From Cooperative Wineries to Fair-Trade Wine: Small Wine Producers in Twentieth Century Chile

This talk explores the history of cooperative wineries in Chile, from their foundation in 1929 to the beginning of the process of AgrarianReform in 1964. While the Chilean state envisioned rural cooperatives as a mechanism to modernize the countryside and help impoverished
small landowners, the project’s implementation had major flaws. The cooperative project did not attempt to transform social and economic
structures in the countryside or to challenge the unequal relation between large-scale and small producers. In the long run, traditional
and large-scale wineries and not cooperatives became the engine of the modernization of the Chilean countryside.

jwil 13.xi.2009