Challenges to the Chilean Regime and Critical Mass Communication Studies: 1967–73

Abstract

The year 1967 was a turning point for both Chilean politics and for academic life, for related reasons. The social forces unleashed by the Christian Democrat Party’s organizing efforts were overtaking the policies that the Frei administration had been trying to follow, and the three-way conflict between Chilean business and landowners, organized labour and peasants, and the government left the PDC with fewer and fewer allies to turn to. This narrowing of the ground which supported the PDC’s policies resulted from the party’s understanding of Chilean politics, a cultural logic — or structure of feeling — rooted in the social doctrine of the Catholic Church and in the international Christian Democrat movement. This structure of feeling was based on the PDC’s understanding that capitalist development had created societies with overly materialistic value systems and severe inequalities, but it rejected the leftist political tactics of developing the class struggle through political struggle in favour of ‘communitarian’ politics in which the values of the community would be shaped by Christian values of charity and love. Thus the PDC’s political strategy was to attempt to isolate the leftist parties and unions while at the same time attempting to improve social welfare.