Source: Latin American Perspectives | Published: 2026-08-01
Category: 정권·선거 변동 | Keywords: authoritarian, chile, coup, institutional
The fiftieth anniversary of the September 11, 1973 coup d'état in Chile has prompted a renewed wave of scholarly reflection on one of the most consequential political ruptures in twentieth-century Latin American history. Yet the significance of this anniversary extends well beyond commemorative exercises. Across the global South, debates about democratic backsliding, the erosion of labor rights, and the long institutional shadows cast by authoritarian regimes have acquired renewed urgency. Chile's experience occupies a singular place in these conversations because the Pinochet dictatorship did not merely suppress political opposition — it fundamentally restructured the economic and institutional architecture through which workers organized, bargained, and contested power. More than five decades after the coup, understanding the persistent contours of that transformation remains essential for scholars of civil society, labor politics, and the political economy of development. The article under examination, published in Latin American Perspectives, contributes to this understanding by tracing the arc from authoritarian imposition to what it characterizes as an emerging revitalization — a trajectory that illuminates not only Chile's particular path but also broader questions about institutional resilience and democratic recovery under neoliberalism.
At the center of the article's analysis is the Plan Laboral of 1979, the legislative cornerstone of the Pinochet regime's reorganization of Chilean labor relations. Designed under the direction of Minister of Labor José Piñera and deeply shaped by Chicago School economic doctrine, the Plan Laboral systematically dismantled the collective power of organized labor. It fragmented bargaining units to the firm level, restricted the scope of collective agreements, curtailed the right to strike, and effectively prohibited solidarity actions between workers across different enterprises. The intent was not simply to weaken trade unions in the immediate term but to embed structural constraints within the legal and economic order that would persist regardless of subsequent political transitions. This is precisely what the article's analysis reveals: the political democratization of 1990, when Patricio Aylwin assumed the presidency and ended seventeen years of military rule, did not translate into a comprehensive restoration of labor rights. The post-authoritarian Concertación governments, navigating the delicate politics of transition and constrained by the 1980 constitution that Pinochet had crafted to protect the neoliberal settlement, left the essential architecture of the Plan Laboral largely intact. Trade union density fell dramatically from its pre-coup levels, and Chilean labor relations entered the democratic era structurally hobbled in ways that distinguished Chile from many of its regional neighbors.
The broader regional context is indispensable for appreciating both the exceptionalism and the representativeness of the Chilean case. Across Latin America, the question of how authoritarian legacies shape post-transition civil society has generated a substantial literature, and the labor movement offers one of the most instructive lenses through which to examine this dynamic. In countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, transitions from military rule were accompanied by — and in important respects driven by — the resurgence of organized labor. Brazil's Central Única dos Trabalhadores, founded in 1983, became one of the most powerful labor federations in the hemisphere and served as the organizational foundation for the Partido dos Trabalhadores and the eventual presidency of Lula da Silva. Argentina's CGT, despite its own complex relationship with Peronism and authoritarianism, retained institutional density through the dictatorship years in ways that Chilean unions, shattered by the Plan Laboral, could not. Chile thus presents an important variation: a case in which the authoritarian intervention was so deeply institutionalized that labor's recovery required not merely political will but structural legislative reform — reform that proved extraordinarily difficult to achieve within a constitutional framework designed to entrench minority veto power and protect market liberalization from majoritarian reversal.
The policy significance of the article's findings is considerable, particularly in light of the constitutional and social upheavals that Chile experienced beginning with the 2019 estallido social and the subsequent — if ultimately unsuccessful — constitutional reform process. The mass protests of October 2019, which exploded in response to a metro fare increase but quickly encompassed decades of accumulated grievances over inequality, privatized pensions, healthcare, and education, demonstrated that the neoliberal model's social legitimacy had been eroding for years. Labor unions were among the actors that engaged with this moment, though the fragmented structure inherited from the Plan Laboral complicated their capacity to serve as organizational anchors for the movement in the way that more institutionally robust union federations might have. The Boric government, which came to power in 2022 on a platform of social transformation, has pursued labor law reforms aimed at strengthening collective bargaining and extending union coverage — efforts that represent precisely the kind of revitalization the article identifies as emergent. Whether these reforms can overcome five decades of institutional path dependency, however, remains an open and empirically vital question. The article's analytical contribution lies in its insistence that understanding the present moment requires a serious engagement with the depth and durability of the authoritarian imprint, rather than treating the democratic transition as a clean break.
For researchers in development studies, ODA policy, and civil society scholarship, the Chilean trade union case carries important methodological and normative implications. A recurring assumption in development discourse holds that formal democratization creates the conditions for civil society revitalization — that once authoritarian constraints are lifted, organizations of workers, citizens, and communities will naturally recover strength and voice. Chile complicates this assumption in productive ways. It demonstrates that institutional design, particularly the codification of market arrangements and labor relations in constitutionally entrenched form, can function as a form of structural authoritarianism that persists long after the generals have left power. Donors and international civil society organizations working in post-authoritarian and transitional contexts must therefore attend not only to the formal political environment but to the economic and legal structures within which civil society actors must operate. The revitalization that the article identifies in Chilean trade unionism — tentative, contested, and hard-won — suggests that recovery is possible but that it requires sustained political effort, legal reform, and generational renewal. As Chile navigates its ongoing reckoning with the legacy of 1973, its experience offers lessons that resonate far beyond the Andes, speaking to all societies grappling with the long afterlife of authoritarian restructuring and the conditions under which democratic institutions can be genuinely, rather than merely formally, restored.