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In 1939 the Caja de Seguro Obligatorio (CSO, Obligatory Insurance Fund), the Chilean agency that provided social security, disability, and health care insurance to blue-collar workers, published an advertisement in the Socialist party magazine Rumbo.“The social security system,” read the advertisement,“tries to replace the denomination of ‘indigent’with that of ‘taxpayer’[imponente], a switch from ‘charity’to ‘insurance’and from ‘alms’ to ‘rights.’” The CSO thus aligned itself with a modern notion of state welfare as a “right.” According to the agency, the extension of CSO-administered benefits would suppress demeaning and retrograde forms of public and private welfare, which it termed “charity.” 1

This CSO advertisement appeared in Rumbo less than a year after the election to the presidency of Pedro Aguirre Cerda, the first of three Radical party members elected as standard bearers of Center-Left, popular-front …