Dissertation May 2015
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Liberating Forestry: Forestry Workers, Participatory Politics, and the Chilean Nation By Jennifer Adaline Baca A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Geography in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Nathan F. Sayre, Co-chair Professor Gillian P. Hart, Co-chair Professor Nancy L. Peluso Professor Thomas Miller Klubock Spring 2015 © 2015 Jennifer Adaline Baca ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Abstract Liberating Forestry: Forestry Workers, Participatory Politics, and the Chilean Nation By Jennifer Adaline Baca Doctor of Philosophy in Geography University of California, Berkeley Professor Nathan F. Sayre, Co-chair Professor Gillian P. Hart, Co-chair In 2011, the eruption of the Chilean student movement broke open a nation-wide questioning of Chile’s current democracy centering on the ongoing influence of General Pinochet’s seventeen-year dictatorship. My dissertation illuminates central elements of Pinochet’s legacy and points toward possible changes necessary for a more democratic Chile in the present. Many studies examine the continuity and change between the dictatorship and the restored democracy and argue that the democratic potential of Chile’s present is bound by the political-economic inheritances from the authoritarian regime. This explanation, while accurate, stops short; the political-economic model of the dictatorship not only was installed by force, it was installed by force to eradicate a more participatory politics. As such, my research focuses on the contentious relationship between the Chilean path to Socialism and the military coup and subsequent dictatorship to elucidate the contents of this participatory politics and specify the tools of its eradication. Liberating Forestry is an historical ethnography of a territory of forestry estates in the Southern Andes that Pinochet came to call his government’s most conflictive zone. In the years between the election of Allende in 1970 and the coup in September of 1973, this territory experienced tremendous socio- ecological transformation; through political alliances, marginalized forestry workers pushed the boundaries of Allende’s Basic Program for an institutional path to Socialism and demanded the conversion of the large private estates of the area into a single, state-owned, worker-operated Forestry Complex. In this Complex, forestry workers, forestry engineering students, and governmental experts negotiated a new form of forestry production that integrated the knowledge of uneducated rural workers with the expertise of foresters, and sought to enable the long-term wellbeing of the forestry communities. Following the coup, the military regime represented the Forestry Complex as a vast guerrilla training camp, the product of outsider extremists’ manipulation of a simple, hard-working rural community. Combining this misrepresentation with the violent repression of workers thought to be leaders within the Complex, the dictatorship sought to erase this experience of worker empowerment and innovative forestry. Although the military kept the Complex as state property, it stripped the workers of any participation in the organization of forestry, and replaced the advances of the previous years with the precarious work forms of temporary contracts, minimum employment programs, subcontracting, and frequent relocations. Across violent repression and the mundane production of alienated labor, these forestry estates became an important site for the dictatorship’s policing of national belonging. Through archival research and oral histories across fifteen months of fieldwork, I recuperate the lived practices of these rural working class activists and their allies as their political participation pushed through the formation of the Complex, and then, as it was deliberately dismantled following the coup. Using ethnographic methods, I examine not only how these large political changes were experienced at the level of the everyday, but also more importantly, how the everyday practices of these forestry workers had wider significance for political participation and national belonging. My findings suggest that deepening Chile’s democracy will require moving beyond the technical expertise so valued by neoliberal ideology to incorporate more voices into decision-making over the use of Chile’s natural resources. 1 Para Don Moises y Fernando Saravia i Contents Acknowledgements iv Introduction 1 1 Foundations of Dispossession/ Foundations of Struggle 22 2 A Complex Nexus: 50 Forestry Science and Political Alliance 3 Negotiating the Nation: 85 The Structure of Worker Participation 4 Negotiating the Nation: 105 Disintegration of the Dream 5 From Exceptional to Mundane: 133 Instituting Precarious Work in the Panguipulli Complex Conclusion 173 Bibliography 179 Appendix A 186 ii Acronyms COFOMAP Complejo Forestal y Maderero Panguipulli Panguipulli Forest and Timber Complex CORFO Corporación de Fomento de la Producción National Development Corporation CUT Central Única de Trabajadores Central Trade Union Federation FTR Frente de Trabajadores Revolucionarios Revolutionary Workers Front INFOR Instituto Forestal Forestry Institute MCR Movimiento Campesino Revolucionario Revolutionary Campesino Movement MIR Movimiento de Izquierda Revolucionaria Revolutionary Left Movement UP Unidad Popular Popular Unity iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without a large network of people offering me many forms of support. Any omissions are inadvertent and due to my absent-mindedness, not to a lack of gratitude. I am very grateful to my committee. Courses and conversation with Gill Hart formed my foundation in theory. As someone who develops ideas best through discussion, Nathan Sayre’s brilliance in brainstorming my project was vital. Together Gill and Nathan made a fantastic advising team, especially in the last years of writing. Nancy Peluso has been a wonderful mentor; she supported me in multiple ways, but most important was her ongoing belief in the value of my project. I am thankful that Tom Klubock agreed to work with me late in this long process; it was amazing to get feedback from someone so knowledgable of Chile and Chilean forestry more specifically. Finally, although not on my dissertation committee, Mark Healey provided early guidance on Chilean historiography, fortified with a dose of bilingual puns. The geography department draws some exceptional human beings. I am happy that I intersected with these folks, many of whom started as fellow graduate students and ended up as very dear friends: Lindsey Dillon, Alicia Cowart, Alberto VelazQuez, Diana Negrín, Sapna Thottathil, Javier Arbona, Greta Marchesi, Seth Lunine, Ale Tiberio, Adam Romero, Shannon Cram, my officemates, Aaron Degrassi and Nikki List, and especially Jenny Greenburg, without whom I would not have finished. The behind-the-scenes crew who keeps our department running is equally exceptional. An enormous thanks to the geography staff, past and present: Carol Page, Delores Dillard, Nat Vonnegut, Darin Jensen, Mike Jones, Dan Plumlee, Marjorie Ensor, Kristen Vogt, Deborah Gray, Eron Budi, and Josh Mandel. Although slow to start, the Sayre lab monthly (bimonthly!) dinners have become a firmly established institution. Thanks to Nathan and Sasha for opening up their home to a growing group of hungry grad students, and to my fellow lab-mates for sharing their work, feedback, and truly amazing culinary skills. The Sayre lab was first inspired by Nancy Peluso’s land lab in the ESPM department. I am happy to have also participated in that intersection of scholarship, feedback, tasty food, and great people. Thanks to Nancy for getting this going and to those who have been part of it: Dan Suarez, Jason Morris-Jung, Alice Kelly, Mez Baker, Hekia Bodwitch, Jennie Durant, Margot Higgins, Freya Knapp, Ashton Weston, Lisa Kelley and many more. This research was made possible by fellowships from the UC Berkeley Graduate Division and the Center for Latin American Studies, the Institute of International Education, and the Society of Woman Geographers. I am very thankful for this financial support. In Chile, first and foremost I want to thank all the people involved in imagining and realizing the Panguipulli Complex. Growing increasingly familiar with 1970s Chile has had an enormous effect on me. The forestry workers, foresters, activists and politicians of the Panguipulli Complex acted with great courage and determination to establish a project of social and environmental justice. This broader project is still pending today in Chile and the world more broadly, and this past iv experience offers many lessons, especially concerning working together across difference. Numerous people welcomed me into their homes and shared their time, experiences, and expertise with me. I want to thank especially: the family of Don Moises; Angélica Navarrete, the woman whose energy, generosity, drive, and good humor keep the Museum in Neltume running; her husband, Colinche, who makes sure there’s enough pasto in the house for this vegetarian; Pedro Cardyn whose intellectual energy and drive to make change is inexhaustible; Fernando Saravia, Luis Astorga, and Rodrigo Undurraga for spending so much time with me and sharing their personal documents, without which I could not have written this dissertation; Fernando Saravia, again, for being such a compassionate, intelligent person; Jaime Toha for speaking with me so many times;