ABSTRACT
Unlike the guerrilla movements marked by the influence of the Cuban revolution and the foco approach, very typical of the 1960s, the armed organizations in Chile had a different origin and evolution. The tendency of the Chilean popular movement to form social and political organizations in the context of the bourgeois institutionality, restricted the field of action and mass support of the new insurgent movements. In the early 1970s, even the most important Castro-oriented organization of the period, the Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria (MIR) opted for incorporation in the mass movement to upsurge the class struggle from within. Only after the coup d’état of 11 September 1973 that brought Augusto Pinochet to power, one can discern a strategic design and operational actions that conjoined armed struggle and political activities. In this chapter I analyze the emergence and development of armed organizations in Chile in order to assess the social, cultural and political impact during the cycle of 1965-1973.
