Reforming Chile: Cultural Politics, Nationalism, and the Rise of the Middle Class (review)
Patrick Barr's study of cultural politics under Chile's Parliamentary Republic makes an important contribution to the growing English-language literature on Chile in the modern period, one that highlights the participation of middle-class reformists in the construction of Chilean nationalism. Drawing on extensive research with literary, periodical, and archival sources, Barr demonstrates the diverse contributions of members of the "rising" middle-class to currents of nationalist expression through politics, education, and literary criollismo, through which Chilean reformers sought the country's future modernity in romanticized notions of Chile's rural and indigenous past. Readers will find in this work a particularly satisfying exploration of the huaso 's emergence as a literary and popular representation of essential chileanidad. Such expressions of nationalist discourse reached a wide and ideologically diverse audience in the early twentieth century, successfully shoring up Chileans' sense of racial distinctiveness and providing the foundation for both popular front "Chileanization" campaigns and subsequent authoritarian projects. By connecting the shared representations underlying the political alliances of the Parliamentary Republic to the contests over revolution, reformism, and liberal authoritarianism that have dogged Chile's modern history, Barr suggests the critical role of race and class in the nationalist constructions that have infused these betterknown political conflicts.