Dignifying the Revolution: Cordón Vicuña Mackenna and the Chilean Road to Socialism, 1957-2010

In this project, which is part of my dissertation, I seek to reconstruct the links between the Catholic Church and Chile’s socialist revolution through a targeted study of the Vicuña Mackenna industrial zone located in southeastern Santiago. Scholars have neglected the Church’s role, especially its international dimensions, in relation to the Chilean revolution. And yet, following Vatican II, the San Cayetano Parish injected discourses of social justice and dignity into the local culture – the same discourses that the zone’s workers and residents deployed in their mobilizations during the revolution. This grant will help fund onsite research in archives across Santiago.