On September 4, 2022, most Chileans who voted within the Constitutional Referendum selected to not approve the brand new proposed doc. The vote was historic due to a two-year technique of convening, designing, and contemplating proposals and finishing a brand new Structure.
A brand new essay in The Forge by Carolina Financial institution Muñoz and Rodrigo Starz explains the context main as much as the vote.” October 2019 marked a transparent shift within the many years of transition to democracy in Chile. The system of neoliberalism aggressively imposed by Augusto Pinochet…got here crashing down as hundreds of thousands of individuals took to the streets to protest disinvestment, privatization, extreme wealth inequality, and eroding requirements of residing…Social actions that had been engaged on far-ranging points — from free tuition to abortion to local weather justice to pension reform — pulled tons of of hundreds of individuals into the streets. The labor motion referred to as for a common strike. More and more, the general public pushed for President Sebastian Piñera’s resignation and a brand new structure.”
The repression in opposition to these actions was widespread and brutal, the ghosts of Pinochet’s previous haunting the Chilean current. But, the organized protests pressured a peace settlement and a vote on two points: 1) whether or not or to not create a brand new Structure; and a couple of) who would take part within the conference.
Then, Covid hit. Chile was on lockdown, and the repression in opposition to the actions continued. That didn’t cease the conference from drafting an formidable blueprint for the longer term. The New York Occasions reported, “Along with housing, well being care and training, the brand new structure would enshrine the appropriate to freedom of expression, faith, and worldview. There could be the appropriate to free time, bodily exercise, intercourse training, cybersecurity, the safety of private knowledge and “free and full authorized recommendation” for anybody “who can not get hold of it.” And whereas 62% of voters rejected the brand new doc, the participation of Chilean society is a crucial residing instance of direct democracy at work.
This problem of The Forge has quite a few articles and first-person accounts of the political moments that led to the Constitutional Conference and the method of drafting a brand new doc. Matters embody views from scholar and labor organizations; testimonies from delegates to the conference; the impression of Constitutional reforms on the Mapuche indigenous land battle; the artwork and music of revolt; and a dialogue of the state violence when “a dozen protestors and a few harmless bystanders misplaced their lives, and a surprising 400 individuals suffered from ocular trauma, principally ensuing from rubber bullets. This final quantity is especially putting as a result of it represents 70% of all ocular traumas on this planet during the last 21 years.”
Not agreeing on a brand new Structure means Chile continues to dwell underneath Pinochet’s legal guidelines. For extra on Chile, Pinochet’s US-supported dictatorship, and political actions, try the next: Chile: The Different September 11, edited by Ariel Dorfman and Pilar Aguilera, and A Nation of Enemies: Chile Underneath Pinochet, by Pamela Constable and Arturo Valenzuela. For sources on the multi-nation soiled wars in opposition to political actions in South America supported by the CIA and the US State Division often known as “Operation Condor,” see Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File or this Guardian article.