This unaltered story [1] was originally published on OpenDemocracy.org.
License [2]: Creative Commons 4.0 - Attributions/No Derivities/Int'l.
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Neoliberalism was born in Chile. Now it will die there

By:   []

Date: 2022-01 

When Chile overwhelmingly elected Gabriel Boric on 19 December, I was elated. Left-wing Boric had been pitted against the far-Right José Antonio Kast, who had systematically denied the climate crisis, attacked the rights of immigrants, women and the LGBTQ community, and spoken admiringly of Augusto Pinochet, the murderous dictator who ruled Chile from 1973 to 1990.

Now, under 35-year-old Boric, who heads the Frente Amplio (‘Border Front’) coalition, the country has a chance for serious and meaningful change – to move away from the economic and social model forged by Pinochet. It is widely acknowledged that the neoliberal model first took hold not in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain or Ronald Reagan’s United States, but in Pinochet’s Chile. Under the dictatorship, the state was shrunk to the minimum, relinquishing to profit-driven businesses the provision of rights through the privatisation of public services.

This turned Chile into a country with housing, health, and education for the rich; a privatised pension system in which social security is at the mercy of investment profitability; a plundered natural environment; communities without access to drinking water as a result of deregulated agribusiness, and a tax system that does nothing to change the fact that the country is one of the most unequal in the world. Pinochet’s biographer, Mario Amorós, characterises the dictator’s legacy as “a model installed by blood and gunfire that benefited the elites who controlled the media and held the economic power”.

Persistent and widespread protests erupted across Chile in 2019, against extreme inequality and for a new constitution to replace the one imposed by Pinochet. The protests forced a 3am showdown on 25 November 2019 in the National Congress, under the watchful gaze of millions of Chileans following the events on television. Capitulating to public pressure, several political parties agreed to a referendum on whether to draft a new constitution.

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At that referendum, which was held in October 2020, 78% of people voted ‘yes’, leading to the election of a historic ‘Constitutional Convention’ of 155 people tasked with rewriting the constitution. The convention – to which I am an adviser – includes delegates from across the political spectrum, many of whom are independent of political parties, as well as feminists and environmentalists. It met for the first time on 4 July last year, with a clear directive: drafting the first democratic constitution in Chile’s history, with gender parity and indigenous representation. It has a year to fulfil that mandate, and the public will vote again in October on whether to approve its proposed new constitution.
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