This paper discusses the impact of international funding on the sustenance of inter-group relations in dictatorial Chile. By assuming a transnational and resource-centered perspective, this article traces the interactions between international actors and specific domestic groups, and focuses on how democratization was favored by the alteration of local power configurations in Chile. This especially favored the incorporation of grassroots organizations into public politics. These set of relations however would become strained as the country democratized and economic support became scarce. While much of the literature on social movements in Chile attributes grass-roots organizing and mobilization to specific conditions related to the dictatorial context, and therefore links demobilization directly to regime change, my argument is that one of the central elements accounting for both mobilization and demobilization of the grass-roots is a stark alteration in resource distribution, in which decisions in the ‘North’ played a major role.
