A Guggenheim Fellow[1] and winner of the National Prize for Humanities and Social Sciences,[2] he is known for being a critic of the socio-economic structure of his country after the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet.

[4] He was deputy director of the Latin American Social Sciences Institute (FLACSO) in Chile (1990–1991), where he also taught from 1974 to 1994.

[6] This same party proclaimed him presidential candidate for the 2005 election,[7] where he finally yielded his selection to the humanist Tomás Hirsch.

[8] His 1997 essay Chile actual: anatomía de un mito – which won the Santiago Municipal Literature Award the following year and which has had several subsequent editions – is well-known.

[8] In this he unveiled the "transvestism" of the political sectors that led the transition towards democracy, who would have allowed the fundamental pillars of the fallen regime to remain.