Summary

The history of Chile’s 19th-century elites has been narrated as an Olympian story: lofty, unreachable and grave. During the same century, writer Juan Rafael Allende managed to create a parallel, if not alternative world which demolished such suspect sublimity. The great satiric author appropriated Chile´s historic plebeian speech, somehow descended from the Spanish picaresque of the 16th and 17th centuries, adopting its visceral and carnival-like anti-clericalism and anticapitalism. Projecting this mode into the 19th century, Allende turned it into a weapon to be used against the gravitas of the formal Market and State. In particular, his attacks were leveled against renowned members of the Chilean bourgeoisie, such as Eduardo Matte, Manuel José Irarrázaval, Agustín Edwards, Julio Zegers or Federico Varela. They had framed a new wealth-centered religion which Allende hastened to denounce as a crass parody of the Christian God. The country had engendered a new creed, the “nitrate-owners creed”. The roots of Allende’s satirical thought sank deeply into the past, encompassing not only the Spanish Picaresque but also the ancient tradition of Arabic Spain, which made fun of wealthy men and magnates in the best spirit of the Libro del Buen Amor and its Islamic antecedents.