Crushing defeat of the neoliberal project | The im …

The elections held in Chile May 15 and 16 have already become a historic event and the fulfillment of a deserved joy for his people. Beyond the fact that the participation reached a lower percentage than expected (43%), the substantial results show significant political and social changes. More precisely, the results indicate, first of all, a crushing defeat of the right at the Constitutional Convention, since they did not reach the third, they sought to have a right of veto in the drafting of the new Constitution.

Secondly, traditional parties in general and the center-left in particular, who ruled the country for three decades alternating with the right, they also suffered a major defeat and they cease to be the main political force, at least in the Constitutional Convention. As the days go by, the effects of the results are felt more strongly, with the resignation of party presidents, the decline in presidential candidacies, the suspension of the internal primaries and a series of responses to the debacle that affects them. The two losses, both from the right and the center-left, indicate that Chile leaves an exhausted party system behind who did not know how to respond to the demands that people raised from the popular uprising, and who seem to be responsible for manage the neoliberal model inherited from the dictatorship who denies the possibility of a life of dignity to people.

Third, the Popular List surprises with 27 places in the Constitutional Convention. It is a group of people outside of politics unrelated to parties, known for their participation in the protests that started on October 18, 2019. They ran a campaign with few resources, without media support, and were screened almost exclusively through social media and in the territories. For its part, the I Approve Dignity List, made up of the Communist Party and the Broad Front, completes the panorama with important results. Although they are political parties, in the case of the PC with more than 100 years of history, they are recognized as protest parties that challenge neoliberalism, coinciding with the demand of the popular uprising.

Collective action

Two very relevant elements to emphasize in the process are participation of indigenous peoples and gender parity. Indigenous peoples participated for the first time in this election to choose 17 seats in the Constitutional Convention for the 10 peoples who inhabit the territory. Afro-descendants, despite their recent legal recognition and their sincere request for participation, were not included in the reserved seats, nor did they meet the quotas they contested in the Arica and Parinacota region. . Regarding gender parity, the Constitutional Convention will be composed of 77 women and 78 men, in application of an unprecedented mechanism which has given very positive results for women, to the point that 7 women go out to cede their quota to men in application of parity.

Both the indigenous movement and the feminist movement are part of a trajectory of collective action which constitutes the immediate precedent of the popular uprising of 2019. The mobilization of the feminist movement on March 8, 2018 and the mobilization of the indigenous movement with the solidarity that it has expressed the Chilean society with the Mapuche people in November 2018 in the face of the murder of Camilo Catrillanca, were precursor events of the mobilization of 2019. Let us recall that Catrillanca was a member of the Mapuche community murdered by the forces of the State on his ancestral territory . These mobilizations marked the beginning of the end of apathy and the exhaustion of one of the premises of the neoliberal project: the establishment of a punitive, judicial and media power who bends rebellious bodies or builds them by consent.

Also in 2021, after 19 months of demonstrations, interrupted only during certain periods because of the pandemic, after all the repression deployed by the State, more than 400 eye injuries, massive violations of human rights, crimes against humanity, even after all, it’s still valid social mobilization in the key to resistance. Voices of resistance against the death drive imposed by the neoliberal project. Therefore, parity and the seats reserved for indigenous peoples in the Constitutional Convention, far from being a concession of the political system, are spaces won after long struggles by the feminist movement, the indigenous movement and the solidarity that has placed the two claims in the center. of the agenda of the mobilizations started in 2019.

Changes

For its part, at the municipal level, the most striking is that Irací Hassler won the office of the mayor of Santiago: it is a young woman, communist and feminist supported by territorial organizations in a collective project, made up of social and territorial organizations, called the Constituent Mayor’s Office. It will be the first time that the Communist Party will be at the head of the municipality of Santiago.

All these elements indicate structural and substantial changes in the political and social scene. It is the New Chile that began to emerge on October 18 and is in a process of transformation in which these elections are only one step among many. Thus, the results, in particular of the Constitutional Convention, show that the emergence of a new popular political subject-subject, made up of new leaders, unrelated to politics, carrying specific social demands related to social rights such as health, education, social security and work. They are ordinary people, who have generated affinities and solidarity in a citizenship that ceased to be represented in a political elite that it was located further and further from the reality of the city, as it is strengthening of political sectors that have challenged neoliberalism.

Social, from October 2019, a process of recomposition of the social fabric devastated by the civic-military dictatorship. Therefore, in parallel with the popular protests that spread throughout Chile, different forms of organization, territorial and sectoral began to come together and regroup. Studies show the emergence of some 1,500 operational organization initiatives.

The neoliberal project, which has been widely tested in Chile, has as its central core the colonization of individual subjectivities and collective subjects through what has been heralded as a “cultural revolution” which should transform the “values” of subjects and populations. The construction of subjectivities centered on values ​​linked to personal interest and competence. In this sense, that the districts and the populations organize themselves, that the neighbors begin to meet and to develop common initiatives of self-management of their own life is an important stage in the confrontation with neoliberalism.

Thus, the emergence of a new collective political subject-subject in conjunction with the recomposition of the social fabric through emerging territorial organizations is the real transformation underway in Chile, which also constitute important bases for the steps to come: the drafting of a New Constitution, the presidential election and, finally, the possibility of transforming the State and its relationship to society. The transformations undertaken are having an impact in Latin America. The popular rebellion that began in 2019 marked starting point of a new cycle of questioning neoliberalism in the region and geopolitical, it will mean a new correlation of forces favorable to the struggles against the dispossession imposed by neoliberalism and for the defense of the dignity of peoples

* Lawyer, member of the Humanity Defense Network.

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