Chile's Troubles Following Long History of Turmoil

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

 

The South American nation of Chile has been the scene of violent anti-government protests for more than two months. At least 26 people have been killed and thousands more injured. 

The government estimates arson, looting and property destruction have caused three billion dollars in damages.

They began Oct. 18 in the capital of Santiago, when students opposing a hike in the price of subway fares engaged in vandalism and violence, prompting the authorities to enact a state of emergency and curfew. 

As the demonstrations grew larger, a Santiago university was set ablaze and a church was looted, with religious iconography burned in the street.

Walmart saw more than 120 of its supermarkets looted or burned during the recent rioting.

An estimated one million people clogged the streets of the Chilean capital by Oct. 26. In the port city of Valparaiso, the National Congress was evacuated as protesters clashed with police.

But the vehemence of the protests should have come as no surprise. Chile has failed to find an adequate response to the grave economic and social inequality that has created the most severe unrest since the country returned to democracy some three decades ago.

During Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship the foundations were laid for a neoliberal economy. The education, pension and health systems, as well as the electricity and water supply, were largely privatized.

The top one per cent of Chile’s population now earns 33 per cent of the country’s wealth. Protesters are angry over low wages and a thin social safety net.

President Sebastian Pinera at first reacted by condemning the protesters. He sent about 10,000 soldiers out onto the streets in armored vehicles. No government has taken such measures since the end of Pinochet’s regime in 1990.

Pinera later sought to quell the unrest by promising to enact higher taxes for the rich and a series of wealth redistribution policies. But his announced pension increases and a subsidy that would top up the monthly minimum wage from $396 to $460 fall far short of union and social movement proposals.

Pinera has been in office since 2018 but served an earlier term as president from 2010 to 2014. He has an estimated net wealth of $2.8 billion, making him one of the richest people in Chile.

Some 1,600 people remain in pre-trial detention out of 28,000 detained since mid-October. People are increasingly labeling the Chilean government’s actions during the state of emergency as unconstitutional.

Human Rights Watch on Nov. 26 accused Chilean police of perpetrating “serious human rights violations” during the protests and demanded reforms of Chile’s national police force.

The UN Human Rights Office, which is headed by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, a political opponent of Pinera, on Dec. 13 concurred.

Meanwhile, the United Nation’s COP25 Climate Summit, originally scheduled for Santiago Dec. 2-13, was moved to Madrid.

As Chile again endures turbulent times, it pays to reread Colombian novelist and Nobel Prize winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s essay “Why Allende Had To Die,” published in the British magazine New Statesman in 1974. It dealt with arguably the worst period in the country’s history. 

The article described socialist Salvador Allende’s triumph in the presidential election of Sept. 4, 1970, and the bloody military coup that followed three years later.

Allende’s Popular Unity government was overthrown and he was killed in the presidential palace on Sept. 11, 1973. A junta under Pinochet was established, with tens of thousands of people interned and tortured, and more than 3,000 executed. 

Pinochet remained Chile’s ruler for 17 years. He died in 2006, without having been convicted of the crimes of which he was accused.

The current unrest has already had one beneficial outcome: Chile’s Congress on Dec. 19 gave the green light to a referendum for April 26, 2020 on changing the country’s constitution to replace the Pinochet-era one.

The present constitution does not establish the state’s responsibility to provide healthcare and education, which are two main demands from the protesters.

“This agreement is a first step, but it is a historic and fundamental first step to start building our new social pact, and in this the citizenry will have a leading role,” declared the country’s interior minister, Gonzalo Blumel. If things continue on the current path, the movement may get much of what it demands.