Fernando Alcoforado*
Chile’s capital, Santiago, is being marred by protests. Seven deaths and thousands of injuries have occurred since the protests began. Protesters, hooded, engaged in violent clashes with police in Plaza Italia, the center of the Chilean capital. Protests against the government began in the capital but spread to other Chilean cities. The increase, between 800 and 830 pesos (corresponding to 1.04 Euros) in the price of subway tickets, which carries about 3 million passengers daily, triggered violent demonstrations against the high cost of living and social inequalities in the country.
As a protest, students began to skip the turnstiles to enter the subway platforms without paying the ticket. Clashes between authorities and protesters began when police tried to block the demonstrations. The situation worsened as violence took to the streets of the Chilean capital with fires at several subway and bus stations, looting of supermarkets and attacks on hundreds of public facilities. President Sebastián Piñera then declared a state of emergency, which meant sending troops to the protest sites. In addition, the government ordered curfew. The state of emergency remains in force in the capital and other regions of the country, with the mobilization of over 10,000 police officers. Authorities have extended curfew in the Santiago Metropolitan Region and in the Concepción and Valparaíso regions. The Chilean Army also announced curfew in other cities, such as Coquimbo and La Serena.
In protest, the people of Santiago took to the streets to express their discontent not only about the rising price of subway tickets, but also about the rising cost of living and the government’s anti-social economic policy. Chilean President Piñera decreed a state of emergency in the capital for 15 days and halted the rise in transport prices. However, demonstrations and clashes continued. Protesters allege the deterioration of social conditions and social inequalities, as health and education are almost entirely controlled by the private sector.
The largest trade union central in the country started two days of general strike, calling for an end to (tariff) increases. The strike comes despite an apology from the Chilean president who also announced a package of economic measures, described as “a social agenda of national unity”. However, none of these measures and announcements alleviated the fury of the Chileans participating in the protests. The insurgent people demand the resignation of the President of Chile and new constitution. President denies resignation but admits to change Chile’s Constitution. In addition, Piñera canceled a recent 9.2% increase in electricity bills, promised to increase pensions by 20% and subsidize increases in the minimum wage, among other measures.
Popular demonstrations, however, continue to march with thousands of people on the streets of Santiago and other cities such as Valparaiso and Concepción who have suffered serious damage to buildings and public spaces, as well as blockages in ports and roads. The reasons for the popular uprising in Chile stem from the excessive indebtedness of the population since 1 in 3 over 18 have a financial situation that cannot afford their lifestyle, from high prices on basic services such as subway, electricity, water, drugs, from precarious health services characterized by a lack of hospitals and specialists, long queues and private health that excludes the elderly and is more expensive for women of reproductive age, from the antisocial pension system characterized by individual capitalization of workers with pensions below the minimum wage of US $ 400, from to the precariousness of the education system in which the law increases penalties against students and more than 600,000 students are indebted with bank credits to cover the costs of their training (4,5 billion dollars in 2018).
However, the popular uprising in Chile is a consequence of the evil legacy left by the bloodthirsty dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet that is expressed in the current 1980 Constitution that is, made during the regime of exception. Pinochet in power approved a neoliberal Constitution that does not place the state as guarantor of the social rights of the population, but as a subsidiary to what the market fails to meet. The result has been, for example, the abandonment of education and health services by the state that have been provided by the private sector. The state also abandoned its Social Security burden with the complete privatization of the system in which people realized that, in practice, it was impossible to stop working until the end of life to support themselves. In the 1980 Chilean Constitution there is a blatant neoliberalism of the country’s legal and economic regime constituting Pinochet’s cursed inheritances in the country’s institutional system.
On Pinochet’s dictatorship, it is important to remember that on September 11, 1973, the Chilean Armed Forces, under the leadership of the Army Commander, General Augusto Pinochet, began of one of the most repressive and bloody periods in Latin America in the twentieth century. For about three hours, coup and legalist forces, which stood alongside President-elect Salvador Allende, clashed in fighting at La Moneda Palace, the seat of Chile’s presidency in Santiago. After being bombed by air force planes and invaded by the military, President Salvador Allende was found dead among the rubble of the palace. A military junta under Pinochet took over and decreed a “state of war”, starting a 17-year regime of terror with more than 3,200 dead and 38,000 arrested and tortured.
In addition to imposing the military dictatorship, Pinochet left as legacy the neoliberal economic model, which resulted in Chile as an extremely unequal country. According to the latest edition of the Latin American Social Outlook report, prepared by the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC), the richest 1% of the Chilean population retained 26.5% of the country’s wealth in 2017, while 50% of low-income households represented only 2.1% of net wealth. According to the Chilean National Institute of Statistics, half of the country’s workers receive a salary of 400,000 pesos or less (R$ 2,280) per month. With this salary, protesters claim that an increase in subway passage is inconceivable. Especially considering that public transportation in Chile is one of the most expensive in the world. A recent study by Diego Portales University points out that out of 56 countries around the world, transportation in Chile is the ninth most expensive. Thus, there are low-income families who can spend almost 30% of their wages on public transportation, while at the richest socioeconomic level, the percentage of spending in this sector may be less than 2%.
In addition to growing social inequalities in Chile, the Chilean political class has for years been promising improvements in the quality of life for citizens. Educational, constitutional, tax and health reforms have been announced, but many have failed to meet society’s expectations. The social unrest resulted in this series of manifestations due to unmet expectations by the governments by center-left Michelle Bachelet (from 2006 to 2010 and after 2014 to 2018) and center-right Sebastián Piñera – who also led the country in a previous period, between 2010 and 2014. It should be noted that the recent protests were mainly led by students. The first demonstration took place on October 7, led by students from emblematic schools, mainly from the National Institute. This establishment, founded in 1813, was the central point of protest organization. Student complaints have to do with the “lack of resources” for Chilean education and precariousness in classrooms. The excesses that have occurred in recent days in Chile are partly the result of the emergence of a new generation of students who are manifesting themselves with increasing intensity..
Countries like Brazil that have been adopting the neoliberal economic model since 1990 may face the same insurrection that occurs in Chile because of growing social inequalities. The rulers of these countries may face the popular uprising that results, fundamentally, from the divorce between the neoliberal state and the economically dispossessed civil society that is undermined by social rights.
* Fernando Alcoforado, 79, awarded the medal of Engineering Merit of the CONFEA / CREA System, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor in Territorial Planning and Regional Development by the University of Barcelona, university professor and consultant in the areas of strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is author of the books Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova (Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado. Universidade de Barcelona,http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of the Economic and Social Development- The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Müller Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável- Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015), As Grandes Revoluções Científicas, Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016), A Invenção de um novo Brasil (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2017), Esquerda x Direita e a sua convergência (Associação Baiana de Imprensa, Salvador, 2018, em co-autoria) and Como inventar o futuro para mudar o mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2019).
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