"...triumph of the "New Republic" even as the war stalemated along the Maule River, with "Colorados" unable to force their way past Blanco defenses but Aldunate's men nonetheless too poorly equipped to muster a serious counterattack; this dichotomy, of progress on paper but frustration as far as facts on the ground, was perhaps symbolically representative of what was to come of Alessandrist Chile over the next eight years until the Revolution of 1924 put the flailing polity out of its misery.
It should not be understated, however, what a new leaf the Constitution of 1916 represented, and the optimism and enthusiasm that greeted Arturo Alessandri as its first President. The provisional Chilean government, dominated by the center and center-left, promulgated the new constitution that signified the end of the Old Republic. [1] The powers of the Presidency were greatly reduced while the Presidential term was extended to six years, with the prohibition on succeeding oneself maintained but the lifetime limit of a single term lifted, rare provisions of the New Republic's governmental structure that would be maintained during the Socialist Republic in turn. The Senate was reduced in number and powers, shifting much of the influence to an expanded and much more influential Chamber of Deputies, suggesting to some that the New Republic would be parliamentary; the powers of the judiciary were further strengthened as well, to provide an additional check.
The constitution was remarkably progressive and drew heavily on ideas from both the United States and Argentina, but went further than either in many ways. The right to vote was enshrined as "inviolable" and indeed was the first article; the second article was the right to "free speech and conscience," with the Church and the Chilean state separated formally. Elections were to be regulated by a judicial electoral tribunal to end vote-rigging as had been common in the Old Republic, and the "dignity of the Chilean worker and their rights" were not to be "denigrated or denied," which the Figueroa Larrain brothers drafted in a fashion to avoid more serious worker's rights being constitutionalized. Considering the rampant corruption of the Blanco political class and power of the conservative Church prior to the Grito de 18 de Enero, this represented a sea change in Chilean politics.
Nonetheless, the explosion of radicalism across Chile in 1915 left many citizens feeling dismayed that, after Alessandri's bursting onto the political scene the previous January, this was the best his movement could do. Recabarren did not denounce the document out of hand - a fact few of his fellow revolutionary socialists ever forgot or let him forget - but he nonetheless referred to it as a "well-intended reform, but born of bourgeois principles and grievances rather than those of labor" and expressed skepticism about many of the provisions it lacked, most notably a more explicit defense of labor unions or the ten-hour working day; others were curious why land reform was not enshrined alongside the separation of Church and state, or why socialism was not proposed as a foundational aspect of the state. Even Alessandri had wanted to write legislative initiative for the President into the constitution, and its denial to him frustrated him to no end, as he predicted (correctly) that the structure of government would not work if a Chamber of Deputies that disliked an incumbent President was seated and refused to work with him.
Alessandri, standing as the only serious candidate for President, was thus easily elected and was inaugurated on April 10th, with as many as half a million citizens of Santiago in the streets the day of his inauguration, which was guarded under tight watch by Altamirano and the most elite of the Chilean Carabineros. In his address from the same window of La Moneda where President Riesco had been slain just over a year earlier, Alessandri spoke for close to an hour, without the use of notes, declaring "the dawn of a new day in the new Chile" and promised "the crushing of the oligarchy, insurgency and banditry in all of the country."
This was easier said than done, and not only due to increasingly fidgety Socialists in the Copiapo region who had still refused to submit to formal political power in Santiago and in concurrent Congressional elections swept essentially every district north of La Serena (Alessandri's Radicals, of course, dominated not just the Central Valley but all of Southern Chile "in absentia," thus enjoying a supermajority that made a farce of the new democratic constitution their champion had just helped shape.) Chile had exited the war about a year earlier in economic collapse, and despite the resumption of trade with Europe - Britain in particular - the ruinous terms placed upon it and the partial occupation of some northern ports by Bolivian soldiers to see to it that reparations were successfully paid had nonetheless created a situation where Chile was only barely able to feed itself thanks to humanitarian imports, let alone economically thrive, especially with the South in Blanco hands. Criminal gangs thus roamed the countryside, often in combination with the rural police, and a state of lawlessness descended over the country that Alessandri for all his good intentions was poorly equipped to combat. Blanco paramilitaries also found it much easier to infiltrate northwards amongst those sympathizers who had not fled southwards during the chaos of 1915, and the new "Alessandrist" Constitution seemed to confirm all of their worst fears about the New Republic, particularly the severely curtailed public role of the Church in matters of state. Despite the anticlerical program of Alessandri being severely cabined compared to other liberal regimes around the world - church schools and properties were not seized, and no religious orders were formally expelled - the curtailment of the Church's prerogatives nonetheless offended a great many Chileans who had turned to faith in the aftermath of the Great American War's various debacles and now saw Alessandri as persecuting them alongside the clergy. This, far more than the conservative political instincts of the Blancos, was what inspired a spate of terrorism across Colorado-held Chile after Alessandri's inauguration, presaging the rise of right-wing, Catholic paramilitarism throughout the rest of the 20th century..."
- Between Two Chiles
[1] Sans Balmaceda and the 1891 Chilean Civil War, there is no distinction between "Liberal Republic" and "Old Republic" in TTL Chilean historiography.
