Chile, five years later

By: Ricardo Israel - 21/10/2024

On October 18, 2019, unexpected violence took place in Chile. Days before, student protests had appeared that used the rise in public transport prices as a pretext, however, what happened from that date shook the country, since its level was such that the government could not contain it, the police were overwhelmed and everything indicates that the Armed Forces did not want to intervene, apparently because the government could not or did not want to modify the current legislation, and without it, perhaps they would have ended up with the military parading in court. Above all, it was shown that the lack of an intelligence service, worthy of the name, made the country ill-prepared for a situation of this type.

Today we know that it could have been even worse, since only the action of the Carabineros prevented the seizure of La Moneda, the seat of government, which due to its symbolism could have had unforeseeable effects on democracy.

Chileans added a new word to their daily lives, “Octubrismo,” to refer to the occupation of the streets that month by a de facto alliance between ultras, anarchists, football hooligans, lumpen, common criminals and drug trafficking soldiers, the presence of the latter being very strong in attacks on police stations as well as in towns occupied by them, thus demonstrating their firepower and territorial presence.

It was a turning point for Chile. Visible effects were that the right-wing government, elected by the majority, sank into irrelevance, the political center that had governed in alliance for most of the transition to democracy disappeared as an alternative until today, and those on the left and right who called themselves the heirs of Allende and Pinochet, respectively, acquired an importance they had not had before. The consensus that the center-left and the center-right sought for 3 decades and that gave the country some of the most successful years in its history, was replaced by polarization, so much so that the next presidential election was won by Gabriel Boric, the youngest and most voted president in history, with the promise of changing everything, since he convinced a large number of voters with the falsehood that, contrary to all evidence, nothing good had been done in Chile in those 30 years. In other words, the narrative prevailed over the facts.

In other words, violence had unfortunately served as the “midwife of history” in the words of Karl Marx, and the country entered an experimental period of profound change, with two failed attempts at constitutional transformation, and, above all, with the acceptance of violence, the country pushed the boundaries of what is possible and acceptable.

Chile discovered that the country's supposed "exceptionalism" was not true, but at least debatable, having brought more problems than benefits. The claim that institutions were strong and always worked was only the 21st century equivalent of those previous generations who erred in claiming in the 20th century that there were no coups d'état in Chile.

Personally, I must humbly admit that I did not know my country as well as I thought I did, a debt that I have tried to make up for in a forthcoming book that attempts to understand what took place as well as the two failed processes of a new constitution. The truth is that they surprised me as much as the level of violence and destruction. Furthermore, the support and acceptance of that violence has since been part of the daily landscape for many, with consequences such as rampant crime and insecurity as the primary factor in citizen complaints, just as has happened in other countries, further proof that there is no such thing as “exceptionality.”

The truth is that I still find it hard to understand that people I knew and valued had no words of condemnation for the violent people, and many, too many, for the Carabineros, who almost alone tried to control public order, with the excesses that come with facing organized mobs, without the proper weapons and support from the authorities and the political world. And beyond the known excesses, the police institutions also had to face the open hostility of some prosecutors and judges with a more persecutory than justice-seeking spirit.

The Piñera government only sought to survive, it did not use all its legal powers, surely to avoid a greater number of national and international complaints about what was not true, "the violation of human rights," in a country sensitized on this issue by the consequences of the Pinochet dictatorship and its more than 3,000 victims, including deaths and disappearances between 1973 and 1990.

Piñera and his government contributed to the instability by offering what no one had asked of him, a new constitution, without any clarity as to why he did so, perhaps just to be able to finish his government. He was not the only one, the now defunct Concertación did not defend its best creation, the Chile of the great agreements, the Chile in democracy that delivered good poverty reduction rates, and together with the center-right, internationally recognized economic development and social progress. And because he maintained the economic policy and internationalization that the country had followed since the 1970s, he managed to have the best indicators in Latin America.

For the Communist Party, the Broad Front and the radical left in general, it was a period of acceleration in history, where there were gestures as shameful for democracy as the front line of violence being received with honours in the National Congress.

They were not the only ones, either, since the media, especially TV, applauded the violence that seemed to bring about a new Chile, just as the violation of human rights during the dictatorship was once supported. Not only were they communicators, actors and actresses, but the greatest responsibility fell on companies that had directors, executives and owners, including television companies, such as those owned by very rich families, where the destruction of the sources of work of many humble Chileans as well as the property of small business owners was applauded.

Without exaggeration, what happened endangered democracy, and I do not mention what has appeared in the press about the intervention of other countries, for the simple reason that I do not do so because I do not have evidence that, beyond statements, there was formal participation by other nations. In any case, up to now, the Chilean State has failed to investigate what happened, since it is not even known who set fire to the Santiago subway, and there does not seem to have been any political will, nor among prosecutors, judges, or the police themselves. There is still a veil of mystery over the origin of the violence, which has fueled speculation of all kinds, so far without support.

However, perhaps Chile's most notable achievement was not only having overcome this violence, but also two constitutional processes, demonstrating that what truly distinguishes Chile in the concert of nations is the ability to give legal form to political conflict, as a way of avoiding violence being the predominant form of resolution. The proposal of the first process, called "Convention", was rejected by the electorate in the referendum called for that purpose. This new constitution had been drafted by a majority of elected left-wing constituents, who proposed a very radical transformation of the Chile built since 1810, with a total modification of the State, society and economy of the country, a proposal that in its extreme vision was only comparable to its opposite, the 1980 proposal of Pinochet, who also wanted to alter in the opposite sense, the type of country that Chile had built since its independence.

The voters themselves reacted and, with a surprising 62%, rejected the proposal to refound Chile in 2022, which was not the work of political parties but of ordinary Chileans, who resisted an immense offer of guaranteed and unfunded “rights”, which have sunk and disillusioned several countries in the region. Unlike the proposal where the radical left wanted to change everything, the second attempt was of the opposite sign, where a majority of right-wing constituents did not want to change (almost) anything, it was also rejected by the electorate in the respective referendum, and by a clear 55% against, in December 2023, both with high levels of participation. It was a complete turnaround, a 360-degree one, since after two attempts we returned to the point of origin on the constitutional issue, with the maintenance of the old constitution.

Chile has been in a real electoral lottery since 2019, as different elections have produced different results, sometimes exactly the opposite of one and the other. Thus, instead of listening to the voice of the ballot boxes and this overwhelming 62%, the parties reached an agreement that went against the current law, which provided that the responsibility fell entirely on Congress, one that was newly elected in 2021 along with the current president.

However, political majorities that included the right, the former Concertación and the governing Frente Amplio, gave rise to a chimera, since, instead of assuming their responsibility in Congress, these forces agreed on the election of 50 constituents, only on party lists, who would have no real power, since they were tied to a proposal that limited them, drafted by a committee of "experts" previously appointed by the parties.

In other words, Chile was this time witness to a departure from the democratic ideal, known since ancient times as “partidocracy”, that is, the sovereign elector is replaced by party leaderships. And as an inverted mirror of the radical left, this time it was the right close to Pinochet’s legacy that was favored, because its constituents received a majority vote in the elections.

However, this right was wrong, since it may have thought that this time the “Pinochet constitution” could be replaced by a similar one, but now, drafted and approved in a democratic way, forgetting that it had been reformed in such a way that the signatures it carried were from 2005, those of President Lagos and his ministers. Therefore, this right made the same mistake as the radical left, since instead of making a proposal where the content represented the country and its history, they proposed a document that reflected a certain government program, and where the previous time they wanted to change everything, now they wanted to change (almost) nothing, looking more to the past than to the future.

These two constitutional processes made the country lose four years, in addition to the cultural change that brought about the acceptance of violence. In order of importance, the first plebiscite stands out, the rejection of the founding constitution, since that failure consolidated the development model that Chile was following, in addition to practically leaving the Boric government without a revolutionary program, who was so committed to the proposal of the Convention that it has been a government of administration since then, since today there is no appetite for a change like the one he proposed when he was elected.

On the contrary, today everything indicates that Chileans are returning from the illusions that were on the verge of leading the country to the precipice. Thus, a majority today thinks that everything that happened after the outbreak of October 18 was for the worse. Today, there is a security crisis, capital flight, a drop in investment, educational deterioration and a long etcetera that make Chile a less attractive country than it was, including disillusionment with political forces that made moral superiority and unfair criticism of the past the basis of argument for their path to power, only to quickly fall into corruption, cronyism, and above all, a set of decisions that showed, due to their student origin, that they were more a group of students in practice than a coalition prepared to govern.

Chile also seems to have awakened from a slumber of self-flagellation, which did not recognize the advantages that the democracy of agreements had in the stability and social progress that it enjoyed in previous years, so perhaps this revaluation could help overcome the story of destruction to achieve a great Pact, this time not for the transition, but for what no country has achieved in Latin America, both economic development and a quality democracy, with reforms that finally allow for the construction of a "house for all" and not just for some.

As a prerequisite or at least in parallel, it is necessary to know everything that surrounded the outbreak and the constitutional processes, including what motivated Piñera's offer of a new constitution, since there are too many things that Chileans ignore, starting with who was behind the violence in October, and although there are some who do not like the truth, only this will allow us to turn the page, including the answer to whether or not there was participation by foreign governments.

The truth is that although the opinion of Chileans has strongly changed after the outbreak of October 18, today, negative, and that the voters solved by a large majority the problems created by the call for two failed constituent processes, it is also true that there is something pending, since at the same time that there was violence and destruction in the streets, on October 25, 2019, over a million people demonstrated peacefully, the largest ever known, and there were raised debts of democracy, which included inequality as well as insufficient quality health and education, which remain fully valid, where the call was not for a radical change to the right or left, but for a continuous process of improvement, to have a better country and a better society. And with the Boric government, today those problems have not only not been solved, but each and every one of them has worsened.

This - let us not forget - remains in force, and its solution can be the basis of a new Pact, of a National Agreement to achieve development and to have a better democracy, one that allows us to feel proud of it.

For now, in the absence of this, everything remains without a perspective of mission and unity. Thus, on October 26 and 27, there are local elections, which include regions (governors) and municipalities (mayors and councilors), and contrary to what the feeling of crisis indicates, without winning, the government can have a better result than expected, since similar to Petro's election in Colombia, the opposition faces them more divided than the government. Depending on the results, immediately after, the country enters presidential mode, and evidence of the (bad) moment of the government is that today they not only do not have a good candidate, but the one who leads the preferences of the left is the former president Bachelet, who apparently does not want to compete, since among other reasons, she could appear as a candidate for the Secretary General of the United Nations, although her possibilities diminished with the criticism she received for her performance as High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).

These are, in any case, elections where the right has the best chances, which is another indication of the government's poor performance, although it has a history of wasting good opportunities, both due to a lack of proposals and by wasting them, spending energy and resources in the fratricidal fight between different factions of that political sector, rather than using them against adversaries, and even Boric could have a new opportunity, since due to his age and having a support of + or - 1/3 which could be the basis for a new and future candidacy, whose success or failure will also depend on whether Chile has managed to overcome the Octoberism.

In this regard, I believe that the answer, as well as the ability to change the attitude of the electorate, whose opinion changes abruptly and becomes disillusioned quickly, will depend on whether some political coalition offers a program that goes beyond promises and does what the Concertación was unable to do, that is, reinvent itself. In my opinion, this would be to offer a great project to be followed by several governments, as occurred during the Chilean transition, and which in the new situation would be to recover the democracy of agreements and seek, as a goal, both economic development and, in the political sphere, a quality democracy, which Chile seemed to be on the way to achieving, and which, on the contrary, both violence and the idea of refoundation could have buried for many years.

Chile seems to be coming back. Hopefully it can take advantage of the momentum.

«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».