Summary

This article analyzed the social dimension of the political discourse addressed by Arturo Alessandri Palma to the nitrate workers, and the working class at large, in the period comprised between 1915 and 1932. Its purpose is to consider the contents of that dimension and their capacity to induces the popular sectors to assume an active political militancy. It evaluates the orientation of Alessandri's "populist" practices after 1920 as a mechanism of working-class politicization, arguing that they had a basically instrumental character. In that regard, the traditional image of Alessandri as a popular "caudillo" since the 1915 congressional campaign is brought to question, emphasizing instead his interest in giving the working-class mobilization an institutional slant, in support of the conservation of public order and social peace.