorial component has not been an exception. To be able to exert a
national influence on the development model is now much less likely, as
the recent yet strong extractivist impulse for lithium and green hydrogen
make evident. Activists seem to have gotten back to their territorial bases.
It remains to be seen whether articulated socio-territorial mobilization
will remain in abeyance, or if it is able to further build on the legacies of
the enduring trend of socio-territorial protests of the 2010s—as did the
student movement after several drawbacks (Bidegain & Maillet, 2021).

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 Gender Protests and Transgressive Tactics

Rodolfo Disi Pavlic, Valentina Paredes,

and Catherine Reyes-Housholder

This chapter focuses on “gender protests,” defined as social conflicts moti-

vated by equality issues concerning men and women as well as sexual
majorities and minorities. Feminist protests resurged massively in May
2018 in what has been referred to as a “third wave” of Chilean feminism
(de Fina Gonzalez & Figueroa Vidal, 2019; Miranda & Roque, 2021;
Reyes-Housholder & Roque, 2019). The first wave of Chilean femi-
nism, promoted by conservative, Catholic women, centered on women’s

R. Disi Pavlic (B)

Escuela de Gobierno, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez & Centre for Social Conflict
and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
V. Paredes
Departamento de Economía, Universidad de Chile & Centre for Social Conflict
and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
C. Reyes-Housholder
Instituto de Ciencia Política, Pontificia Universidad Católica & Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 145

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_8
146 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

suffrage in the 1930s–1950s (Castillo, 2022b; Maza Valenzuela, 1995).1

The second wave in the 1980s advanced women’s rights within a broader
pro-democracy movement while the third wave of feminist protests,
driven by university students, has largely centered on issues of sexism in
education and gendered violence.
However, feminist convictions do not necessarily drive protests on
gender issues because Chileans—women and men—have often mobilized
to restrict women’s rights, particularly their reproductive rights.2 Reli-
gious identities and principles, rather than feminism, can motivate such
gender protests. Finally, LGBT groups since the 1990s have cooperated
with Chile’s recently revitalized feminist movement, visibly and enthusi-
astically embracing causes related to sexual minorities (Núñez González,
2010, p. 383).
Gender protests, by our definition, encompass all these phenomena.
Social conflicts of these types involve both progressive and conservative
demands: in other words, ideologies that seek to expand or curtail the
rights of women or sexual minorities can inspire and drive gender protests.
As a result, gender protests can challenge or seek to preserve the status
quo of gender rights. Our conceptualization suggests that women and
sexual minorities tend to be the protagonists of conflicts of this type, but
men and sexual majorities can also spearhead them.
In recent decades, activists focusing on gender issues have taken a
prominent role in Chilean protests. Feminist movements have influenced
various reforms, from sexual harassment protocols in colleges to the
inclusion of gender parity in two constitution-writing bodies (Castillo &
Reyes-Housholder, 2022). Concurrently, the LGBT community’s advo-
cacy led to the approval of gender identity legislation in 2018 (Schulz &
Thies, 2023) and the legalization of same-sex marriage in 2021 (Álvarez
Fuentes & Muñoz Arias, 2022). Meanwhile, despite some challenges,
conservative views on gender remain potent, showcasing their influ-
ence through sizable demonstrations and influential political networks
(Escoffier & Vivaldi, 2023).

1 Scholars have argued that, in contrast to movements for men’s suffrage—commonly

referred to as democratization movements—movements for women’s suffrage are charac-
terized by more peaceful tactics (Castillo, 2022a; Teele, 2018).
2 Indeed, Chilean women in the 1970s and 1980s mobilized in support of the Pinochet
dictatorship (Baldez, 2002).
 GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS 147

How important are gender protests in quantitative terms? Although

these kinds of protests constitute a small percentage of all protests in
Chile, they have become more common in recent years. The database
compiled by the Observatory of Conflicts of the Center for Social Conflict
and Cohesion Studies (COES) contains 1060 events (about 4.3% of the
total number of events) that meet our definition of gender protests.
We operationalize our concept of gender protest in terms of the kind of
demands and actors. An event qualifies as a “gender protest” if it at least
one of its demands falls into one of the following categories: violence
against women; “moral” issues (abortion, divorce laws, and the morning-
after pill); demands regarding sexual minorities; feminist demands and
demands regarding women in general (equal wages, quotas, women’s
education, and anti-discrimination laws). Finally, the Observatory regis-
ters the presence in events of two groups self-identified in terms of
gender: feminists and LGBT activists. Because gender demands can be for
or against the extension of women’s or sexual minorities’ rights, gender
protests may qualify as progressive or conservative.
Figure 1 shows the number of gender protests—classified on the basis
of their demands—over time. It reveals a sharp increase from about 19
protests about violence against women in 2017 to over 152 in 2020.
This period overlaps with the resurgence of feminism in Chile in 2018 as
well as the start of the social uprising in 2019. The percentage of these
protests increased from 1.3% in 2009 to 11.2% in 2020.
This chapter explores two questions about the tactics used in gender
protests, which can be classified as contained or transgressive.3 The latter
kind of tactics tends to involve some level of violence or disruption. We
analyze the levels of containment or transgressiveness of gender protests’
tactics for three main reasons. First, the choice of tactics could influence a
social movement’s success (Chenoweth & Stephan, 2013), particularly
in a country that has experienced major changes in attitudes towards
gender equality (Lambert & Scribner, 2021, p. 236; Schulenberg, 2019).
Second, women often spearhead protests of these types, and women are
stereotypically expected to employ less violence than men. Socialization
and stereotypes could, thus, dissuade leaders of gender protests from

3 “Transgressive (or confrontational) tactics, as their name implies, seek to disrupt the
daily routines of the population or the authorities, are illegal or semi-legal, and can
occasionally become physically violent or dangerous both for activists and pedestrians, the
authorities questioned, or the police forces” (Medel & Somma, 2016, p. 162).
148 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

Fig. 1 Frequency of protests with gender demands, 2008–2020

employing transgressiveness. Third, gender protests often center on issues

of violence against women, children, and sexual minorities, bringing to
national attention abuses in the “private” sphere, such as the home and
bedroom. Ideological tensions may, therefore, arise between anti-violence
activism and the use of transgressive tactics. Do activists in gender protests
tend to employ more peaceful tactics than those in other kinds of protests?
If so, why and when?
Figure 2 brings initial data to this question by comparing transgressive
rates for different kinds of protests. The left-hand pair of bars compares
protests with gender demands and those without gender demands. Here,
we see that, while 26.8% of all protests with gender demands use trans-
gressive tactics, more than double that percentage (60.4%) of non-gender
protests do so. This descriptive statistic suggests that gender protests may,
indeed, have particular affinities with pacific rather than violent tactics.
However, gender protests that seek to upend traditional gender roles
may differ from those that seek to sustain them. The second pair of bars
 GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS 149

Fig. 2 Gender protests: sub-group type and transgressive rates

compares these subtypes of gender protests: progressive versus conserva-

tive. Here, another striking divergence appears: 30.1% of protests with
progressive gender demands use transgressive tactics compared to just
7.1% of protests with conservative gender demands.
The final pair of bars reveals contrasts between the transgressive rates
of protests with feminist or LGBT actors and events without feminists
and LGBT groups. 21.8% of all protests with feminist or LGBT actors
are transgressive while almost three times this percentage of protests
(62.7%) without them are transgressive. Thus, these groups tend to be
less transgressive than other actors and groups in protests registered by
the Observatory. Figures 1 and 2 together suggest that gender conflicts,
having increased in prevalence in recent years, may have a particular
affinity with contained protest tactics. However, this affinity may depend
on the kind of gender protest and its key actors.
We assert in this chapter that gender protests tend to employ trans-
gressive tactics less frequently than non-gender protests. To sustain this
argument beyond these descriptive statistics, we draw on theories of
150 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

gender and social conflicts to derive hypotheses about the demands moti-
vating protests and the groups involved in these conflicts. We then unpack
our research design. The richness of the data compiled by the Obser-
vatory of Conflicts enables us to gauge statistical relationships between
gender conflicts and transgressive tactics through multiple indicators. We
justify our model specification and the operationalization of our variables
of interest and control variables before, finally, interpreting and discussing
our results.
A series of logit models show that the probabilities of employing trans-
gressive tactics are statistically lower for gender protests than non-gender
protests. This main result is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls,
including protest size, protest targets, and group types. A second set of
models, examining the likelihood of transgressive tactics only for gender
conflicts, finds that progressive gender conflicts are more likely to employ
these tactics than conservative ones. The findings are consistent with our
overarching argument that the protagonists of gender conflicts tend to
select contained rather than transgressive tactics to advance their causes.
Our results further suggest that protagonists’ multiple identities may
complicate this relationship, an area of future research.

Determinants of Transgressive Tactics

in Protests Motivated by Gender Issues
We theorize below about how different features of gender protests and
types of tactics could anticipate a greater resistance to transgressiveness.
Drawing on social movements and gender scholarship, we develop three
hypotheses about the presence of gender demands in general, progressive
gender demands, the participation of feminist or LGBT groups, and their
association with transgressive tactics in mobilizations.

Demands
Research on social movements has long argued that the nature of claims
made in mobilizations largely determines the range of tactics used to
advance them. Specifically, more radical demands tend to promote the
adoption of transgressive strategies (McAdam, 1986). Gender demands
are no exception since “[a] considerable body of scholarship demonstrates
the significance of gender ideology and symbolism in a movement’s selec-
tion of tactics” (Taylor & Van Dyke, 2007, p. 276). In general, demands
 GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS 151

related to women (de Fina Gonzalez & Figueroa Vidal, 2019; Staggen-
borg, 1988) and sexual minorities (Bernstein, 1997) are associated with
contained, cultural, and discursive tactics. In the Chilean case, marches,
parades, and commemorations are central tactics of both feminist and
LGBT movements (Barrientos et al., 2010; de Fina Gonzalez & Figueroa
Vidal, 2019, p. 54; Lamadrid & Benitt, 2019, pp. 7–9; Urzúa Martínez,
2019).
The Las Tesis collective arguably constitutes the most famous recent
example of a feminist group employing pacific tactics. At the height of
the 2019 social unrest in Chile, which was marked by unprecedented
levels of violence and repression (Somma et al., 2021), Las Tesis reinvig-
orated pacific and symbolic activism through Un violador en tu camino
(A rapist in your path), a collective performance (de Fina Gonzalez,
2021; Martin & Shaw, 2021; Pérez-Arredondo & Cárdenas-Neira, 2021;
Serafini, 2020). The group’s influence spilled across Latin America and
the globe as it performed in cities that included Mexico City, Bogotá,
London, Paris, and Berlin (Cooperativa, 2019). Indeed, postmaterialist
demands including “feminist, environmental, sexual, ethical, and animal
rights claims” are negatively associated with the use of violent tactics in
Latin American student protests (Disi Pavlic, 2020, p. 9).
152 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

Chilean feminists have revitalized contained tactics. Here feminists protest

massively in downtown Santiago, Chile on March 8, 2020. Written on the
activists’ backs from the left to right: “Woman, I like it when you do not shut
up”; “Patriarchy censures nipples that are not sold in markets”; “No is no”
(Credits: Florencia Venegas Salvatierra)

This discussion leads to our first hypothesis:

Hypothesis 1. Gender protests, compared to all other protests, are negatively

associated with transgressive tactics.

However, gender conflicts about progressive demands may display more

transgressive tactics than conservative mobilizations. Progressive claims
may, for example, be comparatively “radical” and “entail great institu-
tional reforms to be satisfied” (Medel & Somma, 2016, p. 178). Such
conflicts tend to use more transgressive tactics than those advancing
“non-radical” demands (Medel & Somma, 2016, p. 178). Indeed, femi-
nist demands may be considered radical (Epstein, 2002) insofar as they
advocate sweeping cultural and political changes aiming at, for instance,
gender equality. Upending patriarchy, some feminists may reason, could
require more than just pacific tactics.4 The 2018 “Feminist May” mobi-
lizations provide an example of the use of more disruptive tactics to
advance ambitious demands: feminists and, particularly, school students
used strikes and occupied schools across the country, a relatively novel
tactic for the feminist movement (de Fina Gonzalez & Figueroa Vidal,
2019), to denounce sexist practices in schools and beyond (Leibe &
Roque, 2019; Miranda & Roque, 2021).
By contrast, conservative mobilizations—that is, those which seek to
restrict the rights of women and sexual minorities and maintain tradi-
tional roles—may tend to select more contained protest strategies.5 With
democratization and the advent of leftist governments, the grassroots

4 Some feminist demands can hardly be considered radical. For example, reproductive
rights remain severely restricted in Chile where abortion is legal only in three cases: when
the mother’s life is in danger, when the fetus is not viable, and when conception resulted
from rape. In this sense, expanding anomalously restrictive abortion laws may be viewed
as moving the country more in line with global trends, rather than a ground-breaking
change.
5 Another reason why conservative gender protests may tend to resort to even less
violence because their demands may overlap with the state-directed status quo. In other
 GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS 153

right across Latin America has added mass mobilization to its tradi-
tional repertoire of insider tactics, judicialization, and campaign donations
(Mayka & Smith, 2021).6 For example, “participation in large-scale street
demonstrations, such as the annual, Evangelical-dominated March for
Jesus in several countries, has helped to construct the politicized identi-
ties necessary for subsequent activism” (Mayka & Smith, 2021, pp. 6–7).
Many of these mobilizations criticize “gender ideology”, a key element of
the “master frame” (Benford, 2013) that conservative groups use in their
mobilizations against the expansion of the rights of women and sexual
minorities (Biroli & Caminotti, 2020, p. 2).
Another significant feature of conservative movements is that transna-
tional links between their organizations promote the diffusion of generally
peaceful strategies such as marches and symbolic actions (Lavizzari &
Siročić, 2022, p. 5). Anti-abortion activists in Chile, for example,
have staged massive peaceful demonstrations in different locations and
appealed to the public and authorities using symbols such as white dresses,
religious references, and children’s coffins (Chile es Vida, 2015). Mean-
while, mobilizations against gender identity rights in the country have
secured foreign funding and obtained official permission and even protec-
tion from counter-demonstrators (Arce, 2017; El Tipógrafo, 2017).

Hypothesis 2. Gender protests centered on progressive demands, compared to

conservative demands, are positively associated with transgressive tactics.

Groups Involved
Do individuals and groups mobilized around gender issues tend to select
contained or transgressive tactics? Gender protests, in part because they
often seek to expand women’s and minorities’ rights, tend to involve a
greater number of individuals identifying as women or LGBT than other
kinds of protests. Gender essentialism mistakenly assumes that women
and, perhaps, sexual minorities will “naturally” demonstrate stereotypi-
cally feminine attributes like peacefulness and non-violence (El-Bushra,

words, if the state backs their cause, protagonists of conservative gender protests may
perceive little need to employ confrontation or disruption.
6 14.5% of gender events in the Observatory of Conflict’s database sought to advance
conservative causes.
154 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

2007). Women as a group are socialized to behave less aggressively than

men, implying that they are expected to use less violence and are punished
more severely for failing to conform to this stereotype. Men, on the other
hand, are expected to employ force more freely and may be punished less
for this. Therefore, because women—socialized to be but not necessarily
born as more peaceful—tend to spearhead gender protests more than
other kinds of protests, we could also expect gender protests to nega-
tively correlate with transgressive tactics. This line of reasoning further
supports Hypothesis 1.
The kinds and quantity of political resources a group possesses also
shape its tactical choices. Generally, low-capital collectives tend to resort
to transgressive tactics (Bernstein, 1997; Piven & Cloward, 1979). The
level of political capital enjoyed by the “social movement industries”
(Walker et al., 2008) that participate in gender protests varies widely,
ranging from very high for some religious organizations to low in the case
of some sexual minorities, complicating our expectations about the effect
of their participation on protest tactics. Indeed, discrimination based on
sexual orientation has been shown to positively correlate with more mili-
tant attitudes, including accepting violence to effect social change (Birt &
Dion, 1987).
Due to their historical marginalization, women tend to have fewer
political resources than men. For example, women tend to occupy
fewer political positions and financial resources to influence politics
through donations (Burns & Schlozman, 2001). However, it is not
clear whether that would cause women to choose more violent tactics
than men. Although marginalized in terms of gender, women and the
sexual minorities organizing gender protests may constitute privileged
or well-resourced members of their own groups. This may also influ-
ence the selection of pacific over transgressive tactics. Following this
line of reasoning, the concept of “respectability politics” (Higginbotham,
1994), most commonly applied to civil rights movements in the United
States, may also apply to gender movements in Chile. Respectability poli-
tics refers to “the process by which privileged members of marginalized
groups comply with dominant social norms to advance their group’s
condition” (Dazey, 2021, p. 580). Particularly in conservative societies,
gender-related organizations may choose to use more contained tactics
to sway public opinion (Ayoub et al., 2021). Indeed, in some LGBT
groups, “interactions between activists and members of the polity and
among groups within the activist community produced strategies that
 GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS 155

emphasized similarities to the straight public and the incremental nature

of policy reform” (Bernstein, 1997, p. 552).
Respectability politics also may have played out in gender movements
in Chile. Ties between some feminists and the Chilean state “unraveled”
the strong ties forged in the 1980s within the feminist movement (Núñez
González, 2010, p. 383). As de Fina Gonzalez and Figueroa Vidal (2019,
p. 53) note:

[Although] the Chilean feminist field came to constitute itself hegemoni-

cally in institutional spheres, with NGOs and research centers as hubs for
its practices and discourses, feminist activists and activities still took place in
other spaces, through less visible practices, looking for other places, other
subversive grammars, and forms of advocacy that were different from those
accepted or incorporated by the global process of gender mainstreaming.

A similar phenomenon has occurred among LGBT activists. Searching

for broader support, some LGBT groups, often homosexual groups, have
become more “institutionalized” (Núñez González, 2010, p. 383) in
their tactics:

The homonormalization of gay/lesbian discourse, propagated by political

parties and financial benefactors of gay projects, requires leaders of groups
(bound by their alliance with concertacionista officials) to succumb to
the linguistic schematic of the patriarchy in power, yet it places impor-
tant demands of sexual diversity on legislative and governmental agendas.
(Núñez González, 2010, p. 386).

In the 1990s in Chile, for example, the leadership of the Move-

ment for Homosexual Liberation (Movimiento de Liberación Homosexual,
MOVILH) “pushed for an agenda of ‘mainstreaming’ the organiza-
tion to appeal to the conservative Chilean society” (Schulenberg, 2019,
p. 99). This entailed displacing its lesbian, transgender, and HIV-positive
members (Robles, 2008, pp. 87–90). For our purposes, mainstreaming
may also mean resorting to pacific and cultural tactics, rather than
transgressive ones. This discussion leads to a third hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3. The presence of feminists or LGBT groups in protest events is

negatively associated with transgressive tactics
156 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

Research Design
We empirically explore whether gender protests tend to exhibit less trans-
gressive tactics with data from the COES Observatory of Social Conflicts
from 2008 to 2020. The dependent variable in all our models is an indi-
cator of transgressive tactics. The Observatory of Social Conflicts collects
data about the different types of mobilization tactics throughout Chile.
The tactics are divided into four categories: pacific, artistic, disruptive, and
violent. Protesters at the same event may use different types of tactics.
We define transgressive ones as either disruptive (for example, occupa-
tions, strikes, blocking roads, boycotts) or violent (for example, riots, the
destruction of public or private property, arson attacks, attacks on the
police or third parties). Our dependent variable is a dummy variable that
takes the value of 1 if at least one of the tactics used in the event is
transgressive.7
To test whether protests centered on gender issues are negatively asso-
ciated with transgressive tactics (Hypothesis 1), we constructed a variable
that indicates whether the event features a demand related to gender
issues. The Observatory classifies demands into 14 categories, four of
which are related to gender. We consider an event as a gender protest
event if at least one of its demands falls into one of the following cate-
gories: violence against women; moral issues (abortion, divorce laws, and
the morning-after pill); demands regarding sexual minorities; and femi-
nist demands and demands regarding women in general, including equal
wages, quotas, women’s education, and anti-discrimination laws. Out of
27,780 events with identified tactics, 1060 are classified as protests with
gender demands.
To test whether gender protests centered on progressive demands
are positively associated with transgressive tactics (Hypothesis 2), we
constructed an indicator with three categories: progressive gender
demands, conservative gender demands, and demands from other types
of conflicts. We define progressive demands as those which seek to extend
the rights of women and/or sexual minorities and conservative demands
as those that refer to valuing or preserving traditional gender roles. Out of
the total of 1060 protest events with gender demands, 85% are classified

7 We omit data for 453 events with missing information about the type of tactic, out
of 28,233 observations.
 GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS 157

as progressive while the other 154 demonstrations (14%) are categorized

as conservative.
Finally, we are also interested in exploring the relationship between
gender protests defined in terms of groups and transgressive tactics. To
test whether the presence of feminist or LGBT groups is negatively associ-
ated with transgressive tactics (Hypothesis 3), we constructed an indicator
of these groups’ participation in the event. The Observatory collects
data about different participants, who are categorized in 34 groups of
which one is feminist and/or LGBT groups. Feminist or LGBT groups
participated in 1.8% of all events, 43.3% of protest events with gender
demands, and 50.7% of gender protests with progressive gender demands.
By contrast, feminist or LGBT groups did not participate in any gender
protest with conservative demands.8
As our dependent variable is categorical, we leverage a series of logistic
regression models to test our three hypotheses. Since the variables used to
test Hypotheses 1 and 2 are perfectly correlated, we test them in separate
regression models. We also clustered standard errors at the municipal level
to account for possible autocorrelation within Chile’s comunas (Table 1).
We used six sets of control variables to gauge possible effects of
gendered demands and groups on transgressive tactics.9 The first refers
to the number of participants or the size of the protest. Some gender
protests in Chile, such as the annual International Women’s Day in

Table 1 Descriptive statistics

% N

Tactic Transgressive 62.99 17,499

Groups involved Feminist or LGBT 1.83 514
Demands Gender 4.34 1060
Type of gender demand Progressive 906 85.47
Conservative 154 14.53

8 While feminist and LGBT groups can be considered gender groups, other groups can
also be considered as such. For example, conservative women are a gender group that is
more associated with conservative gender demands. We analyze the presence of feminist
and LGBT groups and not other gender groups for data availability reasons. In addition,
in some specifications, we control for the presence of religious groups.
9 Descriptive statistics for our control variables are available upon request.
158 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

March, have attained an enormous scale in recent years in surpassing

thousands of participants. Regarding a potential impact of an event’s
scale on the choice of tactics, one position argues that a larger number
of participants increases the likelihood of violence. The logic behind this
is that, as the number of participants increases, the cost of violent actions
decreases because anonymity reduces the chances of being apprehended
(Granovetter, 1978; Oberschall, 1994). Moreover, larger demonstrations
are associated with the presence of the security forces, which may increase
the chances of a violent response to repression (Koopmans, 1997).
However, another strand of research claims the opposite effect: a larger
number of participants decreases the likelihood of violent tactics on the
grounds that “human” resources are important for social mobilization
(Edwards & McCarthy, 2007). As demonstrations become larger, they
can attract media coverage, sway public sentiment, and ultimately impact
political decisions and policies, eliminating the need for violence to attain
the goals of social movements (Disi Pavlic, 2020, p. 3). Because the scale
of a protest could confuse the relationship between gender protests and
tactics, we include it as a control variable. We measure the number of
participants using a variable with six ordinal categories: “fewer than 10”,
“10 to 49”, “50 to 100”, “hundreds”, “thousands”, “tens of thousands”,
and “impossible to estimate”.
A second group of controls considers the targets of protests. We
add them because the use of violence in protests may depend on its
target and, particularly, the target’s capacity to respond with repres-
sion (Walker et al., 2008). Previous research suggest that protestors
targeting state institutions such as the national government, Congress,
and other public authorities are more likely to employ relatively pacific
tactics (Wang & Piazza, 2016). By contrast, protestors targeting private
institutions, companies, and individuals may employ less contained means
because these targets lack the legitimacy or capacity to respond with force.
For instance, students are more likely to use peaceful means against the
national government and more likely to resort to disruption when educa-
tional authorities are the target (Gonzalez Vaillant & Schwartz, 2019).
Because they sometimes relate to reproductive rights, gender protests may
tend be oriented toward the national government as much or more than
non-gender protests. Similarly, gender protests related to sexual violence
and harassment may target educational institutions more frequently than
other protests. We control for potential effects of different types of targets
 GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS 159

via six dichotomous variables: the state, private companies, educational

institutions, health care institutions, civil society actors, and others.
Thirdly, we include control variables to account for the presence of
other social groups, which may have affinities with gender protests. Char-
acteristics of collectives or individuals may influence their preferences
for specific tactics. Worker mobilizations, for instance, favor disruptive
tactics such as strikes, which are inherently related to the impact they
can have on the economy (Schwartz, 1988; Velásquez et al., 2022).
Other groups are poorer in “political capital” (Bernstein, 1997; Piven &
Cloward, 1979), prompting them to resort to more transgressive strate-
gies. They may include “groups of residents, indigenous peoples, informal
workers, unemployed and clandestine groups” (Medel & Somma, 2016,
p. 168) as well as secondary school students (Disi Pavlic, 2020, p. 11). We
control for the transgressive potential of other groups via binary variables
measuring the presence of 10 groups that vary in levels of political capital
and the tactics they prefer: women, young people, indigenous Mapuche
groups, students, labor organizations, political parties, religious groups,
mortgage debtors (del Romero & del Romero, 2018); environmental and
animal activists, hooded protesters, and others.
A fourth set of controls captures the presence of other demands in
a mobilization. The kinds of demands that protesters seek to advance
in a mobilization may help determine their choice of tactics. Indeed,
social movements’ collective action frames, which they use to articu-
late and justify their causes (Benford & Snow, 2000), also condition
the array of strategies they may use. Thus, activists may have to decide
how much and what kind of forceful means to employ (Tilly & Tarrow,
2015, p. 3). We take into account the presence of other demands through
five binary covariates: education, indigenous, labor, environmental, and
political system demands.
The fifth type of controls is a continuous variable capturing the number
of formal organizations present at an event. As movements become more
institutionalized and articulated through organizations, they move away
from transgressive tactics. As Piven and Cloward (1979) explain, insti-
tutionalization causes movements to adopt more routine and contained
tactics as the probability of elite cooptation increases. The pro-choice
movement in the United States illustrates this: when certain activists
resolved to formalize the organizational structure (which promoted
alliances and ensured the movement’s continuity), they also abandoned
strategic innovation, relying on “institutionalized tactics” (Staggenborg,
160 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

1988). Evidence from protest events in Chile also shows that organiza-
tions play a role in moderating their more radical elements, guiding them
towards more conventional strategies (Medel & Somma, 2016, p. 184).
Thus, the presence of organizations should be negatively correlated with
the use of transgressive tactics.
Finally, the last set of controls considers geographical and temporal
determinants of transgressiveness in protests. When targeting the execu-
tive and seeking national attention, gender protests may be concentrated
in Chile’s capital, Santiago. Capital cities are targeted due to the presence
of various state institutions (Walker et al., 2008, p. 56). Protests staged
in capital cities also tend to be more visible to the media and the elites,
making the use of more disruptive and violent strategies less necessary
(Disi Pavlic, 2020, p. 7). The use of transgressive tactics may also depend
on certain temporal dynamics. We, therefore, included a dummy variable
for protests in Santiago and a variable using each year included in the
dataset as a category.

Results
Table 2 shows the results of the first set of logit models which enable
us to test Hypotheses 1 and 3. The results are presented in odds ratios.
Coefficients of less than 1 mean that the variable reduces the probability
of transgressive tactics. The gender demands coefficient is less than 1 and
significant at the 95% level in all the models. These results are consistent
with Hypothesis 1. However, the magnitude of gender demands’ effect
depends on the controls we add. In columns 1–4, the effect remains
stable and robust to the inclusion of controls for protest size, location,
and targets. Specifically, the probability of a protest featuring transgres-
sive tactics is reduced by 76% when it has gender demands. The effect of
gender demands diminishes when we control for other demands and the
probability of a protest featuring transgressive tactics falls by 65%.
Columns 5, 7, and 8 in Table 2 test Hypothesis 3 by including the
feminist or LGBT groups indicator. The effect is less than 1 and signif-
icant at the 95% level in all models with this variable. The presence of
feminist or LGBT groups decreases the probability of transgressive tactics
by 45–54%. In the models where the indicator of feminist or LGBT
groups is included, the gender demands coefficient decreases the prob-
ability of transgressive tactics by 28–30%. All these results are consistent
with Hypotheses 1 and 3.
Table 2 Gender protests and transgressive tactics

Variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio

Demands: gender 0.231*** 0.239*** 0.236*** 0.250*** 0.709** 0.353*** 0.713** 0.720**
(0.0348) (0.0378) (0.0365) (0.0327) (0.0977) (0.0506) (0.100) (0.101)
Groups: feminists and 0.452*** 0.530*** 0.543***
LGBT groups (0.0647) (0.0800) (0.0792)
Constant 1.588*** 2.254*** 2.070*** 1.763*** 0.996 1.194 0.758* 0.760*
(0.0992) (0.171) (0.325) (0.288) (0.168) (0.168) (0.107) (0.108)
Observations 23,874 23,874 23,874 23,331 23,805 23,874 23,273 23,273
Year fixed effect No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Control for capital city No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Controls for protest size No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Controls for targets No No No Yes Yes No Yes Yes
Controls for groups No No No No Yes No Yes Yes
Controls for other No No No No No Yes Yes Yes
demands
Controls for number of No No No No No No No Yes
organizations

Robust standard errors, clustered at the municipality level, are presented in parentheses
***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p > 0.1
GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS
161
162 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

Table 3 shows the results for the second set of logit models used to
test Hypotheses 2 and 3.10 In this case, the omitted category is protests
with conservative gender demands. The indicator of progressive gender
demands is greater than 1 across the models, which means that this type
of gender demand increases the odds of transgressiveness compared to
conservative demands. The results again vary in magnitude when we
include controls. The coefficient in columns 1–4 remains rather stable:
progressive gender claims increase the use of transgressive tactics by a
factor of five. However, when we include controls for other demands
(column 6) and for other participating groups (columns 5, 7, and 8), the
coefficient is smaller in magnitude but still large. The indicator for femi-
nist or LGBT groups again is less than 1 and significant at the 95% level.
This means that if the protest features feminist or LGBT groups, then
the odds of using transgressive tactics in gender events falls by 50–58%.
Overall, the results are consistent with Hypothesis 2.
The variation in the magnitudes of the coefficients revealed in Tables 2
and 3 suggests that the relationship between gender protests and trans-
gressive tactics may be explained by activists having more than one
identity and, hence, more than one set of influences on their deci-
sions regarding tactics. For example, intersections between feminist and
student identities that seek to defy traditional gender roles could alter
the relationship between gender protests and transgressive tactics. This
explains why the coefficient of progressive gender demands is smaller
when we include the presence of students and other groups. Conversely,
intersections between religious identities and conservative-driven gender
protests may strengthen the relationship between gender protests and
contained tactics vis-à-vis progressive demands. For example, conserva-
tive religious circles—whether Catholic or Evangelical—could discourage
the use of violent over peaceful means of protest. Future research could
theorize more systematically about how dual identities can either weaken
or reinforce the overarching relationship explored in this chapter.
Finally, we illustrate our results using predicted probabilities. Specifi-
cally, we estimate the predicted probabilities of the use of transgressive
tactics by the presence of gender and other demands (from column 8

10 Two controls do not appear in the models when we estimate them using the sample
of protests with gender demands. Health care institutions, as a target, drop out of the
model because it perfectly predicts transgressive tactics. Mortgage debtors, as a group, do
not appear in the model because this group does not participate in gender demands.
Table 3 Gender protests, progressive demands, and transgressive tactics

Variables (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8)

Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio Odds ratio

Demands: other conflicts 20.65*** 18.73*** 18.93*** 16.34*** 3.528*** 9.971*** 2.705*** 2.365***
(9.490) (9.005) (9.097) (7.802) (0.944) (4.466) (0.768) (0.582)
Progressive gender 5.619*** 5.235*** 5.256*** 4.788*** 2.753** 3.981** 2.069** 1.794**
demands (2.081) (2.011) (2.070) (2.009) (0.752) (1.485) (0.594) (0.461)
Groups: feminists and 0.416*** 0.500** 0.520***
LGBT groups (0.0623) (0.0795) (0.0794)
Constant 0.0769*** 0.120*** 0.109*** 0.107*** 0.283*** 0.119*** 0.280** 0.321***
(0.0331) (0.0557) (0.0462) (0.0504) (0.0624) (0.0465) (0.0756) (0.0750)
Observations 23,874 23,874 23,874 23,331 23,805 23,874 23,273 23,273
Year fixed effect No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Control for capital city No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Controls for protest size No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Controls for targets No No No Yes No No Yes Yes
Controls for groups No No No No Yes No Yes Yes
Controls for other No No No No No Yes Yes Yes
demands
Controls for number of No No No No No No No Yes
organizations

Robust standard errors, clustered at the municipality level, are presented in parentheses
***p < 0.01, **p < 0.05, *p > 0.1
GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS
163
164 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

in Table 2), progressive and conservative gender demands (from column

8 in Table 3),11 and participation of feminist or LGBT groups versus
other actors (from column 8 in Table 2), with the other variables held at
their mean values. As shown in Fig. 3, the presence of gender demands
and groups (vis-à-vis other demands and groups) is associated with a
lower probability of transgressive tactics. In the case of demands, when
other demands are included in a protest, the probability of transgressive
tactics is 60.9%, which decreases to 52.9% with gender demands. When
other groups are present, the probability of transgressive tactics hits 60.9%
while it descends to 45.9% when feminist or LGBT groups participate.
Meanwhile, the probability of transgressive tactics stays slightly higher
with progressive gender demands (53.2%) than when protests feature
conservative gender demands (45.3%).

Fig. 3 Predicted probabilities by demands, gender demands, and groups, with

95% confidence intervals

11 The predicted probability of “other demands” is not shown as it is very similar to

the predicted probability of other demands versus gender demands.
 GENDER PROTESTS AND TRANSGRESSIVE TACTICS 165

Conclusions
The staging of gender protests—that is, conflicts centered on inequalities
between men and women and sexual majorities and minorities—jumped
from 1.3% of all protests in Chile in 2009 to 11.24% in 2020. The
2019 social uprising rocked Chile with intense, unprecedented levels of
violence. More than 63.1% of conflicts that year employed transgressive
tactics. Our analysis suggests that gender protests seem to go against
this wave of violence by presenting affinities with peaceful rather than
transgressive tactics.
We have argued that demand- and group-based characteristics of this
kind of protests might contribute to this overarching pattern. In the
case of their demands, participants of gender protests have often sought
to combat violence against women, children, and sexual minorities in
both the public and private spheres. Protesters in these events, seeking
consistency between words and actions, may be more likely to stick with
peaceful means of demonstrating. The kind of gender demand may also
matter in a different way. We have argued that gender protests which
are progressive—thereby seeking to defy the status quo—may be more
likely to resort to confrontation than conservative gender protests, which
seek to maintain the status quo. Conservative gender protests may feel
less of a need to resort to violence because the status quo is backed by
the Chilean state. In the case of groups, women and LGBT members are
often protagonists of gender protests. Because women are socialized to
act more peacefully, gender protests may, in turn, resort less frequently
to violence to advance their causes. Thus, theoretical considerations of
demands and groups led us to anticipate an empirical pattern, robust to
different model specifications and controls, between gender protests and
peaceful tactics.
This chapter has detected strong empirical patterns between gender
protests and the use of nonviolence as a means to promote their demands.
Our analysis revealed that this relationship is robust to a variety of model
specifications. Our results suggest that future research could explore
possible influence of multiple identities of the protagonists of gender
protests on their tendency to resort to transgressive tactics. For example,
intersectionality theories may shine light on distinct patterns for women
activists who have multiple marginalized identities (for example, marginal-
ization in terms of class, race, and sexuality) (Brown et al., 2021).
Respectability politics may not operate for all women when they have
166 R. DISI PAVLIC ET AL.

another identity such as being a student or working class, which could

favor the use of more transgressive tactics.
Future research could also examine variations in political capital
according to identity intersectionality. Possessing more than one
marginalized identity could correlate with decreased political capital and
a greater tendency to employ violent tactics. Similarly, student identities
could mean that activists in gender protests are more subject to different
kinds of incentives and pressures, widening their repertoire of tactics to
include confrontational means. For example, Disi Pavlic (2020, p. 7)
finds that, in Latin America, events in which secondary school students
participate are more disruptive and violent than protests where university
students act alone. Other scholarship on student movements suggests that
students have a multitude of confrontational or disruptive tactics at their
disposal (Gonzalez Vaillant & Schwartz, 2019).12 Similarly, additional
research could identify distinct types of tactics used by different femi-
nist perspectives, such as liberal, eco-, and radical feminism, and across
different historical and national contexts. Future research can explore all
these possibilities and contingencies.

Acknowledgements We thank Denisse Ramírez for her outstanding research

assistance. We also acknowledge funding from Fondecyt de Iniciación, grants
#11220371 and #11190233.

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The Sociohistorical Dynamics of the Conflict
Between the State of Chile and the Mapuche
People in Gulumapu

Sergio Caniuqueo and Claudio Fuentes

This chapter addresses the sociohistorical dynamics of the conflict

between the Mapuche people and the state of Chile. The statistical data
on social conflict systematized by the Center for Social Conflict and Cohe-
sion Studies (COES) shows an increase in social protest in the south of the
country. This has been accompanied by a gradual expansion of sociopo-
litical conflict in the area. We assert that, to explain this phenomenon, a
long-term perspective is necessary, addressing three questions. The first
has to do with how the state of Chile generated policies and institutions
that addressed (or not) indigenous peoples’ demands on social matters
(land policies, social policies) and security (militarization, securitization of
the conflict). The second question refers to how indigenous social orga-
nizations developed and deployed strategies through which to respond to
the state in their struggle for recognition and self-determination. Finally,
the third question involves the role played by the private business sector
in southern Chile and the expansion of the extractivist economic model.

S. Caniuqueo · C. Fuentes (B)

Centre for Intercultural and Indigenous Rights (CIIR) & School of Political
Science, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 173

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_9
174 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

Based on a rich descriptive-historical analysis of social conflict, this chapter

seeks to characterize the dynamics of sociopolitical conflict in Gulumapu.
Without this detour through history, it is difficult to interpret and under-
stand the levels of conflict in Gulumapu registered by the Observatory of
Conflicts of the Center for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES).

Historical Context: Structural

Changes, Development Expectations,
and Conflicts with the Mapuche People
To understand the recent contentious dynamics of the territory known
as Gulumapu (in southern Chile), it is necessary to observe certain
historical-institutional conditions by which they have been shaped. The
Chilean state’s military occupation of the territories controlled by the
Mapuche in the nineteenth century was followed by a resisted process
of colonization and attempted assimilation. A series of classic studies can
help to understand how the Mapuche have tried to safeguard their civil
rights—the right to be citizens—and collective rights (Bengoa, 2002;
Caniuqueo, 2006; Foerster, 1983; Foerster & Montecino, 1988; Gavilán,
2007; Mallon, 2004; Samaniego & Ruiz, 2007).
Since the beginning of the 1980s, a new cycle of demands has emerged
from the structuring of the indigenous collective organization in various
movements, statements by national political parties, and institutional
responses on the part of the state, which are very important for under-
standing the current state of Mapuche contentious dynamics. A key
milestone was Decree Law Nº 2.568, issued by the military dictator-
ship in 1978, stating that when indigenous lands were subdivided, both
they and their occupants lost their status as indigenous. This prompted
the Ad-Mapu indigenous organization to argue for a need to defend
collective rights, a context in which the ideas of autonomy and self-
determination re-emerged as vital for the continuity of the Mapuche as a
people (Antillanca et al., 2000; Aukin Wallmapu Gulam, 1997).
In this sense, the last 40 years have brought a process of refoun-
dation of the Mapuche people, through the recovery of their history,
language, and culture as well as the safeguarding of their rights. In the
Nütram magazine, led by the anthropologist Rolf Foerster between 1985
and1994, it is possible to trace an itinerary of Mapuche organizations,
starting from the emphasis placed on the concept of people. For example,
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 175

section (a) of the Declaration of the Ecumenical Mapuche-Pastoral Day

of Exchange, which took place in the city of Temuco on December 2–5,
1985, established the use of Mapuzungun on both sides of the Andes,
based on the idea of a people that inhabits two states, and, in section (b),
assumed that the church works with the Mapuche world in both states,
thereby establishing the legitimacy of the idea of a people. Point 1 of this
declaration identified the land as the vital element for the continuity of
the people in all its spheres, while section (a) of this point requested that
the state and its authorities address the claims of loss of territory in both
states. In addition, in section (b), it asked the Catholic Church to put
aside paternalistic practices in order to foster an increase in the autonomy
of Mapuche communities.
Mapuche declarations received extensive coverage both in Chile and
internationally and this generated profound changes such as a shift from
the concept of race to that of a people and from land to territory. As from
1978, the Mapuche Foreign Committee used its Aukin magazine (16
issues published between 1978 and 1990) and its declarations to estab-
lish links with NGOs and European states sensitive to the Mapuche cause
and the rights of indigenous peoples. Indeed, this Committee participated
in the creation of the United Nations Indigenous Working Group. This
resulted in a dialectical logic between national and international spaces in
the installation of a new nomenclature and rights that began to build a
new form of discourse and mobilization.
The Mapuche indigenous movement was not immune to the polit-
ical discussion of Chile’s transition to democracy. Just as the parties that
had opposed the dictatorship were divided into 16 groups, Ad-Mapu,
the main Mapuche organization, split, with Mapuche socialists creating
the Lautaro Ñi Aylla Rehue organization while Christian Democrat
supporters established the Newen Mapu organization.
These divisions reflected differences about both content and strategy.
For example, Convention 169 of the International Labour Organization
(ILO), which was approved in 1989, guaranteed the right to self-
determination, indigenous territories, and the state’s duty of consultation
to build new relationships with indigenous peoples. At the national level,
tension was underpinned by the occupation of land, mainly by more left-
wing sectors, part of Ad-Mapu, and the Commission of 500 Years of
Resistance, which would later become Aukin Wallmapu Gulam or, as it
was better known, the Consejo de Todas Las Tierras (Council of All The
Lands).
176 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

The defeat of the dictator Pinochet in 1988 paved the way for the
opposition Concertación coalition, which ranged from the Christian
Democrat Party to the Socialist Party, to take power. In this framework,
negotiations took place to draw up a proposal to be signed by the coali-
tion’s potential presidential candidate, Patricio Aylwin. This created high
expectations, including the possibility of addressing structural aspects such
as the historical debt to the Mapuche people, the return of land, regional
autonomy, and representation in the state.
However, when it came to signing the so-called Nueva Imperial Agree-
ment, the Mapuche movement was divided. The main organizations,
Ad-Mapu, Newen Mapu, and Lautaro Ñi Aylla Rehue signed it but
supporters of the Commission of 500 Years of Resistance refused to do
so because they believed the pact would not endure over time. A series of
other organizations such as the Liwen Study Center, the Xeg-Xeg Corpo-
ration, and Aukinko Zomo, formed by young Mapuches, did not support
it either.
Under the agreement, the political parties most likely to form the next
government committed to: (a) constitutional recognition of the coun-
try’s indigenous peoples; (b) ratification of ILO Convention 169; (c) the
introduction of an Indigenous Law; (d) the creation of a new institu-
tional framework; and (e) the creation of an Indigenous Land, Water, and
Development Fund. As seen in the next section, constitutional recogni-
tion is still pending, ratification of Convention 169 took 20 years, and the
other policies implemented have been heavily criticized as insufficient. In
other words, the democratic transition began with a fragmented Mapuche
movement and promises of the institutionalization of a new relationship
with the country’s indigenous peoples.

Post-dictatorship Public Policies

In 1990, after taking office, President Patricio Aylwin established the
Special Indigenous Peoples Commission (CEPI) for the implementation
of the undertakings entered into a year earlier under the Nueva Impe-
rial Agreement. An indigenous consultation process took place on a new
Indigenous Law and the design of the New Indigenous Institutional
Framework. This was accompanied by a tightening of relations between
indigenous leaders and the political world in a bid to move forward
with constitutional recognition and the ratification of Convention 169.
However, these efforts did not have a favorable outcome. There was
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 177

tension with the organizations that had not signed the Nueva Impe-
rial Agreement and preferred to exert pressure by occupying farms and
drawing attention internationally to the limitations of the Chilean state’s
response to their demand for collective rights. The authorities reacted by
criminalizing this demand and 144 members of the Mapuche people were
prosecuted for usurpation and illicit association and, in 1966, sentenced
under a norm dating back to the dictatorship. This radicalization also
occurred in the framework of the celebration of the quincentenary of the
arrival of Europeans in the Americas, with the consequent questioning
of the colonial heritage and the situation in which indigenous peoples
had been left (Martínez, 1995; Molina & Correa, 1996a, 1996b, 1998;
Vergara et al., 1996).
In 1993, Indigenous Law Nº 19.253 came into force and the
National Corporation for Indigenous Development (CONADI) was
created. However, it did not have the effects expected by the indige-
nous population. Under President Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle, approval
for the construction of a hydroelectric dam in Ralco (Morales, 1998;
Namuncura, 1999) was met with strong opposition from communities
in the Alto Biobío area since it would directly affect their ancestral terri-
tories. In 1999, faced with mounting protests, the government proposed
a series of Communal Dialogues, using them to gather information about
the Mapuche people’s basic needs and shifting to state assistentialism
(Díaz, 2006). This approach radicalized positions even further because,
albeit recognizing the poverty in which indigenous peoples were living,
it sought to delegitimize and distort indigenous demands, arguing that
collective rights were not the communities’ true demand (Díaz, 2006;
Guzmán, 2003). At the same time, moreover, the Chilean forest exploita-
tion model was beginning to expand in the Biobío Region (Lillo &
Nolden, 2003). The area under forest plantations in this region grew from
861,000 hectares in 2008 to 902,000 hectares in 2018 (a 4.5% increase)
while, in the neighboring Araucanía Region, it grew from 434,000 to
488,000 hectares (an 11% increase) (Instituto Forestal, 2020).
These new territorial conflicts and the emergence of new expressions
of Mapuche resistance fuelled a broad field of political disputes through
the election of Mapuche candidates to local governments and resistance
and territorial recovery movements in the face of the advance of forestry
companies, which were beginning to acquire land in this part of Chile
(Aylwin, 2001; Marimán, 2002; Morales, 2002).
178 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

Given the increased conflict and the radicalization of land demands,

the government of President Ricardo Lagos (2000–2006) reacted more
strategically, creating a Commission for Historical Truth and an Indige-
nous New Deal. This coincided with the launch of the Orígenes Program,
after the death of a Mapuche person, Alex Lemun. The Commission,
chaired by former President Aylwin, opened up the possibility of recog-
nizing the role of the Chilean state and Chilean civil society vis-à-vis
indigenous peoples. It was also thought that, through its recommenda-
tions, it would be possible to address the historical debt and establish
reparation processes. None of this happened. Indigenous peoples were
discussed, but the matter of their rights was avoided. The Commis-
sion itself decided to establish indigenous counterparts, who produced
different reports. However, these had no impact on the Commission’s
public policy recommendations. In other words, the pattern seen in 1990
was repeated, with a promise of recognition that was not fulfilled, accom-
panied by clientelistic public policies to contain the conflict. Indigenous
protest was also criminalized as the struggle for the recovery of territory
intensified (Gallegos, 2003; Pilleux, 2005; Van Der Hoogte et al., 2006;
Yañez & Aylwin, 2007).
The creation of the Orígenes Program in 2003 helped relieve the accu-
mulated tension. The idea of “development with cultural appropriateness”
promised a new dialogue but once again led to disappointment. The terri-
torial roundtables targeted, or helped to target, some public investment,
but their impact was minimal. The bureaucratization of the indigenous
leadership took a large toll and led to new divisions, postponing discussion
about communities’ economic and collective rights.
The first government of President Michelle Bachelet (2006–2010)
sought to advance on constitutional recognition. ILO Convention 169
was ratified and the government implemented a multicultural policy that
sought to mediate between the collective and individual rights of indige-
nous peoples, focusing on intercultural health care and education. Health
centers with an intercultural approach were established and there was
progress on the incorporation of Mapuzungun in schools. Even so, the
criminalization of indigenous demands increased.
During the first government of President Sebastián Piñera (2010–
2014), progress was achieved, through Decrees 66 and 40, on regulating
indigenous consultation processes. The Orígenes Program was replaced
by the Chile Indígena Program and there was a reversal of progress
on indigenous rights. Moreover, the so-called Dialogue Roundtables
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 179

that were established at the regional, provincial and, in some cases,

municipal level led to extremely controversial agreements such as that
offering compensation for withdrawal from a land restitution process.
This violated the right to the recovery of ancestral territories enshrined in
Convention 169. Ultimately, opposition of different types prevented the
implementation of these agreements. Undoubtedly, this period brought
a renewal of criticism, due mainly to harsher repression of the Mapuche
movement, formed by communities in resistance, but also creating new
Mapuche voices that provided alternative interpretations toward the
ongoing conflict (Tricot, 2013, 2014).
The second government of President Bachelet (2014–2018) held
several consultations on public policy, mainly through the Chile Indígena
Program. It also again broached the matter of constitutional recogni-
tion, in this case through an indigenous consultation process in the last
year of its term. In addition, Bachelet launched a new roundtable in a
bid to develop a proposal for coexistence, principally in the Araucanía
Region. Formed by different actors, it discussed issues such as inter-
religious dialogue and other dialogue related to coexistence. However,
its work was cut short by the change of government. A critical episode
during the second Bachelet administration was the so-called Hurricane
Operation (2017) in which the police were later discovered to have fabri-
cated evidence to incriminate Mapuche leaders. This marked one of the
peaks of the criminalization of the Mapuche movement.
The second government of President Piñera (2018–2022) unsuc-
cessfully attempted to implement an indigenous consultation to modify
the Indigenous Law on land matters. It also launched a second, more
productivist phase of the Chile Indígena Program. By this stage, most
community leaders had tired of the non-binding consultation processes
whose texts and contributions were not reflected in the reports of a
government with no interest in discussing collective rights. The social
uprising of October 2019 once again brought the issue of indigenous
peoples’ rights to the fore. The demand for self-determination as a
central right became a relevant part of the agenda and the demand
for a plurinational state began to be reflected in political platforms and
in the streets (Caniuqueo, 2021; Fuentes, 2021; Mapuexpress, 2016;
Samaniego, 2020).
Finally, between 2020 and 2022, a constituent process took place to
draft a new constitution. Debate again turned to structural transforma-
tions implying rights such as self-determination and autonomy, a pluralist
180 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

judicial system, and political representation through reserved seats. The

issue significantly strained national debate, dividing political actors into
those favoring plurinationality and those advocating less intense forms
of recognition, such as multiculturality. The government of President
Gabriel Boric, who took office in March 2022, has faced a radicalization
of protests and an intensification of different forms of violence, leading it
to maintain the use of constitutional states of emergency.

Recent Contentious Dynamics

In the first section, we indicated that contentious dynamics in Gulumapu
have long-term historical roots. The transition to democracy posed a
dilemma for the indigenous world, dividing it into those who partici-
pated in the initial attempts at recognition and the institutionalization of
intercultural relations and other groups that emphasized collective and
territorial rights. The repeated failures of public policy, the repressive
strategy applied by successive governments, and the lack of recognition
worsened the conflict.
To analyze the recent contentious social dynamics we suggest the need
to identify certain critical junctures that have had strong impacts on
either the redefinition of public policies or the shift in social movements
strategies. Following Capoccia (2016), we define critical junctures as “sit-
uations of uncertainty in which decisions of important actors are causally
decisive for the selection of one path of institutional development over
other possible paths” (Capoccia, 2016, p. 89). As will be described in
here, in the last 12 years we identify 6 critical junctures shaping decision
makers and social activists concerning the state-indigenous relations.
Regarding the indigenous movement in Chile, Gabriel Salazar (2014)
classifies the social movement of the Mapuche people as ancestral, distin-
guishing it from the social movements of the wage-earning masses
(social agitation) and the mestizo people (marginal). He asserts that
the Mapuche movement has its own particular characteristics due to its
persistence over time, the nature of its territorial claims, its lack of asso-
ciation with the classic political-party logic of other movements, and
because, in its demands, “it puts all the social being of the commu-
nity at stake: its ethnic identity, its traditional culture, and its innovated
culture” (Salazar, 2014, p. 118). It is, in other words, a movement with
a long memory that endures across different regimes (colonial, Portalian,
republican, dictatorial, democratic) with different cycles of contentious
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 181

tactics. Salazar dates the most recent stage as beginning in 1981 with the
rebirth of the resistance fighter in response to the Pinochet dictatorship’s
agrarian counter-reform. This was further reinforced by the expansion
of the extractivist model in the 1990s, which affected the territories
of the Biobío and Araucanía Regions. José Bengoa (2007) and Víctor
Toledo (2005), on the other hand, situate the rebirth of the indige-
nous movement in the 1990s as part of a broader, regional cycle in Latin
America that consolidated the position of indigenous people as political
actors. Like Salazar, Toledo links struggles for territorial rights with the
expansion of the neoliberal economic model in much of the region.
In a study of the cycle of Mapuche mobilizations, Toledo (2007a)
systematizes the indigenous movement’s dynamics based on press articles
and acts of repression. He suggests that it is possible to identify a first cycle
from 1990 to 1994 in support of land claims and the people’s own rights.
The restoration of democracy fostered a cycle of protests and recovery of
territory by the Council of All The Lands that also coincided with the
quincentenary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America.
A second moment of indigenous social activism occurred between
1997 and 2000, characterized by an intensification of the conflict between
indigenous communities and forestry and hydroelectric companies with
megaprojects in the south of the country. The most emblematic case
was the construction of the Pangue (1996) and Ralco (1997) hydro-
electric dams in the Alto Biobío area, which directly affected Pehuenche
communities. In 1997, members of indigenous communities in Lumaco
also began blocking roads and burning trucks to obstruct the work of
forestry companies. Between 1997 and 2000, conflicts and incidents in
the south of the Biobío Region and the north of the Araucanía Region
intensified and new indigenous organizations appeared: “among others,
the Nankucheo Association of Lumaco, the Lafkenche Identity and the
Coordinator of Communities in Conflict of Arauco and Malleco (CAM)”
(Toledo, 2007a, p. 260). The CAM soon defined the recovery of territory
as its political objective and forestry companies, rather than the state, as its
main adversary because of their control of ancestral territories (Pairicán,
2021).
A third cycle, analyzed in detail in the next section, occurred between
2008 and 2021 and had two new critical milestones related to acts of
state repression: the killing of Matías Catrileo on January 3, 2008, and
of Camilo Catrillanca on November 14, 2018, both by the police. In this
stage, new autonomist groups emerged, such as the Mapuche Territorial
182 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

Alliance (2005), Weichan Auka Mapu (2016), and Lafkenche Territorial

Resistance (2020). According to Fernando Pairicán (2021), they have a
new, more localized territorial identity. Faced with this new cycle, the
government reacted by increasing the budget for the purchase of land
for restitution, creating commissions to propose new recognition policies,
and implementing plans and programs to resolve short-term demands.
In short, a two-fold political-institutional response is observed over
the years. On the one hand, an attempt was made to institutionalize
demands by establishing norms to channel them (for example, the Indige-
nous Law of 1993 and the ratification of Convention 169 in 2008),
creating commissions in a bid to identify the demands and permit some
level of dialogue, and establishing a fund in the National Corporation
for Indigenous Development (CONADI) to purchase land for its restitu-
tion. At the same time, however, the different governments implemented
repressive policies, applying legal instruments such as the State Secu-
rity Law and the Anti-Terrorism Law. The sequence of these two main
responses is summarized in Table 1. The bodies created at the govern-
ment level to respond to indigenous demands have produced a catalogue
of proposals that have tended to be repeated over time and are associated
with constitutional recognition, land policy, and cultural and economic
policies. The most important such bodies were the Special Indigenous
Peoples Commission (CEPI 1990), the Historical Truth and New Deal
Commission (2001–2003), and the Presidential Advisory Commission
for the Araucanía Region (2015). However, insofar as social conflict has
escalated, as seen in the next section, the institutional response has been
accompanied by public security measures.
In this field, governments have invoked three types of instrument: the
State Internal Security Law, the Anti-Terrorism Law, and the establish-
ment of a State of Emergency under which the armed forces are used to
control a certain geographical area. The Anti-Terrorism Law (Nº 18.314)
was introduced by the military dictatorship to define terrorist behavior,
establishing special procedures and harsher sentences for certain crimes.
Since the return of democracy, it has been partially reformed on a number
of occasions. Terrorism is defined as seeking to produce fear in the popu-
lation and includes crimes such as murder, injury, kidnapping, arson, and
child abduction. The law has been heavily criticized by human rights and
international organizations because the typification of crimes is complex,
the rights of detainees are not protected, and the proof of crimes has
been highly questionable. Julio Cortés (2019) also showed that it has
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 183

Table 1 Institutional and public security milestones

Year Institutional milestones Year Milestones in application of

security norms

1990 Special Indigenous Peoples

Commission (CEPI)
1993 Indigenous Law Nº 19.253
1993 CONADI
1997 Application of the State
Security Law (Lumaco)
1998 Communal Dialogues
1998 Presidential Advisory
Commission on Indigenous
Peoples
2000 Working Group on Indigenous
Peoples
2001 Orígenes Program 2001 Application of the State
Internal Security Law (Lleu
Lleu)
2001–03 Historical Truth and New Deal 2002 Operation Paciencia
Commission Application of Anti-Terrorism
Law (Pichún, Norin, Llanca,
CAM) (64 cases)
2003 Application of Anti-Terrorism
Law (Ercilla)
2006 Advisory Commission on Urban
Indigenous Policy
2008 Presidential Commissioner for
Indigenous Affairs
2008 Council of Ministers for
Indigenous Affairs
2009 ILO Convention 169 comes 2009 Application of Anti-Terrorism
into force Law (104 cases)
2010 Position of Commissioner
eliminated; position of Special
Advisor on Indigenous Affairs
created in Ministry for the
Presidency (SEGPRES)
2010 Dialogue roundtable, for hunger
strike
2012 Application of Anti-Terrorism
Law (Carahue)
2015 Presidential Advisory
Commission for the Araucanía
Region (Vargas)

(continued)
184 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

Table 1 (continued)

Year Institutional milestones Year Milestones in application of

security norms

2017 Application of Anti-Terrorism

Law (Araucanía Region) (7
cases)
2018 Araucanía Impulsa Plan Jungle police unit
2021 State of Emergency,
Araucanía/Biobío Regions

Source Compiled by authors based on Toledo (2007b), Correa and Mella (2010), Franch (2017),
and Peralta (2020)

lacked effectiveness given that, out of 127 people accused of terrorist

crimes between 2000 and 2016, only nine were convicted and, in eight
of these cases, the decision was overruled by the Inter-American Court
of Human Rights. In other words, it has been criticized both for its
definition of terrorist crimes and the procedures employed, such as the
method of investigation and its discriminatory application to the Mapuche
people (Cortés, 2019). Franch (2017) systematized applications of this
law, concluding that it was particularly important in two specific years
(2002 and 2009).
A State of Emergency empowers the authorities to restrict freedom of
assembly and movement and establishes control of the area by the armed
forces. Since 1990, it had never been used in response to incidents in
southern Chile until October 2021 when it was invoked by the second
Piñera administration. It remained in place until the government of Pres-
ident Boric took office in March 2022. Initially, the new government
decided to lift the measure but, faced with an intensification of violence
in the south, subsequently reinstated it.

Contentious Events, 2008–2020

Is there a relationship between these institutional public policy and public
security milestones and the contentious events that occurred during the
period? In a bid to answer this question, we analyzed the contentious
events recorded by the COES Observatory of Conflicts. Its database of
collective actions of social protest was constructed by monitoring national
and regional press reports from 2007 through to the present and is used
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 185

here for the period between 2008 and 2020. It should be borne in mind
that the database is not exhaustive since there may have been events not
covered by the press. However, its analysis allows us to draw interesting
inferences about the sociopolitical dynamics of the past decade.
The database contains variables that include the date of a contentious
event, the place of occurrence, its type, the estimated number of partici-
pants, and the type of demand, among other dimensions analyzed below.
We are interested in observing how the sequence of collective action
events relates to the milestones described above.
Figure 1 shows the sequence of contentious events in 2008–2020 that
were related specifically to indigenous groups according to the COES
classification. A total of 1075 collective actions of this type were registered
around the country, including marches, demonstrations, and the seizure
of buildings and the occupation of private and public spaces. Two critical
junctures are observed (2010 and 2018) as well as a sustained increase
in events as from 2011. Events related to indigenous peoples account
for only 3.8% of the total number of contentious events recorded in the
database (1075 out of 28,233), indicating a secondary level of activism.
However, as discussed below, the nature of these events and their inten-
sification over time make them a matter of great qualitative significance
with high visibility in national public debate.
Below, we attempt to explain this sequence and relate it to the institu-
tional milestones identified in Table 1. First, the situation in 2008–2010
stands out for an increase in activism by the Mapuche movement for the
restitution of land. A critical incident occurred on January 3, 2008, when
a young student, Matías Catrileo, was shot in the back by a police officer
during the occupation of the farm of Jorge Luchsinger in Vilcún. This
triggered an intensification of protests in the Araucanía Region, which
continued for two years. A year later, Fabián Mendoza was also killed
when shot from behind by a police officer during an attempt to occupy
land. In 2010, the government intervened to put an end to a long hunger
strike by imprisoned members of Mapuche communities. The institutional
reaction at this critical juncture was important. Six months after Catrileo’s
assassination, the Chilean Congress approved ratification of ILO Conven-
tion 169, which entailed a series of commitments and duties on the
part of the state in relation to indigenous peoples, including the duty
to consult. This bill had been debated since the restoration of democracy
in 1990. Moreover, at the beginning of 2010, the first right-wing govern-
ment since the restoration of democracy took office, headed by President
186 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

Contentious events
Indigenous peoples, 2008-2020
1 2 3 4 5 6
200
180
160
140
120
100
80
60
40
20
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Fig. 1 Contentious events related to indigenous peoples, 2008–2020 (Mile-

stones: [1] Catrileo case, [2] application of Anti-Terrorism Law, Mendoza case,
[3] hunger strike and government commission, [4] Luchsinger-Mackay case, [5]
Tralcal case, [6] Catrillanca case)

Piñera. He created the position of special delegate for indigenous affairs

and set up a roundtable with the aim of ending the hunger strike. From
then onwards, there was a decrease in contentious events until 2013.
In January 2013, in an attack on the house of the Luchsinger-Mackay
family in Vilcún, the house was set on fire and the couple, unable to
escape, died. The event caused tension in the Araucanía Region because
Celestino Córdova, a machi, was sentenced by the courts for his involve-
ment in the attack. This marked the start of a gradual increase in
contentious actions, which led to the creation in 2015 of a new commis-
sion to identify solutions to the conflict. However, this did not prevent
an ever more significant increase in protests. In 2016, another incident
occurred in which a farm owner shot and killed Fabián Tralcal.
At the beginning of January 2018, it was revealed that the police had
manipulated evidence to incriminate eight members of Mapuche commu-
nities in the “Hurricane Operation”. President Piñera, whose second
term began in March 2018, launched an Araucanía Plan of social aid
for the region and, at the same time, reinforced a special police unit
known as the “jungle unit” because of the training its members had
received in Colombia. In November 2018, another member of a Mapuche
community, Camilo Catrillanca, was shot in the back and killed during an
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 187

operation by the special police unit in the Temucuicui community. The

case acquired particular public notoriety because the audiovisual records
that were subsequently released showed that Catrillanca had merely been
a bystander.
Figure 2 shows that over 70% of these contentious events occurred in
the Biobío Region (8), the Araucanía Region (9), and the Los Lagos
Region (10). In other words, the contentious events recorded by the
media are concentrated geographically in three regions in particular.
When analyzing the weight of the Araucanía Region in relation to all
the southern zone (Fig. 3), we observe that, until 2014, it accounted for
a large part of the contentious events but, between 2015 and 2019, its
relative weight decreased as contentious events expanded into the Biobío
and Los Lagos Regions. However, in 2019–2020, it again recovered its
prominence. This pattern may be due to two factors. First, starting in
2014, different indigenous groups emerged and began to make territo-
rial claims and implement protest actions beyond the Araucanía Region,
which is where indigenous demands have historically been concentrated.
Second, governments’ response in terms of public security in the Arau-
canía Region was probably conducive to an extension of the conflict
beyond the region.

Contentious events
Indigenous peoples, 2008-2020
Total and Southern Chile
200

150

100

50

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Total Biobio, Araucanía, Los Lagos Regions

Fig. 2 Contentious events by geographical zone, 2008–2020

188 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Total Southern Zone Araucanía Region

Fig. 3 Importance of Araucanía Region with respect to southern zone

Another interesting aspect is the level of participation in the different

protest events. In many events, the number of participants was not
recorded and, in the others, is only an estimate. However, we observe very
wide fluctuations, with peaks in 2013 and 2019 (Fig. 4). This is related
to the type of tactics employed, which are discussed below. Marches and
demonstrations were particularly important in 2013 and 2019, explaining
the peaks in participation observed in these years. At the national level,
there was a very important peak in 2011 but, in the case of groups mobi-
lized for the indigenous cause, street protest reached higher levels of
mobilization in 2013. This is a sign of its relative independence from
the national student social movement of 2011. In 2013, most indige-
nous protests targeted the judicial system in support of the members of
Mapuche communities who had been imprisoned. The second peak in
participation, in 2019, coincided with the social uprising of that year,
which voiced more transversal social demands. As regards the contentious
tactics used in the demonstrations, the years with general elections (2009,
2013, and 2017) do not seem to have implied particularly intense mobi-
lization—apart from 2013 when the target was the judicial system—which
reaffirms the relative independence of the cycle of indigenous protest from
national political phenomena.
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 189

Average number of demonstrators

Contentious events, indigenous peoples, 2008-
2020
1000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Fig. 4 Average number of participants in contentious events, 2008–2020

Protest tactics (Fig. 5) are classified into pacific activities (marches,

demonstrations, caravans, assemblies, chants), disruptive activities (occu-
pation of buildings and private property, blocking of roads), and violent
activities (arson attacks on vehicles and farms, looting, attacks on the
police). Pacific activities tended to increase and peaked in 2013 and
2019 when, as seen above, they were related to demands targeting the
judicial system (2013) and to the social uprising (2019). Amid fluc-
tuations, disruptive actions increased in 2008–2010, 2012–2014, and
2016–2019. This coincided with critical situations such as the killing
of Matías Catrileo (2008), the killing of the Luchsinger-Mackay couple
(2013), and the intensification of land occupations and the killing of
Camilo Catrillanca (2018). Violent tactics were the least used and were
more frequent in 2008, 2012, and 2016. This data indicates that critical
episodes prompt the activation of some tactics over others. We do not
observe any sequence of a permanent increase in the use of a particular
tactic, but rather fluctuating cycles depending on the circumstances.
In the case of tactics, we selected a subset of those that tend to be
given greater prominence in the media. Figure 6 shows, for example,
that occupations were a widely used tactic in the 2008–2010 cycle before
becoming less frequent and then increasing again in 2017–2020. The crit-
ical juncture of 2008 with the killing of Catrileo probably triggered the
activism of Mapuche groups around territorial claims, an issue that began
190 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Pacific Disruptive Violent

Fig. 5 Protest tactics (percentage of total in each year)

to be taken up again as from 2017–2018. The occupation of buildings

and the blocking of roads acquire greater prominence over the course of
the decade while arson was used particularly in 2016. Again, the specific
political-social circumstances appear to favor certain tactics that become
more or less used by the social actors.
In the period studied, we can identify three critical junctures (2008–
2010, 2015–2016, and 2018–2020) (Table 2). The first milestone is
associated with a significant increase in the number of occupations. In
a context of increased conflict, the killing of two members of Mapuche
communities (Matías Catrileo and Fabián Mendoza) attracted particular
attention. In 2010, when President Piñera took office, he established a
roundtable in a bid to put an end to a long hunger strike and attempted
to implement development plans for the area. However, the increase in
violence in the area led him to apply the Anti-Terrorism Law in 2012.
Subsequently, in 2015–2016, we observe a second juncture in which
protest actions and, particularly, arson attacks increased. This was very
likely associated with the emergence of more radicalized autonomist
Mapuche groups. In response, President Bachelet established two presi-
dential commissions, one to review the Anti-Terrorism Law and the other
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 191

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

0
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

Seizure of buildings Accupations Blockings of roads Arson

Fig. 6 Selected protest tactics, 2008–2020

Table 2 Tactics, critical junctures, and institutional response

Year Predominance of Events and critical Institutional response

tactics junctures

2008–2010 Pacific-disruptive Killing of Catrileo Roundtable

(e.g., occupations) Killing of Mendoza Application of
Hunger strike Anti-Terrorism Law
2015–2016 Disruptive-violent Emergence of new Commission to review
(e.g., arson attacks) autonomist groups Anti-Terrorism Law
(WAM) Presidential
Fabián Tralcal case commission
2018–2020 Pacific-disruptive Hurricane Operation Application of
(e.g., blocking of Killing of Catrillanca Anti-Terrorism Law
roads) Araucanía Plan
Jungle police unit
192 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

to address demands for recognition and the development of the Arau-

canía Region. Finally, the 2018–2020 period began with the discovery of
an illegal police operation to incriminate a group of Mapuche community
members accused of acts of violence and, a few months later, the killing
of Camilo Catrillanca.
This leads us to a more general discussion about the structural factors
and causal mechanisms that may allow certain cycles of contentious
protest to take shape (Meyer & Minkoff, 2004). First, the constant
increase in contentious events in southern Chile between 2010 and 2020
(Fig. 3) indicates that the color of the national government—whether
right-wing (2010–2014 and 2018–2022) or left-wing (2006–2010 and
2014–2018)—does not seem to have had a significant effect on the
contentious dynamics. The escalation of this social conflict appears to be
independent of the political leaning of the incumbent government. In
other words, left-wing governments, which may be interested in recog-
nizing and resolving indigenous social and political demands, have not
necessarily reduced social conflict, while right-wing governments, with a
greater propensity to use force to contain conflicts of this type, were also
ineffective in reducing the levels of conflict.
Secondly, institutional measures (ratification of Convention 169, the
creation of roundtables and commissions) do not seem to lead to a
reduction in contentious events. In the specific case of the roundtable
created by President Piñera in 2010, this did have an important effect,
but because it was organized to resolve a specific problem: a hunger
strike. In the other cases, instances of dialogue were restricted to putting
forward recommendations, but this has no direct impact on the dynamics
of collective action. The increase in contentious events has prompted the
creation of institutional mechanisms for resolving the conflict, but this has
not had a causal effect in helping to reduce protest.
Thirdly, contentious dynamics seem to have been significantly acti-
vated by critical events (deaths of community members, police corruption
scandals, police abuse), leading to intense cycles of protest.
Finally, indigenous activism and the appearance of more radical move-
ments and organizations also explain the contentious cycle and the tactics
deployed at different junctures by the social actors.
 THE SOCIOHISTORICAL DYNAMICS OF THE CONFLICT … 193

Conclusions
The historical conflict between the state of Chile and the Mapuche people
has undergone an important transformation in the last 30 years. Since
the restoration of democracy, the different governments have imple-
mented social development policies combined with measures to contain
and repress the mounting level of conflict in the south of the country.
At the same time, from emphasizing claims to usurped land, the indige-
nous movement went on to talk more about territory. Although it is a
diverse movement, the vision that has predominated recently emphasizes
self-determination and self-government of their territories. Conflicts over
claims to land tend to focus on the restitution of ancestral lands but, at
the same time, on materialization of the rights that correspond to the
Mapuche as a people.
In the first part of this chapter, we noted that successive govern-
ments tried to administer the conflict through different strategies that
combined the implementation of public policies and attempts to estab-
lish forms of social and cultural recognition with the use of instruments
to repress protest actions. This tension increases or decreases, but it does
not disappear and, at certain junctures, the conflicts become more acute.
In this sense, we observe a dialectical logic between the expansion
of the forestry sector in southern Chile, institutional policies generated
by the state, and the contentious events registered over the past decade.
Starting in the early 1990s, the expansion of the private sector (hydro-
electric projects, forestry plantations, sea fishing, salmon farming) became
an important source of tension with Mapuche communities and this still
persists today. The state has implemented a more or less repetitive reper-
toire of institutional actions to resolve conflicts (commissions), create
public policies to address the specific demands of some communities, and
use legal and material resources to contain the violence when it escalates.
This repertoire has not changed much and combines social assistance with
repressive measures to limit the scope of the conflict.
In this context, certain structural conditions have been conducive to
the persistence and—in the past decade—intensification of contentious
actions. These conditions include the expansion of extractivist activity
in southern Chile and patterns of relations between the state and the
indigenous communities whose effects are short-lived. The sequence of
contentious events over the past decade shows that it is independent
of the color of the incumbent government and, in terms of tactics,
194 S. CANIUQUEO AND C. FUENTES

has tended to fluctuate between a combination of pacific and disrup-

tive actions and, at other times, a predominance of disruptive and violent
actions. This seems to be related principally to two factors: the type of
critical events that trigger more or less violent social responses and the
appearance over the past decade of more radicalized groups. Institutional
initiatives on the part of the state (the approval of norms, commissions,
roundtables) seem so far to have had very limited effects and have not
produced substantive transformations in the way of resolving a conflict
that goes back centuries.

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 A Decade of Memories in Conflict: The
Irruption of New Temporalities in Human
Rights Protests in Chile

Carolina Aguilera and Manuela Badilla Rajevic

This chapter analyzes the contentious commemorative events related to

Human Rights violations during the dictatorship and subsequent years,
emphasizing how collective memories of state violence have expanded.
As research on collective memory has shown, violent pasts may give
rise to conflicts about its interpretations that may last several genera-
tions (A. Assmann, 2011; J. Assmann, 2008; Erll, 2009; Olick, 2007).
In the case of Chile, conflicts about the past emerged strongly during
the 1973–1990 dictatorship (Lira & Loveman, 2005; Stern, 2006) and
have not subsided since; on the contrary, they have intensified, particu-
larly in the past decade, which has been characterized by the emergence

C. Aguilera
Facultad de Arquitectura, Diseño y Estudios Urbanos, Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile & Centre for Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES),
Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
M. Badilla Rajevic (B)
Escuela de Psicología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile & Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 197

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_10
198 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

of social mobilizations and a change in their focus, incorporating new

actors, repertoires, and temporalities. Nowadays, in the context of the
50st anniversary of the coup d’état Chile remains divided about the
meaning of this historical event, as a recent public opinion poll shows.
The 36% of the respondents of the CERC-MORI survey conducted in
2023 indicated that the Armed Forces “were right to carry out the coup
d’état”; a increase of 10 percentage points compared to the same study
carried out in 2013, but a similar figure as that obtained by the same
study in 2003 (CERC MORI, 2023).
As this chapter shows, collective memories of state violence have
expanded by the incorporation of protests against state violence, expressed
in terms of human rights, and against state’s abuse of force against
Mapuche communities, women and LGBTQ+ communities. At the same
time, the meaning of protests related to memories of the dictatorship
has expanded to include the socioeconomic model it imposed. In partic-
ular, the analyses focuses on three changes: those that have occurred in
memories of the military regime (“memories of the dictatorship”); the
incorporation of the human rights paradigm in events that recall episodes
not related to the dictatorship (“memories of the state violence in democ-
racy”); and the incorporation of a longstanding memory associated with
the colonial period and Chile’s formation as a nation state (“decolonial
memories”). They are analyzed based on the question of how collec-
tive memories of state violence in Chile have been shaped over the past
10 years, considering their great resonance in the protests that began on
October 18, 2019.1
Regarding the first aspect, of memories of the dictatorship, we show
how those commemorations have remained relatively stable in number,
with a peak in 2013, marking the 40th anniversary of the military coup
on September 11, 1973. However, we also observe the consolidation of a
second commemorative date of national scope related to the dictatorship,
the so-called Day of the Young Combatant, every March 29. Secondly,
we present how memories of the state violence in democracy have also

1 This study uses data from the Observatory of Conflicts of the Center for Social
Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), complemented by a review of secondary literature.
The period covered by the Observatory’s database allows us to observe the development
of this commemoration only in 2020 so it is not possible to observe a trend. However,
due to the magnitude of the event and its first commemoration in 2020, we believe that
it will continue to be a significant commemorative date in the coming decades.
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 199

experienced a shift because the human rights discourse has become more
prominent in protests against state violence. This is reflected in the
growing incorporation of practices that commemorate victims of police
repression after the restoration of democracy, ranging from forced disap-
pearances to torture and including the excessive use of force against
protesters in general and Mapuche activists in particular. Protests against
violence towards women, and the lack of state protection in this regard,
have also gained importance as illustrated by the performance of Las Tesis,
a collective which became an international phenomenon (Hiner et al.,
2022). All these actions incorporate repertoires similar to those used to
commemorate victims of the dictatorship, such as vigils, wakes and, in
some cases, barricades as well as artistic performances. This discourse
has acquired even greater meaning, dramatically so, as a result of state
violence during the 2019 social uprising in which, according to official
figures, 31 people died, hundreds lost their sight completely or partially,
and over 5.558 cases of human rights abuses were reported to the courts
(Aguilera, 2020; Fiscalía de Chile, 2020). Thirdly, this chapter examines
the emergence of decolonial memories, a phenomenon seen during the
2019 social uprising, with the destruction and intervention of statues to
colonizers and figures considered heroes of the conquest of the national
territory in the nineteenth century in a process of monumental decol-
onization of national history. In this sense, the revolt inscribed new
repertoires of protests demanding the recognition of indigenous peoples,
showing that conflicts about the past in Chile are not confined to recent
political history, but have also become entwined with demands for the
recognition of indigenous peoples (particularly, the Mapuche) and against
the state violence they have suffered.
The analyses about the contentious commemorative events in these
three areas is interpreted with reference to the literature that relates
cultural memory, memory conflicts, and collective action. This field
presents various approaches to understand this relationship. Some authors
point to the role played by social movements and activists to mobilize in
favour of preserving certain memory over time (Jelin, 2002), generating
new narratives about the past and defining and even prohibiting what is
remembered and how. Others, looks at how memory and its narratives
can serve as a resource for collective action (Daphi & Zamponi, 2019;
Eyerman, 2016; Gutman & Wüstenberg, 2021; Rigney, 2018). Together
with this, we propose to use the concept of multidirectional memory
of Michael Rothberg (2009), to stress that conflicts over the collective
200 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

memories of a group of victims have the potential to generate critical

views about other affronts, resulting in displacement and solidarity with
other causes and groups. This allows to explain the synergic multiplicity of
voices expressed during the 2019 social uprising. In this sense, we assert
that the strengthening of the understanding of state violence under the
dictatorship in terms of human rights—over and above other hegemonic
discourses in this period (the Cold War and the conflict between socialism
and anti-communism) (Bastías, 2013; Kelly, 2018)—facilitated the identi-
fication and denunciation of other phenomena of state violence, no longer
referring to the dictatorship, but to the past and the present.

Social Movements, Protests, and Memory Processes

Collective memory has been defined as the different ways that a commu-
nity or group relate to its past, and create a sense of belonging in the
present and into the future (Gillis, 1996; Halbwachs, 1980). A group
that remembers its past and origins can strengthen its identity and remain
united over time (Assmann, 2008). This social process takes place in the
present and may change depending on the social and historical context
faced by each community (Assmann, 2008; Jelin, 2002). In other words, a
certain historical juncture can make it easier for some events to be remem-
bered or forgotten and, in this sense, collective memory is permeated by
relationships and balances of power (Connerton, 2009; Jelin, 2002).
Collective memory is transmitted within groups, generations and
across generations (Erll, 2009). The transmission process involves histor-
ical narratives, national symbols, and commemorative practices shared by a
group in relation to its past (Achugar, 2016; Assmann, 2008; Jara, 2016;
Wertsch, 2008). In addition, some studies have analyzed the different
channels through which memory endures over time beyond the particular
groups that gave birth to it. This form of inter or transgenerational trans-
mission is anchored in cultural productions and institutions of different
types that can give rise to memories with greater durability and stability
over time (Alexander, 2004; J. Assmann, 2008; Nora, 1989). This way
of understanding memory has been conceptualized as cultural memory
and alludes to those narratives, symbols, and practices that are cultur-
ally produced and reproduced through, for example, monuments, books,
school curricula, museums, movies, and novels. These processes are not
immune to conflicts and are also influenced by a society’s cultural and
social dynamics of power.
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 201

A group’s decisions about what should be remembered, and how, is

not necessarily harmonious and homogeneous. On the contrary, collective
memory and, particularly, cultural memory that seeks to endure over time,
are the object and source of intense social conflicts to define and impose
certain forms of relationship with the past (Del Pino & Jelin, 2003; Olick,
2003, 2007). Those confrontations imply power debates between those
who hold the official narratives within society and the groups or commu-
nities who dispute it. In general, these conflicts over the construction
of a hegemonic memory are studied mainly from the standpoint of the
origin and continuity of the nation state (Anderson, 2006; Nora, 1998;
Zerubavel, 1995) and of post-conflict societies and the different policies
created to address the conflict (A. Assmann, 2011; Lira, 2010; Olick,
2007).
In Latin America, including Chile, collective memory studies have
focused on the mnemonic processes related to the wave of military
dictatorships and armed conflicts of the second half of the twentieth
century, including the periods immediately before and after it (Allier
Montaño & Crenzel, 2015; Jelin, 2010). In the case of Chile, this period
has continued to be prolific in civil society’s memory production, such
as the construction of memorials (Aguilera, 2015; Piper & Hevia, 2012;
Wilde, 1999), the creation of archives (Acuña, 2007; Bernasconi et al.,
2019), and the marking of commemorative dates such as that of the
military coup on September 11 or, more recently, the Day of the Young
Combatant on March 29 (Badilla Rajevic, 2020a; Fernández, 2015).
This local research has shown that, although memory of this period
has been produced principally by activists critical of the dictatorship, the
state has also contributed (Collins et al., 2013; Lira & Loveman, 2005).
However, a key element in the conflict is the perception by civil society
actors, that the state has been slow to respond; for example, Human
Rights trials in Chile began massively 10 years after the end of the dicta-
torship (Collins et al., 2013). Other criticism has been that state memory
politics has mainly sought to build a depoliticized memory, focusing on
the victims of the dictatorship’s violence, instead of the political conflict
that lead to the coup d’etat and the dictatorship (Aguilera, 2015; Collins
et al., 2013; Klep, 2012). This is evidenced by the difficulties to incor-
porate events reflecting the political confrontations that occurred before
and during the military dictatorship, and even involving other memories
of state repression as is the memory of the violence against indigenous
peoples or women (Badilla Rajevic, 2020a; Hiner, 2009; Jara et al.,
202 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

2018). In other words, memory research in Chile has shown that these
omissions and disagreements have been conducive to social conflict, trig-
gering new tensions that have become more visible in the public space
in the last years. As a result, as analyzed here, conflicts around memory
of the 1970s onwards are far from having diminished over time. On the
contrary, more politicized memories or the incorporation of events not
previously considered, have gradually appeared in the public space, partic-
ularly since the cycle of social mobilizations that began in Chile with the
2011 student movement (Frei et al., 2023). In this sense, these cycles
of protest (2011–2012 and 2019) have been able to activate and amplify
processes of remembrance.
One of the novel perspectives of this field is the analyses on the rela-
tionship between collective memories and social mobilizations (Eyerman,
2016). This research asserts that the construction of collective memo-
ries may be activated by social movements (Rigney, 2018). In one way,
memory processes can influence or motivate the formation of social
movements by, for example, strengthening cohesion among protesters,
attracting new participants, and giving the protests legitimacy (Badilla
Rajevic, 2019; Berger et al., 2021; Daphi & Zamponi, 2019; Iglesias,
2020). For instance, feminist demonstrations, which draw on the memory
of previous struggles for women’s rights may reinforce the movement’s
legitimacy, trans-generational identity, and internal cohesion. In other
way, the formation of new memories may be a result of social mobiliza-
tion (Badilla Rajevic, 2020b; Zamponi, 2019). For example, the Chilean
student movement was able to position a new narrative about the dicta-
torial past that incorporates criticism of the neoliberal model. Another
way in which memory construction is connected to social mobilization
is mnemonic activism, a form of collective action for which memory is
both an end and a means (Berger et al., 2021; Gutman, 2017; Gutman &
Wüstenberg, 2021). Through these processes, social movements can chal-
lenge the hegemonic or more emblematic representations of the past and
reintroduce historical symbols and characters with a new meaning.
These shifts in how the past is recovered in relation to social mobi-
lization may occur, as well, by solidarity between victims group, under a
humanitarian framework, as Michael Rothberg (2009) has shown. One of
the most studied cases is memory of the Jewish Holocaust in Europe and
the United States. This framework for understanding a state’s mass killing
of a sector of the population led to the adoption of two new concepts,
now applied to other cases: genocide and crimes against humanity. The
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 203

narrative, specific to one case, has been applied to other events of people’s
extermination, as is the mass killings of indigenous populations in the
Americas or more recent attempts at racial cleansing in Europe. Moreover,
a system of international relations has been created around these concepts,
mobilizing states and intergovernmental organizations to prevent and
confront such events. Rothberg (2009) suggests that displacements of
this type, from one case to another, should be understood as the ability
of human beings to create relationships of solidarity based on a particular
traumatic experience. This does not always happen, but is a phenomenon
that occurs thanks to social processes that exert pressure in this direc-
tion, either in the form of state policies or from civil society itself. We
take the view that social movements have a privileged capacity to acti-
vate processes of this kind of collective framings, in a multidirectional
fashion, i.e. that allow different memories to become linked to each other,
generating both diagnoses of the situation of injustice and proposals for
change (Benford & Snow, 2000; Keck & Sikkink, 1998). These framings
can incorporate memories of similar events in the past or displacement
towards other affected communities. In what follows we present the
analyses of the data.

The Past That Does Not Pass: Dictatorship

and Memory of Neoliberal Violence
The human rights movement was one of Chile’s most important social
movements in the 1980s because of its capacity to denounce internation-
ally what was happening in the country and the creation of a framing for
the dictatorship’s crimes as human rights violations (Bastías, 2013; Kelly,
2018). In subsequent decades, activism denouncing those crimes declined
in the public sphere and became confined mainly to the private sphere in
the form of recourse to the courts (Collins et al., 2013). However, the
ritual of commemoration of the coup on every September 11 still endures.
Indeed, like other dates marked on national calendars as days of protest
and commemoration, such as May 1 or the anniversary of battles or the
end of a war, remembrance of the violence inflicted on part of the popu-
lation by the state during the dictatorship became a fixed point on the
commemorative calendar (Figs. 1 and 2).
Although September 11 was first proposed by the dictatorship as a date
to celebrate the armed forces’ deliverance of the country from the Popular
204 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

September 11 and DYC Protest Events, 2008-2020

140

120

100

80 94

60
49
40 30
31 35 41 34
27 26 29
20 37 21 27
22 29
17 25
6 12 14 11 13 14 14 8
0 5
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020

DYC Sept 11

Fig. 1 Memory protest events: commemoration of September 11 and the Day

of the Young Combatant (DYC), 2008–2020

400

350

300
133
250

200

150

100 205

50 17
2 2 8 3 4
3 1 5 40 23 31 2
0 16 10 8 7 14 15 18 9 3 7

Sept 11 DYC

Fig. 2 Commemorations of September 11 and the Day of the Young

Combatant, by region
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 205

Unity project (Hunneus, 2001; Stern, 2006), it soon became a counter-

memory among the regime’s opponents. Due to strong repression, it was
not initially marked by public events but by actions such as power cuts
caused by attacks on high-voltage transmission towers or riots in the more
peripheral sectors of cities. Later, the protests took on a more open form
through, pilgrimages to cemeteries, rallies, mass acts, and commemorative
marches, among others (Joignant, 2007; Stern, 2006). The date now has
a consolidated position as the most important commemoration of the
dictatorship, able to condense the entire period symbolically (Joignant,
2007; Manzi et al., 2013). Indeed, it is not unusual for people to refer to
the “11th ” not only as the day of the coup, but also as the entire 17 years
of the dictatorship. The data collected by the Observatory of Conflicts
confirms the importance of the date, which sparks the largest protests
related to this conflict in the public space (N = 466) with a countrywide
presence (Fig. 2). Over the years, the number of protests has not declined.
Mass events include a march to the General Cemetery in Santiago,
which culminates with an act near the Memorial at the northern entrance
to the place. This is followed by violent protests and confrontations with
the police, often inside the cemetery. A wake and a cultural event also
takes place in the country’s main sports stadium, the National Stadium,
which was used in the first months of the dictatorship as a mass detention
and torture center. Similar images of pilgrimages to the cemetery, wakes
in symbolic places, and barricades in peripheral areas or universities are
also usual in almost all the regions of the country.
Despite the time that has elapsed since the end of the dictatorship,
memory of this period is far from declining, and also expresses in a protest
on another date: March 29, the Day of the Young Combatant (DYC). It
originally commemorated the assassination by the police of two brothers,
Rafael and Eduardo Vergara Toledo in 1985, in the Villa Francia. The
place is a social housing complex in Santiago’s Estación Central district.
Since 1986 and during the 1990s, the date was commemorated principally
at the place of their death and at universities. However, the commemora-
tion has now acquired national significance (Figs. 1 and 2). Interestingly,
the meaning of these protests has broadened from their initial denuncia-
tion of the brothers’ killing to include the death and struggles of other
young militants and activists, both during the dictatorship and afterwards.
As the Observatory’s data shows, commemoration of the DYC involves
protest actions of sufficient importance (and violence) to be covered by
the press (Fig. 3). However, these reports often omit the meaning of the
206 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

commemoration and the changes it has undergone, highlighting instead

the violence of the protests and the resulting public disorder.
The emergence of this second commemorative date can be under-
stood as a multidirectional displacement within the student movement
(Donoso, 2021; Somma, 2017). Initially, protests for the Day of the
Young Combatant were common at the university where one of the
brothers was studying philosophy (University of Chile and Metropolitan
University of Education Sciences2 ), as well as in the Villa Francia area.
The commemoration involved an act with speakers, often with the broth-
ers’ mother, Luisa Toledo, as a central figure. Later, the activity was
followed by violent protests with street barricades and clashes with the
police, both in Villa Francia and at the universities. Over the years, the
protests spread to more universities, such as the University of Santiago
and state universities in the regions, and became increasingly popular with
other groups in Santiago and the regions with a commemorative tradition
related to the dictatorship.
Our previous research has shown that the strength of this commemo-
rative relates to the incorporation of the memory of the fight against the

Violent and Non-violent Tactics for September 11 and

DYC, 2008-2020
450
400
350 89
300 135
250
200
150 292 39 62
249 58
100
50 130 102 81
0
Non-violent Violence against Violence against Violence against Other types of
public order private or public police violence
property
Sept 11 DYC

Fig. 3 Violent and non-violent tactics to commemorate September 11 and the

Day of the Young Combatant, 2008–2020

2 Both universities where one university before, and later split in two.
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 207

dictatorship, a memory of resistance and confrontation. While September

11 became the date for commemorating the victims of state repression,
the DYC has focused on criticism of the neoliberal model, imposed by the
dictatorship and not significantly reformed by subsequent governments
(Badilla Rajevic, 2020a). Solidarity with the case gradually expanded to
hundreds of others youngsters around the country who as the Vergara
brothers’ live in social housing complexes or in segregated areas of the
city, experiencing few opportunities to get a good education and go to
university or find good jobs.
The emergence of the secondary student movement in 2006 and the
university student movement in 2011, denouncing the effects of the
legal framework for education introduced by the dictatorship on social
inequality, implied that the figure of the “Young Combatant” gained
strength and took on a broader meaning. In other words, the young
people, who had been born in democracy and led these protests, incor-
porated into their criticism of the educational model a criticism of the
dictatorship, not only on the grounds of its human rights crimes, but
also the economic model it installed. The situation of young people
from poorer districts (both during the dictatorship and today) came to
symbolize what the student movement was denouncing: that the dicta-
torship had created a system of education that was highly segregated at
all levels, aggravating social inequality because only the wealthiest families
could afford the cost of access to high-quality education. Fighting against
the dictatorship, as the Vergara brothers had done, became a more general
model for young people fighting against the legacy of the dictatorship
and, like the student movement, denouncing the acute inequality caused
by the neoliberal model. As a result, March 29 has become important
nationwide.
This case shows how a social movement is harnessed with memory
activism related to victims of the dictatorship in a multidirectional manner
towards the victims of the neoliberal model in general. These are the
victims of the high level residential segregation seen in Santiago and other
cities, who have been left indebted for life by a bank-based model of
financing education, created by the state (state-guaranteed student loans,
known as the CAE) and more generally by a highly segregated model of
education that reproduces social inequalities.
208 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

Memories of Police Violence in Democracy:

Human Rights as a Framework
for Recent Protests in Chile
The most important protests that have emerged over the past decade
include those against state violence or the violence that is deployed
under the protection of the state. We also include in this category
protests against sexist violence. Although this violence also occurs in
the domestic sphere, the feminist movement has denounced this cultural
pattern as enjoying state support and legitimacy and the protests are,
therefore, also against the state. The fight for recognition of femicide
as a specific crime with higher penalties than other forms of murder
underlines the overlapping nature of this phenomenon. Today, the state
continues to be denounced for legitimizing discrimination against women
and doing insufficient to prevent violence against them. These protests
have developed strong ties with those about violence against LGBTQ+
communities, which have also shown strong growth in the 2020s.
The database of the Observatory of Conflicts records over 250
protest events and commemorations of this type. According to it, sexist
violence and violence against LGTBQ+ people are the main issues to
protests. Press reports also allude to protests against state violence towards
Mapuche people. Then it is possible to find other protests against state
abuses, such as prison conditions, police repression against the student
movement, and the murder of human rights defenders with impunity.
These protests against human rights violations after the dictatorship have
expanded the collective memory of violence, adding memories of the
crimes perpetrated by the state during the dictatorship.
Significant crimes that have triggered protests include the disappear-
ance of a young Mapuche, José Huenante in the southern city of Puerto
Montt in 2005; the killing of Matías Catrileo in Vilcún on 3rd of January
2008; the killing of 16-year-old student Manuel Gutiérrez in 2011, in
Santiago’s Peñalolén district in the context of the student movement;
the aggression suffered in Valparaíso by Rodrigo Avilés in 2015 while
protesting in support of student demands; the killing of Macarena Valdés,
an activist for the Mapuche cause who was found dead in her own home
in the town of Panguipulli in 2016; and the killing of Camilo Catrillanca
by the police near the town of Ercilla on 18th November, 2018.
These commemorations belong now to Chile’s calendar of remem-
brance, extending the temporality of memory, which used to be confined
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 209

to the period of the dictatorship. This new dates as January 3 and

November 18 are now locally marked by solemn ceremonies including
commemorative practices similar to those used in the remembrance of
the dictatorship’s victims: candles and photographs of the people remem-
bered, and sometimes, also end with violent actions, such as barricades
and the blocking of streets.
The prominence of the human rights discourse as a framework for
making sense of state violence in Chile has since become evident.
Different actors have created organizations through which to denounce
state violence not only during the dictatorship, but also in democracy as,
for example, in the case of abuse of force against mobilized students or
members of Mapuche communities. These events draw attention to the
excessive use of force by the security forces and the crimes committed
against activists and leaders of the Mapuche people (Table 1). More
recently, the acts of state violence committed during the social uprising
show that Chile has made little progress on reforming its police service
to raise standards of compliance with human rights norms.
To understand this multidirectionality, it is necessary to consider one
of the less studied effects of activism against the dictatorship. As shown
by Patrick Kelly (2013, 2018), one of the most important legacies of
the fight against the dictatorships of Chile and Argentina was the adop-
tion and strengthening of the human rights paradigm, both locally and
internationally. Indeed, initially, the repression in Chile was understood
by those affected as part of the Cold War in which “Yankee imperialism”
had defended its hegemony in the hemisphere to avoid the spread of

Table 1 Commemorations of victims of human rights violations in democracy,

2008–2020

Cause Number of events

Sexist violence 109

Violence against LGTBQ+ people 76
Mapuche victims 66
Victims during the student movement 6
Victims of the San Miguel prison fire 3
Commemoration of the death of Macarena Valdés (environmental 3
activist)
Justice for Fabiola Campillay (woman blinded by police violence) 1
Justice for Juan Pablo Jiménez (union leader) 1
210 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

communism. However, thanks to the participation of humanitarian actors

such as the Catholic and Protestant churches, Amnesty International and
officials from the United Nations human rights agencies and the Inter-
American Commission on Human Rights, transnational ties of activism
were created, creating a solidarity that replaced the discourse of the logic
of the Cold War with one of human rights. From the very beginning of
the dictatorship, the humanitarian actions of European and other Latin
American countries were reflected in solidarity with the victims under the
mandate of human rights and humanitarian agreements and in the polit-
ical asylum afforded to those persecuted in their embassies and, then,
in their own countries. The denunciations of humanitarian organizations
and the exiles themselves in different countries, under the protection of
international human rights law, further legitimized these spaces, which
had until then played a minor role in international relations. Significantly,
the first time the United Nations sent a mission to investigate human
rights violations in situ was to Chile under the Pinochet dictatorship.
Chile’s transitional justice policies during its transition to democracy was
designed under these concepts. For instance, the design of the Truth and
Reconciliation Commission, a central pillar of the state’s approach to the
dictatorship’s crimes in the early years of democracy, was led by José Zala-
quett, a former director of Amnesty International (Cavallo, 2013). The
hegemony of this ethical approach was not only local; since the end of
the Cold War, human rights have been elevated to a cultural category at
the global level as ethically underpinning democracies (Moyn, 2012).
Recently, state violence has been denounced by human rights organiza-
tions, experts, and the United Nations human rights agencies (Aguilera,
2020). It has been thanks to social movements, first in dictatorship
and then in democracy, that this issue has been publicly raised and is
today at the center of the debate about a new political constitution
(Aguilera & López, 2022). This phenomenon shows how the transna-
tional human rights movement, created during the dictatorship in defense
of the victims, established a framework of meaning (that of human rights)
and has generated multidirectional memories of the victims of the state in
the present. By recognizing the victims of the dictatorship’s human rights
violations through a set of memory and reparation policies, the state rein-
forced the human rights framework as an approach to denouncing the
affronts committed by the state through the abuse of force, which was
later used in subsequent cases of state abuse of civilians. In other words,
commemoration of these victims of the democratic period has implied a
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 211

displacement of the original meaning in new directions, from the denun-

ciation of human rights violations by the state in dictatorship to the later
period, generating this multidirectionality of memories.

Attacks on Monuments: Multidirectional

Displacement Towards the Colonial Past
On 18th October 2019 erupted the biggest protests in Chile, since
1990. The data analyzed in this section show that these mobilizations
activated also multidirectional memories by amplifying denunciations of
abuse against the country’s indigenous peoples, in a very expressive way,
with attacks, demolitions and interventions of statues representing the
Spanish and, later, Chilean conquest of the territory.
The Observatory of Conflicts only registers some of these actions, such
as the attacks on the monument to Manuel Baquedano in the core of
Santiago’s October 2019 protests, and some statues of Pedro de Valdivia
outside the capital. However, in a recent study, we identified 175 cases
of monuments referring to the Spanish and Chilean conquest and colo-
nization that were destroyed or intervened during the social uprising
(Badilla & Aguilera, 2021) (Table 2).
Commemorative monuments are central to cultural memory because
they seek to ensure that certain events and their meaning endure over time
(Assmann, 2008). In particular, national monuments, symbolize state
projects aiming to build a collective identity around a nation (Anderson,
2006; Davis, 2005; Zerubavel, 1995). These modern memorials seek
to inspire a nationalistic sentiment by reminding us of heroic deeds,
heroes, and great battles but generally from the standpoint of those
who hold power (Davis, 2005). Attacks on this type of monuments at
times of protest seek precisely to destroy these symbols of the past, ques-
tioning the corresponding national project, at times of harsh political crisis
(Frank & Ristic, 2020). This has also been seen in political crises around
the world: for example, Eastern Europe after the fall of communism or,
more recently, the #Blacklivesmatter anti-racist movement in the United
States in response to death of George Floyd at the hands of the police. As
Ann Rigney (2022) notes, with these recent attacks against monuments
in different regions of the world, we could be witnessed a bottom-up
attempt to change mnemonic regimes, that are hegemonic views of under-
standing our past and heritage. This mnemonic regime change allows
212 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

Table 2 Colonial and nineteenth-century national monuments altered during

the uprising

Issue or figure commemorated Number of monuments altered

Independence of Chile from Spain 58

Pacific War (1879–1883)a 49
Nineteenth-century politicians 18
Nineteenth-century intellectuals 13
Figures of the nineteenth-century European 12
colonization
Colonization of the Americas by Spain in the 8
sixteenth century
Colonial-period figures from the sixteenth to 7
eighteenth centuries
Other Latin American independence figures 6
(Uruguayan, Colombian, Cuban, etc.)
Nineteenth-century soldiers (Roto Chileno) 3
Chile’s sovereignty over the Strait of Magellan in 1843 1
a “Pacific War” refers to the conflict between Chile, Peru, and Bolivia in which Chile took its northern
Atacama Desert copper-rich territories
Source Badilla and Aguilera (2021)

“activists to effect a sea-change in the memorial landscape” as a form

of struggling contemporary injustices and racism (Rigney, 2022, p. 11).
As has been widely reported, the social uprising of 2019 in Chile
brought together profound demands that challenged the very foundations
of the social model. Although triggered by a rise in public transport fares
in the capital, the protests rapidly spread to the rest of the country, with
demands against abuses by economic and political elites and for a change
in the country’s health care and pension system (Aguilera & Espinoza,
2022). A few weeks later, these demands were joined by those of the
feminist movement, which had emerged with force the previous year. The
institutional proposal for resolving the conflict was to hold a plebiscite on
the idea of replacing the 1980 constitution, identified as one of the major
obstacles to the profound changes being demanded. In this plebiscite
(which took place in October 2020), the depth of the crisis was revealed
by almost 80% support for changing the constitution. It is, therefore,
not surprising that some protesters turned their anger against the most
everyday symbols of the state, the statues that represent it. However, on
this occasion, the statues most affected referred to the military deeds that
permitted the conquest of the territory, first by the Spanish Crown and
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 213

then by the Chilean State. How should we understand this displacement

in time and meaning?
As indicated in the previous section, protests about state violence
against Mapuche people had been taking place for at least two decades. In
2018, Camilo Catrillanca had been killed by the police, which had initially
denied his assassination, alleging a confrontation between the community
and the police, which was proven not to have occurred. A year earlier,
in 2017, a police operation had created false evidence of the involvement
of Mapuche community members in criminal acts that were quickly clas-
sified as terrorism (Hurricane Operation). Both events had created great
public indignation and revived memories of earlier cases of the death of
Mapuche people at the hands of the state.
The social uprising, a movement that had neither political nor social
leaders, met the conditions for the incorporation of various demands into
the initial demand against abuse by the elites. In addition, the dispropor-
tionate use of police violence against the demonstrators underlined and
legitimized other demands, such as those related to police violence against
Mapuche communities. In this process, groups of protesters who had not
previously experienced state violence, such as many young people who
were demonstrating for the first time (Aguilera et al., 2023), developed
ties of solidarity with those other communities who had experienced it
since time immemorial. This activated the memory of affronts during the
colonial past and the creation of the Chilean state, working in a reverse
temporal direction, from the demands of the uprising back to a past
when the imposition of a colonial and national project had implied great
suffering, abuse, racism, and the dispossession of indigenous commu-
nities. This multidirectional aspect of the memories triggered by the
uprising was reflected in attacks on statues of Pedro de Valdivia, the
Spanish colonizer who conquered the territory in the sixteenth century,
and the statues of soldiers who participated in subsequent conquests at
the time of the creation of the Chilean state. These figures were seen as
enemies of the groups abused by the elites from time immemorial through
the present, and as such the intervention or destruction of these statues
could be seen as a decolonial social drama (Badilla & Aguilera, 2024),
that triggered the transformation of mnemonic regimes that have domi-
nated the relationships of Chilean society with its past, showing in the
public space and through very concrete forms the unbalance of dominant
hierarchies of value in times of turmoil (Rigney, 2023). These monu-
ments and the values they represent were interpreted as obstacles to the
214 C. AGUILERA AND M. BADILLA RAJEVIC

imagined community or, in other words, the configuration of a series of

common values that can sustain the national project and give it continuity
(Anderson, 2006). The intensity of the protests also meant the interven-
tion of statues that did not necessarily represent figures of this type but,
nevertheless, represented the power of the state in the territory.

Conclusions
Protests for human rights and memory of victims of the dictatorship have
continued in Chile despite the passage of time and have even raised new
issues about that period. As this chapter has shown, these mobilizations
demand greater justice not only in the present and in the recent past,
but also in relation to the consequences of the Spanish conquest and,
later, the establishment of the Chilean state. In this sense, we observe an
expansion of collective memories from an initial focus exclusively on the
dictatorship’s human rights violations to include contentious commem-
orations of state violence against Mapuche communities, women, and
LGBTQ+ communities. At the same time, the meaning of protests related
to memory of the dictatorship has expanded and now often includes the
socioeconomic model it imposed. In addition, it is interesting to note how
the 2019 social uprising operated as a sort of catalyst for these protests
and new memories: first, because the evident police abuse of demon-
strators meant that broad groups of the population became critical of
state violence; secondly, because police violations of the human rights of
Mapuche communities became more common knowledge; and, thirdly,
because the uprising served as a space for the convergence of feminist
demands, denouncing, among other things, state abuse against women.
In this chapter, we have attempted to explain this mnemonic and
conflictive expansion using the concept of multidirectional memory,
which takes into account the solidarity that can arise among affected
communities, once a framework of meaning is in place through which
to understand abuses that occur or occurred in another time and place.
To this end, we first analyzed the durability over time of commemora-
tions and protests on September 11, the date of the military coup, as well
as the incorporation and expansion of the commemoration of the Day of
the Young Combatant on March 29. These dates and, particularly, the
latter not only recall the dictatorship’s crimes but have also installed the
memory of Chile’s neoliberal transformation as from this period. We have
 A DECADE OF MEMORIES IN CONFLICT: THE IRRUPTION … 215

also shown how this commemoration connects with the student move-
ment and its demands, creating ties and intertwined memories related to
the structural violence that exists in Chile.
Secondly, we examined the temporal displacement of memories of
the events and demands that are commemorated, showing how they are
linked to a broad framework of denunciation and defense of human rights.
Data from the Observatory of Conflicts shows that these contentious
events include not only emblematic dates related to violence under the
dictatorship, but also human rights violations committed in democ-
racy, such as the killing of Mapuche activists and environmentalists and
gender violence, creating a common memory of state violence that is
not confined to the years of the dictatorship. This common memory
strengthens the demonstrations that to this day demand justice.
Finally, we analyzed a third shift in collective memory that, through
attacks on public monuments and their intervention, incorporated the
distant past of both the violence exercised during the Spanish Conquest
and abuses committed during the creation and expansion of the Chilean
state. Once again, this broadening of collective memory created solidarity
among demonstrators in the 2019–2020 uprising and those who, for
several years, have been defending historical causes such as the Mapuche
people’s demand for the restitution of territory or denunciations of
injustice and violence against women.
Based on this, we show how these multidirectional activations of
memory occur in the context of social mobilizations able to generate or
reactivate this intertwining. Consequently, the strength of social move-
ments for education and the defense of human rights have, over time,
allowed broad sections of the population to generate solidarity with other
victims of the state, demanding that they be recognized and have a place
in the public agenda of social transformation.

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 Conclusions: What We Know and What We
Don’t Know—Dynamics, Cycles,
Contentious Mechanisms, and Future
Agendas

Nicolás M. Somma and Alfredo Joignant

Modern democratic societies have two distinctive characteristics. First,

they produce conflicts of different types (such as those of gender or class)
that are silenced or non-existent in authoritarian and/or pre-modern
societies. Secondly, they develop a varied repertoire of mechanisms for
processing these conflicts, such as judicialization, state co-optation, or
their channeling electorally through political parties. Sometimes, these
mechanisms do not suffice and conflicts overflow into contentious actions,
such as street protests, disruptive tactics, and urban or rural violence.
This book focuses on conflicts of this type as seen in Chile over the

N. M. Somma (B)
Instituto de Sociología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Centre for
Social Conflict and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]
A. Joignant
School of Political Science, Diego Portales University, Centre for Social Conflict
and Cohesion Studies (COES), Santiago, Chile
e-mail: [email protected]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 221

Switzerland AG 2024
A. Joignant and N. M. Somma (eds.), Social Protest and Conflict
in Radical Neoliberalism, Latin American Political Economy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-58132-8_11
222 N. M. SOMMA AND A. JOIGNANT

past decade. In the space of economic production, conflict arises between

workers and employers. In Chile, a very considerable proportion of
protests are of this type. However, conflict is far from confined to
this sphere. In the educational arena, conflicts occur that give rise to
student and teacher movements but, since the spectacular protests of
2011, educational conflicts have changed a great deal. As is clear in each
chapter, Chile’s conflictive landscape is tremendously diverse and, there-
fore, difficult to capture using the categories of the social sciences. This
is especially true when these categories refer to what Ackerman (1991)
calls periods of “normal politics” (the closest thing to an oasis for social
scientists, without much pressure to invent concepts, in which institu-
tional thinking—and institutions themselves—are in full operation and, it
is assumed, explain what is essential).
Therefore the Chilean protest landscape cannot be reduced to a
few generative cleavages of class, religion, gender, ethnicity, or region
(Lipset & Rokkan, 1967). Nor can it be understood exclusively in
terms of cultural divisions, such as the materialism-post-materialism
axis (Inglehart, 1997) or multiculturalist progressivism versus nationalist
conservatism. These structural divisions are important but, by themselves,
cannot explain the dizzying cycles of protest observed in the different
chapters of this book. These cycles are associated with political opportu-
nities (Meyer, 2004), repressive events (Ondetti, 2006), or the diffusion
of collective forms of behavior that are beyond the control of any actor: an
analytical key developed by Granovetter (1978) that is potentially fertile
for analysing the 2019 uprising. In addition, the triad of the classic social
movements of the twentieth century—peasants, workers, and students—
does not encompass the dozens of mobilized groups, many of them
local, small, and episodic, seen in the data of the COES’s Observatory
of Conflicts.
Given such complexity, this final chapter highlights some analytical keys
that recur in the book and raise questions for future research. It has four
parts: the general dynamics of contentious activity (major trends, cycles,
and rhythms); the various connections of contentious activity (with insti-
tutional politics, the territory, organizations, tactics, and demands); some
recurrent but novel contentious mechanisms (McAdam et al., 2001), such
as the convergence of causes, citizenization of the conflict, resignification
of demands, and tactical and ideological radicalization; and a final section
with suggestions for future research. Before doing all that, we thank again
the academic community at the COES and the vibrant group of scholars
 CONCLUSIONS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON’T … 223

involved in this book, as well as the project that made it possible: COES
ANID/FONDAP/1523A0005.

General Dynamics of Contentious Actions

We begin by pointing out four central results. The first refers to an
apparent stabilization of the total volume of protests in Chile over the past
decade, as seen in Chapter 21 (below we discuss their dramatic increase
during the social uprising of late 2019). This is in contrast to the decade
of the 2000s for which some studies have shown a significant increase in
contentious activity (Somma & Medel, 2017). The question is whether,
in the 2020s, the total volume of contentious events will remain stable,
increase, or decrease.
However, this general relative stabilization conceals three significant
trends: an increase in the volume of indigenous protests since 2011
(Chapter 9), the explosion of gender protests since 2017 (Chapter 8),
and the ongoing commemoration of the anniversary of the coup on
September 11 and the Day of the Young Combatant, the memory of
which, decades later, still persists (Chapter 10). Increased indigenous and
feminist mobilization in a context of overall stability is a first indication
that different issues and groups have their own logic and dynamics. This
is also borne out by the loss of centrality of student protest, which was
very much to the fore at the beginning of the period (particularly in 2008
and 2011) but subsequently declined, perhaps due to the incorporation
of some of its most brilliant leaders into institutional politics.
The second striking result is the quantitative importance of relatively
small protests (fewer than 100 people and often fewer than 50). They
account for well over half of total protests in almost all the years studied.
Mass protests, with great political and public impact, are the exception.
The proliferation of small protests—along with other results mentioned
below—suggests a scenario of high mobilization, but significant fragmen-
tation, with groups led by thematic “specialists” who find it difficult to
unite positions and establish common fronts (Luna, 2022). This produces
a cacophony of voices that are disparate in volume and content and have
difficulty in gaining ground in the space of attention (Collins, 2009) of

1 The number of protests is very similar in the first and last year of the period studied
(2008 and 2020) (N = 2023 vs. N = 1941, see Chapter 2). The second year with the
most protests after 2019 was 2011, early in the 2008–2020 period.
224 N. M. SOMMA AND A. JOIGNANT

the political class. Social movements compete for this space with powerful
centers of attention in the political field (Joignant, 2019), such as internal
party disputes, the demands of constituents, the announcements of the
executive, and international events (as well as the vertigo of digital social
networks).
Thirdly, longitudinal examination of the Observatory’s data permits
identification of the cycles and rhythms of protest. The idea of protest
cycles, popularized by Tarrow (1993), refers to the variability over time
of the volume of protests by different groups, which rises, peaks, and
declines. This cyclical nature, which is consistent with the findings of
other international studies, can be identified, thanks to the Observatory’s
recording of the exact date of protests (Chapter 2). A notable cycle is that
of student protest which, after the stellar years of 2006, 2008, and 2011,
entered a more modest phase of mobilization. Another important cycle,
as mentioned above, is the increase since 2017 in feminist protest, which
remained high until the end of the period studied (2020). These find-
ings raise many questions: What is the expected or typical duration of a
cycle of protests? How can we differentiate a cycle from a mere campaign?
How can we distinguish between a sustained decline and a mere recess to
recoup strength? Do all movements have cycles or are there some in which
protest activity is more stable?
As well as cycles, protests have rhythms, with predictable increases and
decreases associated with certain dates or moments in the calendar year.
For example, students protest most in the autumn and winter, but demo-
bilize in the summer. There are, moreover, annual commemorative dates
of either an international nature (such as May 1 for workers) or a national
nature (September 11 and the Day of the Young Combatant at the end
of March). Finally, there are long-term rhythms. As Chapter 10 shows,
the 40th anniversary of the coup in 2013 triggered a marked increase in
memory protests against state violence. This may, in turn, prefigure an
increase in 2023 related to the 50th anniversary of the coup. The exis-
tence of cycles, rhythms, and commemorative dates makes the apparently
chaotic nature of contentious activity more intelligible.
Finally, any notion of cycle, regularity, or intelligibility falls short
when it comes to understanding the “social uprising” of 2019–2020, an
unprecedented explosion of contentious events in a short space of time
(see Chapter 3). The social sciences have coined the term “transformative
events” (McAdam & Sewell, 2001) to refer to relatively brief phenomena
that consolidate or crystallize pre-existing trends, restructuring future
 CONCLUSIONS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON’T … 225

social relations. The 2019 uprising, as a possible transformative event

(Somma & Sánchez, 2021), not only activated previously demobilized
sectors of the population (González & Le Foulon, 2020) and led to
a constitutional process. Among political parties, it also bred fear of
future rebellions. In almost all of them, the uprising hastened a supposed
consensus on the state’s responsibility of assuring a minimum social
welfare on the population (estado social de derecho, the specific content
of which was never defined after the constitutional process failed and
ended). The Observatory’s data captures the multiplication of protests
during the social uprising, but other methodologies are required to assess
their political and cultural consequences.

Protest Connections
This book illustrates various other aspects of contentious conflict in Chile
beyond its trends, cycles, and rhythms. Here, we address five of these
aspects: the role of the territory, the connection with institutional poli-
tics, tactical repertoires, the organizational bases of the protest, and the
overlapping of material deprivation and symbolic grievances.
First, contentious activity is not homogeneous across the country and
depends strongly on the local context. For example, as shown in Chapter 6,
the past decade has seen the development of groups of neighbors,
activated by threats or problems related to the environment and their
livelihood. Given the local nature of their demands, these groups face
obstacles to their organization at the national level and interact mostly
with municipal authorities, although their demands do sometimes esca-
late, obtaining the support of actors with greater national prominence.
Indigenous protest, which is concentrated in three regions of southern
Chile (the Araucanía, Biobío, and Los Lagos Regions), is an example of
the marked territorialization of contentious activity (Chapter 9).
Chapter 2 provides another example of the importance of territory:
rates of protests are higher in the extreme north and south than in the
center of the country, perhaps because less attention to far-away territories
by the centers of power in Santiago ignite grievances that translate into
protest. Social movement theories suggest that protest is concentrated in
large urban centers with access to the centers of power, but the Obser-
vatory of Conflicts data reveals an anomaly: the Santiago Metropolitan
Region is the region with the lowest rate of protests.
226 N. M. SOMMA AND A. JOIGNANT

It would be a mistake to exaggerate the weight of local dynamics,

though. The two movements with the greatest capacity for national
articulation—workers and students—play a notable role in protest in
Chile, explaining much of its total volume. However, their national scope
does not mean that protest actions are centrally coordinated (apart from
very exceptional nationwide campaigns). Centrifugal tendencies are very
powerful and both movements operate in a segmented manner. For
example, much of student protest is related to problems with specific
institutions (Chapter 6).
In the case of workers, despite the existence of a single large work-
ers’ confederation, the CUT, union fragmentation and pluralism are
high. As Chapter 4 shows, strike dynamics vary across economic sectors
and, due to the institutional framework, many large companies have
several unions that compete to attract workers. Similarly, a heteroge-
neous university system, with different public and private universities
targeting different socioeconomic sectors and with different orientations
(for example, secular or religious), may produce more fragmented student
movements—an aspect to study in the future.
Secondly, the book contributes to debate about the relationship between
protest and institutional politics. In line with the generalized diagnosis
among Chilean academics (for example, Garretón, 2016), the different
chapters show few traces of the presence of political parties and party
leaders in protests. This contrasts with Argentina, where parties are much
more present (Donoso et al., 2023). However, this does not mean that
the two worlds are completely disconnected. The national authorities are
still the most frequent target of protests, which is consistent with the
theory of Davis (1999) that, in Latin America, movements seek access to
the resources and regulatory powers of the state. In addition, the political
elites still have the capacity to deliberately influence contentious activity.
This was clear in the agreement of November 15, 2019, which sought to
pacify the country in the midst of the social uprising and, as reported in
Chapter 2, was followed by a drop in protests.
Conversely, some institutional developments would be incomprehen-
sible without considering the contentious actions reported by the Obser-
vatory. The rise to national power of former student leaders cannot
be understood without considering 2011 (Palacios-Valladares, 2020)
when students were responsible for half the year’s contentious actions
(Chapter 2). Notwithstanding the decrease in student protests in subse-
quent years (when they fluctuated between 9% and 28% of protests
 CONCLUSIONS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON’T … 227

nationwide), 2011 had a long-term political effect. Similarly, to explain

parliamentary support for bills to authorize people to withdraw 10% of
their pension savings in 2021, it is necessary to consider popular mobi-
lizations against the pension system (Chapter 5), which questioned its
legitimacy and contributed to reflection on alternative designs.
The constitutional process is a further example of the impact of
contentious activity on institutional politics. Without the social uprising,
there would have been no constitutional process (Somma & Donoso,
2022). Moreover, the content of the process was shaped by previous
protests. For example, the decision on gender parity in the Consti-
tutional Convention cannot be understood without considering the
previous increase in feminist protests reported in Chapter 8. Nor, without
considering the contentious activity of the previous decade analyzed in
Chapter 7, is it possible to understand the election of 27 territorial and
environmental activists to the Convention or the emphasis on decen-
tralization and environmental protection in its proposed constitution
(rejected in the plebiscite of September 4, 2022). Both examples, as well
as student protest in a different way, suggest that Chile’s much-criticized
political institutions maintain a certain porosity to organized civil society.
However, it is a forced porosity that may require the tortuous paths of
protest or even a social uprising if they are to respond.
Not all groups achieve the relative success of feminism, environmen-
talism, and the student movement in impacting institutional politics.
Chapter 9 describes the dynamics of action and reaction between indige-
nous organizations in southern Chile and the government’s attempts at
channeling, appeasement, and repression (McAdam, 1983). During the
past 25 years, this protest has been fanned by the advance of forestry
companies and the extractivist economy. Since 2014, it has become tacti-
cally and ideologically radicalized in response to instances of repression
and the death of several activists at the hands of the police. Among the
movements covered in this book, the indigenous movement bears the
heaviest mark of police and military repression (Medel & Somma, 2022).
If there is a movement in Chile that is a headache for both right and left-
wing governments, it is the indigenous movement, which does not bow
to the restitution of land or presidential commissions.
In short, the political impact of contentious actions and the polit-
ical system’s capacity to institutionalize demands expressed on the street
vary. The institutional framework is not completely deaf and blind, but
the opposite is not true either. The relative general stabilization of the
228 N. M. SOMMA AND A. JOIGNANT

volume of contentious actions seemed to have given the political system a

“breather” but this was then abruptly interrupted by the social uprising.
Still, it is surprising that the disconnections between civil society and
institutional politics do not produce a significant number of protests
specifically against the political class. In Chile, unlike other countries
in the region, there are few protests about acts of corruption or scan-
dals involving political figures (Fig. 4, Chapter 2). Chile does not have
the large fronts of anti-government protest seen from time to time in
Argentina, Mexico, or Brazil, to cite emblematic cases. Even the social
uprising—the closest thing in Chile to an anti-government front—was
about structural social problems, rather than seeking to overthrow the
government of President Sebastián Piñera. Its slogan of “It’s not 30
pesos, it’s 30 years” diluted Piñera’s responsibility and fragmented it
across the governments of different colors that have ruled Chile since
1990. However, this changed in the later phases of the uprising, with the
appearance of protests against the repression and human rights violations
seen during the initial protests.
Thirdly, contentious activity in Chile is characterized by tactical diver-
sity, as is to be expected in any democracy with a developed civil society.
The tactical repertoire (Tilly, 1993) ranges from the destruction of urban
public spaces (typical of hooded groups) and arson attacks on agricultural
machinery by radicalized organizations, to traditional peaceful marches
through urban capitals. It also includes disruptive tactics such as strikes,
the blocking of roads, and the occupation of workplaces or educational
spaces. Within this range of options, each movement has its prefer-
ences, depending on the desired effect on the authorities and the moral
principles behind the protest.
For example, Chapter 8 shows that gender protests tend to be less
transgressive than those motivated by other causes. Perhaps this is because
their organizations oppose violence against women and sexual dissidents,
preferring marches, commemorations, and performances such as that
of Las Tesis, a Chilean group whose choreography toured the world
during the uprising. However, gender protests are also heterogeneous
in their tactics. Those of a progressive nature adopt more transgressive
tactics—as seen, for example, during the “feminist May” of 2018—in
challenging an omnipresent and powerful patriarchal institutional frame-
work. By contrast, conservative gender protests, aimed at maintaining the
status quo, adopt less transgressive but equally striking tactics, such as the
 CONCLUSIONS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON’T … 229

exhibition of small coffins in front of the La Moneda presidential palace

by anti-abortion groups in 2015.
Protests against state violence also have an interesting tactical profile.
As their focus is on reconstructing the memory of instances of human
rights violations, they adopt commemorative tactics not usually seen in
other movements, such as vigils, wakes, photo exhibitions, and artistic
performances (Chapter 10; see also Collins et al., 2013). During the
social uprising, their tactics also included the destruction of monuments
of nineteenth-century colonizing figures. These examples show that the
choice of tactics, far from being random, is perfectly understandable in
light of movements’ allies, rivals, audiences, and moral principles.
Fourthly, this book examines the relationship between contentious
actions and formal organizations. Chapter 4 reveals an intriguing change:
before the social uprising, organizational density (or the average number
of organizations reported per protest) was generally above 0.8, but fell
to 0.5 (a drop of almost 40%) in 2020. Comparison with other coun-
tries would be required to determine whether this figure is high or low,
but it is clear that many contentious actions do not have visible organiza-
tions, at least according to the press reports codified by the Observatory
of Conflicts. This apparent loss of ground of organizational bases became
evident during the uprising (Chapter 3) in which many people, without
a tradition of activism or participation in social organizations, took to the
streets for the first time (González & Le Foulon, 2020). If social move-
ments overspilled the political parties in the 2000s, protest in the social
uprising overspilled the social movements that had traditionally channeled
and structured contentious action.
Finally, the book also allows us to reflect on the type of depriva-
tions and grievances that produce conflicts in Chilean society. Given the
sustained increase in Chile’s human development index over the past three
decades,2 the great importance of demands with a significant material
component in terms of wages, housing, or health, and territorial demands
(related to threats to livelihoods) may seem surprising. However, the
paradox is only apparent. As Alexis de Tocqueville noted in his analysis
of the French Revolution (Tocqueville, 2010), improvements in material
conditions often produce new sources of discontent.

2 See data at https://hdr.undp.org/sites/default/files/Country-Profiles/CHL.pdf.

230 N. M. SOMMA AND A. JOIGNANT

The weight of the material, however, does not preclude identity,

moral, or ideological motives for protest in Chile. Material privations only
produce collective action when they are interpreted as moral problems
(Snow et al., 1986; Thompson, 1964) such as abuse or lack of dignity.
This is reflected in the popular renaming of Santiago’s Plaza Italia square
as Plaza Dignidad (Dignity Plaza) as well as in the blossoming of the
“indignant culture” in something as “material” as pensions (Miranda,
2021). There is nothing automatic in the view that pensions in Chile
are low because an elite in the private administrators (AFPs) profits from
workers’ resources. It occurs in a context of criticism of global capi-
talism, which is also seen in many other parts of the world, particularly
since the 2008 crisis, and in the reactions of movements like Occupy and
Indignados —a new version of the “Polanyian” conflict (Polanyi, 1996).
In addition, the importance of worker protest (Chapters 2 and 4)
shows some continuity with the classic industrial conflicts of the last
century. However, it occurs in a new context, marked by the prolifera-
tion of self-employment and precarious employment and the emergence
of economic sectors based on digital technologies and with limited state
regulation. This new labor market collides with a hyper-developed offer
of consumer options (that no one would have dreamt of in the era of
import substitution), based on promises of material comfort attainable
only through indebtedness. Again, it is not so much about material depri-
vation, but about how material conditions are interpreted in ways that
produce feelings of vulnerability, unfairness, and desperation.

Contentious Mechanisms
Some contentious mechanisms appear regularly throughout this book. In
their influential comparison of fifteen contentious episodes in different
parts of the world, McAdam et al. (2001) define “relational mechanisms”
as events that “alter connections between people, groups, and interper-
sonal networks” (p. 26) during the course of the contention. Thinking
about mechanisms is useful because it allows connecting and comparing
seemingly disparate conflicts. It reduces the chances of reinventing “con-
tentious wheels” and provides a common vocabulary for addressing new
conflicts. Following this tradition, our book suggests some additional
mechanisms that could illuminate other contentious processes in time and
space.
 CONCLUSIONS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON’T … 231

A first mechanism is convergence or, in other words, the progres-

sive coincidence of different groups and causes in common contentious
actions, producing a meeting of activists from different backgrounds. The
book provides two examples of this mechanism. The first is the conver-
gence between the feminist and student movements in the mobilizations
of 2017–2018. Universities were a propitious space for the deployment
of the feminist wave of these two years, explaining why a third of student
protests in 2018 raised the issue of violence against women (Chap-
ters 6 and 8). At a psychosocial level, the intersection between university
activism and feminism can produce a phenomenon of multiple identi-
ties or “double militancy” (Mische, 2009) that gives density to the field
of social movements. Feminist activation on university campuses also
demonstrates the student movement’s capacity for renewal by temporarily
relegating to second place the demands that had made it strong in 2011.
The other example of convergence has to do with protest against state
violence and human rights violations. As Chapter 10 shows, this cause
brings together groups victimized at different times: not only the victims
of state repression during the Pinochet dictatorship, but also indige-
nous activists, feminists, and sexual dissidents who have been repressed in
democracy as well as repressed participants in the social uprising of 2019–
2020. It is a “second-order” protest, motivated by how the state represses
“first-order” protests. The convergence mechanism is particularly inter-
esting in Chile where civil society can be seen as characterized by a
multiplicity of rather atomized active causes with few organic connections
between them (Luna, 2022).
An opposing mechanism is that of divergence: that is, the construc-
tion in civil society of two antagonistic fronts with opposing demands on
the same issue, defining and reinforcing each other in reciprocal opposi-
tion. Our most notable case of divergence is that of anti-abortion and
pro-choice protest groups (Chapter 8), which also differ in the trans-
gression of their tactical repertoire. Importantly, both groups also draw
on their respective convergence mechanisms. Thus, pro-choice protests
are strengthened by convergence of a younger public of feminists and
students. In the case of anti-abortion protests (which were particularly
important during the second government of President Michelle Bachelet),
they converge with religious communities, particularly Evangelicals, and
an older public.
232 N. M. SOMMA AND A. JOIGNANT

Chapter 5 looks in depth at a new mechanism, that of the citizenization

of a conflict, seen in the transformation of the pension reform move-
ment. It began by bringing together organizations of health sector, public
sector, and bank workers. Yet it then gradually expanded to other more
heterogeneous sectors of society, such as disaffected ordinary citizens,
families, groups of neighbors, and non-union organizations. This went
hand-in-hand with a new “indignant” culture (Miranda, 2021) and an
expansion of its tactical repertoire, including social networks (Scherman &
Rivera, 2021) and mass marches. In addition, it ultimately produced
an autonomization of the demand for pension reform from its original
central organization, the No+ AFP Coordinator. As from 2016, this orga-
nization lost centrality in calls for protests. During the social uprising,
it was partially replaced (or complemented) by town hall and territorial
meetings in which the need for pension reform resurfaced. This case raises
the question of whether the sequence of citizenization + autonomiza-
tion of a demand also operates in other contexts, or whether the two
mechanisms can operate independently.
Another important mechanism is the resignification of demands. This
refers to a pre-existing demand’s appropriation by a new movement whose
members “rework” it and transform its meanings to give it an echo in
their own sphere of conflict. This can be seen in the case of the commem-
oration of the victims of state repression (Chapter 10). The student
movement took this demand, which had its origin in (among other cases)
the assassination of the Vergara Toledo brothers during the dictatorship.
Then they transformed this demand into a criticism of market-driven
education and the indebtedness of students from popular sectors. In this
way, the force of the original demand could be harnessed to the conflict
in a new arena—in this case, educational change.
Finally, Chapter 9, on indigenous protests, illustrates the radicalization
mechanism, already defined by McAdam et al. (2001) as “the expansion
of collective action frames to more extreme agendas and the adoption
of more transgressive forms of conflict” (p. 69). The emergence since
2008 of more radical indigenous autonomist organizations (both ideo-
logically and tactically) challenges the thesis of the “society of social
movements” (Meyer & Tarrow, 1998), which emphasizes the capacity
of contemporary democracies to incorporate and moderate conflicts.
The Chilean case shows that both possibilities—radicalization of certain
conflicts and moderation of others—can exist in the same country for
different movements.
 CONCLUSIONS: WHAT WE KNOW AND WHAT WE DON’T … 233

Future Agendas
There are many ways to continue studying the political conflict in Chile,
but we believe there are some particularly promising directions. We
highlight just three.
Firstly, it is crucial to place Chile in comparative perspective. As
Seymour Martin Lipset apparently once said, he who knows only one
country knows none. We believe this statement is more valid now than
ever, especially in a context where most studies on conflict in Chile
ignore the conflicts in even our closest neighbors. For instance, why did
the Chilean uprising lead to a constitutional process, while the Peruvian
uprising did not? (Guzmán-Concha, 2023). Why couldn’t the Chilean
indigenous protests unite and promote significant political changes, as
their counterparts in Ecuador and Bolivia did?
Of course, there is a demand of adequate data for such purposes. If
one wants to employ protest event analysis for international comparisons,
fortunately, we now have access to the Armed Conflict Location & Event
Data Project (ACLED), providing global coverage but with a limited
number of variables. Nevertheless, there are incipient efforts to conduct
more focused comparisons within Latin America by utilizing a broader
range of variables (e.g., Arce & Wada, 2024; Carvalho et al., 2024).
Additionally, a current challenge is to evaluate new automatic or semi-
automatic methodologies for gathering information about contentious
actions (Beyerlein et al., 2018; Fisher et al., 2019).
Secondly, given the rise of radical right-wing social and political
forces in Chile and other parts of the world, it is essential to study
the mobilization dynamics of “anti-rights” groups (Payne et al., 2023).
In recent years, Chile has witnessed protests and public demonstrations
against immigration, women’s rights, and sexual diversities. This coin-
cided with the emergence of rightist political forces reacting against
progressive advancements in minority, women’s and social rights, as well
as the growth of immigration. While Chile is not yet (for now) expe-
riencing situations like Brazil, where a conservative social and political
front opposed a left-wing government until it was defeated, it is crucial
to monitor these dynamics and understand if they parallel those of
progressive forces.
Thirdly, similar to other parts of the world, most studies in Chile focus
on massive and consequential conflicts, but there is less attention given to
“non-conflicts”. These are spaces in society where discontented groups
234 N. M. SOMMA AND A. JOIGNANT

lack the organization and resources needed to attract media and polit-
ical authorities’ attention. For example, for many years, there was little
attention given to certain Chilean localities heavily polluted due to indus-
trial activity (known as “sacrifice zones”). They only recently succeeded in
gaining national attention for their desperate situation. Identifying these
spaces is crucial not only for potentially predicting future conflicts but,
more importantly, because they harbor situations of pain and injustice
that require remedy.

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