Friday, March 29

Chile: feel hope again

In Chile, the great avenues have reopened and hope is opening through them. After years of social implosion and pandemic, and decades of accumulated frustration, a path that leads to a future of social justice is beginning to consolidate. The road will be winding and full of obstacles, challenges, mistakes, and roadblocks. It will be necessary to face the contradictions typical of a country that has lived, like no other, the lights and shadows of stark neoliberalism, and reaching a successful conclusion will require temperance, tenacity and leadership skills. The protagonists of this chapter in history will be young people born towards the end of the Pinochet dictatorship led by Gabriel Boric, who at 35 will become the youngest president in the history of the country and the newest in office worldwide.

The chronicle of this generation – our generation – began to be written during the protests of high school students in 2006. In the so-called “penguin revolution”, hundreds of thousands of young people took to the streets to express their rejection of the progressive privatization of the educational system . The newly assumed president Michelle Bachelet managed to reach a transversal agreement that allowed the political class to calm the spirits, take a colorful triumphant photograph, and little else. In the absence of structural changes, in the street the feeling of having been betrayed grew and the collective frustration deepened.

The situation would become more acute in 2011, under the first term of Sebastián Piñera. The university students marched en masse demanding free, quality public education. During the Ricardo Lagos government, the logic of the transition had engendered the CAE (Credit with State Guarantee): a financing mechanism in which the State acts as a bank guarantee to allow admission to universities. The result – in addition to the expected increase in students entering higher education – was the suffocating indebtedness of a generation and the grotesque enrichment of university owners. At the head of the movement were the presidents of the student federation of the University of Chile: Camila Vallejo and her successor Gabriel Boric. Chilean neoliberalism began to show deep cracks and the telluric momentum of our society would make itself felt a few years later.

In October 2019, the leading role was once again in the hands of the secondary players. In response to a 30-peso hike in the price of public transport, students protested by carrying out massive evasions of payment in the Santiago metro. The situation –which had as a direct precedent the tightening of repressive laws within public schools– was escalating, until on October 18 there was a definitive break in the country’s history. That night, the streets of Santiago would become the scene of barricades, fires and looting, while dozens of subway stations would burn simultaneously. In an act unprecedented since Pinochet’s time, Piñera decrees a state of emergency and declares war on his own people.

The social explosion of October 18 would be followed by weeks of peaceful marches and violent incidents. On Sunday 25 the most massive demonstration in the history of Chile takes place and with the shouts of “It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years”, the demand for a new constitution begins to grow strongly. After a month of extreme tension, in which Chile is teetering between anomie and the threat of a new coup, the political class is trying to put an end to discontent through the “Agreement for Social Peace and New Constitution.” This momentous pact is signed, among others, by Deputy Boric. After doing so in a personal capacity for not having the unanimity of his collective “Social Convergence”, he is suspended from his membership. This decision would also cost him the rejection of sectors of the ultra and would lead him to suffer physical and verbal attacks.

The social maelstrom unleashed in 2019 is truncated by the pandemic, but the democratic impulse prevails and plebiscites and elections are held that reaffirm the majority will to start deep processes of change in the country. It is possible to install a parity Constitutional Convention, with seats reserved for Indigenous Peoples, and with a wide representation of independents and social movements. The right wing, which for the first time since the return to democracy obtained a minority representation (well below the third that would allow it to have the power of veto), is beginning to entrench itself.

The conservative sectors, overwhelmed after years of social instability and demoralized by the bad government of Piñera, give in to the temptation of the heavy hand and square almost completely behind the neo-Pinochet leadership of Jose Antonio Kast. In response to this scenario, a vast majority consolidates in support of Boric, turning the recent presidential election into a contemporary mirror of the plebiscite that ended the dictatorship in 1988. As has not happened since then, there is a genuine cultural effervescence in around a political project that offers renewal and new perspectives. The campaign is fierce and Kast does not hesitate to play dirty, saturating the media with fake news and waving a speech in the purest Bolsonaro style.

Election day doesn’t start out well. In different parts of the country, voters report that due to the lack of public transportation they cannot go to vote. Images are circulating showing parking lots filled with parked buses, while thousands of people wait at bus stops in the sweltering summer heat and many decide to return home unable to vote. Faced with the serious situation, many citizens organize and go out to supply public transport using their private cars to take people to the polling stations. Until the last moment there is no indication of the imminent result. At around six in the afternoon, the tables begin to close and the result is unquestionable. With the largest vote obtained in all of our history and by more than a million votes difference, Gabriel Boric becomes president-elect. Everything is jubilation and the Alameda, wide open, gathers an ocean of citizens united in celebration to receive the new president.

Thus, the story runs its course. Two years after that burned-out October, Chile is in the middle of a constitutional process and has just elected a young president who personifies the beginning of a new cycle. With a divided parliament and an economic crisis of global proportions, Boric and his team will face complex and challenging times. In addition to offering governance to advance the necessary reforms proposed in its program, the government will have the responsibility to protect and ensure the proper development of the Constitutional Convention. There, formulas are sought to transcend the neoliberal model and the design of what will be the Chile of the coming decades is forged. Once again, the eyes of the world look towards this narrow strip of land with the certainty that, as Salvador Allende said, “social processes are not stopped by crime or by force.” The possibility that a new generation can lead the destinies of Chile with temperance, energy and humility is reason enough to finally feel hope again.



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