Conservative Modernisation: The Portalian State

As in the late colonial period, modernity and tradition do not constitute opposites in nineteenth century Chile, but were in many ways complementary. The political and social elites accepted different aspects of modernity and modernisation, in order to be able to sustain the traditional social order. Furthermore, modernity became increasingly articulated as a project, in the form of the creation of a modern state which was able to combine order with progress. In the course of the century, Chile’s ‘conservative modernity’ becomes increasingly contested by the rise of liberalism. However, similar to the way in which the conservatives had incorporated elements of modernity in order to be able to maintain elements of tradition, now the liberals internalised many aspects of the conservative project, in order to implement at least part of their project of modernisation.

Conservative Modernity: the ‘Portalian State’

Around 1810, the year of Chile’s independence, the country’s oligarchy was still relatively small and weak. However, in the two decades that followed, it would rapidly gain strength and become focused on its main project of modernisation: the creation of a modern state, which would be able to guarantee order and progress. This project was fundamentally ambivalent and consisted of a blend between the ‘bias towards modernity’, which had been developed by the Chilean political elites, and their ideologically conservative outlook. In this way, democracy was combined with the restoration of the ‘absolute authority’ of the colonial era. The ability of Chile’s elites to create a mix between elements of modernity and tradition proved to be a key to the success of the Chilean state and of Chile’s path of modernisation.

Pragmatic and instrumental in their approach towards modernity, the oligarchy embraced ‘modern inventions’ like constitutional democracy because it saw

4 _{Manuel de Salas became well-known for his dedication to the charitative beneficiencia-programme, which} was targeted to help the poorest sectors of society. Rather than being a simple charitative fund, though, beneficiencia was based on the notion that society could not function properly if large sections of society are excluded and neglected. This same perspective would be used, some two centuries later, by the Christian Democrats in their promoción popular programme.

opportunities to mould them and use them as a means of power. Because of its limited scope, political modernisation did not threaten the social order; and therefore the Chilean conservative elites were happy to introduce it themselves, even though it clashed with their conservative ideology. They were not ‘reactionary’ in the traditional sense: they struck a pragmatic deal between tradition and modernity in order to maintain their position in the social order (Jocelyn-Holt 1997: 131-132).

The pragmatic approach of the oligarchy towards modernity allowed for a slow but relatively stable path of modernisation, albeit at the cost of a strong authoritarian culture.5

The quintessential representation of this model is the figure of Diego Portales, a conservative trader, who came to de facto power in 1830 when he took up two of the four ministerial posts in the government. It was under his supervision that the 1833 constitution was implemented, which proved to be the core of a state model that some historians have labelled the ‘Portalian state’, or the ‘state in good shape’ (Estado en forma) (Góngora 1986, Edwards 1928). Essential in this model is the maintenance of social order by means of authoritarian rule within the framework of a democratic republic. In order to reconcile these opposites, Portales installed a powerful executive, a weak and submissive congress, and an extremely limited electoral system that would ensure political victories for the ruling party. Moreover, electoral ‘interventions’ became a regular feature of the political process, because of the numerous loopholes that the system offered (Collier and Sater 1996: 57). This authoritarian model of democracy, formalised in the 1833 constitution, remained effective until 1891, when congress succeeded in reasserting its position in relation to the executive.6

As Góngora emphasises, Portales and his followers were not ideologists and did not follow a transcendental idea or belief. They fulfilled a ‘duty’ to restore order and make Chile a great country, the ‘England of the Pacific’, as Portales put it (Góngora 1986: 81). In order to accomplish this, they made use of traditional social structures, like the abstract notion of authority of the Spanish monarchy in colonial times, without intending to revert to colonialism or monarchy. They used elements of modernity and tradition wherever they saw fit; they were highly pragmatic. For instance, Portales once commented to Egaña, the main author of the 1833 constitution: ‘You believe in God; I believe in priests’ (quoted in Collier and Sater 1996: 59). This scepticism constitutes a strong break with the colonial or the Hispanic order. In this sense the Portalian state,

5 _{The 1833 constitution was the fourth constitution to be installed in Chile in a period of twenty years.} The previous ones, all of which were approved by democratically elected ‘constituent assemblies’, did not survive the political turbulence of the era. Interestingly, the 1833 constitution was the first one that was implemented without the approval of an elected body or ‘constitutive assembly;’ it was approved by a group of advisors that consisted of deputies and citizens of ‘recognised loyalty and enlightenment’ (de Ramón 2001: 70). The key role of authoritarianism in Chile’s constitutional history can be appreciated when considering that all of the country’s lasting constitutions (1833, 1925, and 1980) were implemented under authoritarian circumstances - even though they produced formally democratic regimes.

6 _{Portales considered the authoritarian nature of his model to be a temporary feature, necessary to} discipline the Chilean people. Once it has reached certain moral standards, he argued, ‘a completely liberal government may come, free and full of ideals, in which all citizens have a share’ (quoted in Eyzaguirre 2004: 121).

however conservative, may be called a ‘modern creation’ (Góngora 1986: 47). It should be noted, though, that Portales’ project was not exclusively based on doctrines and ideas: it was also a pragmatic reply to the turmoil that had characterised Chilean politics after independence, and was still very present in some places in the continent, where caudillos (warlords) fragmented and eroded the power of the national states. The result was a highly original and stable mix between modernity and tradition that would come to characterise Chile’s path towards modernity.

The concept of a ‘Portalian state’ is not uncontroversial. Portales’ work has been interpreted from different points of view and has been debated thoroughly. Two different standpoints seem to have consolidated in the discussion: on the one hand the view of Portales as a great historical figure, either positive or negative, and on the other the view of Portales as the initiator of an impersonal political system. The defenders of the first position usually stress Portales’ authoritarianism, his lack of political ambition (he never seems to have aspired to the presidency and preferred to exercise power rather than to fill important political positions), and the absence of a structural political philosophy in his work. In this view, he was either a ‘despot’ (in the words of his liberal contemporary Lastarria), or an ‘imperfect genius’ whose work was ‘exclusively personal’ (according to the nineteenth century historian Vicuña Mackenna). However, these views fall short in explaining the relative stability and continuity of the political system he installed. This has led authors like Alberto Edwards Vives to stress the work rather than the man. In his famous La Fronda Aristocrática, Edwards describes Portales’ work as the restoration of the colonial order, and the ‘Spirit of Portales’ as the creator the ‘state in good shape’ (Estado en forma). This strong and centralised state is characterised by its impersonal and abstract form of government:

The work of Portales was the restoration of a ‘fact’ and of a ‘sentiment’, that have served as the basis of public order during the Octavian peace of the three centuries of the colony. the ‘fact’ was the existence of a strong and enduring power, superior to the prestige of a caudillo or the strength of a faction; the ‘sentiment’ was the traditional respect for the abstract notion of authority, for power which is legitimately established independently of those who wield it (Edwards 1966: 47, italics in the original).

Mario Góngora follows this analysis in part, but questions the impersonal and abstract aspect of the Portalian State. According to Góngora, there was no restoration of an ‘impersonal and abstract’ type of government, but only the practical solution of the problem of power:

The government needed the support of an aristocracy - surely an American aristocracy of landowners, not of feudal lords - but this class needed to be obediently subject to the government because of its own interest in public order (Góngora 1986: 45).

This view is supported, finally, by Alfredo Jocelyn-Holt, who states that there is no Portalian system; and the stability of the Chilean political system is a result of his solution of the question of authority, but this was a conjunctural, pragmatic, solution, not a historical project. Portales was a dictator in the political sense, but he did not

intend to create a new system. If he had, he would have created a stronger institutional framework for it (Jocelyn-Holt 1997: 131-132). However, even if there was no ‘Portalian state’ in the sense of a projected state configuration, Portales’ solution of the problem of authority did last for over sixty years, and in this sense it may be legitimate to speak of a ‘Portalian state’ or ‘Portalian system’.

The ‘Portalian state’ was essential to Chilean modernity in three ways. First, it laid the foundations for material progress and economic growth. Portales as well as his successors (he was killed in 1837), slowly opened up the country’s economy, although they never went so far as to introduce true free trade. Again, the conflict between importing wholesale foreign doctrines like free trade and maintaining local balances was resolved in a pragmatic fashion. New economic principles were introduced, but only after they had been adapted to local circumstances. For instance, when in 1852 export duties on minerals were discussed in congress, Interior Minister Antonio Varas was attacked for such ‘unmodern’ and ‘uneconomic’ taxation. His reply was typical for the regime:

I wish that the products of national industry could be freed from all imposts; but (…) it is one thing to write a book, and quite another to apply its doctrines to the government of a state (quoted in Collier and Sater 1996: 74-75).

Apart from this cautious economic modernisation, the Portalian state continued the fostering of material progress that had been initiated during the late colonial period. It built railways, ports and highways, and expanded the educational system. These efforts were not impressive, but also not negligible. They betray a practical sense of progress that may not stem from a high abstract ideal but that is still tangible and real.

Second, the Portalian state was important for nineteenth century Chilean modernity because it influenced the country’s self-image in a particular way. The stability of the model, combined with the early institutionalisation of democracy in the country, gave rise to a discourse of ‘Chilean exceptionalism’. According to this discourse, Chile stands out in the Latin American context because of its institutional stability, sobriety and democracy. Here there was no anarchy, there were no caudillos, no cruel dictatorships or slavery; Chile had reached a higher level of civilisation (and, in this sense, progress) than its Latin American neighbours. Usually this discourse stressed the links between Chile and Europe, especially the United Kingdom (Portales not only spoke of ‘making Chile the England of the Pacific’, but also joked that he would lend the country to England in order to improve it) and France (Collier and Sater 1996: 64). Additionally, the country’s military victories, especially in the War of the Pacific (1879-1883), gave cause to label Chile the ‘Prussia of South America’ (Fermandois 2005: 38). The factuality of this discourse of exceptionality, democratic stability, and progress is only partial: throughout the nineteenth century Chile lived through several civil wars, some of them extremely bloody. The democratic system was very limited and regularly corrupted. Despite these shortcomings, however, the myth of Chilean exceptionalism has remained popular since then, together with the habit of looking for new models and doctrines outside Latin America.

Third, the highly authoritarian and exclusive nature of the Portalian state has marked patterns of modernity in Chile. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Chilean democracy was characterised by its highly top-down nature, especially in the authority and privileges of the President. The success of the Portalian state was also used to legitimise two dictatorial but modernising governments, those of Ibáñez (1927-1931) and Pinochet (1973-1990). The work of Portales, with its emphasis on social order, authority and the state, has deeply influenced Chilean history:

The country, in the deepest sense of its being, is authoritarian. Chilean history is

the history of its institutional authoritarianism. Chile has no other history than that of its state, be it ‘Portalian’ or ‘anti-Portalian’ (Jocelyn-Holt 1997: 129, italics in the original).

In conclusion, the Portalian state, which is the ultimate expression of the elite compromise between tradition and modernity, set the parameters for modernity in Chile: democratic, but simultaneously authoritarian; open to modernisation, but only if the social order and the authority of the state are not jeopardised. As will be seen in this study, these parameters are still tangible in the twenty-first century.

The Ascendance of Liberalism

The project of Conservative modernisation was by no means uncontested. From the early nineteenth century, sectors of the elites sought to construct an ‘alternative modernity’, based on European liberalism. The competition between the two camps was fierce. Portales and his followers vehemently tried to exclude the liberals (called pipiolos, novices) from political power and were initially successful in this: between the 1830s and 1850s, the liberal opposition to the conservative (called pelucón, bigwig) government was marginal and weak. However, liberalism became highly popular within the educational system and within institutions that were set up by leading intellectuals, and slowly began to become the main ideology to be connected with ‘progress’. From the 1860s on, liberalism (and its Comtian equivalent, positivism), became the main paradigm for intellectuals in Chile, and it profoundly influenced the way modernity developed in the country.

Already in the 1820s liberalism was circulating within intellectual circles, not only in the form of general ideas, but already as a doctrine. The pipiolos argued for a constitutional separation of powers, for religious tolerance and against the enormous political influence of the church, for education, and for free trade and the rationalisation of taxation. They referred to Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau and Bentham. In particular Bentham’s utilitarianism (laws should be directed to bring about as much happiness for as many as possible, while simultaneously diminishing suffering for as many as possible) became popular. However, the import of liberal doctrines from Europe remained largely disconnected from reality in Chile. As a result, liberalism in Chile remained largely theoretic and somewhat utopian, for instance in its glorification

of individual freedom.7

On the one hand, this led to a weakening of the political power of the liberals, and contributed to the rise of the conservative regime of Portales. On the other, however, the disparity between theory and reality gave way to a whole generation of intellectuals who sought apply liberalism as a doctrine that would contribute to the progress of the country:

This imbalance (…) also explains the point of view with which the Chilean youths received liberal thinking, and the characteristics which it came to acquire, especially what could be called liberal voluntarism: the belief that the ideas - and in this case the liberal ideas - are the motor of progress, and that it is sufficient to educate the majority of the people in them so that not only the reality of the conscience, but also the society and the political life of the country would change (Subercaseaux 1997a: 23-24)

The rise of liberalism was facilitated by the creation of several educational institutions, which would become bulwarks of liberal thought. In this sense, Venezuelan intellectual Andrés Bellos, who came to live in Chile in 1829, has been important. Bello, who was a conservative himself, became a leading figure in the main educational institutions of the era, the National Institute (Instituto Nacional) and the University of Chile, which he co-founded in 1842 and which he led during the rest of his life. For Bello, the emphasis was on the usefulness of institutions for the progress of the nation, rather than on creating possibilities for ‘knowledge for the sake of knowledge’, and it is in Bello that we see the first clear example of a ‘projected modernity’ (Ramos 2001: 24). Despite many ideological conflicts, these institutions came to educate generations of liberal thinkers in the course of the nineteenth century (Subercaseaux 1997a: 30). Especially the creation of the University of Chile is important in this context. It was not just an educational institution, but rather the combination of a Ministry of Education, a national think-tank and a university. It was partly fashioned after the French Imperial University and was placed under tutelage of the state, but not without maintaining its academic independence. This made possible the structural organisation of intellectual efforts for the sake of a national project:

Only in 1842, with the creation of the University of Chile, did a truly articulated, well thought out, state-supported project become possible, which could permit a cultural transformation corresponding to a modern nation-state (Jocelyn-Holt 1997: 30).

One of the major themes that Chilean liberals dealt with was the liberation of the mind, or the ‘emancipation of the spirit’. This referred to the cleansing of the Chilean conscience of the legacies of Hispanic colonialism, and the shedding of the dark past in

7 _{In fact, the Portalian state was a pragmatic response to the lack of realism that Chilean liberals displayed} in the first decades of the nineteenth century. The conservative historian Eyzaguirre argues that Portales was well aware of the gap between reality and the liberal discourse: ‘The fever of democracy, the excessive love for liberty, which has maddened so many, did not convince him. He knew that in the United States those ideals could work out well, because there they were the natural fruit of an evolutionary process. However, they did not possess an intrinsic virtuosity through which they would, just by being transplanted to Hispanic America, produce an immediate and miraculous transformation’ (Eyzaguirre 2004: 120).

order to reach a brighter future. In order to progress, Chile had to divest itself of its Spanish past and Catholic domination in order to be able to become civilised; political