Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation
Justice, Peace, Integrity<br /> of Creation

It's not a matter of 30 pesos, but of 30 years

Other News 18.11.2019 Adriana Fernández Translated by: Jpic-jp.org

President Sebastián Piñera reacted to the civil disobedience of secondary students in the Santiago Metro with the brutal force of the militarized police, causing a social upheaval.

This social upheaval exploded in the violent destruction of the neoliberal model iconic symbols, in acts of vandalism, looting and fire, as in the pacifist mass marches, popular self-convened assemblies and social organizations demanding rights and dignity.

Piñera, greatly weakened by the uncontrollable social chaos, the massive marches, and the allegations of human rights violations, on the November 12 night called for peace. Well, apparently, he had not obtained the support to proclaim a State of Exception, as he would have preferred, and put the Armed Forces in control of the situation. However, he offered no plan on how to reach this peace. Therefore, this scenario led the parties of the delegitimized political class to seek, together, an urgent way out of the crisis and they started the process for elaborating a new Constitution to replace that of Pinochet. This was unimaginable just a short time ago. It is a historic first step, although it is not a guarantee of the legitimacy of the process to come. In fact, the social organizations and leftist political parties questioned the start and kept themselves outside the agreement. In addition, if those who govern do not give real solutions to problems as serious as pensions, it is to expect that violence will continue.

What is clear, for now, is that Piñera no longer has real power. That the country has changed. That it is the State that must change now. And, that it is the students who opened the way.

Foreign intervention? Or, "aliens" coming in?

Since the destruction of Santiago Metro stations, the political-right launched rumors that Cuba and Venezuela were behind the violent unrest and the social networks rebounded the message. Those who forward it believe it firmly. They are not able to recognize that Chile is a dystopia, whose guiding principles are the opposite of human justice and solidarity. That Chile is the best social laboratory of wild capitalism. That the list of iniquities is long and recurring in the lives of millions of Chileans. That Sebastián Piñera and his government did not need powerful enemies to create this violent social chaos and the biggest political and institutional crisis since the return to democracy. If all this has become a popular upheaval, it is because the individual and group subjective experience overlapped and transformed into a great collective force rejecting the system – into a volcanic, direct and destructive expression engendered by the permanent abusive conditions of a system made increasingly intolerable under the government of Piñera.

It is important to take into account that this explosion occurs after the failure of the 100 reforms ambitious project for equity Michelle Bachelet had promised in her second mandate (2014-2018). That reformist agenda had raised expectations of improvements in living conditions for many of the young people who today face the government on the streets both peacefully or with so much violence. Right wing politicians fiercely opposed these reforms until they managed to make them unfeasible. It was at that time unthinkable for them to work for equity, to stop abusing the population, accustomed as they were from Pinochet’s time to do and undo at their will, protected as they were by “their own Constitution”, in the historical and cultural tradition of their own, and by the complicity of many of the center-left parties. All of them are today searching how to dissolve the wrath of the people they have abused.

The massive and fantasist students’ mobilizations during the first Sebastián Piñera’s government (2011 and 2012) asking for reforms in education, marked a “before and after” in the collective consciousness of the country. It opened the public discussion on the neoliberal model installed in Chile, until that moment considered enormously successful. It questioned the privatization of education and demanded a free, quality public education. It broke the tacit interdiction to discuss the relations between politics and the social reality that dominated public discourse in colleges and universities, in the media and in social gatherings, despite the time that had passed since the fall of the Dictatorship. Finally, it made possible the surging and display of other social movements, such as for health and environment, for the Mapuche’s cause, for feminism and sexual diversity, for decentralization versus centralism, for pensions and other issue. Michelle Bachelet's reform agenda was a product of the social demands the student movement had promoted as well as of the OECD remarks on Chile’s social inequities.

The reforms were not made, the Bachelet government met a general failure, and the Piñera's agenda until a few weeks ago engendered a clear awareness of the oppression the system had been growing. On the other hand, during the last years, several scandals came to light, which exposed the politics’ collusion with money, the Army and police’s frauds and their criminality, the thousands of ways in which companies used to explode consumers, and - among them and very importantly -, the devastating reports on sexual abuse of the Catholic Church. All together, they have caused irreparable damage to the trust in institutions, in a society that has already long lived in distrust.

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* Adriana Fernández is a State Professor at Universidad Austral, Chile; at Studies in Literature, University of California, S.D. California; she is Bilingual educator, California, USA, Retired educator, and currently resides in Chile (http://www.other-news.info/noticias/2019/11/no-son-30-pesos-son-30-anos/).

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