Making Friends and Making Out: The Social and Romantic Lives of Young Communists in Chile (1958–1973)

“B. D. Q. C.,”as he signed his letter, must have felt pretty special that New Year’s Eve of 1973. Some time that evening, the 15-year-old Communist boy from Santiago de Chile kissed a 17-year-old Communist girl admired for her beauty by all the young Communists from the local headquarters of the Juventudes Comunistas de Chile (JJCC), or Jota, as the youth wing of the Partido Comunista de Chile (PCCH) was nicknamed. He had never dated an older woman before, and though he bragged about having kissed thousands of other girls, he had never truly fallen in love until then. “I dated her for only 13 days. We broke up, but every day that goes by I love her more and more,” he confessed in a letter to the editor of the young Communists’ magazine a few days later. To make matters worse for our lovelorn teenager, the object of his affection did not stay single for long. “She is now dating another guy from the Jota. Every day that goes by I grow more jealous of him and of everyone who talks to her, because even though I’m not with her any more, I dream we are still together, and I have hopes to be with her again.” The existence of a place like the JJCC local headquarters, which all the people involved in this romantic affair visited regularly, was the cause of both solace and affliction for this young man: “I waste the whole afternoon in the headquarters waiting for her to arrive and greet her, so my eyes can take her in. I think about her every minute, while she has thousands of things to think about, and I have only one.”¹

This article delves into the social and romantic lives of young Chilean Communists like B. D. Q. C. The article’s focus is on the era often called the “long Sixties,” which here spans from 1958 to 1973.² Under the leadership of Mario Zamorano, first, and then Gladys Marín, the JJCC went from being a small cadre organization of roughly 1,000 to an impressive mass organization of more than 80,000 members. The growth, particularly noteworthy among previously underrepresented constituencies like young women and middle-class youth, gained greater momentum after the triumph of Chile’s first Socialist president and long-time Communist ally Salvador Allende in the 1970 presidential elections.³ By the time of the 1973 coup that ended Allende’s experiment in democratic socialism, the JJCC was leading the student governments of the most important public universities in Chile (the Universidad de Chile and the Universidad Técnica del Estado), publishing its own magazine (Ramona), and producing music under its own record label (Discoteca del Cantar Popular). In addition, four of its leaders sat in Congress: Alejandro Rojas, Eliana Araníbar, Orel Viciani, and the aforementioned Gladys Marín.

The main purpose of this article is to account for the radicalization of vast sectors of Chilean youth during the Sixties. It does so by shifting the focus from the strictly political aspects of left-wing activism to the lively social life that was part and parcel of this activism. While scholars point to the increasing dominance of ideology when studying the radicalization of the Sixties, this article shows that Communist ideology was embedded in a rich web of social and interpersonal relationships. Bringing together thought and emotion, I contend that the appeal of the left among the youth of the era cannot be understood without recourse to feelings of friendship and love.

The article is divided into four sections. The first section, intended as a case study of the social life of the young Chilean Communists, examines peer sociability in party headquarters, where young men and women interacted with little to no adult supervision. It shows that the JJCC’s language of camaraderie was rooted in social practices—sharing a cup of coffee, playing games, dancing together—that made the promise of community a reality for a number of...