“A Country Proud to be Democratic”:Demanding Democracy in Nineteenth-Century Chile

Abstract

This article examines criminal court cases about conflicts related to the electoral process at all stages from determining how elections would be administered to disputes about results. It argues that contemporary allegations of fraud, corruption, and misconduct during elections can inform us not only of the anomalies but also of the ways in which elections worked as expected, according to the laws and norms of the time. We can also see how participants defined and defended the democratic ideal. A careful reading of participants' complaints to local authorities about electoral law violations, including incidents that ended in violence, can provide important insights into partisanship, the mechanics of elections, and the formation of political culture. The use of democratic rhetoric in these complaints suggests a consensus around a democratic ideal based on free and fair elections even though that ideal was not yet realized. Through the analysis of criminal court cases, it also introduces a broad range of questions about how nineteenth-century Chileans understood and practiced democracy that suggest avenues for further research.

El voto secreto en Chile: regímenes de publicidad y privacidad electoral, 1872-1958

“…Sirvió para este fin la denuncia de numerosas prácticas de corrupción electoral acostumbradas 74 . Por las declaraciones de los intervinientes se puede reconocer que para los contemporáneos sí existía una noción clara del contenido moral de la corrupción electoral 75 . Para reforzar, se puntualizó que dichas prácticas electorales acarreaban efectos particularmente negativos sobre los votantes socialmente dependientes, con especial importancia entre aquellos empleados del gobierno 76 .…”