“the radio of the majority”

“the radio of the majority” is the recurring self-description associated with Radio Cooperativa, a broadcast voice that links the Queen of the Corner’s private world to the political crisis unfolding around her in 1986. The phrase gives the station a public identity, but the novel’s scenes also show how its reports enter homes, shops, and streets, turning radio listening into part of everyday life under repression.

The Phrase on Air

The wording appears as part of Radio Cooperativa’s identifying language: the Queen hears the station introduced as “Radio Cooperativa, the radio of the majority,” and elsewhere as “Cooperativa, the radio of the majority.” The refrain is not detached branding in the novel. It accompanies reports that make the political situation present in ordinary spaces, including the neighborhood store and the Queen’s home.

The station’s bulletins report unrest and government action in concrete terms. A report heard near the Queen’s neighborhood describes weapons and leaflets confiscated by security forces and attributes them to the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front. Another announces that more than twenty students were injured and at least as many arrested during rioting at a university, after which they were handed to military authorities. These reports place the station’s claim to speak for a broad public beside news of people exposed to state force.

A Voice in Domestic Life

Radio Cooperativa competes with the music the Queen prefers. Political reporting frightens her, and she often chooses oldies programs instead; she spends afternoons embroidering for wealthy clients while the city’s troubles arrive through the radio. Yet the station is difficult to exclude from daily life: neighbors hear it at the store, and its bulletins overlap with music and other sounds in the streets.

Over time, the Queen’s response changes. During a drive with Carlos, a bulletin identifies the Manuel Rodríguez Patriotic Front as claiming responsibility for a blackout across metropolitan Santiago. The news connects the intimate excursion to the wider conflict, but the announcer’s familiar voice also feels reassuring to the Queen in the darkness. She associates that voice with the news Carlos follows closely and with the suffering of families searching for missing relatives. Listening draws her attention toward those families even as she continues her embroidery.

Reports, Repression, and Recognition

The broadcasts do more than announce political events: they bring the consequences of repression into the Queen’s understanding. Reports of women seeking news of detained or missing family members move her, and she begins to use the word dictatorship rather than the more accommodating phrase military government. The station thus marks a change in how she names the political order, as well as what she is willing to hear about it.

Radio Cooperativa also reports a government warning that a subversive plan for September has been uncovered, then broadcasts that the Organization of Families of Detained and Disappeared Persons is holding a vigil at the Vicaría de la Solidaridad in the Plaza de Armas and demanding accountability for human-rights violations. The juxtaposition places official warnings beside a public demand for justice. The Queen has become more emotionally responsive to the testimonies she hears, though she remains wary of discussing Carlos and his activities with her friends.

The Broadcast Amid Crisis

After the September 1986 events, the station’s low-volume news becomes part of the Queen’s sleepless vigil at home. With the army occupying Santiago, roads closed, and house-to-house searches underway, Radio Cooperativa relays an Interior Ministry instruction that citizens remain indoors, stay vigilant, and report anything suspicious. The broadcast carries official orders into the same house where the Queen waits in case Carlos or his friends arrive.

Across these scenes, “the radio of the majority” holds together public crisis and private routine without making them equivalent. The broadcasts provide information, repeat the state’s warnings, and give the Queen a familiar voice through which she encounters political violence and the search for the disappeared. The phrase’s force comes from that recurring presence: the station is heard not from a distant political stage but amid embroidery, neighborhood conversation, anxious waiting, and the Queen’s gradual recognition of what is happening around her.