Editora Nacional Quimantú was a

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in western South America. It is the southernmost country in the world and the closest to Antarctica, stretching along a narrow strip of land between the Andes, Andes Mountains and the Paci ...

publishing house Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

created in 1971 by

Salvador Allende Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens (26 June 1908 – 11 September 1973) was a Chilean socialist politician who served as the 28th president of Chile from 1970 until Death of Salvador Allende, his death in 1973 Chilean coup d'état, 1973. As a ...

's Unidad Popular government. It was founded under the premise of offering various literary works and a view of

Chilean culture The culture of Chile reflects the population and the geographic isolation of the country in relation to the rest of South America. Since colonial times, the Chilean culture has been a mix of Spain, Spanish colonial elements with elements of In ...

not covered by the "official

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tradition" by then, at an accessible price for the country's

working class The working class is a subset of employees who are compensated with wage or salary-based contracts, whose exact membership varies from definition to definition. Members of the working class rely primarily upon earnings from wage labour. Most c ...

. ''Quimantú'' is

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for "sun of knowledge". Now refounded as Editorial Quimantú, it is in charge of "a group of people that decided that dreams aren't of much use if we don't try to make them a reality, belonging to social, cultural and political organizations in various sectors of Santiago de Chile."

History

Foundation

Towards the end of 1970, the workers of Editorial Zig-Zag went on strike in order to push for the nationalization of their publishing house. On February 12, 1971, the Unidad Popular government took control of 40% of the company's assets, leading to the creation of the ''Empresa Editora Nacional Quimantú'' (National Quimantú Publishing Company, Ltd.). It was run by Joaquín Gutiérrez, a Costa Rican close to President Allende. The books published by Quimantú were sold at very low prices in bookshops and newspaper kiosks, in order to effectively make culture more accessible to the people. Its catalogue included classical and contemporary works of literature, history, general information and original research. It also set up weekly and monthly magazines, including ''Cabrochico'' for children, ''Onda'' for young people, ''Barrabases'', a comics magazine, ''Paloma'' for women and ''La Quinta Rueda'', a cultural publication. Joaquín Gutiérrez once commented, on the influence of Quimantú:

Closure and refoundation

In 1973, Editorial Nacional Quimantú was closed after the

1973 Chilean coup d'état The 1973 Chilean coup d'état () was a military overthrow of the democratic socialist president of Chile Salvador Allende and his Popular Unity (Chile), Popular Unity coalition government. Allende, who has been described as the first Marxist ...

and subsequent dictatorial regime (supported by the United States ) led by General Augusto Pinochet, and many of its books were burned. The following year, the military restarted a publishing house, named ''Editora Nacional Gabriela Mistral'', but it went bankrupt ten years later and closed. In 1989, former general manager of the editorial Sergio Maurín came back from exile by the military regime and registered the name for ten years with the intention of "constituting it as an anonymous society and making it big" with other former members. The plan was abandoned upon realizing the high initial costs this implied, and its poor profitability due to the poor presence and management of bookstores and the public's lack of interest in reading. A decade later, the idea of making an alternative, popular editorial emerged in an "extraparliamentary left-wing

collective A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an e ...

", and thus the name Quimantú was registered again in 2000, and its first title, "''Agenda del Che 2002''", published in November 2001. The refounded company is currently managed by Mario Ramos, and books are distributed independently from traditional bookstores - as this would increase end consumer costs considerably - preferring popular fairs, including their own "''Yo me libro''".

Collections

Editora Nacional Quimantú published a total of around 250 titles, of which it printed around 10 million copies, between November 1971 and August 1973. One year after its foundation, it published over 500 000 copies every month. Its collections included: *Quimantú para todos (''Quimantú for all'') *Minilibros (''Minibooks'': works of Chilean and world literature)Minilibros (Quimantú) - Book Series List
publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 1 January 2020. *Nosotros los chilenos (''We, the Chileans'') *Cuadernos de Educación Popular (''Books for Popular Education'') *Cuncuna (children's books) *Camino Abierto (''Open Path'') *Análisis, pensamiento y acción (''Analysis, Thought, Action'') *Clásicos del Pensamiento Social (''Classics of Social Thought'') *Figuras de América (''Figures of America'')

References

External links

Editora Nacional Quimantú
on the Memoria Chilena cultural history website

official website {{DEFAULTSORT:Editora Nacional Quimantu Companies of Chile Book publishing companies of Chile Publishing companies established in 1971 Publishing companies of Chile Book publishing companies based in Santiago, Chile