Gremialismo

Gremialismo, or guildism, is a social, political and economic ideology, inspired in the Catholic social teachings, which claims that every correct social order should base itself in intermediary societies between the persons and the state, which are created and managed in freedom and the order should serve the purposes for which they were created and no other.^[1]

In Chile, gremialismo was the main doctrine of the liberal-conservative movement that emerged in the second half of the 1960s and led the opposition to the University Reform in the Catholic University of Chile. Thus, it opposed the Chilean left and centre. The principal thinker of gremialism was the lawyer and professor and later an advisor of Pinochet, Jaime Guzmán.

There has been a dispute on whether or not gremialismo thought has been influenced by Juan Vázquez de Mella.^[2]

Gremialist Javier Leturia wrote about the origin of the movement as:^[3]

We [the gremialistas] were orderly, we were those that were not hippie, those that were not left-wing, those that were not potheads. I would say they [sic] were participative people. That is why former school union leaders and people from school unions, the scouts and religious movements were picked up. We were openly pro-coup. We published a manifesto in the newspaper that 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 did that manifesto as university students and it was signed by student unions from the catholic universities of Santiago and Valparaíso, that were headed by gremialismo. I would say that from the moment Allende was elected many turned pro-coup. I mean, we were not going to accept that this country fell into communism.

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