Ranquil: Rural Rebellion, Political Violence, and Historical Memory in Chile

by Thomas Miller Klubock

Overview

The first major history of Chile’s most significant peasant rebellion and the violent repression that followed

In 1934, peasants turned to revolution to overturn Chile’s oligarchic political order and the profound social inequalities in the Chilean countryside. The brutal military counterinsurgency that followed was one of the worst acts of state terror in Chile until the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet (1973–1990). Using untapped archival sources, award-winning scholar Thomas Miller Klubock exposes Chile’s long history of political violence and authoritarianism and chronicles peasants’ movements to build a more just and freer society. Klubock further explores how an amnesty law that erased both the rebellion and the military atrocities lay the foundation for the political stability that characterized Chile’s multi-party democracy. This historical amnesia or olvido, Klubock argues, was a precondition of national reconciliation and democratic rule, which endured until 1973, when conflict in the countryside ended once again with violent repression during the Pinochet dictatorship.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780300262322
Publisher:	Yale University Press
Publication date:	01/04/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Thomas Miller Klubock is professor of history at the University of Virginia. He is the author of La Frontera: Forests and Ecological Conflict in Chile’s Frontier Territory and has won numerous awards, including a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments vii

Glossary ix

Maps xi

Introduction 1

1 San Ignacio de Pemehue: Building an Hacienda on the Southern Frontier 26

2 Campesinos, Indígenas, and Early Challenges to the Hacienda 44

3 The Inquilinos Organize: Rural Labor and Social Unrest in Southern Chile 69

4 Populism in the Countryside: The Sindicato Agrícola Lonqiumay and Carlos Ibáñez 98

5 Agrarian Reform Arrives in Alto Bío Bío 117

6 The Fall of Ibáñez and Political Radicalization in Southern Chile 142

7 Expulsion from the Nitrite Valley 168

8 "All You See Is Yours": The Sindicato Agrícola Lonquimay's Road to Revolution 188

9 Rebellion and Repression 214

10 History, Memory, and the Question of Campesino Insurgency 243

Notes 271

Index 309

Editorial Reviews

A deeply researched work. . . . Ránquil deserves a long historiographical life. It is a superb work of labor, agrarian, and political history.”—Raymond Craib, Hispanic American Historical Review

“An engaging, well-researched historical account of the country’s 1934 Ránquil rebellion. . . . A model for studying rural rebellions, violence, and memory.”—A. Vergara, Choice

Winner of the Whitaker Book Prize from the Mid-Atlantic Council on Latin American Studies (MACLAS)

“This deeply researched narrative unfolds like a historical novel, capturing the protagonists in the long history of conflict over land, labor conditions, and national government policies that provoked the Ranquil rebellion and massacre, as well as its ‘place’ in present-day Chilean politics and historical memory.”—Brian Loveman, author of No Higher Law: American Foreign Policy and the Western Hemisphere since 1776

“In this meticulously researched, finely crafted, and cogently argued work, Klubock challenges Chile’s long-standing image as a paradigm of social peace and political concord in Latin America. This is a mandatory read for anyone interested in contemporary Chilean history.”—Julio Pinto, Universidad de Santiago de Chile

From the Publisher