Frederick Nunn’s most recent book on the Chilean military is much more than a description of the military in Chilean history as its title suggests. It is a provocative series of essays which seek to explain the distinctive character of Chilean military-civil relations in the nineteenth century; the effects of military professionalization within the context of a society undergoing profound socioeconomic change (1891-1932); the role of the military during the years of seemingly institutionalized formal democracy (1932-1970); and the breakdown of formal democracy (1970-1973). The book contains as much political and social history as it does history of the evolution of military institutions in Chile.
To explain the lack of caudillismo and military intervention in Chilean politics from 1830-1891, Nunn points to the predominance of a Basque-Castilian aristocracy fused with military elites; Chile’s relative ethnic and cultural homogeneity; early development of Chilean nationalism; a competent, responsible and responsive ruling class which absorbed new talent and wealth; a docile, subservient lower class; and a respect, reverence and appreciation for the services rendered by the military. According to Nunn, these elements combined to create conditions in which the military elites had almost no reason to intervene in national politics after the initial instability following independence. From the late nineteenth century onward, however, military professionalization led to increased politization of the Chilean military and eventually to the military overthrow of the parliamentary republic (1891-1924).
The period 1920-1932, previously treated by Professor Nunn in his Chilean Politics 1920-1931, gave way to some forty years of uninterrupted civilian rule, despite occasional military plots or rumblings. Nunn suggests that the military had no reason to intervene as long as the [military] institution was guaranteed its autonomy, a reasonable share of the budget, and as long as it was not drawn into extraprofessional matters and the constitution was observed by all Chileans (p. 241). When these conditions no longer applied after 1970, the military eventually carried out a coup “neither rightist nor leftist. . . [which] served the interests of Chile as interpreted by the armed forces. Other interests [were] ancillary (p. 297).”
Nunn’s book contains a wealth of information (and useful citations) concerning the Chilean military. It is also a profoundly conservative interpretation of the military in Chilean history which will be favorably received in Santiago (1976) and scathingly attacked by Marxist and leftist social scientists. Nunn’s conservatism is clear when he tells us that “in Chile, finally, the coming to power of extremists [Allende] was . . . by election” (p. 219). Nunn’s conception of the military as an institutional interest group with its own professional concerns and ideologies rather than as an integral part of a state apparatus which imposed “stability” through repression of working class movements is provocative but clearly incompatible with conventional Marxist analysis and also, perhaps, with revisionist Chilean historiography. For while Nunn interprets the legend on the national escutcheon (por la razón ó la fuerza) in terms of the military’s role in Chilean foreign policy, Francisco Encina claims that this legend originated in the abusive use of force by an eighteenth-century city official in Santiago (Luis Manuel de Zañartu), who believed that “whippings, fetters, and forced labor would make useful, sober citizens [of those who avoided work] and bullets or the gallows eliminate the recalcitant.”
There is no question that the so-called subservience and docility of Chilean campesinos and workers resulted from persistent and harsh repression from the time that landowners were extended judicial authority within their estates in the eighteenth century. The precise role of the military (and the carabineros) in this repression, at different times, needs further study. As Professor Nunn recognizes, in the twentieth century a significant element within the military were attracted to fascism and in accord with certain civilian groups in regard to anti-Marxism. In this respect, at the least, the Chilean coup of 1973 cannot be said to be “neither rightist nor leftist” as Professor Nunn suggests—though to reject this assertion is not to reject Nunn’s basic thesis that the Chilean military must be understood in relation to its own institutional imperatives and evolution, nor to minimize his significant contribution in pursuit of that understanding.
