Continuidades y discontinuidades de la violencia política en la transición a la democracia en Chile

Abstract

This article reflects on political violence in the Chilean transition based on a dialogue with seven narratives that address the memories built by activists who exercised it during that period. Taking the knowledge produced by activists, produced through the method of “narrative productions”, as a starting point, two axes of analysis emerge: the reconfigurations of the practices, meanings, and possibilities of violence for struggle in post-dictatorial democracy and the continuations of state political violence. The text concludes that Chilean political transition is conformed as a device for the pacification of society. Such a device creates institutions, laws, and discourses that delegitimize, persecute and stigmatize the use of political violence as a form of struggle, while it legitimizes the State political violence, aimed primarily at those who pose a risk to the maintenance of the new order.