Chile is reborn

In an international scenario marked by the tragedy of the pandemic, good news comes from Chile. The southern country - "a long petal of the sea" as Pablo Neruda called it - has just begun the journey towards a new Constitution. This is not just a legal issue.

For the second time in thirty-two years, Chile has managed, not without difficulty, to trace an institutional way out from the current crisis, through a referendum. El plebiscito, the inhabitants call it. He did so on October 5, 1988 when citizens used the ballot paper to retire the Augusto Pinochet regime. This October 25, albeit with less drama, the nation once again took the path of voting, this October 25, to give the green light to the rewriting of the fundamental Charter, drawn up during the dictatorship although it was subjected to forty significant reforms in the last three decades.

The victory of the yes to change was predictable. Less predictable that the decision would come with such clarity. The front of the in favor triumphed with 78.3 percent, over 50 points behind the rival line-up. The success of the proposal for an elected Constituent Assembly is also overwhelming - 79 per cent - compared to the hypothesis of a mixed assembly, also made up of parliamentarians. For the first time in Chilean history, therefore, citizens chosen by popular vote will write the fundamental law. Furthermore, participation was around 50 per cent, despite the limits imposed by Covid which affected over half a million Chileans and killed almost 14 thousand. Results at all obvious. Until the last, the range of those in favor varied between 55 and 75 percent.

The great unknown was, then, the abstention, high in the last consultations, up to a record of 64 percent at the municipal offices in 2016. This time, however, people showed up en masse at the polling stations, albeit with gloves and mask, as shown in the photos of “spaced” rows. "Citizenship, democracy and peace have triumphed over violence," said President Sebastián Piñera (pictured) .

A quite obvious outcome a year ago when, following the increase in the price of the metro ticket by 30 pesos - equivalent to 4 euro cents - by the government of Sebastián Piñera, the social protest was exploded with telluric force. And violent. Alongside the multitudinous peaceful processions, there were looting, fires, destruction. The repression by the police has exacerbated tensions: for weeks one of the most stable nations in Latin America plunged into chaos. El estallido (the explosion) cost thirty-one deaths, thousands of injured, damage millionaires. A reaction
apparently disproportionate to the contested measure. The thirty pesos have, however, become the metaphor of the great unresolved knot during and after the pinochettist dictatorship: inequality. In the face of uninterrupted pre-Covid growth, one percent of the population still owns 26.5 percent of the wealth while 50 percent must survive on less than 2.6 percent of resources. In practice, as the economist Jorge Katz states, there is no "Chile" but four different Chile, in descending order of development where, at peaks of excellence that are the envy of the North of the planet, correspond to abysses of marginalization.

To suffer the most from structural injustice, even more than the poor, are the middle and lower-middle classes, forced into debt to pay for education and health, privatized by the dictatorship and left as such by democratic governments. It is the Magna Carta that establishes the pre-eminence of the market over the state in the provision of basic services. This is why the "battle of the 30 pesos" quickly turned into the struggle for a new Constitution. On a symbolic level, moreover, the general's shadow has never stopped hovering over the Charter, representing a "congenital defect", to use the expression of the political scientist and UN consultant, Gabriel Negretto.
The request to "change the rules of the game" has emerged several times over the last fifteen years. The opposition of the center-right had always, however, blocked the way to reform. Until November 15, 2019, when the conservative Piñera gave in, announcing the referendum. Later, even the moderate right - as well as the center and the left - sided with the new Constitution, isolating the "nostalgic". The engine of the "yes", however, was not the traditional parties, discredited by corruption scandals, but the civil movements.

Now, in any case, both the different classic political forces and organized citizenship will have to be able to cooperate to manage the post-Plebiscite. A delicate moment divided into various phases. The next 11 April will be the vote of the 155 representatives of the Constituent Assembly, which must finish the text - approved by a two-thirds majority - within the next nine months. Then, the citizens will be called for final ratification. In each of the stages, it is essential to be able to contain the violence of radical minorities who seek to boycott the process.


Lucia Capuzzi
NP November 2020