Description
Book SynopsisExamines the politics of coal miners in Chile during the 1930s and '40s, when they supported the Communist Party in a project of cross-class alliances aimed at defeating fascism, promoting national development, and deepening Chilean democracy.
Trade Review“The research in Mining for the Nation is highly original. It fills a gap in Chilean labor and mining history, both in English and in Spanish. The book offers a reinterpretation of the Popular Front experience in Chile and the first serious book-length political history of the coal region and the role of the Communist Party there from the 1930s to 1952. Additionally, it serves as a very readable history of the complex connections among local, regional, national, and international politics in 1930s–1950s Chile.”
—Brian Loveman,San Diego State University
“In Mining for the Nation, Jody Pavilack tells a complex story with commendable clarity. The book is well conceptualized, lucidly analyzed, and persuasively argued, with the support of extensive research in diverse local, national, and international primary and secondary sources, both public and private. Pavilack makes good use of recent literature on citizenship, on states of exception in Chile, and on the Cold War in Latin America. This is a book that every scholar of Chile and Latin American labor and the Left will want to have.”
—Peter Winn,Tufts University
“[Jody Pavilack] does an excellent job of summarizing Chilean politics from the 1920s through the 1940s.”
—Michael Monteón The Americas
Table of ContentsContents
List of Illustrations
Preface: Beginning at the End
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Communists, Coal Miners, and Chilean Democracy
Part I Hopes and Promises
1. From Soldiers of Revolution to Citizen Workers
2. Challenging Exclusion: The Birth of the Popular Front in the Coal Region
3. From Tremors to Quakes: The Popular Front Wins the Presidency in 1938
Part II Collaboration and Conflict
4. Workers Contend with the Companies and the Popular Front Government, 1940–1942
5. “With a Bullet in His Heart and the Chilean Flag in His Hand”: Police Shootings in Lota, October 1942
6. “Soldiers of Democracy”: Collaboration and Conflict During World War II
7. General Strikes and States of Siege: Polarization in the Postwar Transition
Part III Rupture and Betrayal
8. “The People Call You Gabriel”: Communist-Backed González Videla Reaches the Presidential Palace
9. The Great Betrayal: González Videla and the Coal Miners’ Strike of October 1947
10. Democracy Under Siege: González Videla’s “Damned Law,” Internment Camps, and Mass Deportations
Conclusion: Coalition Politics in the History of Chilean Democracy
Bibliography
Index
