A shameful and uncivilized spectacle”

Taxibuses, students, and the conflicted road to deregulation in Pinochet’s Chile, 1975–1978

Bibliographic Data

ID10249285
AuthorsAndra B Chastain (0000-0001-6225-7993, Washington State University Vancouver, Vancouver, USA, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume42
Issue2
Pages187-205
Publication date2021-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Transport History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-5266 • E-ISSN: 1759-3999
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0022526620975918
OpenAlexW3112317931
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited16

As the military regime of Augusto Pinochet deregulated urban transportation in the late 1970s, controversy flared over a popular mode of urban transit called a taxibus, a small bus with a higher fare than a full-sized bus. This article utilizes newspaper sources to examine the struggles that played out between the taxibus industry, the government, and passengers in the midst of shifting policies. It focuses in particular on controversies surrounding students and youth on taxibuses. The article argues that taxibuses became an object of contention because they occupied an ambiguous space in terms of social class, they displayed the military government’s struggle to provide sufficient transportation and, finally, because bus owners, drivers, and passengers resisted deregulation during this period. This study contributes to our understanding of urban transit in the Global South by shifting attention to small-scale bus entrepreneurs, who occupied an important market in Latin American cities

Advertising · Business · Deregulation · Economics · Economy · Government (linguistics · Latin Americans · Market economy · Newspaper · Political science · Spectacle · Communism, Protests, Social Movements · Law · Political and Social Dynamics in Chile and Latin America · Water Governance and Infrastructure

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