Popular Guerrillas at the Birth of the Republic: Chile, 1810-1820

Abstract

This article deals with the social movement that erupted in Central Chile during the 1810-1820 decade, examining the upsurge of popular montoneros who, contemporary to the monarchists and free Mapuche Indians resistance, challenged the Republican project. Cipriano Palma, José María Zapata, Pablo Pincheira y Vicente Benavides, amongst others, emerge as the leaders of those plebeian guerillas that forced the displacement of revolutionary forces from Concepción to Santiago; it also quotes official reports of hundreds of marauders, thieves and bandits who runsacked resources from local villages and the countryside. It postulates that subaltern social groups took advantage of the power vacuum created by the 1810 Revolution, took up arms and, thus armed, withstood the installation of a political regime monopolised by the creole aristocracy. This account also defies official history, which is centered exclusively around the facts derived from the actions of the elite and the State.