Ideological Struggle Inside Ortúzar Commission: Authoritarians versus Moderates

This study examines the political and ideological stances of the jurists responsible for drafting Pinochet’s Constitution. Through a rigorous analysis of primary sources and the application of Critical Discourse Analysis to the corpus, two principal ideological positions are identified and scrutinized: one authoritarian and dominant, the other more moderate. The authoritarian stance represents a coalition between Catholic conservatism and neoliberal monetarism, while the moderate position reflects a continuity of the democratic and republican principles characteristic of the Chilean developmental state period (1938-1973). The findings are discussed in terms of their sociopolitical and historiographical significance.