Tejedores de la revolución

by Peter Winn

Tejedores de la revolución capta agudamente el espíritu del gobierno de Allende desde las experiencias y las voces de los trabajadores de la fábrica textil Yarur, que con su accionar iniciaron el camino de la vía chilena al socialismo. Yarur era la primera fábrica tomada por sus trabajadores después de la elección de Allende y también la primera industria textil moderna de algodón en Chile. Estas circunstancias motivaron a Peter Winn a investigar desde abajo, tal como lo indica el propio autor: "Después de todo, si ésta es una revolución proletaria, como clama la izquierda chilena, entonces estos trabajadores son los protagonistas principales". Además, Winn postula que "a través de la historia local de la fábrica Yarur se podría dilucidar gran parte de la historia moderna de Chile". Este libro da cuenta tanto de los orígenes de la industria y la relación entre capital, trabajo y el Estado, como de las formas de organización de los trabajadores y las tensiones surgidas entre estos y las nuevas autoridades políticas. Todo ello a partir del relato de los protagonistas, que revisan y analizan tanto sus acciones como los antecedentes de la constitución y crecimiento de parte de la industria nacional. Tejedores de la revolución es la historia de un grupo de trabajadores que soñaron con un Chile distinto, democrático, igualitario y participativo, sueños que terminaron abruptamente el 11 de septiembre de 1973, un acontecimiento que no solo cambió el curso de sus propias vidas sino que la de todo un país.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Labor, Latin American History, School, Political Science

362 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Peter Winn is a professor of history at Tufts University specialising in Latin America. He has written several books, including Americas, which he developed while serving as academic director for the 1993 PBS series of the same name.

Winn earned a BA from Columbia College in 1962 and a PhD from Cambridge University in 1972.

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely incredible. I cannot recommend this book enough. Winn's combination of oral history from the workers involved in the Chilean Revolution with scholarly history make for an extremely readable but also incredibly educational look at revolution in practice. I feel I have a much, much better grasp on the internal dynamics within the Allende Popular Unity government coalition than before I read this. The dialectical relationship between the elected leadership working to make changes through the legal system on the one hand and the workers taking the revolution into their own hands and dragging it forward on the other is fascinating and extremely important stuff. I have a few minor quibbles with a couple spots where Winn's liberal fear of the workers taking martial action crop up but those are the exception to an otherwise magnificent book.

If you care at all about revolutionary history, how we can learn from struggles around the world to inform our own, on labor history generally, you have to read this book. Have already started working on my notes for an episode or two of my podcast, Work Stoppage, to discuss this book and let folks know about it, because there's a ton to learn here.

[Kaine Kennedy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely phenomenal book that I think basically every comrade should read. I’ve managed to find a pdf of it so message me if you want a copy. Few episodes in the history of capitalism can match the awe inspiring heights of the Chilean revolution, and even fewer the tragedy of its brutal destruction. The workers at the Yarur textile factory were the first to force Allende to socialise their workplace against his will. This account gives you a direct vision into their “revolution from below” that came to compete with and rival Allende’s top down conception of socialism and that showed the potential they had for victory. Workers at Yarur went from the secretive movement of a handful of socialist activists in 1969 seeking to liberate the company union from the bosses control to a confident and radical movement at the vanguard of the revolution in 1971 that had liberated not only the union but also their workplace. Inspired by the radical rhetoric of popular unity but unwilling to wait for Allende’s glacial pace of reforms they took things into their own hands and thus left an indelible mark of the history of the revolution. The success of their struggle and the potential it showed for the revolution makes the eventual defeat even more brutal, all of the leading militants were either murdered, exiled, or jailed in the aftermath of the coup and the conditions of the workers that remained were barely enough to survive. Wages as a portion of national income rose to 66% by 1972 and were halved after the coup while the price of basic goods like bread rose by over 1000%. All this was backed by the murder of 30,000 of the best working class activists that Chile had to offer, an entire generation of militants physically destroyed to prevent the working class from fighting back. The brutality of the capitalist class knows no bounds and we should never forget the lengths that they are willing to go to in order to protect their profits. May the workers of Ex-Yarur live in our memories forevermore, and may their murders rot in hell for all eternity.

[Isaac Timm · Rating 5 out of 5]

A wonderful historical book, any account that examines the thoughts of everyday persons involved in that time of history deepens the readers understanding. A well argued history and an readable text, that takes on a lot of information but doesn't lose the reader. Does the Chile's revolution take place for the bottom up? I have to write a three page paper to answer that, I'll post it when I'm finished.

[Andrew · Rating 3 out of 5]

An extremely thorough recounting of the socialization of the Yarur textile factory in Allende-era Chile. Probably too thorough, as there was so much background and repetition that it took about half the book to get to the title event.

It strikes me that Winn may have fallen too in love with his research, such that he left a lot of his interviews in even when they stopped adding much to the narrative. It's not a huge flaw, just notable.

A far bigger flaw for me is how severely Winn discounts the role of the U.S. in sabotaging Chile's economy and fomenting the coup. Whether because of his own ideological priors or because there simply wasn't as much evidence for it at the time of his writing, the result is a seriously compromised analysis of who was to blame for the failure of the democratic revolution.

You can tell Winn wants to blame Allende and the more cautious socialist\communist parties -- and the 1st person reports here are definitely not flattering towards Allende. But he doesn't give enough weight, or almost any at all, to the external pressures Allende was facing. He also has a clear but unacknowledged bias toward the more anarcho-syndicalist end of the communist spectrum, which isn't a problem by itself but becomes a problem when he tries to pass his biased analysis off as objective.

E.g. for all the blame he heaps on Allende, he spends almost no time wondering if there was any way the Yarur workers could have held off on their strike for a few months. I kind of doubt anything would have prevented a coup, but there's at least an argument to be made that Allende was right and the Yarur workers moving that fast got the revolution too far out over its skis.

Overall though this is an extremely valuable snapshot of the era, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Allende or socialism. It's not a quick read but I doubt you'll find a more granular narrative of these events, and it's always fascinating (and important) to learn more about the ideological rifts that can develop during a revolution.

Not Bad Reviews

[josh · Rating 5 out of 5]

In 1970, Chile elected Salvador Allende, a socialist, as president. The three years that followed saw a massive explosion of nationalizations, and general mass movements. This book is an important case study of one of these nationalizations. It is very well written and will appeal to history buffs and novel readers alike.

[Nicky Dator · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this book because it discussed the dictatorship of Pinoche from the early 1970s to 1990's which led to a mass genocide overtime with the help of the United States. In the same process that they assisted Peron during the Dirty War in Argentina that led to disappearances. Furthermore, how Chile turn to Socialism as a means to survive.

[Arin Goswami · Rating 5 out of 5]

As an organizer in Canada, this book was an incredibly informative read on the "revolution from above" and "revolution from below" concepts that ultimately led to the demise of 'la via chilena'. I had previously read about Allende in a variety of texts; Vincent Bevins' "The Jakarta Method" seems to have informed the bulk of my understanding of him. That said, it is interesting to read directly the inherent commandism that Allende showed in the face of the Weavers of Ex-Yarur organizing their "revolution from below".

While there were more radical forces in the Popular Unity coalition that were in direct contact with the weavers and helping shape outcomes within their organization, Allende and the social democrats that backed him were often at odds with the same. Upon learning of the Yarur factory strike, Allende tried multiple times to mitigate both, the workers' revolutionary zeal, and the gains they were actively making against their employer. There is an instance of him even saying that they were not the leaders of the Chilean revolution, he was. If that is not commandism, I don't know what is.

On the flip side of this, the book also outlines the direct toll that Chilean inflation, the destabilization of foreign reserves, and the US' "invisible blockade" had on the Chilean people and their revolution. All of this cannot have been easy for Allende to have dealt with, and it eventually is what led to his demise in an American-backed coup. Our ideological predecessors did their best, and it is our duty to learn from their failures.

An example of something I learned reading this was that Allende took a poor approach to self-defense (this was Castro's criticism of him as well at the time!). He should have made efforts to bring the Chilean armed forces under his wing and also help arm the "revolution from below" workers to help defend their gains against imperialism. He didn't and was usurped by the same army he didn't look to ally with. I'm sure there will be more learnings like this that I will take from this book as I think about it further.

Great read, a must for anyone interested in organizing at the grassroots level.

[Pete Dolack · Rating 5 out of 5]

When history is written, it is often from the perspectives of elites and governments. History can't be told without discussing those, but too often the perspectives and motivations of everyday people are missing. Not here: Weavers of Revolution focuses on the experiences of textile workers in the first factory to be directly taken over by its workers during the Allende administration.

What was happening in the ministries and the presidential palace is not left out, but rather deftly woven into the story of the textile workers, putting together a well written account of history from above and from below. Far from faceless masses, the textile workers are complicated human beings with varying motivations, who must overcome fear and memories of past repressions before they can band together to improve their lots.

This book fully lives up to its reputation as a classic telling of Chile during the years of Popular Unity.

[Alexa Smith-Rommel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is an incredible historical achievement and I can’t physically give it anything less than 5 stars. It dragged at times, but in the end it was an important documentation of Chile’s democratic socialist revolution, the power that actual ownership of labor can give people, and the social/economic traps that were set for the Allende government from the beginning. You can’t read the book without knowing it will end in tragedy but it didn’t make me any less hopeful that the Yarur workers could actually achieve material change. If only it lasted more than ~18 months. Putting this in the small niche of books about the Allende government that doesn’t just talk about the coup but actually explores why the Chilean working class came to believe in socialism + how it came together. Glad I found this one!!!!

[Mika · Rating 4 out of 5]

(Note I base my ratings on personal enjoyment and I am not in any way an authority on Chilean History.)

So, this book made me quite sad because history is super depressing and I kind of knew where things were going when I saw the name Pinochet.

That being said, it's not often that I get really involved in pseudo-narrative historical accounts and I was invested here. I think the book benefits from focusing on the workers and they hold the book together. It also presents them not as a homogeneous group but as a diverse class with many motives and goals, but who comr together to fight.

I'm kinda happy that I own this now. It's not for everyone but, if the writing doesn't throw you off and you have a hunger to learn about worker movements and Chile I'd say go for it.

[Alek · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book covers the history of the Chilean revolution from two angles "from above" and "from below". It follows the seizure of a major textile factory as an important step in the radicalization of the Chilean revolution. This book really showed me how radical the Popular Unity period really was and how powerful the Chilean labor movement had become by that stage in history.

A really excellent example of bottom up history that is not purely sociological.

[Ben Haines]

There's a guy named Marmaduke Grove.

Thought this was good. Compelling as a story, he does a good job of showing what being part of these events meant to the people that went through them. Also does a good job connecting the Yarur story to the national story of Chile, the conflicts and turning points in the revolution.

The difference in the political environment from the US is pretty wild as a general background.

[foxfire · Rating 5 out of 5]

There's a lot to be said about this book, but I'll just stick with - rarely have I come across an author whose excellent research is matched by their excellent theoretical analysis. Peter Winn has done it wonderfully here, a fantastic contribution to history from below with countless lessons for revolutionaries today.

[Meagan Sullivan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting and informative insight into a specific on-the-ground experience of factory workers during Salvador Allende presidency in Chile. I read this for a history class, "Latin American Revolutions."

[Elly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a seriously wild ride with a terribly sad ending.

[Kelvin Yudianto · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorites

[Toby Mustill · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent account of both the Yarur Workers and Allende’s Chile.

[tommie ☭ · Rating 5 out of 5]

an absolute must-read for anyone studying allende’s chile.

[Hielogratis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved it, for English speaking people, it’s a very nice account of Chilean workers resistance.

[Kyle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A comprehensive and thorough account of some of the most important historical events of the 20th century. Essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the Western hemisphere as we know it

[Jahn Sood · Rating 3 out of 5]

history told like a story of real people, go figure. i sat in my backyard and read it until it was finished. one of the best books that i've read for college. much cooler than reading a top-down, dry political version of this history. it gave a much more human look at socialism. cool.

if anyone has the "americas" book that peter winn wrote i'd swap.

[Robot · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a really great book if you like that sort of thing. Want a way to learn about social and political movements in Chile that is fun and personal? This book is rooted in Oral Histories, so the whole history is interspersed with very personal stories and it is very clearly written.

[Jason Oringer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this for a class years ago, but this popular history comes into my thinking every few months or so even 15 years later

[Vale Navarro-rosenblatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

a voice to the workers, and a remarkable portrait of the catastrophic consenquences after the 1973 coup in Chile.
There is a lack of gender analysis that needs to be explore by other historians

[Laura-Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic and well-researched! Interesting perspective on Chile and socialism and their link to the working class.