On 18 October 2019, a 4% increase of 30 Chilean pesos in metro fares compelled the youth in Chile to organise a mass fare strike and videos of them dramatically jumping over barriers flooded Chilean social media. Violent repression by the state forces and police soon followed. As clashes erupted on streets across the country, mass mobilisations against state brutality set off what has become a weeks-long protest against the effects of imperialist domination and demanding President Piñera’s resignation, with no sign of abating until the people’s demands are met. Sheila Rubio reports.
‘It’s not 30 pesos, it’s 30 years’ has been the unifying slogan of millions of Chileans. The Chilean Constitution has remained largely unchanged since it was rewritten under fascist General Augusto Pinochet in 1980. It is this legacy and the continued interference of imperialist interests in the country, both protected by the Constitution, that have placed the Chilean people under back-breaking pressure. Protests have broken out after decades of discontent over: the rising cost of living; the quality and privatisation of vital public services like health care, water, education and transport; inadequate pensions that are linked to the market and average £180 a month; the destruction of nature; the perdonazos (‘big forgiving’) of massive corporations and wealthy individuals for avoiding taxes . . . the list goes on. Frantic to bring order back into the country, all the political parties have agreed to hold a referendum in April 2020 when Chileans can state if they want to change the Constitution and how.
After weeks of brutalisation and murder by state forces, figures from an Activa Research poll show that Piñera’s approval rating is 9.6%. 82.3% want to change the Constitution and 81.2% want the new Constitution to be voted through an obligatory plebiscite.
Indigenous rights have taken centre stage, with demands for representatives of Mapuche and Quechua communities to be given a voice in the rewriting of the Constitution. There has been an increased military presence in the south of Chile, where the Mapuche ancestral homes are located. In 2016 and 2018, two prominent Mapuche leaders, Macarena Valdés and Camilo Catrillanca, known for their active political work against the Chilean state’s racist abuse and neglect of the Mapuche communities, were assassinated by police. The indigenous communities face constant evictions from their ancestral lands and have seen their history and culture uprooted and destroyed by multinational timber companies that plundered the Araucanía region for decades. In early November, protesters tore down a statue of Spanish coloniser Pedro de Valdivia in the southern city of Temuco. Indigenous communities are rising up alongside the mass of Chilean people to demand back their lands, the protection of nature and to have representatives in any proposed Constituent Assembly.
Water shortages have worsened year on year. Chile’s water system is the only one in the world that is completely privatised. Since early November over a hundred people living in El Melón, Valparaíso have occupied a mine well owned by Anglo American and in doing so returned water to their town. Energy companies have their sights on the rich lithium deposits found in the salt plains of the Atacama desert, vital to their efforts to greenwash imperialism. Massive extraction of these deposits would cause catastrophic ecological damage.
Police repression exposed
Right-wing press efforts to divide the movement by disseminating lies have been ineffective, as videos have been shared widely on social media of the carabineros (Chile’s heavily militarised police force) running over pedestrians and using a water cannon on a community cleaning their street. In a sign of the government’s lack of control over the narrative, police have been recorded burning down supermarkets, starting fires on streets and attacking a firefighter, to sow chaos and turn public opinion against the protests. El Mercurio, a notoriously right-wing newspaper, had its offices in Valparaíso burnt down as a show of defiance against its reactionary smears. Hashtags #ApagaLaTele (turn off the TV) and #ElMercurioMiente (El Mercurio lies) have spread to counteract repressive state efforts.
Chile despertó – ‘Chile has awoken’
The explosion of protest in Chile has shaken the people out of any illusion in a parliamentary route. The ruling elite is made up of a few ultra-rich families who dominate the Chilean political field.
People have taken to organising amongst themselves, ahead of the April 2020 proposed referendum: within their communities they have set up informal open councils – cabildos abiertos – to discuss what is to be included in the rewriting of the Constitution and how to go about setting up a Constituent Assembly. Progressive radio station Radio Placeres, based in Valparaíso, broadcasts people being asked their opinions. One responder said, ‘we now know that since the [Pinochet] dictatorship, everything has been imposed on us and we have never had a say’. The focus of these discussions includes pensions, raising the minimum wage, reparations for those blinded by police bullets and for relatives of those killed by state forces, and rewriting the Constitution.
Youth battle to keep police from their neighbourhoods, demanding change and involvement in the Constituent Assembly. One young protester from La Bonilla, Antofagasta declared: ‘You can’t lead without the people – the Constituent Assembly is with us, or it doesn’t happen at all!’ On the 20 November deadline to present reasons for avoiding military service, hundreds of young men overwhelmed recruitment offices with applications, forcing the deadline back to 30 December. The youth see their futures being sold and are at the frontlines of the fight back.
The people are learning from and teaching each other what democracy means, how to listen and make demands within their communities. As we go to press, organisers from over 200 organisations, from trade unions to student movements, are connecting the local to the national in efforts to build a new Chile, free from the shackles of imperialism and onwards to a sovereign future.
Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! 273 December 2019/January 2020
