Chile is dealing with its authoritarian past. He has lived with that ghost for decades, and now he faces it, with a greater or better fate. Not all countries that suffered a dictatorship that left them with an iron economic and institutional framework were able to launch a constituent process.
Valencia, September 11 (TheConversation).- The September 11, 1973 and coup d’état finish the Government of Salvador Allende in his life and, finally, in democracy in Chile. Thus ended, suddenly and violently, the so-called “Chile’s road to socialism”, that is, the road leading to socialism not through revolution but through democracy.
Chile is a democratic regime and, in addition, the example that, through the ballot box and respect for democratic game a left project can win and manage.
NEOLIBERALISM IN DICTATORSHIP
From 1973 to 1990 Augusto Pinochet, along with a military junta, led the country through repression and violence. Unlike other dictators in the region, he implemented a neoliberal economic program that, together with the so-called Chicago Boysradically changed the country.
These reforms have resulted in remarkable economic growth, which has been praised on many occasions.
In a short period of time, Chile went from being an example of the democratic road to socialism to being an example of neoliberal economics. Also on human rights violations (page 115).
Pinochet, like other dictators, institutionalized these reforms so that they would survive beyond his identity and regime. In this way, even though Chile regained democracy in 1990, it did so with a constitution that had a distinctly neoliberal character and with authoritarian enclaves which preserves the interests of the power groups in the dictatorship. As an example, Pinochet left the Presidency as a senator for life and the electoral system benefited properly.
TRANSITION, ALTERNANCE AND REFORM
Chile has been a full democracy since 1990. For 32 years (1990-2022), the country was governed by two political forces that more or less They can be described as left and right: on the one hand, Coalition of Parties for Democracy (New Majority since 2013) and on the other, Alliance for Chile.
Thus, the constitutional reform of 2005, during the Presidency of Ricardo Lagos, eliminated many authoritarian enclaves and was abolished. in fact any authoritarian traces of the Chilean Magna Carta.
Despite the apparent success of the Chilean model, serious problems and social injustices accompany the country: inequality, difficult access to education, high cost of living, the impunity of forces linked to the dictatorship…
The student protests of 2011 provide a good account of this latent unrest.
CONSTITUENT PROTESTS AND PROCESSES
In October 2019, after the increase in the price of the metro in Santiago, the company in Chile eruption shouting “Not 30 pesos, 30 years.”
The protests, without any precedent, changed the political landscape and put pressure on the system until it opened the beginning of a constituent process.
This epidemic has a replica in the elections: in the 2021 elections the first two forces are the Republican Party, with the far-right José Antonio Kast as a candidate, and Apruebo Dignidad, a coalition of left parties, with Gabriel Boric.
The two forces that have governed Chile since 1990, increasingly disconnected from society, have given way to two new forces, one on the left and one on the right.
Boric, a former student leader, won the second round against Kast and became, in 2022, the new President of the Republic of Chile.
RETURN OF THE CONSTITUENT PROCESS IN 2022
Similarly, the majority of Chilean citizens (78 percent) voted in 2020 in favor of starting a constituent process led by a unified Constituent Convention. After almost a year of work full of controversy, in 2022 the Convention gave its draft constitution, with truly new measures.
However, in the September 2022 plebiscite, the rejection of that proposal won with a large majority (62 percent). After weeks of uncertainty, the main political forces in the country agreed to continue the process. Based on the 12 constitutional bases, an expert commission (not elected), a technical admissibility committee (not elected) and a constitutional council (elected) are in charge of drafting a new proposal in the constitution.
These 12 bases, which must be respected in the new words, already represent an improvement in themselves, such as the recognition that Chile is a social and democratic State governed by the rule of law.
A CONSTITUTIONAL COUNCIL TURNED TO THE RIGHT
In the elections for the constitutional council (50 councilors) in May 2023, Kast’s Republican Party, which is openly against the constituent process, obtained 23 seats, and the right in general 34: a clear most. So a paradox arises: while the left governs a country institutionally and economically shaped by dictatorship, the right now leads the constituent process aimed at replacing the 1980 constitution, the one that shaped the country institutionally and economically.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE
In a way, Chile has always been an example for Latin America and the world: the Chilean road to socialism, neoliberalism, a strong party system organized in terms of the program , the transformation of the political system through protests and the ballot box. … always the country of the possible.
50 years after the coup, Chile is a full democracy governed by the left and there is a constituent process that continues to be led by the (extreme) right to change, precisely, the Constitution that gave way to country in the military regime that began on September 11 of 1973.
What happened 50 years ago is still happening in Chile, and it doesn’t seem like it will stop.
