page_title: Anarchism in Chile
section_title: "The idea" expands throughout Chile
hierarchical_section_title: Anarchism in Chile / "The idea" expands throughout Chile
caption_attribution_description: English: Noam Chomsky at Vancouver, Canada in 2004. Français&#160;: Noam Chomsky à Vancouver au Canada en 2004.
context_page_description: The anarchist movement in Chile emerged from European immigrants, followers of Mikhail Bakunin affiliated with the International Workingmen's Association, who contacted Manuel Chinchilla, a Spaniard living in Iquique. Their influence could be perceived at first within the labour unions of typographers, painters, builders and sailors. During the first decades of the 20th century, anarchism had a significant influence on the labour movement and intellectual circles of Chile. Some of the most prominent Chilean anarchists were: the poet Carlos Pezoa Véliz, the professor Dr Juan Gandulfo, the syndicalist workers Luis Olea, Magno Espinoza, Alejandro Escobar y Carballo, Ángela Muñoz Arancibia, Juan Chamorro, Armando Triviño and Ernesto Miranda, the teacher Flora Sanhueza, and the writers José Domingo Gómez Rojas, Fernando Santiván, José Santos González Vera and Manuel Rojas.
  At the moment, anarchist groups are experiencing a comeback in Chile through various student collectives, affinity groups, community and cultural centres, and squatting.
context_section_description: During the 2000s a rebirth of "the idea" arose again; this time around the Anarchist Blok, an organization composed by different groups based in Santiago, such as: "Current Anarchist Revolution" (CRA) (the longest standing group; active since 2003), the newspaper "Ideácrata", "Direct Action Editions" or "Santiago's Society for Resistance". During those years "Anarchist May Day" and "Libertarian May, the first" celebrations were held in remembrance of the Haymarket affair.
  Noam Chomsky, member of the American IWW; and Eduardo Colombo of the French CNT -and author of L'espace politique de l'anarchie-, visited the country during 2006 as they were invited by the Institute of Anarchist Studies (IEA).
  The libertarian groups "GOKE" and "Neither Helmet Nor Uniform" lead the opposition to compulsory military service through conscientious objection since the early 1990s; becoming, thus, a referent for Chilean antimilitarism.
  It is also worth noting the healthy state of the squatting movement, which has refurbished different cultural and social venues re-opening them for community use. In the city of Santiago alone there are several squat houses like "El Ateneo", "La Tortuga", "Volnitza" and "La Máquina" in the Recoleta Commune.
  Born in the squatter spaces of the cities of Valparaiso, Villa Alemana and Quilpué, the informal group "Black Column" has become a center of gravity for many people committed to tasks of agitation, urban intervention, hacking, and media activism. They claim to be inspired by their particular interpretation of Situationism, their own update to Autonomism, biopolitical criticism and Queer Theory; they do not belong to an organization as such, although they function within a rhizome-like structure. This situation has made Anarchists from Valparaiso to be sometimes perceived as different to many others in the rest of Chile and elsewhere.
  From the beginning of the 1990s the Eco-anarchist tendency started to be expressed in Chile in an incipient way when the works of Murray Bookchin began to be widespread. Nowadays, the "Eco-anarchist Group" (GEA) from Santiago -which advocates Social Ecology – and some other groups linked to organic community farming, permaculture and vegetarianism stand out.
  During the 2006 student protests in Chile, young anarchist students at the University of Art and Social Sciences, for the first time in almost half a century, raised their banner in a struggle against education profiteering and for universal gratuity in the education system, beginning thus a campaign that would expand into the following decade and was, in fact, supported massively by the rest of the Chilean students. During the student protests in Chile in 2008 and 2011, libertarians had a significant presence within the assemblies of high school and university students, forcing the reformist sectors (communists and socialists mainly) to maintain the debate regarding universal gratuity. The communist project, up to that point, was oriented towards obtaining a system of "differentiated fee".
  In the year 2012 the "First Anarchist Book Fair in Santiago" took place; and it was organized again in 2013, 2014 and 2015.
caption: Noam Chomsky.
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