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Olivia Haynes, Meredith Haydel, Darby Dryden

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Olivia Haynes, Meredith Haydel, Darby Dryden

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From democracy to military rule and back to democracy - the 20th century saw extraordinary reversals in Chile's political, social, and economic arenas.

The civil war of the 1890s tilted the balance of power in favor of the Congress and against the presidents, who were reduced to refereeing the fights for cabinet posts among the parties. But by this time there were new actors on the political scene. The railways had made travel easier and the towns were growing, and with them a new cultural and social life. A new middle class was organizing in the recently founded Radical Party. A strong force within it were the freemasons, whose lodges were political debating centers.

A new working class was forming, too. Industry had grown up in the early and mid-century in specific centers - everything from biscuit and pasta factories in Valparaíso that supplied passing ships, to breweries started by German settlers in the south. The new railways needed workshops, and the growing towns needed textiles, shoes, soap, and furniture. Business boomed, as did the numbers of urban artisans.

It was getting ever harder to scratch a living in the countryside, so many peasants were drawn to the nitrate mines of the north. Once there, they were often trapped, earning low wages paid in tokens that could only be exchanged for goods in the company store. Schools, a police force, and courts were practically non-existent. Alcohol was easier to come by than water in the northern mining camps of the pampas (lowlands).

Birth of the trade unions

It was in these harsh conditions that the modern Chilean trade union movement was born, evolving out of the early mutual aid societies. The miners formed the basis for Chile's early political movements, anarchist at first and later socialist. One figure stands out in that early history of working-class organization. Luis Emilio Recabarren, a former print worker, traveled the country as a union organizer. He got an audience among the miners for his political message by publishing newspapers which carried news from other parts of the country. They helped the immigrants isolated in the pampas to keep in touch with their homes, and also provided a means of communication between groups of workers in the cities, the mines, and the countryside, who until then had been isolated from one another. In 1912, Recabarren founded the Chilean Socialist Workers' Party. After the Russian Revolution in 1917, it was the basis of the Chilean Communist Party.

Recabarren traveled to Russia, and met Lenin and Trotsky, as well as trade union and political leaders from across the world. He was elected to the Chilean parliament twice during this period, though he was never allowed to take his seat. Although he was a key figure in the early history of the Chilean left, Recabarren's relationship with the Communist Party was always difficult. Political difficulties may well have been the cause of his suicide in 1928.

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Desert slaughter

The massacre at Santa María de Iquique, a remote mining town in northern Chile, has come to symbolize the struggle of Chile's mineworkers in the early 1900s. In 1907, the miners went on strike for better pay and conditions. When an envoy was sent from central government to speak with them, the miners and their families gathered in the town center to hear what he had to say. Four-and-a-half thousand of them were crammed into the local school, and 1,500 more were in Plaza Manuel Montt. An eyewitness gave a chilling account of what happened as squads of soldiers began to appear in the plaza.

"On the central balcony... stood 30 or so men in the prime of life, quite calm, beneath a great Chilean flag, and surrounded by the flags of other nations. They were the strike committee... All eyes were fixed on them just as all the guns were directed at them. Standing, they received the shots. As though struck by lightning they fell, and the great flag fluttered down over their bodies."

In 1969, the musician Luis Advis composed a famous oratorio based on the tragedy at Santa María de Iquique which he performed and recorded with his folk music group, Quilapayún.

Most thought that was the end of the incident. But, said the witness, "There was a moment of silence as the machine guns were lowered to aim at the schoolyard and the hall, occupied by a compact mass of people who spilled over into the main square... There was a sound like thunder as they fired. Then the gunfire ceased and the foot soldiers went into the school, firing, as men and women fled in all directions."

The army general later reported that there had been 140 victims. The eyewitness quoted talked to doctors and others involved, and estimated the figure at 195 dead and 390 wounded. Others reported many more.
Miners on strike in Santa María de Iquique prior to the massacre. Source: Wikimedia Commons/public domain
Social inequalities

Experiences like these, combined with the organizing work of Recabarren, laid the foundations of Chile's strong trade union tradition. At one stage, before and during World War I, sections of the ruling classes gave some consideration to the implementation of basic social welfare legislation - the nitrates industry, after all, was booming as a result of the war. But the discovery of artificial nitrates had a powerful impact on Chile, putting a swift end to the boom, and all such proposals were shelved.

Agriculture was stagnant, dominated by huge landed estates whose owners lived either in town or in Europe, and had little interest in raising productivity or modernizing. Import figures for 1907 show the ruling class's priorities: 3.7 million pesos were spent on importing agricultural and industrial machinery, while 6.8 million went on the purchase of French champagne, jewels, silk, and the latest perfume from Paris. As tax revenues from nitrates declined and the foreign debt grew, increasing numbers of ordinary Chileans found themselves without work or the possibility of it, and facing poverty and collapsing living standards.

Power struggles

In conditions of growing social conflict, there often emerge leaders who claim to bridge the conflicting interests of all social classes. In Chile, that "figure above society" was Arturo Alessandri, the son of an Italian immigrant.

Typically, his rhetoric was nationalistic and deliberately vague, enabling him to appeal to different sections of Chilean society at the same time. His election to the presidency in the early 1920s did not give him the power over Congress he aspired to, and in deepening conditions of crisis he turned to the younger and more restless sections of the army.

The result was a military coup in 1928, which gave military caudillo Colonel Carlos Ibáñez del Campo dictatorial powers. His models were Mussolini and Spain's José Primo de Rivera, and he was a fierce critic of the traditional political structures, especially the parties, some of whose leaders he "invited" to leave the country. But he was even more fiercely anti-Communist, and had Communists and union leaders arrested and deported. It was a return to authoritarianism such as Chile had not seen since the years of Diego Portales.

In a sense, the coup brought an end to a system of power which had observed the democratic rules but within a limited framework, in which power was simply exchanged between sections of the ruling classes. Chile has a reputation for a long democratic tradition; yet this was pushed aside in the 1920s, as it would be again in the 1970s, with considerable ease.

Ibáñez set about creating a powerful state sector of the economy, establishing the national airline and a daily government newspaper La Nación. This was an attempt to shift resources into new areas of the economy, placing them under national control and overcoming the resistance of the traditional ruling classes, using the state as an instrument of economic control.

Recession and social unrest

This was a bad time to be increasing state expenditure. With the Wall Street Crash in 1929 and the world recession that followed, the Chilean economy went into a crisis. Nitrate sales had long been declining, and now the expanding copper industry was also hit as the Great Depression squeezed its markets. There was widespread unemployment and social unrest. The government set up an emergency employment program, and printed money to pay for it. Inflation rose, and so did the protests.

Ibáñez was forced to resign. He left for exile in July 1931, but his elected successor was promptly overthrown by a military-civilian junta. In June 1932, a "Socialist Republic" was installed by Colonel Marmaduque Grove. Grove belonged to a group of radical young officers whose aim was to bring about a redistribution of wealth, particularly through land reform, that would set the economy to work again. The new republic lasted only 100 days, however, before Grove was exiled to Easter Island and Arturo Alessandri returned with a draconian program in October 1932. He purged the army of dissident elements, clamped down on trade unions, banned strikes, and closed down the opposition press.

Although Grove's social experiment had achieved very little, some proposals had reached the statute book: 40 years later, President Salvador Allende would begin to implement some of the changes that Grove had envisaged.

Recovery and reform

A new Chilean government, elected in 1938, offered a program of mild economic and social reform. Headed by a Radical, Pedro Aguirre Cerda, it enjoyed the support of both the Communist and the Socialist parties, but disputes later broke the alliance. Aguirre Cerda's elected successor, another radical, quickly outlawed the Communists.

During World War II, and later in the Korean War, the US government bought copper from US-owned copper companies in Chile at a special low price, which meant a substantial loss of tax revenues for the Chilean state.

The radicals boosted the state sector of the economy substantially, with a steel industry and a nationwide electrification program. But in the countryside, government intervention had a negative effect. Strict price controls on farm produce meant that the landowners had little incentive to invest and produce more. Public opinion was beginning to sense that farming would simply never take off under ruling-class ownership and that the only hope was to take away the land and give it to those who could produce.

The other conflict that began to loom was the ownership of the copper mines. The main deposits had always been owned and worked by US corporations. Control of such a major source of national wealth was bound to become an issue.

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The caudillo returns

By the late 1940s, party infighting and petty corruption had again paved the way for a "strong man." Carlos Ibáñez was returned to power by the electorate in 1952, demanding "a fundamental change of direction," and brandishing a symbolic broom with which he would sweep away politicking and corruption. He had the support of a redoubtable figure, María de la Cruz and her Feminine Party of Chile - women got the vote, finally, in 1949 and promptly strengthened the conservative forces.

Ibáñez had the personal charisma to get himself elected, but no organized support. He tried to get the Constitution reformed to give more power to the presidency, failed, and sat out the rest of his term in political impotence. In 1958, Arturo Alessandri's son, Jorge, succeeded the old general, elected almost entirely on the strength of his father's name. He was Chile's last elected president from the political right for over 50 years.

The Christian Democrats

The center and the left were now grouped in two easily definable camps. In one were the Socialist and the Communist parties - full-blooded Marxist-Leninists who talked of armed struggle to overthrow "the bourgeois state," but who were actually engaged in building up their electoral strength to win it by peaceful means.

Their rival, proposing very similar reforms in, for example, land ownership and nationalization of the copper mines, was the Christian Democrat Party. It developed in the 1930s out of a movement started by a group of young Catholics from the Conservative Party, initially with vaguely Fascist leanings, who called themselves the Falange Nacional. By the end of the 1950s their ideas had been modified to Christian socialism and they were growing rapidly among both the middle and working classes. They had strong links to the Catholic Church and a comparably strong anti-Communist message. There was not a vast difference between the programs of the two camps.

In the early 1960s when the influence of the Cuban revolution was sweeping through Latin America, the Christian Democrats throughout the region appeared to many people to be the best answer to the Marxist threat. The Chilean Christian Democrat Party was the first of its kind in Latin America to get into government, in 1964, with a good deal of North American financial support. The following year they won a solid majority in Congress, with party leader Eduardo Frei Montalva becoming the first president in Chilean history to have at least theoretical control over both the executive and the legislature.

Success went to their heads, and they boasted that Christian Democrats would govern for the next 30 years (like their Italian counterparts). However, the Frei government made two powerful enemies: the old landowning class, who opposed its attempt at land reform, and the military, who felt underpaid and unappreciated. An army general, Roberto Viaux, led an uprising in 1969 to protest against their conditions.
Statue of Salvador Allende. Photo: Richard Espinoza/Wikimedia Commons
The old political right, which had helped vote Frei into office, now withdrew to reform itself into a new party, the Nationals. Tensions within Frei's own party led to a split in 1969, and his left-wingers, who felt that the reforms had not gone far enough, went off to join the Marxists.

The Allende years

In 1970 a left-wing coalition known as Popular Unity put forward as their candidate a middle-class doctor turned socialist senator, Salvador Allende. Allende won his fourth attempt at the presidency by a paper-thin margin (36.3 percent). One of the first electoral promises he honored was to give every poor child in Chile a pair of shoes, and to provide free milk in schools.

But the new government faced formidable enemies in the United States. President Nixon's government pumped in approximately US$8 million in covert financing over the next three years to boost the opposition and to help, for example, to keep the anti-Allende publishing group El Mercuri o in business.

At home the government had some early successes. In 1971, it got all-party support in Congress for the nationalization of the copper mines. But Allende's decision not to pay compensation to the North American owners sparked an official US boycott of non-military aid and credits for Chile. The US government also tried to ban Chilean copper from world markets.

Social discontent

The political tension grew. When Fidel Castro visited Chile in November 1971, upper- and middle-class women held the first "march of the empty saucepans" to demonstrate against food and other shortages. A year later, the shortages were even worse and truck owners went on strike following a government proposal to create a state transportation system.

Doctors, shopkeepers, and bus owners joined in, and industrialists staged lockouts. Workers in small factories reacted by taking over their workplaces. Neighborhood committees set up their own retail networks, bringing goods direct from the factories. By this time the opposition had convinced itself that Allende was out to install a full-blooded Marxist state. The far left of Allende's own Socialist Party encouraged this view - ironically, the Communists were moderators in the unruly coalition, committed to a "peaceful road to socialism."

US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger condemned Allende's reform program, saying that he did not see why the US should stand idly by "and let a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people."

The tanks roll in

In March 1973, despite the growing chaos, the government won an increased majority (44 percent) in the parliamentary elections. The opposition decided that it could not wait until the next presidential elections, which were scheduled for 1976. In late August, Congress declared the government unconstitutional. Days later, on the morning of September 11, tanks rolled into the streets of Santiago, and the military took over the radio stations and announced a curfew, calling on President Allende to resign.

Besieged in the presidential palace with only a few advisers, Allende refused to resign. Photographs from the palace show him in a helmet and armed with a machine gun given to him by Fidel Castro, and the popular image remains of Allende fighting to the end. In his final broadcast to the nation, he ordered his supporters not to resist, yet he himself refused an offer of a safe conduct to the airport and exile. Allende's doctor testified that he died by his own hand, alone, in the ruined palace which the air force had bombed.

Pinochet's rise to power

The Chilean coup sent shock waves around the world. For some, the 1970 elections had proved the possibility that social change could occur peacefully, gradually, and via the ballot box. That hope now lay in ruins. Chile's reputation as a haven of democracy in a subcontinent given to resolving its political problems by violent means had now lost its legitimacy - in fact, military intervention had been a feature of 20 th-century political life in the country.

The Italian film Il Postino was based on the novel Ardiente Paciencia, by Chilean novelist Antonio Skármeta, which depicted the weeks following the 1973 Pinochet coup.

Though the coup was led by a junta of the heads of all the armed forces, it was Augusto Pinochet who would emerge over the following two years as its undisputed head. And it was he who was largely responsible for the violence that followed the coup. The military took power quickly, pursuing and detaining all those who had led the trade unions, popular organizations, student groups, and cultural movements most identified with the Allende regime.

The descent into brutality

The particularly brutal murder of the singer Víctor Jara came to symbolize thousands of other, equally violent deaths, as the foreign journalists who were herded into the National Stadium together with Jara and other suspected left-wingers to suffer beatings and torture, would later testify. Thousands of people were murdered, many more were tortured, and hundreds of thousands went into exile to escape persecution.
Augusto Pinochet and Eugenia Garrido in the 1980s. Photo: Emilio Kopaitic/Wikimedia Commons
All opposition activity was banned. The last demonstration in Chile for some 10 years was the funeral of Chile's great poet Pablo Neruda, who died just two weeks after the coup. The 3,000 mourners who marched between ranks of soldiers through the streets of Santiago shouted slogans against the military and carried placards bearing the names of Neruda and Allende. Thereafter there would be no more public expressions of hostility to Pinochet until the 1980s.

Initially, churches provided refuge for those who could not find asylum in foreign embassies. From its formation in 1976, the Vicariate of Solidarity, organized by the Catholic Church, helped the victims of repression to find legal aid and became a focus for protests against the human rights abuses that continued in the years following the coup.

Free-market economics

By 1977 it was clear that Pinochet's regime had its own economic as well as political agenda. The crude anti-Communism of the earlier years now combined with a new economic philosophy of neo-liberalism, or complete openness to the world market - ideas advocated by Milton Friedman and a group of his Chilean acolytes known as the "Chicago boys". Their recipe was free-market policies and the "trickle-down effect" - the theory that wealth created by the private sector would flow down and benefit the workers. These policies were imposed by a military dictatorship in a country without a Congress, without a free press, and with restricted labor organizations - ideal, if abnormal, conditions for such an experiment.

But the regime's economists made some bad mistakes, even on their own terms. In the late 1970s, the Finance Ministry fixed Chile's exchange rate for more than two years, and lifted controls on bank lending. When the peso finally had to be devalued, there was a near-fatal bank crash. As a result, the state had to bail out most of the private banks, but many companies went bankrupt, mortgage repossessions soared, and an economic recession followed, lasting until the mid-1980s. The high unemployment and economic hardship of this period were key factors in mounting discontent with the dictatorship.

Crisis and disintegration

In 1983 trade unions again began to call strikes, and there was widespread protest as gross domestic product (GDP) collapsed. All political organizations remained illegal, and most of the left-wing groups had been destroyed after the coup. In this new climate of protest, however, they began to reorganize.

The Communist Party had taken a moderate line under Allende, and had argued after 1973 that the coup happened because things had gone too far too fast in the Allende years. The party now turned in a radical direction as a new generation of young people joined its ranks. By 1985, the creation of the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front marked a commitment to armed struggle, which culminated in the failed attempt to assassinate Pinochet in 1986.

Thereafter the old enemies came together in a series of agreements to build a joint campaign for a "No" vote in Pinochet's 1988 plebiscite, which was designed to confirm him in power for another eight years at least. In the event, and to the dictator's evident surprise, 54 percent of the Chilean people voted "No."

Elections followed in 1989, amid intense negotiations at a number of levels. The pace and direction of the return to democracy had to be agreed on by businessmen and trade unionists, Christian Democrats, and Communists who supported the "No" campaign - people whose purposes were very different. The hopes for a peaceful transition led the campaign into a series of talks with Pinochet. While he yielded the presidency, and formal authority, it could hardly be said that he relinquished power.

The end of the party for Pinochet

A new constitution written by the dictatorship in 1980 remained largely in force; the judiciary was dominated by Pinochet's appointees; some senators would continue to be nominated directly by the armed forces, giving them a controlling voice in parliament; the financial gains Pinochet had made as president would remain untouched. Pinochet stayed on until 1998 as head of the army and, while a commission of investigation would seek the truth about the "disappeared" and the human rights abuses that had occurred under his rule, there would be neither revenge nor restitution.

The memories of the 1973 coup and its aftermath were sufficiently fearsome for the suggestion of renewed military intervention to silence any complaints. Thus it was that Pinochet could display such absolute confidence and certainty when, in March 1998, he retired as commander-in-chief of the army, at the age of 82. He had already been named senador vitalicio - a senator for life - and in this capacity was given effective immunity from prosecution for crimes against human rights committed in Chile during his regime, for which there were some 200 cases pending in the Chilean courts.

It was with the same confidence that he left for Britain in September 1998 for medical treatment. Pinochet's period in power had largely coincided with the governments of Margaret Thatcher in Britain, and her relationship with him had always been cordial and admiring - as had US President Ronald Reagan's with them both.
Patricio Aylwin. Photo: Gobierno de Chile
In the meantime, a series of cases had been brought before courts elsewhere on behalf of the families of Pinochet's non-Chilean victims. Among the cases pending was one brought before a Spanish court by a team of lawyers including Joan Garcés, ex-adviser to Allende. While Pinochet was in London, the Spanish Justice Ministry initiated extradition proceedings with Britain, and he was placed under house arrest. An extraordinary chain of events was set in motion, as the House of Lords in London confirmed by a majority that he had a case to answer under international law, and later overturned their own ruling when it was revealed that one of the Law Lords had links with the human rights group Amnesty International. Meanwhile, journalists and commentators began to revisit the experience of Chile in 1973, while those Chileans still in their countries of exile even after 1990 emerged in demonstrations.

In March 2000, the British Home Secretary agreed to the release of Pinochet on the grounds of ill health, opening the way for his return to Chile. The local courts later removed his immunity from prosecution, but then declared that the former dictator was unfit to stand trial.

Forced to resign his Senate seat and, subsequently, further discredited by the revelation of secret multimillion-dollar bank accounts held abroad in his name and those of family members, the former dictator gradually disappeared from public life and died in December 2006.

An economic example

By the late 1980s, the Chilean economy was well on the way to recovering from the 1982-3 crisis. Exports were growing rapidly, with the development of the forestry, fruit farming and wine industries that were later to play a key role in driving the country's economic growth. There was also a lot of interest from foreign investors and the dictatorship's creation of a private pension (AFP) system to replace the former state pay-as-you-go system had laid the foundations of an active capital market.

Income distribution, however, remained extremely unequal and one of the first challenges of the center-left Concertación coalition, which took office in March 1990 under Christian Democrat Patricio Aylwin (1990-4), was to attempt to narrow the huge gap between the very rich and the very poor, without upsetting Chile's healthy balance of payments and finances. The coalition accepted the main tenets of the macroeconomic policies of the "Chicago boys" and even the Socialist Party admitted that "the market has the main role in assigning resources".

With the grudging assent of the right-wing political parties, the Aylwin government raised corporate and income taxes to finance improvements in health and education. The new government also battled some fairly timid labor reforms through Congress to help improve wages and working conditions, and give the unions more strength to defend their members. These were much more controversial than the tax increases. The business community insisted that low wages for miners, forestry, and industrial workers were crucial if Chile's exports were to remain competitive in world markets.

At the same time, Chile began to recover the international integration denied it under Pinochet because of repudiation of his dictatorship's human rights violations. The free trade agreements subsequently signed with the country's main markets, including the United States, the European Union, Japan, and China, played a key role in the sustained growth of its exports.

Road to development

Aylwin was succeeded in 1994 by President Eduardo Frei, a son of the 1960s Christian Democrat president, heading a government of the same center-left coalition, the Concertación. As well as launching major school and criminal justice reforms, President Frei, a civil engineer by profession, concentrated on projects like improving roads and airports (usually through private concessions), and on privatizing ports and water companies. These reforms vastly improved infrastructure - laying the foundations for the international-standard highways seen in Chile today - and increased productivity as the key to the international competitiveness of the small Chilean economy.

President Ricardo Lagos (2000-6) headed the Concertación's third government. A moderate socialist, he sought to combine economic growth with greater social justice and to extend the benefits of increased prosperity not only to the urban poor, but also to provincial Chile. Despite slower economic growth from 1999 through 2003, owing mainly to the weakness of international export markets, his government introduced unemployment insurance and embarked on a major reform of public and private health services in a bid to increase their efficiency and achieve greater equality of access to care, guaranteeing timely and low-cost attention for a growing number of important illnesses.

A national census, carried out in 2002, revealed a radical improvement in material welfare since the previous census a decade earlier. Ninety-six percent of Chile's homes had access to electricity, up by a fifth on 1992, and 91 percent had drinking water, representing an increase of more than a quarter. Similarly, 82 percent had a refrigerator, as compared with 55 percent in 1992, while 79 percent had a washing machine, as compared with 48 percent a decade earlier.

Fees at Chile's top private schools, at around US$700 per month, are over ten times the per-pupil subvention received by state schools in Chile.

Impatience for change

By 2006, the poverty rate had, moreover, dropped to less than 14 percent, down from 40 percent in 1990 and per capita income had reached US$8,900, up from just US$2,400 in 1990 (by 2010, it was running at almost US$12,000). However, despite the impact on living standards, the unequal distribution, combined with improvements in education, only fueled social demands. According to a government survey in 2009, the richest tenth of the population received 40.2 percent of national income while, at the same time, seven out of ten university students were the first in their family to go on to higher education.

These pent-up demands came to the fore under President Michelle Bachelet (2006-10), a socialist who headed the Concertación's fourth term and was the country's first woman president. Only a matter of months after she took office, marches and sit-ins organized by secondary schoolchildren in support of better state education mushroomed into the largest show of civil defiance since the Pinochet days. The movement was another symptom of the maturing of Chilean democracy - with no memory of the Pinochet dictatorship, the schoolchildren lacked their parents' fears for its potential fragility.

After initially floundering in face of the protests, Bachelet went on to focus on "social protection" as the theme of her government. The first major overhaul of the private pension (AFP) system left in place by the Pinochet dictatorship increased the role of state in supporting low-income senior citizens and, as it comes into gradual effect, is significantly increasing their (albeit still meager) pensions. Her government's creation of new state childcare centers for poor families also laid the foundations for an increase in women's participation in the labor force which had been very low, even by Latin American standards. In addition, she continued to reduce the housing deficit, with a greater emphasis on the standards of the social housing built by private companies with state support and their future owners' participation in the process.

However, despite these spending increases, her government also maintained the fiscal and macroeconomic discipline that had characterized Chile since 1990. In a key step, it established two offshore sovereign wealth funds into which part of fiscal revenues are paid when the price of copper - a key source of government income - is high. This was one of the complaints of the protesting schoolchildren who accused the government of "tightfistedness" but it stood Chile in good stead in 2009 when its small, open economy was hit by the international crisis and GDP contracted by 1.7 percent. Mitigating the impact of the crisis, the government used part of these savings to finance a fiscal stimulus plan worth US$4 billion that, relative to GDP, was one of the largest such plans in the world.

The right returns

Bachelet ended her term with record popularity ratings and may run again in the next presidential election in 2013 (consecutive periods are not permitted under Chile's constitution). However, after 20 years in office, the Concertación was tired, had lost much of its original mystique and was widely perceived as having become complacent in power. The result was the election of President Sebastián Piñera who took office in March 2010 at the head of center-right Alianza por Chile coalition. This was the first time that Chile had elected a president from the right since the 1950s.

A former businessman and billionaire, Piñera comes from the National Renewal Party, the smaller, more centrist party in the government coalition where its partner is the Independent Democratic Union, many of whose older members served under the Pinochet dictatorship. His position, close to the center of the political spectrum, and his family ties with the Christian Democrat Party and his opposition to the dictatorship in its latter days were important factors in his triumph.

The government's first months in power were devoted to grappling with the consequences of the February 2010 earthquake and its promised greater efficiency in government was apparent in these early days, particularly in getting public infrastructure back into working order, although it has been less successful in the longer-haul task of rebuilding housing and, according to critics, has failed to take into account the views of the affected families.

Piñera's popularity surged later in 2010 during the two-month operation to rescue 33 miners trapped underground in the San José gold and copper mine near Copiapó in northern Chile. He personally received the miners as, one-by-one, they were hauled to the surface. The success of the operation was certainly a triumph of perseverance against the odds and of Chilean engineering (although international mining companies operating in Chile also made an important contribution) and was facilitated by Piñera's ability to take quick decisions and lack of aversion to risk.

In 2011, however, his approval ratings sunk to the lowest level of any president since 1990, despite strong economic growth and virtually full employment. Like President Bachelet, he faced protests about the quality of state education, led this time by university students, rather than schoolchildren. As well as standards, their demands extended to the cost of education − monthly university tuition fees start at around a third of the country's average wage − and in response, the government agreed to increase the number of state grants and reduce their cost.

In 2010, it was widely assumed that Piñera's election marked the start of a relatively long period of right-wing government in Chile. However, with the economy set to slow in 2012, it is no longer clear that this will be the case.

Constitutional reform

On many indicators, Chile is close to becoming a developed country. In the UN Development Programme's 2011 Human Development Index, for example, it ranked in 44 th place, only three places below Portugal and in top place within Latin America. Its progress was also recognized in 2010 when it became the first country in South America to join the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

Since Argentina ceased to export natural gas, Chile has faced a tight energy supply that has been compounded by public opposition to new coal plants and hydroelectric dams. Electricity prices are among the highest in Latin America.

However, in its last mile to development, it still faces a number of important challenge, including not only the inequality of income distribution but also Chileans' mounting demand for a greater say in decisions that affect their lives. This has become more acute because the return of the right to power has heightened the perception that the country is closely controlled by a small political-business elite which is, moreover, supported by its main media.

Complaints focus partly on the 1980 constitution. A reform in 2005 repealed some of its least democratic provisions, including the existence of nine non-elected senators who previously sat alongside the 38 elected senators (four appointed by the armed forces, three by the Supreme Court and two by the president). Increased participation in elections has also been facilitated by a reform, which came into force in early 2012, under which voter regulation became automatic for all those aged 18 and over. In a reversal of the country's previous tradition under which registry had been compulsory, the 1980 constitution made it voluntary and, moreover, requiring a personal visit to an election service office with only limited opening hours in the weeks prior to an election. Partly as a result, only 8.3 million people were registered to vote in the 2009 presidential and congressional elections (out of an estimated population of 16.9 million) as compared to the 7.6 million voters registered for the 1989 elections when the population reached 13.2 million.

The key barrier to increasing the representativeness of democracy is, however, the binominal electoral system, also introduced by the 1980 constitution. Under this system, unique to Chile, each constituency returns two representatives to each house of Congress, with the party or coalition that comes second only needing a third of the vote to take one of the two seats. Designed to force political parties into two broad coalitions and ensure that neither has a large majority, it guarantees that, in most constituencies, the government and opposition coalitions will each take one of the two seats.

This not only means that the political parties, in practice, "designate" their representatives in Congress, it also makes it very difficult for minority parties outside the two main coalitions to obtain representation. Several attempts to reform the system have been made since 1990 but all failed in the face of the vested interest of incumbent members of Congress in maintaining the existing system. President Piñera himself is in favor of reform - like, according to polls, some 60 percent of the population - on the grounds that the system, although useful in providing stability during Chile's transition to democracy, has now served its purpose. However, his proposal to present a reform bill to Congress during 2012 met with a storm of protest from the Independent Democratic Union and is unlikely to prosper.

Planning a trip to Chile? Look no further than our selection of fantastic tailor-made trips.

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Chile In The 20th Century History and Timeline Overview - Major Historical Events in Chile In The 20th Century, Chile | Insight Guides

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The civil war of the 1890s tilted the balance of power in favor of the Congress and against the presidents, who were reduced to refereeing the fights for cabinet posts among the parties. But by this time there were new actors on the political scene.

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Communism is the political and economic beliefs which are opposite of democracy. In a communist society there are no social classes. Business and production is owned by the government meaning there is no private companies.

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What Is Communism?

Communism is a political and economic ideology that positions itself in opposition to liberal democracy and capitalism, advocating instead for a classless system in which the means of production are owned communally and private property is nonexistent or severely curtailed.

Understanding Communism

"Communism" is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of ideologies. The term's modern usage originated with Victor d'Hupay, an 18th-century French aristocrat who advocated living in "communes" in which all property would be shared, and "all may benefit from everybody's work." The idea was hardly new even at that time, however: the Book of Acts describes first-century Christian communities holding property in common according to a system known as koinonia, which inspired later religious groups such as the 17th-century English "Diggers" to reject private ownership.

The Communist Manifesto

Modern communist ideology began to develop during the French Revolution, and its seminal tract, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' "Communist Manifesto," was published in 1848. That pamphlet rejected the Christian tenor of previous communist philosophies, laying out a materialist and-its proponents claim-scientific analysis of the history and future trajectory of human society. "The history of all hitherto existing society," Marx and Engels wrote, "is the history of class struggles."

The Communist Manifesto presented the French Revolution as a major historical turning point, when the "bourgeoisie" -the merchant class that was in the process of consolidating control over the "means of production" -overturned the feudal power structure and ushered in the modern, capitalist era. That revolution replaced the medieval class struggle, which pitted the nobility against the serfs, with the modern one pitting the bourgeois owners of capital against the "proletariat," the working class who sell their labor for wages.

In the Communist Manifesto and later works, Marx, Engels, and their followers advocated (and predicted as historically inevitable) a global proletarian revolution, which would usher in first an era of socialism, then of communism. This final stage of human development would mark the end of class struggle and therefore of history: all people would live in social equilibrium, without class distinctions, family structures, religion, or property. The state, too, would "wither away." The economy would function, as a popular Marxist slogan puts it, "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

The Soviet Union

Marx and Engels' theories would not be tested in the real world until after their deaths. In 1917, during World War I, an uprising in Russia toppled the czar and sparked a civil war that eventually saw a group of radical Marxists led by Vladimir Lenin gain power in 1922. The Bolsheviks, as this group was called, founded the Soviet Union on former Imperial Russian territory and attempted to put communist theory into practice.

Prior to the Bolshevik Revolution, Lenin had developed the Marxist theory of vanguardism, which argued that a close-knit group of politically enlightened elites was necessary to usher in the higher stages of economic and political evolution: socialism and finally communism. Lenin died shortly after the civil war ended, but the "dictatorship of the proletariat," led by his successor Joseph Stalin, would pursue brutal ethnic and ideological purges as well as forced agricultural collectivization. Tens of millions died during Stalin's rule, from 1922 to 1952, on top of the tens of millions who died as a result of the war with Nazi Germany.

Rather than withering away, the Soviet state became a powerful one-party institution that prohibited dissent and occupied the "commanding heights" of the economy. Agriculture, the banking system, and industrial production were subject to quotas and price controls laid out in a series of Five Year Plans. This system of central planning enabled rapid industrialization, and from 1950 to 1965 growth in Soviet gross domestic product (GDP) outpaced that of the U.S. In general, however, the Soviet economy grew at a much slower pace than its capitalist, democratic counterparts.

Weak consumer spending was a particular drag on growth. Central planners' emphasis on heavy industry led to chronic underproduction of consumer goods, and long lines at understocked grocery stores were a fixture of Soviet life even during periods of relative prosperity. Thriving underground markets -termed the "second economy" by some academics-catered to demand for cigarettes, shampoo, liquor, sugar, milk, and especially prestige goods such as jeans smuggled in from the West. While these networks were illegal, they were essential to the party's functioning: they alleviated shortages that, left unchecked, threatened to spark another Bolshevik Revolution; they provided party propagandists with a scapegoat for shortages; and they lined the pockets of party officials, who would either take payoffs to look the other way or grow rich running illegal market operations themselves.

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, following a push to reform the economic and political system and provide greater room for private enterprise and free expression. These reform pushes, known as perestroika and glasnost, respectively, did not halt the economic decline the Soviet Union suffered in the 1980s and likely hastened the Communist state's end by loosening its grip on sources of dissent.

Communist China

In 1949, following more than 20 years of war with the Chinese Nationalist Party and Imperial Japan, Mao Zedong's Communist Party gained control of China to form the world's second major Marxist-Leninist state. Mao allied the country with the Soviet Union, but the Soviets' policies of de-Stalinization and "peaceful coexistence" with the capitalist West led to a diplomatic split with China in 1956.

Mao's rule in China resembled Stalin's in its violence, deprivation, and insistence on ideological purity. During the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962, the Communist Party ordered the rural population to produce enormous quantities of steel in an effort to jumpstart an industrial revolution in China. Families were coerced into building backyard furnaces, where they smelted scrap metal and household items into low-quality pig iron that offered little domestic utility and held no appeal for export markets. Since rural labor was unavailable to harvest crops, and Mao insisted on exporting grain to demonstrate his policies' success, food became scarce. The resulting Great Chinese Famine killed at least 15 million people and perhaps more than 45 million. The Cultural Revolution, an ideological purge that lasted from 1966 until Mao's death in 1976, killed perhaps another 1.6 million people.

After Mao's death, Deng Xiaoping introduced a series of market reforms that have remained in effect under his successors. The U.S. began normalizing relations with China when President Nixon visited in 1972, prior to Mao's death. The Chinese Communist Party remains in power, presiding over a largely capitalist system, though state-owned enterprises continue to form a large part of the economy. Freedom of expression is significantly curtailed; elections are banned (except in the former British colony of Hong Kong, where candidates must be approved by the party and voting rights are tightly controlled); and meaningful opposition to the party is not permitted.

The Cold War

The U.S. emerged from World War II the world's richest and most militarily powerful nation. As a liberal democracy that had just defeated fascist dictatorships in two theaters, the country - if not all of its people - felt a sense of exceptionalism and historical purpose. So did the Soviet Union, its ally in the fight against Germany and the world's only revolutionary Marxist state. The two powers promptly divided Europe into spheres of political and economic influence: Winston Churchill called this dividing line the "Iron Curtain."

The two superpowers, both of which possessed nuclear weapons after 1949, engaged in a long standoff known as the Cold War. Due to the doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction-the belief that a war between the two powers would lead to a nuclear holocaust-no direct military engagements occurred between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, and the Iron Curtain was largely quiet. Instead, they fought a global proxy war, with each sponsoring friendly regimes in post-colonial nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The U.S. and Soviet Union both sponsored coups to install such regimes in various countries.

The closest the U.S. came to a direct military conflict with the Soviet Union was the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. The U.S. did fight a prolonged hot war in Vietnam, however, in which its military supported South Vietnamese forces fighting the Chinese- and Soviet-supported North Vietnamese army and South Vietnamese communist guerrillas. The U.S. withdrew from the war and Vietnam was united under communist rule in 1975.

The Cold War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Why Did Communism Fail?

While there has been extensive study of the reasons for communism's failure, researchers have pinpointed a couple of common factors that contributed to its demise.

The first is an absence of incentives among citizens to produce for profit. The profit incentive leads to competition and innovation in society. But an ideal citizen in a communist society was selflessly devoted to societal causes and rarely stopped to think about his or her welfare. "At all times and all questions a party member should give first consideration to the interests of the Party as a whole and put them in the foremost and place personal matters and interests second," wrote Liu Shaoqi, the second chair of the People's Republic of China.

The second reason for communism's failure was the system's inherent inefficiencies, such as centralized planning. This form of planning requires aggregation and synthesis of enormous amounts of data at a granular level. Because all projects were planned centrally, this form of planning was also complex. In several instances, growth data was fudged or error-prone in order to make facts fit into planned statistics and create an illusion of progress.

The concentration of power into the hands of select few also bred inefficiency and, paradoxically enough, provided them with incentives to game the system for their benefit and retain their hold on power. Corruption and laziness became endemic features of this system and surveillance, such as the one that characterized East German and Soviet societies, was common. It also disincentivized industrious and hard-working people. The end result was that the economy suffered.

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What Is Communism? Learn Its History, Pros, and Cons

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Communism is a political and economic ideology that positions itself in opposition to liberal democracy and capitalism, advocating instead for a classless system in which the means of production are owned communally and private property is nonexistent or severely curtailed. "Communism" is an umbrella term that encompasses a range of ideologies.

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Three large fascist countries were Italy under Benito Mussolini, Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler, and Spain under Francisco Franco.

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In simple terms, fascism is defined as a government structure where one dictator has complete control of the entire country, state, or territory. Anyone who opposes this dictator is suppressed and individual rights are often oppressed. A fascist government might also be called totalitarian.

Benito Mussolini, Hideki Tojo and Adolf Hitler

Examples of Fascism in History

While the two main examples of fascism in history involve Mussolini and Hitler, there were many other fascist leaders between 1922 and 1945 when this government structure was most popular.

1925-1943: Italy's National Fascist Party led by Benito Mussolini made Italy a fascist state.

1933-1945: Adolf Hitler's National Socialist German Workers' Party, or the Nazi Party, ruled Germany under his leadership for 12 years.

1932-1934: After being named Chancellor of Austria in 1932, Engelbert Dollfuss had no intention of ending the democracy until he was convinced fascism was necessary for the future of the country.

1932-1968: António de Oliveira Salazar joined The National Union in Portugal and ruled for nearly four decades.

1935-1945: In Belgium, the Rexist Party had success in winning many parliament seats under the leadership of Léon Degrelle.

1937-1938: The French Cross of Fire (Croix-de-Feu) was the biggest and fastest-growing right wing party in France in the late 1930s.

1941-1944: Prime Minister Hideki Tojo in Japan rose through military ranks and ultimately became famous as the leader who gave the order for the Pearl Harbor attack in the U.S.

Historical Origins of Fascism

Contrary to popular belief, Benito Mussolini did not invent fascism. The origins of fascist ideas can be traced back to the 19th century in countries like France and Austria.

While these ideas weren't uncommon, fascism was only successful when the perceived economic threats were such that specific social groups wanted something radically different. Progressive revolutions in different countries from the late 1700s to the early 1800s sparked the original fascist ideas.

Mussolini and Fascism

Ideals of fascism gained support and notoriety in Italy in the 1920s as landowners and businessmen embraced fascism as an oppositional alternative to socialism. This is where Mussolini came in as the "founder of fascism."

He was expelled from the socialist party for being in favor of strong nationalism. Mussolini, also known as Il Duce ("The Leader"), is considered the world's first fascist leader. This is because he created the term "fascism" from the Latin term "fasces," a symbol of punitive authority in ancient Rome. Mussolini then used the term to name his fascist party Partito Nazionale Fascista (National Fascist Party).

Neo-Fascism

At the end of World War II, any major fascist parties in Europe were broken up and even banned. But, this didn't stop other groups from adopting fascist ideals.

Starting in the late 1940s, neo-fascist groups started to form in Latin America, the Middle East, and South Africa. These groups made efforts to look more democratic than autocratic, and they altered some of their beliefs based on modern, post-war European principles.

Characteristics and Principles of Fascism

It is incredibly difficult to name all the elements of fascism because each fascist leader and party interpreted the ideology in slightly different ways. Some of the most prominent principles and characteristics of fascism include:

Totalitarian regime: One dictator has total control.

Extreme militaristic nationalism: An individual's devotion to the state is strictly enforced.

Disdain for electoral democracy: Leaders don't need to be elected from a group of candidates.

Oppose political liberalism: The government must protect the people at all costs.

Oppose cultural liberalism: The government must protect a specific culture at all costs.

Rule of the elites: There's a natural hierarchy of people.

Creation of a people's community: Individual interests are subordinate to the good of the nation.

Corporatist economy: Society is organized by "corporations" that are subordinate to the state.

Mass mobilization: Leaders win popular support and power through mass gatherings of the public.

Oppose decadence: A fascist state fights, by any means, against characteristics like materialism and cowardice.

Physical force: Violence is deemed necessary to combat opponents.

Differences Between Fascism, Communism, and Socialism

The different types of government structures and types of economic systems are easy to confuse, because there are many blurred lines between them.

Fascism vs. Socialism

If you look at examples of socialism, you'll see that the main difference between fascism and socialism is that fascism is a type of government structure while socialism is more of an economic structure. Socialism falls somewhere between capitalism and communism.

Fascism vs. Communism

When you examine examples of communism, you'll see that it is a government structure like fascism and both include government control over certain industries.The main difference between these two ideologies is that fascism embraces a strict class system while communism rejects a class system for the people.

Fascism is a right wing ideology, emphasizing authority, order and hierarchy. By contrast, communism is a left wing ideology, emphasizing concepts like equality, individual freedom and progressive ideas.

Fascism vs. Nazism

Nazism is very similar to fascism, but it takes every characteristic of fascism to the extreme. While examples of fascism can be seen throughout history, Nazism is specific to the the Nazi Party in Germany during the first half of the 1900s.

"Nazi" is an abbreviated form of the German Nationalsozialist. Even though the party's name contains the term "socialist," its actual ideals were almost the complete opposite. As mentioned above, the term "fascist" derives from the Italian Partito Nazionale Fascista.

A History of Fascism

Look at different examples of dictatorship and you'll probably see a lot of elements of fascism. While fascism might not be a mainstream ideology in modern times, there are still examples of fascist ideals throughout the world today.

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In simple terms, fascism is defined as a government structure where one dictator has complete control of the entire country, state, or territory. Anyone who opposes this dictator is suppressed and individual rights are often oppressed. A fascist government might also be called totalitarian.

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Marxism is a theory constructed by Karl Marx, in which society functions with no distinct classes and capitalism is overturned for communism.

Example of Marxism: Replacing private ownership with co-operative ownership.

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Fascism is a political movement that embraces far-right nationalism and the forceful suppression of any opposition, which is overseen by an authoritarian government. The difference between communism and fascism is that communism is based on economic equality, while fascism is based on nationalistic ideas with rigid class roles.

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The Cold War started in 1947 and ended 1989. The rivalry between the US and The Soviet Union that developed after World War 2. This conflict did not involve direct military confrontations between the main participants. Instead it was  an extensive arms race. Ideologically speaking it was a battle between Marxism and Capitalism. Neruda was returned to Chile when the Cold war ended. Neruda was originally exiled for his political views.

The video link: https://youtu.be/rB1Y4Lu1rZs
The article link: https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War

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Fascism places the importance of the nation above all else. The unity of the national community is prioritized above the rights of individuals.

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The Second Republic was also called La nina bonita (the pretty girl) and the flag was changed into this 

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Melissa

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This video gives a basic definition of communism and some examples of those principles being put in action.

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Capitalism, Communism, & Political Economies: Crash Course Geography #38

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Communism is when all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their ability's and needs. A pro of communism is it can help avoid monopolies, and a con is it often turns into manipulation of the public.

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https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/spanish-civil-war-breaks-out

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On July 18, 1936, the Spanish Civil War begins as a revolt by right-wing Spanish military officers in Spanish Morocco and spreads to mainland Spain. From the Canary Islands, General Francisco Franco broadcasts a message calling for all army officers to join the uprising and overthrow Spain's leftist Republican government. Within three days, the rebels captured Morocco, much of northern Spain, and several key cities in the south. The Republicans succeeded in putting down the uprising in other areas, including Madrid, Spain's capital. The Republicans and the Nationalists, as the rebels were called, then proceeded to secure their respective territories by executing thousands of suspected political opponents. Meanwhile, Franco flew to Morocco and prepared to bring the Army of Africa over to the mainland.

In 1931, Spanish King Alfonso XIII authorized elections to decide the government of Spain, and voters overwhelmingly chose to abolish the monarchy in favor of a liberal republic. Alfonso went into exile, and the Second Republic, initially dominated by middle-class liberals and moderate socialists, was proclaimed. During the first two years of the Republic, organized labor and leftist radicals forced widespread liberal reforms, and the independence-minded region of Catalonia and the Basque provinces achieved virtual autonomy.

The landed aristocracy, the church and a large military clique opposed the Republic, and in November 1933 conservative forces regained control of the government in elections. In response, socialists launched a revolution in the mining districts of Asturias, and Catalan nationalists rebelled in Barcelona. General Franco crushed the so-called October Revolution on behalf of the conservative government, and in 1935 he was appointed army chief of staff. In February 1936, new elections brought the Popular Front, a leftist coalition, to power, and Franco, a strict monarchist, was sent to an obscure command in the Canary Islands off Africa.

Fearing that the liberal government would give way to Marxist revolution, army officers conspired to seize power. After a period of hesitation, Franco agreed to join the military conspiracy, which was scheduled to begin in Morocco at 5 a.m. on July 18 and then in Spain 24 hours later. The difference in time was to allow the Army of Africa time to secure Morocco before being transported to Spain's Andalusian coast by the navy.

On the afternoon of July 17, the plan for the next morning was discovered in the Moroccan town of Melilla, and the rebels were forced into premature action. Melilla, Ceuta, and Tetuan were soon in the hands of the Nationalists, who were aided by conservative Moroccan troops that also opposed the leftist government in Madrid. The Republican government learned of the revolt soon after it broke out but took few actions to prevent its spread to the mainland.

On July 18, Spanish garrisons rose up in revolt all across Spain. Workers and peasants fought the uprising, but in many cities the Republican government denied them weapons, and the Nationalists soon gained control. In conservative regions, such as Old Castile and Navarre, the Nationalists seized control with little bloodshed, but in other regions, such as the fiercely independent city of Bilbao, they didn't dare leave their garrisons. The Nationalist revolt in the Spanish navy largely failed, and warships run by committees of sailors were instrumental in securing a number of coastal cities for the Republic. Nevertheless, Franco managed to ferry his Army of Africa over from Morocco, and during the next few months Nationalist forces rapidly overran much of the Republican-controlled areas in central and northern Spain. Madrid was put under siege in November.

During 1937, Franco unified the Nationalist forces under the command of the Falange, Spain's fascist party, while the Republicans fell under the sway of the communists. Germany and Italy aided Franco with an abundance of planes, tanks, and arms, while the Soviet Union aided the Republican side. In addition, thousands of communists and other radicals from France, the USSR, America, and elsewhere formed the International Brigades to aid the Republican cause. The most significant contribution of these foreign units was the successful defense of Madrid until the end of the war.

In June 1938, the Nationalists drove to the Mediterranean Sea and cut Republican territory in two. Later in the year, Franco mounted a major offensive against Catalonia. In January 1939, its capital, Barcelona, was captured, and soon after, the rest of Catalonia fell. With the Republican cause all but lost, its leaders attempted to negotiate a peace, but Franco refused. On March 28, 1939, the Republicans finally surrendered Madrid, bringing the Spanish Civil War to an end. Up to a million lives were lost in the conflict, the most devastating in Spanish history. Franco subsequently served as dictator of Spain until his death in 1975.
READ MORE: 7 Things You May Not Know About the Spanish Civil War

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On July 18, 1936, the Spanish Civil War begins as a revolt by right-wing Spanish military officers in Spanish Morocco and spreads to mainland Spain. From the Canary Islands, General Francisco Franco broadcasts a message calling for all army officers to join the uprising and overthrow Spain's leftist Republican government.

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Marxism is a political ideology, whereas communism is a political system and implementation of Marxism. Marxism is a way in which the world/society can be veiwed, while Communism exists as a form of government and condition of society.

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The Cold War was a long period of political tension between the United States and the USSR that lasted from 1947 to 1989. The US hoped to contain the spread of communism while the USSR resented the US arms buildup and intervening in others affairs. This led to an arms race and specifically the buildup of nuclear weapons. There was no actual war in terms of fighting, but the constant threat of nuclear attack made both sides take precautions and fear for potential attacks in the future. This affected Neruda because he was affiliated with the communist party and supported Joseph Stalin, and held a very high position in the Chilean government. Him being communist led to the government being overthrown and possibly his death, because he died only a few days after the government fell.

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https://www.history.com/topics/cold-war/cold-war-history

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Containment

By the time World War II ended, most American officials agreed that the best defense against the Soviet threat was a strategy called "containment." In his famous "Long Telegram," the diplomat George Kennan (1904-2005) explained the policy: The Soviet Union, he wrote, was "a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the U.S. there can be no permanent modus vivendi [agreement between parties that disagree]." As a result, America's only choice was the "long-term, patient but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies."

"It must be the policy of the United States," he declared before Congress in 1947, "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation...by outside pressures." This way of thinking would shape American foreign policy for the next four decades.

Did you know? The term 'cold war' first appeared in a 1945 essay by the English writer George Orwell called 'You and the Atomic Bomb.'

The Cold War: The Atomic Age

The containment strategy also provided the rationale for an unprecedented arms buildup in the United States. In 1950, a National Security Council Report known as NSC-68 had echoed Truman's recommendation that the country use military force to contain communist expansionism anywhere it seemed to be occurring. To that end, the report called for a four-fold increase in defense spending.

In particular, American officials encouraged the development of atomic weapons like the ones that had ended World War II. Thus began a deadly " arms race." In 1949, the Soviets tested an atom bomb of their own. In response, President Truman announced that the United States would build an even more destructive atomic weapon: the hydrogen bomb, or "superbomb." Stalin followed suit.

As a result, the stakes of the Cold War were perilously high. The first H-bomb test, in the Eniwetok atoll in the Marshall Islands, showed just how fearsome the nuclear age could be. It created a 25-square-mile fireball that vaporized an island, blew a huge hole in the ocean floor and had the power to destroy half of Manhattan. Subsequent American and Soviet tests spewed radioactive waste into the atmosphere.

The ever-present threat of nuclear annihilation had a great impact on American domestic life as well. People built bomb shelters in their backyards. They practiced attack drills in schools and other public places. The 1950s and 1960s saw an epidemic of popular films that horrified moviegoers with depictions of nuclear devastation and mutant creatures. In these and other ways, the Cold War was a constant presence in Americans' everyday lives.

The Cold War and the Space Race

Space exploration served as another dramatic arena for Cold War competition. On October 4, 1957, a Soviet R-7 intercontinental ballistic missile launched Sputnik (Russian for "traveling companion"), the world's first artificial satellite and the first man-made object to be placed into the Earth's orbit. Sputnik's launch came as a surprise, and not a pleasant one, to most Americans.

In the United States, space was seen as the next frontier, a logical extension of the grand American tradition of exploration, and it was crucial not to lose too much ground to the Soviets. In addition, this demonstration of the overwhelming power of the R-7 missile-seemingly capable of delivering a nuclear warhead into U.S. air space-made gathering intelligence about Soviet military activities particularly urgent.

In 1958, the U.S. launched its own satellite, Explorer I, designed by the U.S. Army under the direction of rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, and what came to be known as the Space Race was underway. That same year, President Dwight Eisenhower signed a public order creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency dedicated to space exploration, as well as several programs seeking to exploit the military potential of space. Still, the Soviets were one step ahead, launching the first man into space in April 1961.

That May, after Alan Shepard become the first American man in space, President John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) made the bold public claim that the U.S. would land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. His prediction came true on July 20, 1969, when Neil Armstrong of NASA's Apollo 11 mission, became the first man to set foot on the moon, effectively winning the Space Race for the Americans.

U.S. astronauts came to be seen as the ultimate American heroes. Soviets, in turn, were pictured as the ultimate villains, with their massive, relentless efforts to surpass America and prove the power of the communist system.

The Cold War and the Red Scare

Meanwhile, beginning in 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee ( HUAC) brought the Cold War home in another way. The committee began a series of hearings designed to show that communist subversion in the United States was alive and well.

In Hollywood, HUAC forced hundreds of people who worked in the movie industry to renounce left-wing political beliefs and testify against one another. More than 500 people lost their jobs. Many of these "blacklisted" writers, directors, actors and others were unable to work again for more than a decade. HUAC also accused State Department workers of engaging in subversive activities. Soon, other anticommunist politicians, most notably Senator Joseph McCarthy (1908-1957), expanded this probe to include anyone who worked in the federal government.

Thousands of federal employees were investigated, fired and even prosecuted. As this anticommunist hysteria spread throughout the 1950s, liberal college professors lost their jobs, people were asked to testify against colleagues and "loyalty oaths" became commonplace.

The Cold War Abroad

The fight against subversion at home mirrored a growing concern with the Soviet threat abroad. In June 1950, the first military action of the Cold War began when the Soviet-backed North Korean People's Army invaded its pro-Western neighbor to the south. Many American officials feared this was the first step in a communist campaign to take over the world and deemed that nonintervention was not an option. Truman sent the American military into Korea, but the Korean War dragged to a stalemate and ended in 1953.

In 1955, the United States and other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) made West Germany a member of NATO and permitted it to remilitarize. The Soviets responded with the Warsaw Pact, a mutual defense organization between the Soviet Union, Albania, Poland, Romania, Hungary, East Germany, Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria that set up a unified military command under Marshal Ivan S. Konev of the Soviet Union.

Other international disputes followed. In the early 1960s, President Kennedy faced a number of troubling situations in his own hemisphere. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 and the Cuban missile crisis the following year seemed to prove that the real communist threat now lay in the unstable, postcolonial "Third World."

Nowhere was this more apparent than in Vietnam, where the collapse of the French colonial regime had led to a struggle between the American-backed nationalist Ngo Dinh Diem in the south and the communist nationalist Ho Chi Minh in the north. Since the 1950s, the United States had been committed to the survival of an anticommunist government in the region, and by the early 1960s it seemed clear to American leaders that if they were to successfully "contain" communist expansionism there, they would have to intervene more actively on Diem's behalf. However, what was intended to be a brief military action spiraled into a 10-year conflict.

The End of the Cold War and Effects

Almost as soon as he took office, President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) began to implement a new approach to international relations. Instead of viewing the world as a hostile, "bi-polar" place, he suggested, why not use diplomacy instead of military action to create more poles? To that end, he encouraged the United Nations to recognize the communist Chinese government and, after a trip there in 1972, began to establish diplomatic relations with Beijing.

At the same time, he adopted a policy of "détente"-"relaxation"-toward the Soviet Union. In 1972, he and Soviet premier Leonid Brezhnev (1906-1982) signed the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT I), which prohibited the manufacture of nuclear missiles by both sides and took a step toward reducing the decades-old threat of nuclear war.

Despite Nixon's efforts, the Cold War heated up again under President Ronald Reagan (1911-2004). Like many leaders of his generation, Reagan believed that the spread of communism anywhere threatened freedom everywhere. As a result, he worked to provide financial and military aid to anticommunist governments and insurgencies around the world. This policy, particularly as it was applied in the developing world in places like Grenada and El Salvador, was known as the Reagan Doctrine.

Even as Reagan fought communism in Central America, however, the Soviet Union was disintegrating. In response to severe economic problems and growing political ferment in the USSR, Premier Mikhail Gorbachev (1931-2022) took office in 1985 and introduced two policies that redefined Russia's relationship to the rest of the world: "glasnost," or political openness, and " perestroika," or economic reform.

Soviet influence in Eastern Europe waned. In 1989, every other communist state in the region replaced its government with a noncommunist one. In November of that year, the Berlin Wall-the most visible symbol of the decades-long Cold War-was finally destroyed, just over two years after Reagan had challenged the Soviet premier in a speech at Brandenburg Gate in Berlin: "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall." By 1991, the Soviet Union itself had fallen apart. The Cold War was over.

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Cold War: Summary, Combatants, Start & End

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The Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union lasted for decades and resulted in anti-communist suspicions and international incidents that led the two superpowers to the brink of nuclear disaster.

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Marxism is important because it was a new economic system that opposed capitalism. Communists used it to support their anti-democratic views. Because Pablo Neruda was a politcal figure who supported communism, he most likely also supported the ideas of Marxism.

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The Case for Surrealism | The Art Assignment | PBS Digital Studios

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1917 was the beginning of the  surrealism movement, appearing in street art. In the middle of  the 1920's is when a lot of different artists started to begin the

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1917 was the beginning of the  surrealism movement, appearing in street art. In the middle of  the 1920's is when a lot of different artists started to begin the

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"The Second Spanish Republic was proclaimed when King Alfonso XIII left the country following municipal elections where anti-monarchist candidates won the majority of votes. Its government went into exile on 1 April 1939, when the last of the Republican forces surrendered to the rebel nacionales."
TAKEN FROM AN ARTICLE.
https://www.andalucia.com/history/second-republic

"It began as a late consequence of the stock market crash of 1929 and was terminated by the dictatorship of General Franco, who emerged victorious from the Spanish Civil War after plotting a military coup against the republic. The period marked the second time in Spanish history that citizens could vote for their leaders."
https://www.donquijote.org/spanish-culture/history/second-spanish-republic/

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History - Second Republic | Andalucia.com

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The Spanish Republic and commonly known as the Second Spanish Republic to distinguish it from the previous and short-lived First Spanish Republic (1873–1874), was the democratic republican administration that existed in Spain from 1931 to 1939.

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After 1945 and the surrender of Nazi Germany allies created began to fall apart and caused tension between super powers between the Warsaw Pact and the eastern country's. This time was a arms race between the USA and the USSR. During this time great strides were made in science as well as aircraft with planes like the British Concord being a commercial Jet. During the time if the cold war one major event was the space race and let to the United states being the first to lay foot on the moon. The cold war died in the 70's and 80's due to the fall of the USSR.

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20th century Chile was a time of change in Chile. During the early 20th century there was a civil war in order to attempt the balance of power in the country. Some of the changes that occurred was a new working class. With the development of railroads new industrialized workshops and textile shops began to pop up. In addition to this The Chilean trade union was born.

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20th century Chile was a time of change in Chile. During the early 20th century there was a civil war in order to attempt the balance of power in the country. Some of the changes that occurred was a new working class. With the development of railroads new industrialized workshops and textile shops began to pop up. In addition to this The Chilean trade union was born.

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The second Spanish republic brought an anticicial government which was adopted from France. It was the second time in history where the Spanish could vote for their own leaders. Then a new Spanish constitution was adopted which guaranteed the freedom of speech and freedom of association,  women's suffrage, legalized divorce and stripped Spanish nobility of their noble privileges. Land reforms came forward causing more violence between liberals and conservatives giving a group of military officers led by General Francisco Franco an opportunity to lead a military coup, this led to a civil war where eventually General Francisco franco was declared victorious -Allison
https://www.donquijote.org/spanish-culture/history/second-spanish-republic/

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Second Spanish Republic – History of Spain - don Quijote

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Second Spanish Republic. The Second Republic in Spain started after the crash of 1929 and ended with the victory of General Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

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Pablo Neruda wrote about including the working class more within society.  This is similar to 20th century Chile because through the revolution a new working class was formed and supported by their community and government. Later in his life, Neruda was part of the Chilean government, yet his power was stripped when the coup overthrew the government. This relates to 20th-century chile because at the start of the 20th century there was a civil war over an imbalance of power in the government.

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Fascist governments control the way people live. Those who criticize the government or do not obey are punished. They must leave the country, go to prison or are often executed.

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By: Liz Olaribigbe

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Surrealism officially began with Dadaist writer André Breton’s 1924 Surrealist manifesto, but the movement formed as early as 1917, inspired by the paintings of Giorgio de Chirico, who captured street locations with a hallucinatory quality.

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The Significance of the Second Spanish Republic to Pablo Neruda

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The Significance of the Second Spanish Republic to Pablo Neruda

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The Second Spanish Republic is significant to Pablo Neruda because it was one of three governments fighting for control of Spain in 1936. They all fought to be the government in charge resulting in the Spanish Civil War. The war disrupted Neruda's poetic and political development. Neruda eventually left Madrid to live in Paris, organizing the transport of over 2,000 refugees to Chile at the same time. -Erin

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The Spanish government had republic beliefs and values and failed to compromise and respect the democratic norms. This caused the fascist to revolt against the Republican government of Spain. During this time there was systematic killings, mob violence, and torture. Eventually, the fascist captured the capital Madrid and the leader, Francisco Franco ruled as a dictator for 40 years after.

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Neruda rescued over 2,000 refuges from fascist rule and saved their lives because if he hadn't, they would have been killed.

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Pablo played a big diplomatic role in Spain. He was working for the government when it was overthrown by fascists. After seeing how fascism affected the people, he began to become a very political person with very republican/ communist leaning views. When he began to speak out on these beliefs and the treatment, he was exiled. He worked to save over 2,000 refugees by taking them to chile even after being exiled and continued to deepen his beliefs.

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Pablo Neruda was a great poet during the years before and after WW2. After WW2 he help get Gonzalez Videla Elected. After WW2 the main export of Chile, copper, had decreased in price leading to economic aid coming from the US if Communism was banned in the country. Neruda who was a member of the Chile Communist party ran and hid out around south America till he could get to Europe. This lead to a Manhunt for him being led by both the USSR and the USA due to the importance of his poems. He would later return to Chile when it became a communist nation and later died soon after the communist regime was overthrown

Main Source: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/150472/on-the-run

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Pablo's focus of love and objects in his early writings connects to surrealism because he used to describe small things in great detail which allowed his creativity to flow out and it allowed him to express what was going on in his head up until his writing changed due to the communist ideology that was implemented into his country by the fascists.  The differences between the Surrealist movement and Pablo are that Pablo's life took a turn for more violent poetry, while the Surrealist movement kept heading in the same direction while still making drastic improvement.

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Surrealism, defined as an early artistic movement based on the theories of dreams and the unconscious mind made its debut in many aspects of history such as painting, photography, literature, and film. Used as a creative artistic principle, the ideologies of insanity were represented by various forms of juxtaposition. Surrealism was sought to revolutionize human experiences by finding the balance between rationality and the unconscious mind and the creativity it bestows.
By: Liz Olaribigbe