ABSTRACT
The opposition may have failed in its efforts to over throw the dictatorship yet have succeeded in maintaining its political organizational structure. It may have established a political alternative to the regime and yet lack the means to precipitate the transition. The regimes ultimate logic has been to eliminate all the structural bases that had allowed any form of class-based or popular activity to develop. Analyzing the evolution of the political opposition to the Chilean military regime reveals that its course of development until 1980 emphasized maintaining and renewing its organizational structure as well as creating a united front that could offer an alternative to the regime. The regimes so-called political laws revived the debate over the opposition’s options. The imminence of the 1988 plebiscite led most of the opposition to propose “free elections.” The relations between church and state in Chile are far more complex.
