On October 26th, 2020, the streets of Santiago, Chile erupted into celebration as the results of a momentous referendum were announced to the public. With almost all of the ballots counted, 78% of Chileans had voted in favor of re-writing the country’s Constitution, which has served as a lasting legacy of the right-wing dictator Augosto Pinochet.
Chilean voters will return to the ballot boxes on April 11th, 2021 in order to elect 110 people who will be responsible for writing the new Constitution. With an estimated time period of 9 months to create the document, and the option of an extra three-month extension, the Chilean people will finally open a new chapter in their country’s history by April 2022 at the latest. It will be crucial for these elected officials to create a Constitution that encapsulates the diversity of the Chilean nation, addresses its drastic inequalities, and progresses away from the damaging methods of neoliberal governance that have marked its past.
The 2020 plebiscite itself was the culmination of decades of civil discontent towards the current Constitution, written in 1980 under the military dictatorship of Augosto Pinochet. Pinochet headed Chile’s military government from 1974 to 1980 after leading a military junta that overthrew the country’s democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende. Inaugurated in 1970, Allende began to restructure Chilean society in line with socialist values, democratic government, civil liberties and due process under law. His government took control of key mining and manufacturing sectors, as well as took over large agricultural estates to be used by peasant coalitions. Allende also implemented expansionary monetary policy in an attempt to redistribute wages and increase government spending on social programs, along with expropriating U.S.-owned copper companies, which created a tense relationship between his government and the U.S. Though successful at first, after a few years international influence against these policies led to hyperinflation, strikes, food shortages and rising civil unrest. Much of this government opposition was supported by U.S. President Nixon and the CIA, given U.S. strategic interest in the region as well as the context of Cold War ideological opposition.
Allende’s policies had led to a period of economic retraction, but his government was given little opportunity to curb these effects as they were overthrown by a military coup led by Pinochet in September of 1973. The U.S. had been heavily involved in the lead-up to this coup, with Nixon authorizing $10 million for the covert operation against Allende, citing his government as a threat to democracy in Chile and Latin America. Mandated by Washington, the CIA attempted to bribe, coerce and blackmail Chile’s Congress and military to unseat Allende, launched an international disinformation campaign against him, and assassinated the chief of the armed forces, who was opposed to intervention in Chile’s democratic processes.
Following this coup, Pinochet became dictator of Chile and immediately rounded up hundreds of Allende’s supporters to be tortured and executed. The U.S. offered military and economic aid to Pinochet, who they ironically considered the “savior of democracy,” and the CIA is speculated to have helped his government capture and execute dissidents - a total of 3,000 in his 17 years in power.
With this U.S. involvement also came U.S. influence over the economic system that Pinochet implemented during his 17-year rule. This economic plan was created by a group of Chilean economists known as the “Chicago boys,” who were trained in free-market capitalist ideologies by notorious American economists Milton Friedman and Arnold Harberger. The Chicago boys’ plan was also developed alongside CIA collaborators. Under this model, the Chilean government would allow private enterprise to operate completely independent of government control. It became the first country in the world to implement such a model, and the effects on the nation have been drastic to say the very least.
The model of perfect competition that the Chicago Boys envisioned did not become a reality in the Chilean context. Powerful monopolies crushed smaller producers and businesses as well as raising the prices for everyday consumers. Workers were not provided protection in negotiating their wages, unemployment skyrocketed, and wealth inequality reached an extreme. Educational institutions were also largely privatized, leading to lessening equality of opportunity among Chileans. The same principle applies to healthcare access. In other words, Chile’s upper classes benefited immensely from these reforms while the everyday worker suffered immensely, despite extreme economic growth for the country as a whole. This liberal economic model has remained in place, and over the years wealth inequality has remained extremely high, contributing to extreme civil unrest as seen in the violent protests in Santiago in fall of 2019.
The Chilean Constitution of 1980, serving as their current Constitution, was largely created to help secure the implementation of these neoliberal economic ideals. Created only by a small group of lawyers loyal to Pinochet, its drafters knew that though Pinochet could not stay in power indefinitely, this Constitution would secure his legacy for future generations of Chileans. This Constitution ensured that unfeasibly large majorities would be needed to challenge the neoliberal economic policies that the military dictatorship was implementing, outlawed left-wing political parties, and made the military the “guarantors” of the state. Presidential vetoes also required an overwhelming Congressional majority to overthrow, securing Pinochet’s position. Though the document was approved in a national plebiscite, it was considered widely fraudulent.
Democratic rule in Chile was reinstated by a popular referendum to oust Pinochet in 1989, and Constitutional amendments have tweaked the constitution to allow it to function within democratic regimes. Nevertheless, the Constitution was created to preserve the governing interests of right-wing dictatorship, leans towards a conservative interpretation of the law, and provides no formal protections or avenues for citizens to participate in political decisions. It also favors private property rights and entrepreneurship over human and social rights, such as healthcare, education, and worker’s rights. Additionally, any amendments to the document require a ⅔ approval in Congress, which is often difficult to solidify. All of these concerns go without saying that the Constitution itself was approved in a fraudulent, non-democratic plebiscite, yet it continues to represent people who are now able to participate in democratic processes.
The irrefutable issues contained in the Constitution itself as well as the lack of legitimacy it holds over the Chilean people, on top of the economic inequality fortified by this Constitution, led the Chilean people to take to the streets in fall of 2019, demanding a new Constitution and increased social protection. Marked by extreme violence, destruction of property, and police repression, these uprisings marked a tipping point for the Chilean working class, who have long awaited a government which would secure their rights.
As a response to these protests, in November of 2019 Chile’s National Congress signed an agreement to hold a national referendum that would rewrite the Constitution, if approved. Though originally set to take place in April of 2020, COVID-19 lockdowns delayed the plebiscite until October of 2020. With overwhelming approval, members of Chilean civil society as well as politicians have begun to contemplate what type of social and civil rights should be integrated into the new Constitution, and whether or not the economic legacy of the Pinochet era should be continued. Chileans will elect who will constitute the body who will write the Constitution in April of this year, and these members will have a year to produce their product.
Interestingly, the small minority who opposed the Constitutional change in the first place was concentrated among the political elite. In a map of Santiago neighborhoods that went viral, the only ones to vote in a majority against the reform were the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city. It is evident, therefore, that the 1980 Constitution continues to secure the interest of these classes, and doing away with the document presents an opportunity to check the power of these classes and equally redistribute this power among the classes below. Thus, it will be crucial for the body who drafts the new Chilean Constitution to equally represent all sectors of Chilean society, in terms of class, race, gender, and other identities.
In fact, measures to include diverse groups of policymakers in the drafting body have already taken hold. The drafting body itself includes a gender-parity requirement, meaning that Chile’s new constitution will be the first in the world to be drafted by an equal number of men and women. In addition, 17 out of 155 seats on the drafting body have been reserved for representatives of Indigenous communities, constituting a proportion just shy of the 13% of 7 million Chileans who identify as indigenous. Meeting this 13% representation should have been a non-disputable measure, yet these types of steps towards political representation in Chile have set a historic precedent which should become a global standard. This is especially true for post-colonial societies, which have tended to suppress the political participation of their indigenous populations.
This representation will provide indigenous populations in Chile for a prime opportunity to not only represent their existence within the country, as the only Latin American country that has yet to officially recognize their indigenous population in their Constitution, but also to include Constitutional measures that will secure indigenous rights in Chile for centuries to come.
For example, water privatization is a key issue that has disproportionately impacted Chilean indigenous populations for decades. The 1980 Constitution, under Pinochet, enshrined the complete private ownership of water. After the democratic transition, water sanitation sources were also privatized. As a result of these efforts, Chile now pays the highest rates in Latin America for drinking water, which is owned primarily by transnational corporations. With indigenous populations located in some of the driest regions in the country, indigenous populations have been disproportionately affected by the privatization of water and land resources.
Improvements in workers’ rights are also expected to be a key issue brought about by the Constitutional reform. All-encompassing privatization of industry has meant less regulation in terms of securing workers’ rights to collectively bargain and advocate for workplace safety in the country, so the new Constitution expects to see major reforms to the Chilean labor code as well. Private businesses will no longer be allowed relatively full autonomy in conducting their relations with workers, as they were in the past.
Chilean Mayor of Valparaíso, Jorge Sharp, accurately described the pivotal opportunity that rewriting the Chilean constitution will provide the country in an interview with the Times: “Chilean neoliberalism isn’t just an economic policy. It’s become a way of conceiving life itself: social relations, cities, democracy, society, and the economy. Rewriting the Constitution is our chance to lay the foundations of a new society, a new state, and a new country.”
With this Constitutional reform comes a momentous opportunity to remove the holds of neoliberalism from its roots, not just in Chile but in other Latin American countries which have been so profoundly disrupted by the unjust societal and economic structures brought about by it. Time will only tell whether the new Constitution will provide such progressive and necessary reforms, but representing Chile’s diverse populations in its drafting committee is a monumental step in the right direction.