Abstract

BRAVO VARGAS, Viviana. A Liberating Church, Rearticulation of Politics and Social Protest in Chile (1973-1989). hist.crit. [online]. 2016, n.62, pp.77-96. ISSN 0121-1617.  https://doi.org/10.7440/histcrit62.2016.04.

The purpose of this article is to reconstruct and analyze the singular role the Catholic Church assumed both as a space and as a political actor during the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. On the one hand, it examines the work of the Committed Christians during the national protest days initiated on a massive scale in May of 1983; and, on the other, it highlights the wealth of its archives for understanding the Chilean social protest that circumvented the censorship of the time. With this objective, the article presents information obtained through interviews of agents of ecclesiastic communities and leftist militants, as well documents, photos and reports conserved in its document archives. Finally, it concludes that the diverse initiatives undertaken to defend human rights and to regenerate the social fabric offered a solid institutional framework to break through the censorship and to articulate grassroots political practices during the period studied.

Keywords : Chile; dictatorship; protest movement; censorship; religious community; Catholic Church.

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