The Longue Durée of Chilean Exceptionalism: Settler Colonialism, Political Violence, and Popular Culture

Thesis (Master's)--University of Washington, 2022The nationwide protests that began in Santiago in October 2019 laid bare the tensions churning underneath the narrative of Chilean economic prosperity, democracy, and stability known as Chilean exceptionalism. Protestors carrying signs stating “it’s not about 30 pesos, it’s about 30 years” exhibited the public’s understanding that the triumphalist discourse of the democratic transition from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet in 1990 was not as complete as advertised. However, even the slogan’s transformed understanding of the transition does not consider the continuity of settler-colonial logics of elimination and counter-insurgent violence that started with the dispossession of Indigenous land. I argue that the roots of the tensions that boiled over in October 2019 are not 30 but rather 500 years old. Through a dialogue between an archive of “high politics” comprised of official documents and an archive of “low data,” the 2017 docudrama series Una historia necessaria, I demonstrate how settler-colonial violence is an essential to Chilean statecraft. Finally, I contend that the fallout from the protests has provided an opening for new forms of justice that can address the settler-colonial sources of violence