Concept of Dictatorship: Secondary chilean students’ conceptions

The military coup of september 11th in 1973 was the beggining of a hard dictatorship that placed Pinochet for 17 years in the chilean executive power. This fact, gave origin to many research that, from different visions, positions and ideas, intend to create an “historical conscience” among the citizens who lived in dictatorship and live in democracy today. Related to this, from the educational world, this research has a real importance as, knowing ideas about dictatorship will allow to see the visión of this “sons of democracy” who perceive the effects of this histórical process. For chilean secondary students, the process of dictatorship was caracterised by violence because of the hard repression during the military regime to demonstrations and protest, enphasising that for them, Dictatorship and Transition are parts of the same historical period, as they relate the transition with facts and situations that happened in the military regime.