Disciplinamiento represivo y amotinamiento colectivo en un dispositivo militar decimonónico. Illapel, 1885

Abstract

The movements of the popular protest against the State and the social clases in power, during the XIXth century, took different forms. The most comon ways were urban mutinies, rural bandolerism and miners revolts. Nevertheless, the members of the repressive forces of the state, called to maintain and impose the public order, also, and in more than an occasion, rebelled against its chiefs and dedidated themselves to transgress its offices. In general, the rebellion of military or policial groups was motivated by a situation of injustice. This means that the troop was thinking that its chiefs were perpetrating abuses or using for themselves its position of power, and, as a consequence, reacted with violence in order to eliminate this injustice. These violent actions are the sign of two facts belonging to the social history of the second half of the nineteenth century. First, it shows us the tensions generated by the modernisation process of the oligarchic state repressive dispositions, and then, puts us in front of the public speech concerning social discipline. One can easily find both aspects in the local press of this time; this allows us to recreate the particularities of political modernisation in the Chile's "Norte Chico".