Gringos Get Rich: Anti-Americanism in Chilean Music

By Eunice Rojas

Documents counterimperialism in Chilean music since the 1960s

Gringos Get Rich: Anti-Americanism in Chilean Music examines anti-Americanism in Latin America as manifested in Chilean music in recent history. From a folk-based movement in the 1960s and early 1970s to underground punk rock groups during the Pinochet regime, to socially conscious hip-hop artists of postdictatorship Chile, Chilean music has followed several left-leaning transnational musical trends to grapple with Chile’s fluctuating relationship with the United States. Eunice Rojas’s innovative analysis introduces US readers to a wide swath of Chilean musicians and their powerful protest songs and provides a representative and long view of the negative influences of the United States in Latin America.

Much of the criticism of the United States in Chile’s music centers on the perception of the United States as a heavy-handed source of capitalist imperialism that is exploitative of and threatening to Chile’s poor and working-class public and to Chilean cultural independence and integrity. Rojas incorporates Antonio Gramsci’s theories about the difficulties of struggles for cultural power within elitist capitalist systems to explore anti-Americanism and anti-capitalist music. Ultimately, Rojas shows how the music from various genres, time periods, and political systems attempts to act as a counterhegemonic alternative to Chile’s political, cultural, and economic status quo.

Rojas’s insight is timely with recent political trends toward the right in the Americas. There is also increased interest in and acceptance of popular song lyrics as literary texts. The book will appeal to Latin Americanists, ethnomusicologists, scholars of popular culture and international relations, students, and general readers.
.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Nov 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9780817394677

Book preview

GRINGOS GET RICH

GRINGOS GET RICH

Anti-Americanism in Chilean Music

EUNICE ROJAS

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487–0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2024 by the University of Alabama Press

All rights reserved.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Arno Pro

Cover image: courtesy of Eunice Rojas

Cover design: Sandy Turner Jr.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978–0–8173–2170–3 (cloth)

ISBN: 978–0–8173–6097–9 (paper)

E-ISBN: 978–0–8173–9467–7

Para todas mis amistades en Chile

CONTENTS

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Chile Is a Town South of the United States: A Brief History of Chile’s Anti-Americanism

2. A New American Dream: Anti-Americanism in the Peña de los Parra

3. Mounting a Revolution: Víctor Jara and Quilapayún’s Anti-American Support of the Popular Unity Campaign

4. Taking On Tío Caimán: Protesting the United States during Allende’s Presidency

5. You’re Not Living Well: Maintaining Chilean Anti-US Sentiment under Pinochet

6. Yankee Man Money and Shock Value: Anti-American Folk, Rock, and Hip-Hop after Chile’s Return to Democracy

Epilogue: Reawakening, Anti-Americanism in the Songs of Chile’s 2019 Social Upheaval

Notes

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

My inspiration for this project began with efforts to teach Latin American literature and culture to US university students through the appealing medium of music and the poetry of popular songs. Socially conscious songs, in particular, can be such valuable sources of insight into cultural attitudes, and so I found that introducing students to songs critical of the United States allowed for thoughtful reflections regarding the outsized political, economic, and cultural role of the United States in Latin America. By no means are anti-American songs or anti-Americanism itself unique to Chile, but the nation’s evolving and complicated relationship with the United States has given rise to a long history and relatively high incidence of popular music that depicts negative attitudes toward the United States in Chilean music, as evidenced by the many songs populating the following chapters. It is important for me to note that I approach these songs not as a musicologist but as a scholar of literature, language, and cultural studies. Therefore, my analysis focuses on the lyrics of these songs and not on their musical or sonic dimensions, which are beyond my field of expertise, except in the most rudimentary of ways.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I began this book September 2015. In those seven years, there has also been an unprecedented and unexpected amount of change—in Chile, in the world at large, and in my life—and some of people who were with me in the early part of this journey are no longer here. My parents, for example, whose support and encouragement never faltered in life, have continued to inspire me even in their absence, so I offer my thanks to them into the ether, and I know they both would be eager to read the completed work.

I also changed institutions during the process of writing this project, so I am grateful to both Lynchburg College, Furman University, and the Furman Humanities Center for funding my visits to Chile and other aspects of this project. In addition, a Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges Mednick Faculty Fellowship made one particular trip possible in which I was able to sit down and chat with musicians in Santiago. As a result, I am forever indebted to Francisco Villa, Joaquín Figueroa, and the now-departed and forever legendary Max Berrú for welcoming me into their homes to talk to me about their music. They are days I will never forget, and the insight that they offered me was invaluable. Joaquín, in particular, animal nocturno that he is, introduced me to so many parts of Santiago that I would have never seen on my own, most of them in the wee hours of the morning.

Back in Lynchburg, I have Lindsay Michie to thank for getting me started with studying resistance music and Tammy Hertel for suggesting that I turn that new field of study into a course that eventually led me to the concept for this book. This project would also have never come about if not for the inspiring students I have taught along the way. Every time I have taught these songs, it has helped me add a new level to my analysis. I was able to teach about some of the songs in this book in two iterations of my Spanish Language Resistance Music course at Lynchburg and in the Cuban Culture course that Lynchburg offered in partnership with the Universidad Viña del Mar.

At Furman, I have included songs I examine here in the senior seminar on Chilean and Cuban protest music and in Furman’s capstone course for the Latin American and Latinx minor. Special thanks go to Matt Hogg in the senior seminar course for some lyrics that he helped me to hear. In addition, of all the students I have ever had, Daniel Sarkela has been the most instrumental to my work by offering his musical expertise and analytical skills in our collaborative project on the songs of the 2019 Chilean social upheaval. Along with Daniel, I am grateful to the rest of our Club de Lectura (Jack Markowitz, Olivia Martins, and Paula Velissaris) for their friendship. I am also forever indebted to the constant support from my entire MLL department and to Santiago Quintero and Nathan Brown in particular for their constant camaraderie. Moreover, I have to thank Ron Friis for mentorship that has always gone above and beyond the call of duty.

In Chile, Lisa Pierce and Jerica Simmons were extraordinary travel companions, and Eugenia Pinochet warmly opened her home to me in Viña del Mar. Óscar Nuñez, my tour guide extraordinaire during my first visit to Santiago, and Pamela Flores, my impromptu concert companion, both quickly became dear friends in Chile.

Over the last seven years, I have presented work related to this project at numerous conferences, and either Andrea Smith or Tricia Reagan (and usually both) have been there almost every time to offer feedback and advice. Andrea, in addition, has been a steadfast source of encouragement and is always the first person I turn to with questions of phrasing or translation. In the conference sphere, Steven Hyland’s excitement about my project and helpful feedback have also been invaluable to me. Special thanks also to Diana Palardy for her work on the index.

Finally, my children, Liam, Owen, and Julia, have grown up listening to many of the songs that I write about here and have dutifully learned about Chilean culture and US interventions in Latin America through the conversations those songs have sparked. They have also patiently endured my trips to Chile, and I am forever grateful to Brian Crim for helping make that possible and for his unconditional encouragement.

Introduction

In 1967, Manuel Rojas, a prize-winning Chilean novelist and poet who was already in his seventies, paid a visit to the much younger singer-songwriter Ángel Parra to propose that the two collaborate on a folk-style album.¹ Parra, part of the socially conscious nueva canción chilena (Chilean new song) movement, and Rojas, whose work centered on the social issues confronting Chile’s working class, quickly got to work and together recorded and released an album entitled Chile de arriba a abajo (Chile from top to bottom) with lyrics and introductions written by Rojas and music composed by Parra. On the fifth track, a cueca titled El canto de Chile (The song of Chile), Rojas’s words and Parra’s voice describe the nation’s indigenous ancestry and natural beauty contrasting with poverty, hunger, inept governing, and gringos que se enriquecen (gringos that get rich).² Although the reference to gringos alludes to exploitative US businesses that controlled much of Chile’s natural resources at the time, Rojas refers directly to the United States in the spoken word introduction to the song. He asks what good is the beauty of that country if the nation is haunted by racial hatred and corrupted by social and economic inequalities. Chile, Rojas continues, is similarly plagued by the misery and desolation of its lower classes. As Parra begins with the encouraging lyrics vamos cantando el canto de Chile (we’re singing the song of Chile), ³ the song proceeds to describe the Chilean nation as both beautiful, because of its natural splendor, and unhappy, due in part to the consequences of economic imperialism through which US businesses enrich themselves at the expense of the Chilean lower and working classes.

The anti-American sentiment embedded in Rojas and Parra’s El canto de Chile is part of a long tradition of negative sentiments toward the United States among mostly left-leaning segments of Chilean society, and this book illustrates how since the 1960s many artists from various genres have given musical voice to Chilean anti-Americanism. Even though the musical history of anti-American sentiment toward the cultural, political, and economic influence of the United States in Chilean culture dates back to the 1960s, extreme negative attitudes toward the United States in Chile can be traced back to the nineteenth century. The most notable incident of early anti-Americanism in Chile actually began as a bar fight in the port city of Valparaíso.

On October 16, 1891, two US sailors from the USS Baltimore were killed and seventeen others wounded in what began as a dispute in a Valparaíso saloon. Capt. Winfield Scott Schley, the commanding officer of the US crew involved in the incident, reported an initial disturbance in the True Blue Saloon in which a Chilean spat in the face of a US seaman. Afterward, scores of US sailors were chased and attacked at several different locations around the city by angry mobs of Chileans armed with stones, clubs, and knives.⁴ In the report issued three days after the occurrence, the board of investigation appointed by Captain Schley clarified that the attacks by Chileans on US sailors appeared to have been premeditated and coordinated and that shouts of Yanks were heard from the stone-throwing Chileans.⁵ Just one month earlier Captain Schley had traveled to Santiago, Chile, and reported that there was strong feeling and great hostility among Chileans against American citizens in that city.⁶ This incident therefore seemed to be for the US government no ordinary bar brawl but instead a short-lived wave of violence instigated and fueled by a spirit of anti-Americanism in Chile.

The Baltimore incident and its aftermath described in further detail in chapter 1 constitute neither the beginning nor the end of negative sentiments toward the United States among certain segments of the Chilean population. Still, the event highlights the intensity with which anti-Americanism has at times been felt in parts of Chile. It also constitutes an important turning point in Chile’s imperialist struggle with the United States. Gringos Get Rich examines how this anti-Americanism in Chile has manifested in Chilean music in the past half-century. From the folk-based nueva canción chilena movement in the 1960s and early 1970s to the socially conscious hip-hop artists of postdictatorship Chile, left-leaning Chilean music has rather consistently grappled with Chile’s fluctuating and complex relationship with the United States. Much of the criticism of the United States in Chile’s music centers on the perception of the United States as a heavy-handed source of capitalist imperialism that is exploitative of and threatening to Chile’s poor, indigenous or working-class public and to Chilean cultural independence and integrity. Gringos Get Rich proposes to introduce these Chilean anti-American songs to the US public as literary and cultural artifacts and make them accessible to English-speaking readers. I do this in an attempt to both inspire reflection about negative attitudes toward the United States and to demonstrate how musical movements in Chile continue to push back against cultural hegemony through the creation of an oppositional consciousness that challenges the economic, political, and cultural values represented by the United States.

HEGEMONY AND OPPOSITIONAL CONSCIOUSNESS

Gringos Get Rich examines anti-American and anticapitalist music within the context of Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci’s analysis of counterhegemonic struggles for cultural power within elitist capitalist systems as well as Jane Mansbridge and Aldon Morris’s theory of oppositional consciousness in social protest. Historian Thomas R. Bates describes Gramsci’s theory of hegemony as one of the most significant contributions to twentieth century Marxist thought but also notes that the Italian theorist’s long imprisonment by Italy’s fascist regime prevented him from elaborating the concept in a systematic way.⁷ Nevertheless, Bates concludes that the concept of hegemony is the unifying thread of Gramsci’s prison notes, and appears to be the logical conclusion to his total political experience.⁸ Hegemony can be understood most simply as the cultural, moral and ideological leadership over allied and subordinate groups that consent to their own domination.⁹ Anti-Americanist music in Chile, therefore, poses a challenge to the cultural and economic hegemonic influence of the United States, and it does so through the cultural medium of popular song.

In one of Gramsci’s early writings, a letter to an Italian newspaper in 1917, he asserts the need to integrate political and economic activity with an organ of cultural activity.¹⁰ Several years later, he expanded on the importance of culture by explaining its role in proletarian revolution. Together with the problem of gaining political and economic power, he wrote, the proletariat must also face the problem of winning intellectual power. Just as it has thought to organize itself politically and economically, it must also think about organizing itself culturally.¹¹ In his prison writings, Gramsci explicitly connects the role of culture with his conception of hegemony by explaining the place of the concept of ethicopolitical history within the philosophy of praxis. While the philosophy of praxis is Gramsci’s term for Marxism in both theory and practice, he describes ethicopolitical history as the foundation of hegemony. Refuting the idea that the philosophy of praxis excludes ethicopolitical history, Gramsci notes that the philosophy of praxis consists precisely in asserting the moment of hegemony as essential to its conception of the state and to the accrediting of . . . a cultural front as necessary alongside the merely economic and political ones.¹² In other words, for Gramsci, ideological and political domination requires a cultural component, as does any effective attempt to contest such domination.

Political scientist Patrice McSherry, in writing on the nueva canción chilena movement within the framework of Gramsci’s theories of hegemony and counterhegemony, asserts that the political vision of the movement "challenged the existing hegemonic sphere of music on radio and television, dominated by U.S. rock-and-roll, similar Chilean music (Nueva Ola), and ‘typical’ Chilean huaso music."¹³ Even more importantly, though, McSherry points out that the nueva canción chilena movement challenged the structure of power relations in Chile and Latin America [and] used its poetry to cry out for social justice, equality, self determination, and structural change.¹⁴ Gringos Get Rich draws on McSherry’s work but focuses specifically on the political, economic, and cultural influence of the United States within Chilean hegemony and the anti-American aspect of counterhegemonic challenges to the dominant culture. Furthermore, Gringos Get Rich traces the anti-Americanist resistance to hegemonic rule from the nueva canción chilena movement of the 1960s and early 1970s through rock music under the Pinochet dictatorship to the hip-hop music of today. According to Gramsci, the proletariat can become the . . . dominant class to the extent that it succeeds in creating a system of class alliances which allows it to mobilize the majority of the working population against capitalism and the bourgeois state.¹⁵ Anti-Americanist Chilean music from the 1960s to today has constituted part of an attempt to create class alliances with an oppositional consciousness to mobilize the working population against the hegemony of US-influenced capitalist economy in Chile.

In her work on oppositional consciousness in social protest, political scientist Jane Mansbridge explains that she uses the term oppositional consciousness to define an empowering mental state that prepares members of an oppressed group to undermine, reform, or overthrow a system of human domination.¹⁶ Critical to the creation of an oppositional consciousness, according to Mansbridge, is the identification of the members of the subordinated group and the injustices done to them in order to create a collective sense of opposition to those injustices.¹⁷ In order for oppositional consciousness to be fully fledged, Mansbridge adds, the oppressed group must identify a specific dominant group as causing and in some way benefiting from those injustices.¹⁸ Morris and fellow sociologist Naomi Braine clarify that oppositional consciousness does not appear spontaneously but instead arises out of a preexisting oppositional culture. Oppositional cultures work to foster a sense of collective identity among the dominated group but often fail to offer them the specific tools and incentives to spur them into action. A mature oppositional consciousness, in contrast, challenges dominant beliefs and ideologies by distilling and synthesizing the ideas already present in that culture, giving them a coherence that forges them into symbolic blueprints for collective action and social change.¹⁹ Oppositional consciousness therefore works to actively undermine the hegemonic culture that benefits the dominant class. In fact, according to Morris and Braine, one of the most important cultural forces working against a hegemonic culture is the oppositional consciousness of oppressed groups.²⁰

Morris and Braine also explain that individuals with fully formed oppositional consciousness perform several tasks. Most importantly, they identify the enemy as an oppressor, thus politicizing preexisting ‘we’ vs. ‘they’ dichotomies, . . . they highlight and reinterpret countercultural expressions previously somewhat camouflaged in rituals[,] . . . music, poetry, dance[,] . . . [and] they create free spaces where resistance can be contemplated, acted out, and condoned.²¹ Seen in this way, the songs studied in Gringos Get Rich often position the United States and US-friendly Chilean elites as an oppressive Other. Working-class, rural, and indigenous Chileans, in contrast, are frequently presented collectively in the first-person plural as an oppressed we. Furthermore, the music studied in Gringos Get Rich draws on existing anti-American ideas present in Chilean society to encourage collective action aimed at diminishing US political, cultural, and economic influence in Chile.

By applying Gramsci’s theory of hegemony complemented with Mansbridge and Morris’s concept of the empowering mental state of oppositional consciousness, Gringos Get Rich studies how the music from various different genres, time periods, and political systems attempts to act as a counterhegemonic response to the influence of the United States in Chile’s political, cultural, and economic systems. Political scientist Nicola Pratt defines counterhegemony as a creation of an alternative hegemony on the terrain of civil society in preparation for political change.²² The songs examined here are part of a movement spanning more than half a century that criticizes the acceptance of US political, economic, and cultural influence among much of the Chilean public, but they also seek to help mobilize a counterhegemonic movement to challenge the status quo.

UNDERSTANDING ANTI-AMERICANISM

Recognizing that the term anti-Americanism can be problematic for a number of reasons, in this book I follow historian Alan McPherson’s broad definition of anti-Americanism as presented in Yankee No! Anti-Americanism in U.S.–Latin American Relations. McPherson defines anti-Americanism generally as the expression of a disposition against US influence abroad.²³ Furthermore, he goes on to explain, this definition includes dispositions against any US influence—cultural, political, economic—but . . . it does not assume that one disposition implies another.²⁴ Similarly, political scientists Alvin Rubinstein and Donald Smith in their study of anti-Americanism in the Third World define the concept as any hostile action or expression that becomes part and parcel of an undifferentiated attack on the foreign policy, society, culture, and values of the United States.²⁵ Although anti-American sentiment can be found throughout the world, McPherson notes that during the twentieth century the growing power of the United States created its own particular mythology in Latin America. Rightly or wrongly, he writes, the more the United States made its presence as an industrial juggernaut, military overlord, and cultural omnivore known, the more Latin Americans came to see—or imagine—links between these roles, and the more they rejected them.²⁶

Often, as many of the songs examined in Gringos Get Rich attest, especially in the later chapters, anti-American sentiment is aimed at the US government as a source of capitalist imperialism. French theorist Jean-François Revel alludes to capitalism in asserting that the principal function of anti-Americanism has always been, and still is, to discredit liberalism by discrediting its supreme incarnation.²⁷ British political scientist Stephen Haseler has expressed a similar view by characterizing criticisms of US policies as a repudiation of liberal democratic capitalism and its attendant values.²⁸ Similarly, historian Greg Grandin asserts that in Latin America in particular, anti-Americanism began to take on an increasingly anticapitalist role by the early twentieth century. Criticism of the United States, sharpened through Marxist theory, gained political momentum with the growth of communist, socialist, and nationalist political parties. . . . As corporations and banks steadily replaced gunboats as the main agent and symbol of US power[,] . . . Latin American critics began to focus on the economic dimensions of US power.²⁹

French philosopher Pascal Bruckner, in contrast, asserts that anti-Americanism is not a critique of America, of its faults or its crimes.³⁰ Instead, he writes, anti-Americanism is an autonomous discourse of its own . . . [that] shapes one of those grand narratives of modernity imbued with a unifying and allegorical capacity.³¹ Similarly, political scientists Dinorah Azpuru and Dexter Boniface point out that while the actions and attitudes of the US government and its citizens are certainly important factors in giving rise to anti-Americanism abroad, the domestic political context in which anti-American attitudes take root is no less important . . . [as] anti-Americanism functions as a stalking horse for other grievances.³² In the case of much of the music studied in Gringos Get Rich, the criticisms embodied in anti-American statements are targeted as much or more toward Chile and Chileans’ response to US actions and attitudes as they are to the United States itself. As such, they challenge the consent to domination inherent in Gramsci’s conception of hegemony as much as the domination per se.

It should be noted as well that some scholars take issue with the term anti-Americanism, preferring to write instead more generally of anti-imperialism, as the criticisms of the United States are often toward the imperialist actions of the US government rather than to the collective society of US citizens. I acknowledge that the United States is, indeed, by no means the only example of an imperialist nation that has wielded power over Chile, but I nevertheless agree with McPherson that "treating US power as just one more manifestation of a worldwide pattern of empire neglects the specificity of anti-US protests."³³ Gringos Get Rich, therefore, studies anti-imperialism in Chilean music only within the context of US imperialism and not the imperialism of Spain, Britain, or the Soviet Union, even though all of those imperial forces have had a considerable presence in Chile and at times have intertwined with each other.

Finally, the adjective anti-American is an English term of which the equivalent in Spanish is often anti-yanqui and not anti-americano because in much of Latin America the place name América and the adjective americano refer to the entirety of both the North and South American continents and their people rather than to the United States and its citizens. Cognizant of this possible point of confusion, Gringos Get Rich makes use of the English term in which the America in anti-Americanism refers to the United States. Nevertheless, although many US-based theorists are often quoted making use of the US understanding of American, it is important to clarify that the Latin American and geographically broader use of americano is the one that is generally found in the lyrics of the music studied in this book.

THE ROOTS OF CHILE’S ANTI-AMERICANIST MUSIC

Amid the waves of intense anti-Americanism described in the previous section, during the twentieth century, Chile, like much of the rest of Latin America and many parts of the world, experienced profound cultural norteamericanización (Americanization), as US culture seeped into Chilean society. Nonetheless, Chilean sociologist José Joaquín Brunner asserts that the phenomenon of US cultural influence in Latin America should not be understood as cultural penetration. Rather, Brunner explains that in the capitalist world, the United States functions as a cultural center and Latin America as one of its peripheries. These peripheries construct their own national identities in part based on the image of the central Other. According to Brunner, all fields of culture, including sociology, pop art, rock music, film, [and even] neoliberalism are produced first in the United States and then received and appropriated in Latin America.³⁴ Stefan Rinke, in his study of anti-Americanism in Chile during the twentieth century, notes that beginning around 1910 the American way of life, as a symbol of modernity and social change, provoked fascination among many Chileans while it worried others. Although a significant part of the Chilean public opposed US cultural influence, Rinke explains, dances and musical styles from the United States quickly gained popularity in Chile and even began to dominate the free time of the emergent middle class and were embedded deeply into youth culture.³⁵

Along with music and dance, the film industry also incorporated a significant amount of US culture into Chilean society. According to Rinke, the idolization of movie stars along with the Hollywood messaging related to beauty, wealth, and luxury along with the commercial success of the US film producers and distributors left a profound and lasting effect on the Chilean public.³⁶ Chilean historian Fernando Purcell has studied the impact of US propaganda film in Chile during World War II. According to Purcell, the repeated attendance of tens of thousands of Chileans at film functions organized by US institutions operating in Chile generated a favorable impact in the conscience of thousands of Chilean citizens.³⁷

When the television industry boomed in Chile in the 1960s, US representations of reality entered many middle-class Chilean homes. In addition, Rinke explains that the CIA . . . used Chilean television for the development of anti-communist propaganda.³⁸ By the 1970s, many US shows were transmitted daily in Chile including such diverse offerings as Sesame Street, Hawaii 5-O, and televangelist Jimmy Swaggart’s broadcasted sermons.³⁹ In 1976, three years into the Pinochet dictatorship, the presence of US television in Chile reached its peak with 84 percent of broadcasts arriving from the United States.⁴⁰

In 1971, Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean American academic and novelist, and Armand Mattelart, a leftist Belgian sociologist, published a bestselling book in Chile titled How to Read Donald Duck, arguing in part that the super-rich Disney character Scrooge McDuck functions as a normalized portrayal of US corporate exploitation of Latin America. In the book, Dorfman and Mattelart denounce the profound effect such messaging has had on the Latin American public: Our Latin American countries become trash cans being constantly repainted for the voyeuristic and orgiastic pleasures of the metropolitan nations. Every day, this very minute, television, radio, magazines, newspapers, cartoons, newscasts, films, clothing, and records, from the dignified gab of history textbooks to the trivia of daily conversation, all contribute to weakening the international solidarity of the oppressed. We Latin Americans are separated from each other by the vision we have acquired of each other via the comics and the other mass culture media. This vision is nothing less than our own reduced and distorted image.⁴¹ In Gramscian terms, what Dorfman and Mattelart describe is the hegemonic domination exercised by the United States through media sources of all sorts.

With this backdrop of over two centuries of mistrust and resentment for the US government, coupled with a growing cultural influence of the United States in Chile, it is of little surprise that messages expressing a spirit of anti-Americanism began to emerge in Chile’s popular music. In the 1940s and 1950s, a type of music referred to as folklore or música típica increased in popularity in Chile. This music centered on the romanticized figure of the huaso, a type of horseman or cowboy common in central Chile. Chilean music scholars Juan Pablo González, Óscar Ohlsen, and Claudio Rolle explain that despite the virtual assault of foreign musical genres from Mexico, Argentina, or the United States, música típica chilena maintained a high degree of production and consumption in Chile during the 1950s and 1960s and constituted a common source of identification for Chileans.⁴² Similarly, historian Jedrek Mularski asserts that música típica "became deeply entrenched in the hearts and minds of many Chileans as the fundamental and authentic representation of chilenidad and national identity. Furthermore, Mularski states that in the wake of World War II, música típica in Chile represented a sense of domestically rooted pride and identity in the face of Sovietization and yankee imperialism."⁴³

As the main audience for música típica began to age in the 1960s, a modern alternative began to develop. Neofolclore, a blend of pop music and traditional Chilean folk melodies and lyrics, constituted an attempt to revitalize traditional rural musical trends in the urban sphere and continued to popularize national music over purely foreign influences. However, despite its rapid rise in popularity, neofolclore also quickly found harsh critics, as other musicians disparaged what they perceived as overly patriotic or sentimental themes, exaggerated use of vocal imitations of instruments, and desperately trendy fashion choices. In contrast with the neofolclore movement, in the mid-1960s a number of folklorists began once again to recoup traditional Chilean music—this time not just from the central valley but also from a wider swath of the nation—and infuse it with social justice commentary associated with the political left. This movement became known as the nueva canción chilena. While música típica and neofolclore both rebelled against the musical influences of US imperialism by their very nature, nueva canción artists were the first to fold anti-Americanism into the lyrics of their songs.

Anti-imperialist and anticapitalist critiques of the United States in Chilean music coincided with the lead-up to the peak of the political left in Chile, which culminated with the inauguration of Salvador Allende to the presidency in 1970. Long before Allende’s election, folk-based music had already begun to contribute to the shaping of national identity in Chile, and politically tinted musical festivals from both sides of the political spectrum had become commonplace by the middle of the twentieth century. Although musicians from both the left and the right participated with different subgenres in this endeavor, it is the nueva canción chilena movement that aligned itself with Allende’s leftist Popular Unity campaign and social justice causes. As such, the nueva canción movement also most strongly embraced anti-imperialism and anti-Americanism into