Psychedelic Chile
May 15, 2017 Patrick Barr-Melej
A youth-driven, transnationally connected counterculture emerged in Chile during the politically turbulent 1960s and 1970s, a period that saw the election of a Marxist president followed by a military coup in 1973. Focusing on "hippismo" and an esoteric movement called Poder Joven, the book challenges prevailing assumptions about culture, politics, and the Left under Salvador Allende's "Chilean Road to Socialism." While countercultural attitudes toward recreational drug use, gender roles, rock music, and consumerism influenced many leftist youths, most leftist leaders shared a more conservative cultural sensibility, exposing intergenerational dissonance. Public contempt for counterculture from across the political spectrum ultimately contributed to fierce repression of nonconformist youth after the coup.