In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Hispanic American Historical Review 81.3-4 (2001) 816-817



[Access article in PDF]

Book Review

Ein Weg zur Sozialreform in Lateinamerika: Die Rezeption der katholischen Soziallehre Europas in Chile, 1880-1920


Ein Weg zur Sozialreform in Lateinamerika: Die Rezeption der katholischen Soziallehre Europas in Chile, 1880-1920. By Patricio Valdivieso. Histoamericana 7. Stuttgart: Verlag Hans-Dieter Heinz; Akademischer Verlag Stuttgart, 1998. Tables. Notes. Bibliography. 451 pp. Cloth.

Social justice, social problems, social questions, and social teachings have been core issues in a major public policy discourse of recent decades. Vital roots of these issues are found in the social teachings that were formulated by European Catholicism in the nineteenth century and gained official validity through the Rerum Novarum Encyclical of 1891. These teachings defined the complex nature of the social questions and social problems during the Industrial Revolution and suggested remedial strategies.

Furthermore, the recent revival in political philosophy has injected an impressive vitality into the discourse of the criteria defining social justice. Utilitarianism has reaffirmed its faith in the criterion of maximum utility for the largest number of people. To social contract theorists, the maximandrum remains equality. Inequality is permissible only as long as it benefits the least advantaged. The prime political virtue for libertarians is freedom. In the composite theory of justice, freedom and equality are complementary criteria rather than substitutes.

The social question poses even today a decisive problem for the development of Chile. This problem was recognized and discussed for the first time between 1880 and 1920. The first concrete initiatives by Chilean leaders towards the solution of the social problem also have their roots in the 1880-1920 period. Unfortunately, little noteworthy has been known about the origins of this important reform process in which Chilean Catholics participated decisively.

The splendid monograph by Patricio Valdivieso, A Road to Social Reform in Latin America: Reception of European Catholic Social Teachings in Chile, 1880-1920, makes a major contribution to Chilean social historiography by providing--in three massive, well-researched and superbly written chapters--an excellent and novel review, analysis, and evaluation of European Catholic social teachings and their reception and impact in Chile between 1880 and 1920; by presenting a detailed examination of the social situation of the underclasses in the cities and on the land; and by delivering new perceptions about the discussion of the social question during the modernization process.

The first chapter exhaustively documents the historical context within which the social question arose and was discussed. The processes of social and economic transformation and the problems created by them, namely pauperism, prevalence of money wages and their link to the cost of food, and protests, display, according to Valdivieso, an extraordinary similarity in Europe and Chile. This created the conditions for the acceptance of European models for the solution of social problems in Chile between 1880 and 1920. [End Page 816]

The second chapter describes the reception of European social teachings by Chilean Catholicism and the development of a program of social reform. An overview of the creation of Catholic social teachings in Europe in the nineteenth century until the Rerum Novarum Encyclical, is followed by a presentation of the political-confessional context in Chile. Being at a loss when the social problem and tensions became obvious, Chilean Catholicism sought help where similar problems were known to exist and where knowledge had been gained in solving them, namely Europe.

Chapter three demonstrates how such social grievances as alcoholism, spread of diseases, high mortality rates, inflation, substandard housing, plural labor markets and low savings were jointly designated as the social problem and question. These social grievances formed, during 1880-1920, the basis for a discussion of a societal crisis. In this context, the Social Catholics contributed both to the formation of reform thinking as well as to the transformation of ideas into concrete forms of social policy.

The issues of social justice, the social question, and the social problem remain as relevant today as they were hundred years ago. This monumental study by Valdivieso fills numerous gaps...

pdf

Share