Democratic Party

views updated

Democratic Party

The Democratic Party (Partido Demócrata) was the first Chilean political party dedicated to advancing the cause of the workers. Created in 1887 by an offshoot of the Radical Party, the Democrats held their first convention two years later. This party was the first in Chile seeking to protect the economic and political interests of the lower classes, calling for honest elections, laws to provide decent housing and improved working conditions, a return to the gold standard, and economic nationalism.

Unlike other political organizations, the Democratic Party's directors included professionals and intellectuals like lawyer Malaquías Concha and physician Alejandro Bustamante, but more significantly, it also included workers, such as printer Luis Emilio Recabarren. Not surprisingly, this party, which seriously challenged Chile's status quo, encountered difficulties. Its support of José Manuel Balmaceda during the 1891 revolution led to the persecution of its leaders at the hands of the congressionalist victors. Perhaps because it included various political extremists such as anarchists, the party initially refused to participate in any of the parliamentary political coalitions. It also provided leadership in organizing various strikes and demonstrations, such as the 1905 Santiago Meat Riots.

Eventually, anxious to participate in government, and perhaps in patronage as well, the Democrats abandoned their principles of noncooperation, often supporting extremely reactionary candidates such as those of the Conservative Party, in return for ministerial portfolios. This willingness to cooperate with bourgeois parties, which gained the Democrats a ministerial post, precipitated various schisms. The conflict between the traditionalists and those advocating socialism ultimately led, in 1912, to the creation of the Socialist Workers Party (Partido Obrero Socialista—POS).

Electing its first deputy to the national Congress in 1894, the Democratic Party continued to win additional victories. In 1904 six Democratic congressmen and, for the first time, a senator, won legislative seats. Triumph at the polls, however, did not always translate into political power, as the Congress sometimes refused to seat Democratic legislators. The party nevertheless enjoyed increasing popularity, particularly in the nitrate pampas and among urban workers. The Democrats seemed to reach their political zenith in 1932, when the party elected thirteen deputies. Too conservative for the Left and too radical for the Right, the party began to lose support, particularly when some of its more progressive members, like Recabarren, left the party. Even those who remained seemed without direction: in the 1958 presidential election the members of the Democratic Party supported each of the three candidates. By this time the party had won but 5 percent of the vote, and by 1965 it had ceased to be of any real importance.

Although it eventually went out of existence, the Democratic Party nonetheless fulfilled an important function. It was one of the first of Chile's parties to articulate such ideas as creating a labor section and providing social security, worker compensation, and accident insurance to protect the nation's working class.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Hector De Petris Giesen, Historia del partido democrático (1942).

Germán Urzúa Valenzuela, Los partidos políticos chilenos (1968), pp. 53-55.

Ben G. Burnett, Political Groups in Chile (1970), pp. 161-170, 178-181.

Peter De Shazo, Urban Workers and Labor Unions in Chile, 1902–1927 (1983), pp. 90-92, 109-113, 119-122, 126, 139-140, 175, 177.

Karen L. Remmer, Party Competition in Argentina and Chile: Political Recruitment and Public Policy, 1890–1930 (1984), pp. 67-70, 85-86, 118-120.

Additional Bibliography

Hutchison, Elizabeth Q. Labors Appropriate to Their Sex Gender, Labor, and Politics in Urban Chile, 1900–1930. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001.

William F. Sater

Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture