Chile 50 Years Later A Special Dossier

When I arrived in Chile in July of 2023, after a COVID-generated absence of 4 years, the public agenda was defined by a series of scandals affecting the governing coalition of president Gabriel Boric, the future of the constitutional process then under the direction of the right and extreme right, and the imminent arrival of the 11th of September which would mark 50 years of the coup d'état that deposed the government of Salvador Allende. What was the meaning of the confluence of these factors, what could it mean that the first left-hegemonized government since Allende was in trouble, that the constitutional process that had begun dominated by the left and the extreme left had ended being led by the right and the extreme right, that the country did not seem to know how to commemorate the half a century mark of an event that persisted in its capacity to ghost the present with its economic, political, social and ethical demands? In that July, a flurry of articles in the press addressed these issues. Just in the two major newspapers I read in the span of 3 weeks, a series of pieces were published attempting to posit the question of the meaning of the half century mark or answer it in some way. An editorial in El Mercurio, the conservative mainstay of Chilean journalism, warned: ‘50 Years: the hardest line dominates’ The reference was, first, to the situation after Patricio Fernández, a well-known leftist writer and journalist, who had been appointed by president Boric to preside over the commemoration of the anniversary, had been forced to quit after the Communist party complained about some statements Fernández had made that the party deemed insufficiently clear about the nature of the coup d'état. Then, it alluded to Boric's own pronouncements while on a state visit to Spain. The president, according to the newspaper, had relented to Communist pressure and given up on his more moderate discourse about a reflexive approach to the event that first looked centrally to the future, and then was capable of analysing the break of democracy in all its complexity by using multiple sources of interpretation. Instead, El Mercurio insisted, the president had, on the one hand, emphasised that Allende's government had been a model of revolution in democracy with clear respect for its institutions and legality; and on the other, returned to the discourse of memory and human rights (El Mercurio, July 16th, 2023, p. A3). What irked the conservative outlet the most was that the president had announced, in Spain, that he was going to ask all the political parties in Chile, from the right to the left, to subscribe a statement of commitment to democracy and respect of human rights on the occasion of the 50 years celebration. That same day and in the same newspaper, the Reportajes section included short interviews of politicians and academics ranging from the right to the left on the question ‘Is it possible to arrive at a broad agreement on the [meaning of the] 50 years?’ The responses, unsurprisingly, ranged from ‘this [presidential] statement is just a political maneuver of the left’ to ‘the most important thing is the condemnation, without any reservations, of the coup d'état in 1973’(El Mercurio, July 16, 2023, pp. D6–D7). Another daily, La Tercera, featured a long piece signed by Martin Browne with the heading ‘50 Days to the 50 Years. The Countdown that overwhelms La Moneda [the presidential palace]’. The article referred to Boric's incapacity to find a discourse that the communist and socialist-centrist sides of his coalition could subscribe, and described what it perceived as the president's change of tone and perspective about the coup. For Browne such change could be summarised with the heading: ‘From Admiration [of Allende] to the Myth’ and involved a switch of positions for Boric, going from ‘The popular Unity is something that is very much talked about and I believe it is a period worth revising. And from the Left we must be able to analyze it in much more detail and not only from a mythical perspective’ to the president's new call, from Spain, for the political parties across the political spectrum to sign a declaration based on two agreed upon points: ‘That a coup d'état is unacceptable’ and ‘that nothing, not even the sharpest differences, can justify human rights violations against those who think different or anybody else’ (Browne, pp. 12–13, La Tercera Domingo, July 23, 2023). In order to confront the challenge posited by the coincidence of this process and the commemoration of the break-up of democracy that preceded it 50 years ago, I drafted the following questions to invite a series of Chilean or Chile-based intellectuals to participate in a special dossier of the Bulletin of Latin American Research. The dossier, I explained, would explore the historic meaning and significance, beyond the political conjuncture, of the Chilean constitutional process. What was and is truly at stake in the constitutional process? How do you explain the trajectory of such process and what do we learn about those 50 years as a result of thinking this process? Is there something broader, beyond the political conjuncture that can be learned or drawn from its understanding? After these questions, my letter of invitation to potential contributors continued: ‘The Chilean social and constitutional process—from the so called: estallido’ or upheaval to the new phase of the constitutional process, including the citizens' disapproval of the first version of the proposed constitution—can be understood in its origin and ulterior development, respectively, as a contrast of diagnostics regarding the neoliberal regime and the sui generis democracy it engendered. On the one hand, in its beginning, it can be easily read as the signal that marked if not the end of such regime, at least its limitations and the consensus on the need to change it. On the other hand, the wide disapproval of the first proposed constitution and the right-wing majority in the new constitutional convention can also be seen as the confirmation of the validity of the neoliberal model, both at the level of the economic principles that ground it as well as the forms of politics and citizenship that express it in the daily life of the majority of Chileans. Participation, re-founding, democratisation and the recovery of the commons against precarization and extractivism, are here contrasted with the hyperexploitation of nature, individualization and privatisation, the desire for order and security, the fear of others (the social, immigrants, criminals) and precarity (unemployment, political and economic instability). Leaving aside a type of conjunctural political analysis and the speculation about what may happen in the near future, this Dossier set out to investigate, beyond the specifics of the constitutional votes, then still in process, this question/provocation: What is it that the dynamics of estallido/new constitution makes evident and allows us to understand regarding democracy before the coup d'etat 50 years ago and the neoliberal democracy of the last 30 years, their respective legacies, the models of the country, society, politics and citizenship that each one of the created? How fundamental are now those models in the actual material and affective, structural and emotional life of Chile? As can be seen the questions are wide, but, in a certain way, they can be summarised in a much shorter version: What is the current meaning and value, at both the structural and subjective levels, of the last 50 years of Chilean history. My ideal contribution would choose one or more distinctive aspects or a specific area to develop a thesis on or an answer to this question. Four Chilean intellectuals accepted this invitation. Three of them are part of this dossier: Kathya Araujo: ‘Political Processes and Social Moralities in Chile (1990–2024)’. Pablo Ortúzar Madrid: ‘Carnival and revolt: the political ambivalence of the 2019 Chilean Estallido’. Sergio Villalobos Ruminott: ‘The Chilean Revolts and the Failure of the Constituent Process’. No sé qué va a pasar, pero el país no volverá a su corsé, faja y zapato chino; se miró al espejo, no se reconoció y se empelotó para bailar una mezcla de sahumerio, cueca brava y huayno sampleado en el laptop del futuro en medio de un huracán, porque los pueblos están vivos, y tampoco se trata de andarlos refrigerando en los museos. El proceso constituyente es el país mirándose a sí mismo, es más grande que un estallido, que una constitución o que un apruebo o un rechazo. Es algo inevitable que seguirá avanzando hacia la historia. (La Constituyente, p. 13) This was a hopeful reading for and of a country that, under the fear of immigrants and indigenous people, violent crime and narcotrafficking, decided, instead of radical democracy, to keep the status quo, and keep a constitution that, however modified, continues to be the dictatorship-imposed compromise that made the specifics of the Chilean gradual and limited democratisation, possible. The Dossier includes: Juan Poblete, Introduction: Chile 50 Years Later. Kathya Araujo: ‘Political Processes and Social Moralities in Chile (1990-2024)’. Abstract: Recent political events in Chile—a 2019 social outburst, attempted constitution-making processes ending in rejection, and electoral volatility—have raised questions about the reasons behind seemingly contradictory aspects of these phenomena. This article addresses these questions by analysing the relationship between social moralities and politics. Based on empirical research, it argues that an initial phase of relative autonomy of these two spheres has been followed by a stage of deep interconnection between them. This shift has fueled individuals' moral critiques and detachment from institutional political dynamics, a conjunction that has created a context of high volatility, rejection and scarce ideological and electoral loyalty. Pablo Ortúzar Madrid: ‘Carnival and revolt: the political ambivalence of the 2019 Chilean Estallido’. Abstract: The Chilean estallido of 2019 presents us with a puzzling paradox: why did the same people who massively supported social protests also vote against a constitutional draft that contained all the social demands that theoretically were behind the revolt? In this article, I argue that theories of ritual and festival violence associated with events like carnivals, masquerades or fiestas can be productive for understanding social revolts and riots, like the Chilean estallido. While acknowledging the significance of economic, structural and demographic explanations, attentiveness to the carnivalesque nature of protests in Chile helps understand the estallido's ambiguity and its varied, often surprising, political outcomes. I will also propose that ritual violence, as an end in itself and not as a means to other ends, should be considered the defining element of the estallido: violence, in a way, can justify itself. Sergio Villalobos Ruminott: ‘The Chilean Revolts and the Failure of the Constituent Process’. Abstract: This article aims to contextualise the recent constituent process in Chile and its subsequent failure, paying attention not only to the so-called contingent nature of the revolts inaugurated in October 2019, but also to the reengineering process implemented by the Pinochet dictatorship. The most ostensible result of this reengineering process was the Constitution of 1980, which was supplemented by a complex juridical-political framework that has both protected the Constitution and regulated the life of the country during the last 50 years. Despite the recurrence of revolts during the last decades and the aspirations and hopes for a new Constitution, the failure of the recent constituent process is symptomatic of what we can consider the limitations of neoliberal democracy. Kathya Araujo is professor at the Instituto de Estudios Avanzados (IDEA), University of Santiago de Chile. Director of the Núcleo Interuniversitario Multidiciplinar Individuos, Lazo Social y Asimetrías de Poder (NIUMAP), University of Santiago de Chile and University Diego Portales. She has published more than 20 books, among them Figuras de autoridad: Transformaciones históricas y ejercicios contemporáneos (editora, LOM, 2022); The Circuit of Detachment in Chile. Understanding the Fate of a Neoliberal Laboratory (Cambridge University Press, 2022); ¿Cómo estudiar la autoridad? (Universidad de Santiago de Chile, 2021); Hilos tensados. Para leer el octubre chileno (editor, 2019, Universidad de Santiago de Chile); Las calles. Un estudio sobre Santiago de Chile (editor, LOM, 2019); El miedo a los subordinados. Una teoría de la autoridad (LOM, 2016); (with Danilo Martuccelli) Desafíos comunes. Retrato de la sociedad chilena y sus individuos. 2 tomos (LOM, 2012); and Habitar lo social (LOM, 2009). Pablo Ortúzar Madrid is a researcher at Instituto de Estudios de la Sociedad (IES) and Centro de Políticas Públicas de la Universidad Católica de Chile (CPP-UC) and Sunday columnist in ‘La Tercera’ newspaper. He has published three books: Sueños de cartón: sobreoferta de credenciales académicas y sobreproducción de élites en un país estancado (2024). El poder del poder: repensar la autoridad en tiempos de crisis (2017) and El precio de la noche: diálogo sobre la tiranía (2021), and edited Subsidiariedad: más allá del estado y del mercado (2015). He completed a Ph.D in Political Theory at Oxford University with the thesis ‘A Tale of Two Civitates: On the Origins and Meaning of the Concept of Subsidiarity’ (2023). Sergio Villalobos Ruminott is professor at the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. He is the author of Asedios al fascismo. Del gobierno neoliberal a la revuelta popular (Santiago, Doble A Editores, 2020), La Desarticulación. Epocalidad, hegemonía e historicidad (Santiago, Ediciones Macul, 2019), Soberanías en suspenso. Imaginación y violencia en América Latina (Buenos Aires, La Cebra, 2013), and Heterografías de la violencia. Historia, nihilismo, destrucción (Buenos Aires, La Cebra, 2015). Juan Poblete, professor of Latin/o American Literature and Cultural Studies, University of California, Santa Cruz. Author of Hacia una historia de la lectura y la pedagogía literaria en América Latina (Cuarto Propio, 2019), La Escritura de Pedro Lemebel como proyecto cultural y político (Cuarto Propio, 2019), and Literatura chilena del siglo XIX: entre públicos lectores y figuras autoriales (Cuarto Propio, 2003); editor of New Approaches to Latin American Studies: Culture and Power. Volume 1 (Routledge, 2018), Volume 2 (Routledge, 2025), and Critical Latin American and Latino Studies (University of Minnesota Press, 2003); and co-editor of Internet, Humour and Nation in Latin America, University of Florida Press (2024), Precarity and Belonging: Labor, Migration, and Non-citizenship (Rutgers University Press, 2021), Piracy and Intellectual Property in Latin America: Rethinking Creativity and the Common Good (Routledge, 2020), Sports and Nationalism in Latin America (Palgrave, 2015), Humour in Latin American Cinema (Palgrave, 2015), Desden al infortunio: Sujeto, communicación y público en la narrativa de Pedro Lemebel (Cuarto Propio, 2010), Andrés Bello (IILI, 2009) and Redrawing the Nation: National Identities in Latin/o American Comics (Palgrave, 2009). The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to privacy or ethical restrictions.