Siloísmo and the Self in Allende’s Chile: Youth, “Total Revolution,” and the Roots of the Humanist Movement

Silo’s “sermon on the mount,” as some later called it, took place high up in the Andes mountains near Mendoza, Argentina, at midday on May 4, 1969. Days earlier, Mendoza’s municipal officials, in accordance with the national government’s restriction of civil liberties, had denied a public meeting space within the city’s limits to Silo (the pseudonym used by the Mendocino Mario Luis Rodríguez Cobos) and his young followers. Rebuffed by Mendoza’s elders and seeking a space in which to assemble inconspicuously, the Siloístas formed an impromptu convoy and traveled a meandering road into the towering mountains, with inquisitive police never far behind, until they eventually gathered on a rise named Punta de Vacas. There, surrounded by rocks, dust, and shrubs, Silo and his followers engendered a youth movement whose repercussions would soon be felt strongly across the border in Chile, where profound political, social, cultural, and economic change lay on...