‘An economic model that must fail’

Chile, no peaceful oasis

The protests in Chile are against a state that sold out the majority in favour of a tiny minority that has long profited from what should be communal resources.

by Luis Sepúlveda 

Enough! Chileans protest against the Piñera government in November 2019

Marcelo Hernandez · Getty

Violent protests have rocked Chile since early October 2019; at least 27 people have been killed, hundreds maimed, thousands injured and an unspecified number arrested. The police and armed forces have raped, tortured and committed other atrocities. Just before the protests began, President Sebastián Piñera commented on upheavals in other parts of Latin America, and described Chile as an oasis of peace and calm in the middle of a storm.

What characterised this oasis was not its sweet water or its lush palm trees, but the apparently unscalable fence that ringed it, made of a curious alloy of the basest metals: neoliberal economic policy, absence of civil rights, and repression. Chileans were on the right side of this fence.

Until the recent street protests, economists and politicians had held fast to the mantra that smaller government means more entrepreneurial freedom. They claimed a miracle, a spontaneous generation, had taken place in Chile, and they saw irrefutable proof of this miracle in growth figures and economic statistics praised by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank.

The coup that ousted Allende

But not everyone in Chile was included in this little southern paradise. It lacked such trivial details as a right to fair wages, decent pensions, good-quality state education and a healthcare system worthy of the name. It was not concerned with the right of citizens to determine their own fate rather than just swallowing the macroeconomic figures the government force-feeds them.

What characterised this oasis was not its water or palm trees, but the fence that ringed it, made of neoliberal economic policy and repression. Chileans were on the right side of this fence

On 11 September 1973, a military coup toppled Chile’s democratic government. A brutal dictatorship took over in Santiago and under General Augusto Pinochet lasted until March 1990. Its objective was not to restore order nor save the country from a communist threat but to implement principles advocated by the gurus of neoliberalism, led by Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. The aim was to establish a new economic model that would lead to the creation of a new society in which precarity and absence of rights would be the norm, silence would be enforced and guns would ensure social peace.

The civilian-military dictatorship achieved its goals, writing them into a constitution that enshrined the economic model established by force and made it the definition of Chile. No other Latin American country has adopted a model so carefully designed to benefit a minority at the expense of the rest of the population. The rules did not change with Chile’s ‘return to democracy’ in 1990, or, to be more precise, its ‘transition to democracy’. The dictatorship’s constitution was retouched, but not revised at a fundamental level. All successive centre-left and rightwing governments maintained the economic model as sacrosanct, though precarity affected ever more people.

If two people sit down to a meal and eat two cakes, then, statistically, the rate of consumption is one cake per person, even if one of them eats two and the other has none. This is the sleight of hand that allows Chile to present its economic model as a success. It’s not really a dictatorship, but neither is it a democracy; it relies on repression and fear.

Julio Ponce Lerou, former son-in-law of Pinochet, is one of the world’s richest men and heir to an economic empire built by robbing Chileans of what was rightfully theirs (1). He has paid huge sums to most Chilean senators, deputies and government ministers to encourage them to pursue privatisation. When Chileans found out about this, the government suggested that criticising these actions would end the ‘Chilean miracle’, then it repressed the protests.

Multinationals own all the water

Chile’s water — all of it, in rivers, lakes or glaciers — belongs to a handful of multinationals. The government responded to popular protests at this situation with the only form of communication it is prepared to countenance, police brutality. The same thing happened when people mobilised to defend Chile’s natural heritage from power generation transnationals; and when high school students demanded good quality education, not governed by market forces; and when much of the country came to the defence of the oppressed Mapuche people. The government responded in the same way every time, repressing the protesters and claiming that they were endangering the Chilean economic miracle.

Chile is not really a dictatorship, but neither is it a democracy; it relies on repression and fear

The peace of the Chilean oasis was not shattered just because the price of metro tickets in Santiago went up. It has been destroyed by injustices committed in the name of macroeconomic statistics, and by the insolence of ministers who suggested that people get up earlier to save money on public transport (cheaper outside peak hours), buy flowers instead of bread (because the price of flowers, unlike that of bread, hadn’t increased), and organise bingo nights to raise money for the repair of school roofs.

Saying no to precarity

The peace of the oasis has been destroyed because it is not fair that students graduating from university are burdened with a debt that will take 15-20 years to pay off.

It has been destroyed because the pension system is controlled by predatory companies that speculate with their collected contributions and pass their losses on to pensioners, who receive tiny annuities based on a morbid calculation of the number of years they have left to live.

It has been destroyed because workers, labourers and small employers choosing a fund to manage their pension capitalisation accounts have to remember the government warning that ‘the size of your pension will depend on how clever you are when investing your savings on the financial markets.’

It has been destroyed because a majority of Chileans are now saying no to precarity and setting out to win back their lost rights.

No rebellion is more just and democratic than that of the Chileans. The demonstrators demand a new constitution that represents the whole country in all its diversity. They demand the reversal of the privatisation of sea and water. They demand the right to exist and to be considered as active participants in the country’s development. They demand to be treated as full citizens, not as an unimportant element of an economic model that must fail because of its inhumanity.

No rebellion is more just and democratic than that of the Chileans. And no repression, however harsh or criminal, can hold back a people rising up against it.

Luis Sepúlveda

Luis Sepúlveda is a Chilean writer and the author of The Story of a Seagull and the Cat who Taught her to Fly (translated from Spanish), Alma, Richmond (Surrey), 2016.