260 CHAPTER 11 THE TRIUMPH OF NEOCOLONIALISM AND THE LIBERAL STATE, 1870–1900
On January 7, 1891, congressional leaders
proclaimed a revolt against the president in the
name of legality and the constitution. The navy,
then as now led by offi cers of aristocratic descent,
promptly supported the rebels, who seized the ports
and customhouses in the north and established
their capital at Iquique, the chief port of Tarapacá.
English-owned enterprises also actively aided
the rebels. Indeed, by the admission of the British
minister at Santiago, “our naval offi cers and the
British community of Valparaíso and all along the
coast rendered material assistance to the opposi-
tion and committed many breaches of neutrality.”
Many nitrate workers, alienated by Balmaceda’s
repression of their strike, remained neutral or even
joined the rebel army, organized by a German army
offi cer, General Emil Korner. Politically isolated and
militarily defeated, Balmaceda sought refuge in the
Argentine embassy, and on September 19, 1891,
the day on which his legal term of offi ce came to an
end, Balmaceda put a bullet through his head.
The death of Chile’s fi rst anti-imperialist presi-
dent restored the reign of the oligarchy, a coalition
of landowners, bankers, merchants, and mining
interests closely linked to English capital. A new
era began, the era of the so-called Parliamentary
Republic. Taught by experience, the oligarchy
now preferred to rule through a congress divided
into various factions rather than through a strong
executive. Such decentralization of government
favored the interests of the rural aristocracy and
its allies. A new law of 1892, vesting local govern-
ments with the right to supervise elections both for
local and national offi ces, reinforced the power of
the landowners, priests, and political bosses who
had fought Balmaceda’s progressive policies.
THE PARLIAMENTARY REPUBLIC,
FOREIGN ECONOMIC DOMINATION,AND
THE GROWTH OF THE WORKING CLASS
The era of the Parliamentary Republic was accom-
panied by a growing subordination of the Chilean
economy to foreign capital, which was refl ected in
a steady increase in the foreign debt and foreign
ownership of the nation’s resources. English in-
vestments in Chile amounted to 24 million pounds
in 1890 and rose to 64 million pounds in 1913.
Of this total, 34.6 million pounds formed part of
the Chilean public debt. In the same period, North
American and German capital began to challenge
the British hegemony in Chile. England continued
to be Chile’s principal trade partner, but U.S. and
German trade with Chile grew at a faster rate. Ger-
man instructors also acquired a strong infl uence in
the Chilean army, and the fl ow of German immi-
grants into southern Chile continued, resulting in
the formation of compact colonies dominated by a
Pan-German ideology. The revival of the Chilean
economy from the depression of the early 1890s
brought an increase of nitrate, copper, and agri-
cultural exports, and further enriched the ruling
classes, but it left inquilinos, miners, and factory
workers as desperately poor as before. Meanwhile,
the working class grew from 120,000 to 250,000
between 1890 and 1900, and the doctrines of trade
unionism, socialism, and anarchism achieved
growing popularity in its ranks.
Luis Emilio Recabarren (1876–1924), the fa-
ther of Chilean socialism and communism, played
a decisive role in the social and political awaken-
ing of the Chilean proletariat. In 1906, Recabar-
ren was elected to Congress from a mining area but
was not allowed to take his seat because he refused
to take his oath of offi ce on the Bible. In 1909 he
organized the Workers Federation of Chile, the fi rst
national trade union movement. Three years later,
he founded the Socialist Party, a revolutionary
Marxist movement, and became its fi rst secretary.
The growing self-consciousness and militancy
of the Chilean working class found expression in
a mounting wave of strikes. Between 1911 and
1920, almost three hundred strikes, involving
more than 300,000 workers, took place. Many
were crushed with traditional brutal methods that
left thousands of workers dead.Brazilian Politics and Economy
THE FALL OF THE MONARCHY
Abolition of slavery in 1888 sabotaged slavery’s
sister institution, the monarchy, which had long
rested on the support of the planter class, especially