Gremialismo before Gremialismo. The university roots of the Chilean right (1942-1967)

Abstract

Gremialismo, which defends a limited role for the State in society and whose main historical figure is Jaime Guzmán, is one of the most successful and influential political currents in the recent history of Chile. Although its origin is usually traced back to the student politics of the Catholic University of Chile in the second half of the 1960s, recent studies have questioned the time and space of this genesis. This article delves into this intuition and argues, through previously unpublished sources and records, that university gremialismo is a tradition that precedes Guzmán by decades and that there were at least three such organizations at the Catholic University itself prior to 1965. Thus, it is concluded that, in light of these findings, gremialismo, both at the university and national level, must be approached as a broad movement that has acquired different organic incarnations over time, with that of 1965 at the Catholic University being the most important, but not the first, nor the second, nor the only one.