The political uses of the history of the Chile-an Civil War of 1891 during the last stage of the Popular Unity Government (1973)

In the last year of the Popular Unity government (1973) the country expressed the political, economic and social conflict through a level of polarization that transversally tense the re-lationships between the different classes of Chilean society. A polarization caused by permanent foreign and internal eco-nomic pressures on the government, the explicitly formulated strategy of the political opposition and a sector of civil socie-ty to put an end to “the Chilean path to socialism” and, final-ly, the political crisis. internal conflict that the Popular Unity faced. In this confrontational context, a little-regarded aspect relates to the fact that both the government and the opposition symbolically delegated historical processes for legitimatory purposes. Both the government and the opposition used a historical interpretation of the Civil War of 1891 as an in-strument of political legitimation: the Popular Unity government to vindicate its political project of achieving socialism through democratic means, and the opposition to explain their “political-moral incompetence” to avoid a civil war.