The cuestión social must end! The dictatorship of Ibáñez from a populist perspective, 1927-1931

Resumen

This article explores the feasibility of including the Military Dictatorship of General Carlos Ibáñez del Campo (Chile, 1927-1931) among Latin America’s “classic” mid-twentieth century populist experiences. To that end, it focuses on its policies of labor legislation and working-class appeal, aimed at mitigating social conflicts through institutional co-optation and the expansion of State functions, invoking the restoration of a compromised “national unity.” It uses administrative and journalistic sources from the time and concludes that ibañista strategies managed to attract considerable popular support, thus making them comparable, in terms of both its aims and its results, to more extensively studied cases of “classic populism”.