Chile Update: The constituent process on the tightrope …
Nelly Cárcamo V.
Unexpp de Chile
On October 18, 2019, Chile experienced the beginning of an unprecedented popular revolt. This was the product of the accumulation of anger in broad sectors of society that for many decades had been victims of abuse, injustice, mistreatment, and inequity. Until then, the people's clamor was brutally repressed or at best, trapped in ineffective and useless official discussions, and their demands neutralized. Then nothing changed. The revolt, however, urgently forced the government and the "opposition" parties (all long questioned and repudiated) to offer, among other crumbs, a plebiscite to change the constitution as an emergency escape route to social pressure. But, they imposed rules that allow them to maintain their privileges and absolute control of all processes. The mobilization continued, producing the most massive demonstrations in the history of Chile. Inclusively, it remained constant, although with less intensity throughout the summer period. This gave the government a slight respite, which took the time to pass, together with a sector of the "opposition", new repressive and authoritarian laws, with the aim of containing what was coming with the arrival of March, which promised the reactivation, intensification and massification of protests.
Sebastián Piñera: Richer than Trump, this man is a prominent entrepreneur and reliable conduit for his ruling class' point of view: "Protesters are vandals and criminals".
Chile woke up, again...
And the icing on the cake is, a neutralized opposition that is wintering (with very few exceptions). It only wakes up from time to time, just when the government needs the votes to pass all the laws (repressive and undemocratic) that it has recently presented, the weight of which falls on the shoulders of the working people and the mobilized people in particular and of citizens in general. Meanwhile, we must also contend with the efforts and fervor of the opposition parties to “sell the pomá” ("sell the ointment") to approve, in addition to the change in the constitution, the alternative of a “constitutional convention”, which will allow them to remain attached to power and to the “tit” of the State and obviously also to the privileges of the owners of Chile, a position which forces them to continue waiting, exposed to uncertainty, for what the ruling party decides. But what difference does it make, parliamentarians continue to receive their millionaire salaries, which they refuse to reduce, therefore unlikely to suffer from a lack of water, precarious sanitary conditions, or go hungry as large sectors of our people do at this time. Only the mobilization of broad sectors of our society can prevent the ruling party from carrying out its [clearly treacherous and antisocial] plan.
Further reading: The author recommends the following materials—
