Abstract

On October 25, 2020, Chileans voted overwhelmingly to annul Augusto Pinochet’s 1980 constitution. Following a year after mass protests, the country’s citizens are thereby on a path to fully recovering the public sovereignty lost ever since Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’étatagainst Salvador Allende in 1973. The present conference sets out to explore the ideological origins of Chile’s so-called “Authoritarian and Protected Democracy,” its rendition into the infamous 1980 Constitution, the mobilization and resistance to this alleged democratic state model within and outside Chile, and its ultimate decline. If successful, this mini-conference could become a basis for an original, and indeed timely, special issue on Chile’s 1980 Constitution in a Latin American history/Latin American studies journal. In this symposium, we seek to touch on the following interconnected themes: •The national and international right-wing ideologies and networks informing Pinochet’ brand of authoritarianism. •The influence of Chilean authoritarianism in Latin America during the Cold War. •The national and international contexts of the 1980 constitutional process (human rights violations; changes in the Cold War balance and in USA foreign relations) •The Chilean transition to democracy and the efforts to either modify or invalidate the 1980 constitution, 1980-1992. •The political, legal, and social consequences of the 1980 Constitution (the “authoritarian clauses”); the Constitution as a basis for the Chilean political, economic and social order).

Program [pdf]