Gremialismo, or guildism, is a social, political, and economic ideology, inspired in the Catholic social teachings that claims that every correct social order should base itself in intermediary societies between persons and the state, which are created and managed in freedom, and that the order should serve only the purposes for which they were created.

History

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, gremialismo was the main doctrine of the

liberal-conservative Liberal conservatism is a political ideology combining conservative policies with liberal stances, especially on economic issues but also on social and ethical matters, representing a brand of political conservatism strongly influenced by libe ...

movement that emerged in the second half of the 1960s and led the opposition to the

University Reform University reform is a type of education reform applied to higher education. Examples include: *Argentine university reform of 1918 *Chilean university reform *Reform of French universities ** Law on Higher Education and Research (2007) **Liberties ...

of the

Catholic University of Chile The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.3 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwide . It is am ...

. Thus, it opposed the left and the center. The principal thinker of gremialism was a lawyer and professor who was later a Pinochet advisor, Jaime Guzmán. There has been a dispute on whether or not gremialismo thought has been influenced by Juan Vázquez de Mella. The gremialist Javier Leturia wrote about the origins of the movement: :We he gremialistaswere orderly, we were those that were not hippie, those that were not left-wing, those that were not potheads. I would say that the people were participative. That is why former school union leaders and people from school unions, the

scouts Scouting, also known as the Scout Movement, is a worldwide youth movement employing the Scout method, a program of informal education with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities, including camping, woodcraft, aquatics, hiking, backpack ...

, and religious movements were picked up. We openly supported the coup. We published a manifesto in the newspaper that read: "Towards a new institutionality through the renounce of Allende." ..What we said was that the crisis was insurmountable and that the only solution was to have the armed forces take charge. We drafted that manifesto as university students, and it was signed by student unions from the

Catholic universities Catholic higher education includes universities, colleges, and other institutions of higher education privately run by the Catholic Church, typically by religious institutes. Those tied to the Holy See are specifically called pontifical uni ...

of Santiago and Valparaíso, which were headed by gremialists. I would say that from the moment Allende was elected, many began to support a coup. I mean that we were not going to accept for this country to fall into communism.

Role in military dictatorship youth policy

One of the first measures of the military dictatorship that came to power though the 1973 coup d'etat was to set up the Secretaría Nacional de la Juventud (SNJ, National Youth Office), which was done on October 28, 1973, even before the Declaration of Principles of the junta made in March 1974. It was a way of mobilizing sympathetic elements of the civil society in support for the dictatorship. The SNJ was created by the advice of Jaime Guzmán and was an example of the dictatorship adopting gremialism. Some right-wing student union leaders like

Andrés Allamand Andrés Allamand Zavala (born February 7, 1956), a Chilean politician, is the founder and one of the past leaders of Renovación Nacional. He is of French, and Basque descent. On January 14, 2011 he was named Minister of Defense by president S ...

were skeptical to the attempts as they were moulded from above and gathered disparate figures such as Miguel Kast, Antonio Vodanovic and Jaime Guzmán. Allamand and other young right-wingers also resented the dominance of gremialism in the SNJ since they considered it to be a closed gremialist club. From 1975 to 1980, the SNJ arranged a series of ritualized acts in reminiscent of

Francoist Spain Francoist Spain ( es, España franquista), or the Francoist dictatorship (), was the period of Spanish history between 1939 and 1975, when Francisco Franco ruled Spain after the Spanish Civil War with the title . After his death in 1975, Spai ...

. The policy towards the sympathetic youth contrasted with the murder, surveillance, and

forced disappearances An enforced disappearance (or forced disappearance) is the secret abduction or imprisonment of a person by a state or political organization, or by a third party with the authorization, support, or acquiescence of a state or political organiza ...

that dissident youth faced from the regime. Most of the SJN's documents were reportedly destroyed by the dictatorship in 1988.

References

{{Conservatism Anti-communism in Chile Catholicism and politics Christian democracy Conservatism in Chile Neoliberalism Political ideologies Right-wing politics in Chile