La Matanza del Seguro Obrero

摘要

The year 1938 was a momentous one for Chile. An elected political system that had run the country since a civil war in 1891 broke down in 1924-5 into a dictatorship with a highly limited legislature. A military opportunist, the then Colonel Carlos Ibariez del Campo, consolidated power in the name of carrying through social and economic reforms while suppressing anarchists and communists. The president displaced by the coup that led to Ibaflez was Arturo Alessandri, a leader of the Radical Party and a populist rabble-rouser when he ran for office in 1920.