| Summary: | <p class="first" id="d132030e117">On 11 July 1971, Chile’s National Congress, in a historic vote, unanimously approved
reforming the constitution, which opened the door to nationalise the large-scale copper
industry. Traditional historical accounts of the nationalisation of copper had emphasised
a history of negotiations between foreign capital and the Chilean government, documenting
how economists and political leaders experimented with different approaches to obtain
a share of the profits from the country’s most valuable commodity. By focusing exclusively
on the political economy, however, scholars have overlooked the role of workers during
and after the process of nationalisation and failed to account for why copper miners
continued to fight to protect a state-owned company. Influenced by Peter Winn’s
<i>Weavers of Revolution</i> and recent studies on people’s experience during the Popular Unity (UP) era, this
article looks at the nationalisation of copper from below. It analyses how workers
fought for, understood and experienced the nationalisation; how the UP transformed
labour relations at the local level; and how the military, after 1973, redesigned
the state company. By placing workers at the centre of the nationalisation, this article
can help better understand its importance as a matter of both political economy and
workers’ power and explain why the copper mines became the first site of labour resistance
against the military regime.
</p>
|
|---|