Psychedelic Chile: Youth, Counterculture, and Politics on the Road to Socialism and Dictatorship by Patrick Barr-Melej (review)

Patrick Barr-Melej has written an interesting and entertaining book about counterculture and its impact in Chile in the 1960s and early 1970s. He writes with sympathy for the Chilean hippie and Siloist movements, using eclectic and diverse entry points: descriptions of the 1970 "criollo Woodstock," appraisals of contemporary novels and films, a review of political and psychosocial views held by hippies and Siloists, and the hostility toward both expressed by the right and the left (for different reasons), especially during the Unidad Popular period of Salvador Allende (1970-73).

Barr-Melej argues that the hippie movement, with its unconventional interest in sex, drugs, and rock and roll, brought to the fore cultural conflicts in a society that was deeply politicized, with a strong history of militant political parties. Masses of leftist young people were involved in the youth wings of class-identified political parties, especially the Socialist and Communist parties on the left and the centrist Christian Democrats. Most of them strongly supported Allende and the "Chilean road to socialism." Leftist youths volunteered by the tens of thousands for Trabajos Voluntarios (236–238) to dig irrigation ditches and build housing in shantytowns, teach poor people how to read, and bring artistic pursuits to previously marginalized social sectors. These leftist youth disliked the hippies, seeing their lifestyle choices—their use of marijuana, their admiration of foreign "imperialist" counterculture, and their rejection of political involvement—as irresponsible and hedonistic, even reactionary. The leftist youth saw in all this signs of a "colonial mentality" that sent a poor message to youth and about youth (158). The anti-Allende right wing detested the hippies for what it saw as their wanton and delinquent ways and their degradation of gender norms and Christian morals, values, and traditions. Barr-Melej analyzes the different meanings of "the good young Chilean" among these social strata.

Barr-Melej argues for "the relevance of generation and cultural change in a society where class and party dominated discourse and practices during the long 1960s" (276). His view is that scholars must consider generational categories of analysis as well as political and social class factors and that even in Chile, with its well-structured party system, there were observable generational traits. This is true: long hair, new fads in clothing, and openness to sexual freedom were widespread among young people in Chile (and worldwide) in the 1960s. Barr-Melej shows that members of the Communist Youth, for example, pressed party leaders to open their minds to long hair and freer lifestyles. He shows, too, that even right-wing youths adopted long hair in this era; long hair did not necessarily signify leftist or hippie politics (229). But counterculture did not produce structural social change. Cases of marijuana-sharing between affuent youths and the fewer working class young people involved in the hippie movement did not erase the stark class differences in Chile (see for example 33, 135–136, and 262).

This book sheds light on movements in Chile that have escaped much examination thus far. How can we assess their significance? The author says that countercultural youth were never more than a minority in Chile (118) and that between 3000 and 5000 youths attended the Piedra Roja festival, the Chilean Woodstock (33). At the same time, tens of thousands of people were attending concerts of the Chilean New Song movement, a new genre of music based in Latin American folklore with socially conscious lyrics and commitment to the goals of social revolution, in national stadiums.

How can we measure the importance of Silo, the countercultural "guru" who attracted followers in Chile and elsewhere? Barr-Melej estimates 100 core members of Poder Joven, Silo's organized followers (204). Silo, with his blend of Eastern and Western philosophy, his admonition to "transform the self" rather than social structures, and his criticisms of the Allende project, was an ambiguous...