In 1939 the Caja de Seguro Obligatorio (CSO, Obligatory Insurance Fund), the Chilean agency that provided social security, disability, and health care insurance to blue-collar workers, published an advertisement in the Socialist party magazine Rumbo. “The social security system,” read the advertisement, “tries to replace the denomination of ‘indigent’ with that of ‘taxpayer’ [impo-nente], a switch from ‘charity’ to ‘insurance’ and from ‘alms’ to ‘rights.’” The CSO thus aligned itself with a modern notion of state welfare as a “right.” According to the agency, the extension of CSO-administered benefits would suppress demeaning and retrograde forms of public and private welfare, which it termed “charity.”1
This CSO advertisement appeared in Rumbo less than a year after the election to the presidency of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, the first of three Radical party members elected as standard bearers of Center-Left, popular-front coalitions. The first popular-front coalition was formed in...
