Narratives from teachers who lived through a dictatorship: Reflections 50 years after the Chilean coup

• In Event: Teachers' resistance and protests for a more equitable education system and society

Proposal

This year (2023) marks 50 years after the coup that introduced Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile (1973-1989). Their impact on the Chilean educational system has been acknowledged and thoroughly analyzed worldwide. During the dictatorship, the regime implemented initiatives that intervened educational spaces, to modify their organization, exert control over teachers and transform the profession (Perez & Zurita, 2021). Concerning the latter, the aim of intervening teachers’ work was to depoliticize and purify the teaching profession from ideologies opposed to the regime, through: military intervention in schools and teacher education institutions; the closure of escuelas normales; the dissolution of teacher unions; the interference of pedagogical practices to impose teacher-students hierarchical relationship; and political persecution (Fernández, 2018; Inzunza et al., 2011; Perez & Zurita, 2021; Zurita, 2020).
Before its end, the dictatorship established a neoliberal educational system, which set up the bases for the later consolidation of a hypervigilant state, driven by the perpetuation of the imposed extreme market model and the introduction of new public management policies (Falabella, 2015; Zurita, 2020). This system deepened the precariousness of teachers’ work through regulations that deprofessionalize teaching, increase teachers’ dissatisfaction due to work overload and low salaries, and thus deepen teachers’ social devaluation; leading to teachers’ abandonment of the profession (Gaete Silva et al., 2017).
Despite evidence about the consequences of the dictatorship for the society, education and protection of human rights, denialist discourses endorsing this antidemocratic period have multiplied throughout the country. Hence, recovering the historic memory becomes a necessary form of protest to counteract these narratives. Memory is a fundamental resource for historic development and interpretation. It resignifies the past, and allows us to understand how educational actors construct their professional identities and configure themselves as members of the educational system, through their narration of lived daily experiences and survival strategies that configure their subjectivity (Burke, 1994). The memories about the Chilean dictatorship in educational contexts is comprised of their experiences about structural changes that reconfigured the educational system and the relationship between the state and schools; therefore enriching analysis about the dictatorship’s consequences in the educational system.
Accordingly, this paper analyses the narratives of teachers who worked in schools and teacher education institution between the pre-, during and post-dictatorship periods, to answer: How did teachers live the dictatorship inside educational contexts? How did it impact their daily work, relationships and prompt expressions of protest? What do their narratives tell us about the impact of the dictatorship inside the educational system? Their narratives discuss their professional experiences to reflect about the change process experienced in Chilean education over the last 50 years.
We conducted biographical narrative interviews (Bamberg, 2012) with 4 teachers from different disciplines (2 men/2 women) who worked in educational institutions throughout the pre- during and post-dictatorship periods. The interviews were analyzed following a narrative approach that delves in plots and latent themes present in the narrations, accounting for the meanings and purposes provided by their temporal-spatial context (Bamberg, 2012).
The testimonies reveal that their lived experiences concerning intervention inside their educational contexts varied according to the characteristics of their institutions and their personal ideologies. Nevertheless, they agree that the dictatorship created an atmosphere of mistrust among teachers, administrators and students, impacting their relationships. This was attributed to the fear of being reported as opponent to the regime by informers infiltrated in their schools or even by old acquaintances. The sentiment was reinforced by acts of cover surveillance, differential treatment, threats of job dismissal, or mistreatment, especially for teachers in public institutions: One of the teachers was recurrently fired and re-hired without further explanation, while another teacher was demoted from faculty to part-time teacher for attending a public vigil for a student killed by the regime. In the latter case, her demotion was accompanied by verbal abuse that triggered suicidal thoughts. Another case involves a teacher union leader who was illegally detained by the military in front of his students (freed after three months). Even the only teacher working on an institution without intervention faced threats made by a student’s parent with a military rank for talking about “revolution” in his classes. The industrial revolution.
Despite these atrocities, all teachers felt their classrooms were a safe space, as pedagogical processes were the only scenario where relational dynamics were not affected by the predominant context: the bond with students constituted a private space. Furthermore, the teachers recount the progressive incorporation of acts of protest into their work: refusing to greet authorities visiting their institutions -including the dictator himself-; preventing principals appointed by the dictatorship from entering their classrooms to supervise their work; and even promoting clandestine union organization among teachers (disguising meetings as recreational events).
Along with criticizing the neoliberal model, their testimonies also highlight other issues they believe were inherited from the dictatorship and still harm educational contexts: fear, mistrust, and authoritarianism. For them, the imposition of fear hindered spontaneity of thought that drives curiosity, and mistrust shattered the ability to establish social bonds. Teachers agree that both issues still jeopardize educational processes, as curiosity and social bonds are essential to foster dialogic spaces, intellectual exchanges and critical thinking. They also argue that authoritarianism disrupted the nature of teaching processes and relationships with students, as it deviated teaching purposes from supporting holistic student learning towards achieving outcomes, and established punishments as the base for teacher-student interactions.
Through their testimonies, these teachers prevent us from forgetting the repercussions of democratic breakdowns, as they help us recognize and understand the impacts of authoritarianism, providing us with tools to dismantle denialist discourses and foster more democratic and just educational settings. Thus, the exploration of memories transcends as a necessary act of protest. Furthermore, the teachers’ narratives and analysis of the educational system demonstrate that, even after 50 years, the consequences of Pinochet’s dictatorship are not only systemic; they also affect the nature of relationships among educational actors and delimit pedagogical processes. Hence, their experiential knowledge present new challenges for contemporary national and international research on the matter.

Authors

• Catalina Cuenca, Universidad Alberto Hurtado - Universidad Diego Portales

• Mariateresa Rojas, Universidad Alberto Hurtado