Sistema Regional de Información
en línea para Revistas Científicas de América Latina,
el Caribe, España y Portugal

This article deals with the intellectual evolution and political activities of Carlos Keller Rueff between the early 1920s and the late 1930s. It discusses his development from a German nationalist to a Chilean fascist during this eventful period. In the 1920s Keller, who started his career in the Deutsch-Chilenischer Bund, the umbrella organisation of the German-Chilean community, expressed German National positions. Only at the end of the decade he began to distance himself from his narrow, sectarian German sub-culture and took a broader, national view, a development that coincided with his move from Concepción to Santiago and the failure of his plan to revive the immigration of Germans to Chile. With the book La eterna crisis chilena, published in 1931, he finally emerged as a Chilean nationalist and gained the reputation of an intellectual. One year later, in April 1932, he was, together with Jorge González von Marées, one of the founding members of the Chilean Movimiento Nacional Socialista (MNS). Keller became the movement’s ideologue and its second most prominent leader. This article concludes that his career abruptly ended with the failed nacista coup of 5 September 1938 and the subsequent transformation of the MNS into the Vanguardia Popular Socialista. 

Through schools, newspapers, and military quarters from Argentina and Chile, it is taught that the neighbour country is always the expansionist and lands’ robber one. On the one hand, to all lands to the south of the Bío-Bío belonged to Río de la Plata’s Viceroyalty, and therefore, they should be now Argentinian. On the other hand, to Chileans, the Patagonia would have been owned by Chile until the Treaty of 1881, which Chile would have signed under pressure, since the Pacific War was taking place at that moment. This article shows that both positions are untrue, since some documents, antecedents and royal dispositions haven’t been taken into consideration by these two countries. These serious mistakes are already standardized in both, Argentinian’s and Chilean’s historiography. In this article the errors are described and explained through new documentary evidence.

The industrialisation of Magallanes was a particular economic phenomenon that typified the rise and development of the southern Chilean territory during the period between the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first two decades of the twentieth century. This article argues that the context of geographical isolation and remoteness served as a stimulus to the colonists to satisfy the numerous requirements for services and supply of goods, which imports from Europe did not cover in the stipulated time. Through a study of the economic development of the industries, it can be stated that, first and foremost, this work depended on sheep breeding. It is concluded that this was at the same time evidence of the creativity, intelligence and energy of European immigrants, which contributed to Magellanic autonomy and self-sufficiency during a decisive period of its history.

This article analyses the installation in Chile of a neoliberal model during the military regime headed by General Augusto Pinochet, between 1973 and 1979. Within that context, it offers a reinterpretation of the allegedly foundational character of that government, its also supposedly early adherence to the neoliberal matrix, and its break with the Keynesian capitalism which had prevailed since the 1930’s. The analysis is focused on the evolution of military about the links between the State and development, and on the debate between neoliberalism and statism that was carried out within the armed forces. It is concluded that this ideological debate was not linear and that there was some resistance within this group to the implementation of the new model.  

This article shows a document related to the advice given by the Compañía Minera de Cobre to its US workers at the Potrerillos mine, entitled: "Information for Employees. Andes Copper Mining Company, Potrerillos, Chile", dated 1918, which is part of the Company's archives held at The Montana Historical Society Archives. The text is accompanied by a brief historical contextualisation that addresses the social situation of the copper mining companies in Chile, their housing camps and possible interpretations of the document. It is concluded that the document provides accurate information on the living conditions of its inhabitants, and that it reflects the foreigners' view of Chile.  

Salinity is an important variable influencing the density and diversity of rotifers. Studies on salt tolerance of rotifers have so far concentrated on euryhaline species while very little information is available on noneuryhaline taxa. In the present work, we have evaluated the combined effects of Chlorella vulgaris and sodium chloride on the population growth of two freshwater rotifers B. calyciflorus and B. patulus. A 24 hr acute tolerance test using NaCl revealed that B. calyciflorus was more resistant (LC50 = 3.75 ± 0.04 g l-1) than B. patulus (2.14 ± 0.09 g l-1). The maximal population density (mean±standard error) for B. calyciflorus in the control at 4.5 X106 cells ml-1 (algal level) was 80 ±5 ind. ml-1, which was nearly a fifth of the one for B. patulus (397 ± 7 ind. ml-1) under comparable conditions. Data on population growth revealed that regardless of salt concentration, the density of B. calyciflorus increased with increasing food levels, while for B. patulus, this trend was evident only in the controls. Regardless of salt concentration and algal food level, the day of maximal population density was lower (4 ± 0.5 days) for B. calyciflorus than for B. patulus (11 ±1 day). The highest rates of population increase (r values) for B. calyciflorus and B. patulus were 0.429 ± 0.012 and 0.367 ± 0.004, respectively, recorded at 4.5 X106 cells ml-1 of Chlorella in the controls. The protective role of algae in reducing the effect of salt stress was more evident in B. calyciflorus than B. patulus.

 Amid the transformations of the international order, the subordination of commercial and financial flows to non-economic goal is a phenomenon with increasing occurrences. The objective of this work is to understand the characteristics of this instrumental use of in­ternational economic relations in the recent period (2017-2022). It is argued that in these years there has been a deployment of instrumental economic diplomacy, supported both by discourses that postulate a necessary link between economic policy, international security and strategic policy; and by the expansion of the capacity of governments to intervene in the economic flows. The article reviews the conceptual debates around instrumental eco­nomic diplomacy and geoeconomics; to seek to systematize the features of these practices and proceed to their empirical study. Three key cases are analyzed: the USA, China and the European Union. A research agenda emerges from the identified regularities.

In Latin America, recent processes of democratic backsliding have tested the robustness of the Inter-American democratic system (IADS). Based on theoretical frameworks of democ­racy promotion, hypotheses stemming from institutionalist and normative theories suffer from important limitations in explaining the liberal democracies’ motivations to act in the face of anti-democratic threats. Analyzing the cases of democratic regression in Bolivia, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and the consequent responses from the Caribbean Community’s (Caricom) liberal democracies vis-à-vis these autocracies, this article cor­roborates that democracy promotion responds to a materialistic-utilitarian hypothesis that prioritizes material cost-benefit calculations over democratic norms and institutions. The analysis reveals that the worrying but real prevalence of power politics over democratic principles challenges the solidity of the IADS.

This is a theoretical paper in the field of democratic theory. It reviews the discussions on one of the elements proposed to measure the quality of democracies: government responsiveness to citizens’ preferences. It analyses theoretical discussions on democracy, quality of democ­racy and in particular the debate on whether responsiveness is useful to measure quality, what challenges it implies and what are its conceptual and empirical limits. It concludes with a research agenda on this topic.

State capacity is often hypothesized to reinforce democracy, wherever democracy already exists. This article demonstrates that, at the local level, capacity can actually undermine democracy by making it harder for councilors to hold mayors accountable. Drawing on the comparative method, this work analyzes the effect of bureaucratic capacity on horizontal accountability (which is critical for liberal democracy) in four municipalities in Santiago, Chile. I argue that well-funded, professionalized, and usable bureaucracies allow mayors to monopolize relationships with local communities and, thus, marginalize municipal councils as key agents of local accountability. When bureaucracies lack capacity but not usability, mayorscan still manage to avoid horizontal accountability by making access to municipal resources contingent upon councilors’ loyalty. Municipal councils’ inclination towards accountability is, however, greater when local bureaucracies are highly capable but not usable. Here, the local executive lacks influence over councilors’ electoral support and, therefore, on their inclination towards accountability.