Chile: the Constitutional Convention advances despite the right which tries to block it | One month of installation

From Santiago

On July 4, a cycle unprecedented in recent Chilean history began: the installation of the Constitutional Convention which will draft the new Magna Carta which will replace that of 1980 established by the dictatorship of Pinochet. This is after the so-called “social epidemic” which began on October 15, 2019, with more than a million people demonstrating in different cities across the country and a state crackdown not seen since the 1980s, which has forced the class policy to organize a plebiscite. , where a year later, the option to change the constitution would get 78.28 percent.

Another important step in the process is that during elections elect the 155 members of the Convention, with gender parity and seats reserved for indigenous peoples, May 15 and 16, the right barely got 37 seats. Dominates the scene a new left represented by the Wide front, a conglomerate born after the student demonstrations of 2011 and one of its founders, Gabriel Boric, is currently a presidential candidate after winning the Communist primary Daniel Jadû, in the primary on July 18. The other new force is List of cities, which brings together the much more radical and diverse leaderships that emerged during the epidemic, with representatives ranging from Giovanna grandon, famous for attending virtually every event disguised as a Pikachu character from Pokémon to the health activist Rodrigo Rojas Vade, better known as “Pelado Vade”.

And it is the emergence of this last political force that has aroused the annoyance since the first day of the installation of the Convention, since it was able to interrupt the first session in the courtyards of the former National Congress at the center. de Santiago due to protests. in the neighboring streets, denouncing police violence. In fact, the national anthem had to stop until the situation normalized and finally what should end at noon, finally ended around 6:00 p.m. with one last important step: Mapuche scholar Elisa Loncon would be the president of the Convention —Elected by the majority of her peers— who gave an electrifying speech that began in Mapundungún and then continued in Spanish, demanding “that a new Chile, plural, multilingual, be founded with women, with territories. This is our dream ”.

But he also made a request: free the Mapuche political prisoners and also those of El Estallido, mostly young people who, paradoxically according to the Judiciary – which calls them “detainees” – would only stay in preventive prison for five, but for relatives there would be more than 800 who could benefit from a pardon. The question that continues to cause controversy.

The elite disoriented by Mapuche power

For a large part of the right-wing elite, used to ruling the country since colonial times, everything looks more like a nightmare, even if they don’t openly admit it. First, the subtle problems of the organization, supposedly watched from above by the president himself Sebastien Piñera: non-sanitized spaces, lack of internet, problems with places to eat lunch.

Then, constituents of the official sector such as the far-right philosopher and media columnist Teresa marinovic, questioning the presence of the machi Francisca Liconao to the Convention which, as Mapuche spiritual leader, accompanies and advises Loncon and the representatives of his native people, especially when he speaks in Mapuzungún. “He can speak Spanish, but that doesn’t matter. He does not miss the opportunity to put on a show, ”he said. Linconao, who was jailed in 2016 in a process full of irregularities after the fire at the Luchsinger-Mackay family camp and who was acquitted two years later, replied: “From today , they won’t tell me Francisca Linconao, they will say machi Francisca Linconao, with respect ”.

Then, the mass media which in Chile are traditionally in the hands of right-wing businessmen, who from their editorial columns insist on the slowness of the Convention and even, in an interview with Loncon, they were asked last Sunday in Mercury why she, an admirer of Nelson Mandela, He did not ask the more radical sectors of the Mapuche people to lower their arms in Araucanía, a militarized zone exploited by the logging industry with a long history of abuse by the police against this ethnic group. She replied, “I don’t have Mandela’s standard at this point to ask for the guns to be lowered. I believe that the prosecution must investigate, the government must show signs of participation ”. It has even been criticized by the Piñera government, where the president of the Convention had to take on a role that simply does not correspond to him.

Love, dialogue, interculturality

But Loncon and a large section of his constituents prefer to put aside these intense attacks and are committed to peace and the continuity of the process. Thus, in a report drawn up last Wednesday, accompanied by the vice-president, Jaime Bassa, Constitutionalist lawyer, Loncon underlined: “I believe that we have exercised participatory democracy, of inclusion, to install this deliberation from other paradigms, which are not the traditional ones, as we usually analyze, as if we we always saw from the right, the left, the center. He also underlined that “other paradigms of dialogue” exemplified by parity, the idea of ​​interculturality and “the feeling of love” were installed in the Constituent Assembly.

At the count, a month after the operation, it was found that they had already performed 13 plenary sessions, 115 votes and 36 committee and sub-committee sessions. A total of 230 working hours in one month. A COVID-19 protocol was also approved, a political declaration on political prisoners and the functioning of an enlarged Table which integrates new voices – including the ruling party – and the creation of committees such as those for Regulation, Ethics, Budget, Human Rights. , Communications, Indigenous participation and consultation, Territorial decentralization and Popular participation. “You have to trust to move forward,” said Loncon, who insisted on dignified treatment among the participants themselves. However, he recognizes that “sometimes it has cost this dignity that we deserve, which is also the dignity of the Chilean people”.

“With this word (dignity) we dialogue among ourselves: social movements, women, regions, political parties, political thoughts that are here. They allow us this instance to live, to cultivate, to give a meaning to human dignity, and the indigenous peoples also speak of the dignity of mother earth ”.

In Chile, certainly times, they change.