University and Politics
Chapter two follows Beatriz to the University of Concepción to study medicine. It examines the type of medicine she studied in the early 1960s, how this related to evolving ideas about development, and how it shaped her political convictions. Young Chileans tended to follow their parents politically, especially when it came to the Left. But it was only in Concepción that Beatriz began understanding the basis for her loyalty to the Socialist Party independently of her father. In this respect, her visit to Cuba in the aftermath of Chile’s 1960 earthquake was decisive. In Havana she also attended the First Latin American Alongside a significant generation of students who would come to lead Chile’s revolutionary left in subsequent decades, studying a particularly socially-driven medicine at the university at the time, she began to act politically in her own right on a local stage through her involvement in study groups, student newspapers, and elections.