David Goldstein:

In 2019, we recorded an episode covering the protests that were going on in Chile. Chile has a tradition of protests, but this one was different. More than a million people protested in the streets of Santiago, the nation’s capital. A listener from Santiago, Gustavo de la Piedra, shared this audio with us.

Gustavo de la Piedra:

Hola, Pitchfork listeners. This is Gustavo from Santiago. The pitchforks have come to Chile.

Speaker 3:

Every day for the past month, the Plaza Italia has been overrun with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who have come to protest a deeply unequal society.

Gustavo de la Piedra:

It turns out that the government favored a small elite in lieu of the people for far too long, and the country decided it had had enough. Citizens have been protesting due to among other things, low wages, mismanagement of public funds, increased cost of living, healthcare problems and perceived abuse of citizens’ pension plans. Not to mention enormous income inequality.

Speaker 3:

Since the beginning of the protest, more than 1500 people have been wounded and 20 killed in violent clashes, including at least five killed by live ammunition.

Gustavo de la Piedra:

The riots left a lot of destruction and ashes in their wake, not only the capital Santiago, but in many cities. Luckily, it was relatively short lived, only a month or so, which is very brief compared to demonstrations that have taken place in other countries, some of which are quelled with military force, continue for years or never succeed.

The government has given into many of the demands of the people, and we are emerging from this a better country.

Speaker 3:

Led by young people, Chile has woken up. The population is now demanding the resignation of conservative president, Sebastián Piñera. Despite government concessions and the resignation of several ministers, anger has not subsided. The country’s pain runs too deep.

David Goldstein:

This was about vast inequality, but it was also about holding a constitutional assembly to create a new constitution. The constitution at the time was written under a neoliberal dictatorship that had promised that a free market would lead to prosperity for all. Instead, it led to radical inequality.

The current president, 36 year old Gabriel Boric, a leader of the protest came into office in March of this year. He ran on reforming the free market economic model. During his campaign he said, “If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave. Do not be afraid of the youth changing this country.”

Will this uprising against neoliberalism lead to lasting change. Three years later, we’re following up. Today, I’m speaking with Marcelo Casals, an independent scholar based in Santiago. He holds a PhD in Latin American history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and wrote a recent article for descent magazine titled The End Of Neoliberalism in Chile.

Marcelo Casals:

My name is Marcelo Casals. I’m a historian from Chile dedicated to the study of the Latin American cold war with a special focus on Chile. I have written some books and articles on revolutionary and also right wing movements in the ’60s, the ’70s and the ’80s in Chile.

Currently I am a post doctoral fellow at the Free University of Berlin here in Germany.

David Goldstein:

Well, thank you for joining us. We of course have been watching what’s been happening in Chile over the past couple years with a lot of interest here at Civic Ventures and on the podcast, because of course we spend a lot of time critiquing neoliberalism.

And if there’s any country, any people who have been a victim of neoliberalism over the past few decades, it’s the people of Chile. If you could just give us a little background on what is happening in Chile at the moment and your perspective on the uprising there.

Marcelo Casals:

Well, as you know, in October 2019, there were huge social protest and why that happened? Well, that is the question that the Chilean intellectuals and politicians are still dealing with. Of course, it was a combination of factors mainly related with the very deep structural inequality that had characterized the country for the last 50 years or so.

It was also a social reaction against the political establishment. Since for many reasons, they have been unable to deal with this problem. But more importantly, from my view, the uprising in 2019 was the result of a hegemonic crisis of what can be called a neoliberal democracy in Chile during the last 30 years.

Even though that new democracy was able to change the material conditions of the country in general, I mean, it wasn’t capable of a building a more harmonious, integrated society. The Chilean society is a very, very factored society.

And also this model, this neoliberal democracy didn’t react to the deep cultural and social changes of the last few years. For many people, it became pretty obvious that they were overdeterminate by their class situation. And at the same time, they didn’t find the proper institutional channels to express their demands.

David Goldstein:

So, let’s go into this a little deeper. One of the main demands of the uprising and a demand that is currently being met was a new constitution to replace the old neoliberal constitution that was put in place by the Pinochet regime, the longtime dictator.

What is it in that old constitution that has stuck Chile with a neoliberal democracy, as opposed to, I would suppose what we might think of as a liberal democracy?

Marcelo Casals:

Yeah, that’s a good question. Actually, what is interesting to say to notice is that the constitution was not at the center of the uprising at the beginning. Of course, replacing the constitution has been a historical demand of the left wing since the constitution was created during the military dictatorship and given the nature of the democratic transition, it was impossible to replace the Army and the right wing.

And the business class were very powerful during the ’90s. So the center left political establishment accepted the constitution after some reforms in 1999, and then again in 2005. But the people who participate in or support the protests, as I did, became aware during the uprising that at the center of their demands was the constitution.

It was also a way out to a very difficult situation during October and November, 2019. The protest didn’t have a clear leadership, the right wing government of [inaudible 00:09:05] Piñera, sought to suppress the protest by repression, right?

That is why the National Congress decide to approve a constitutional reform in order to replace the constitution. I think that’s a good thing because that allow to the conflict to become institutionalized. And at the same time, it opened the door to a major political change.

So yeah, it was a good thing. Especially if we compare that situation with what was happening at the same time in Colombia, right?

David Goldstein:

Right.

Marcelo Casals:

Where the constitution was not the issue. This wasn’t the way out to that situation in 2019. Now, to answer your question, of course, the word neoliberal does not appear in the constitution, but originally the constitution was a mechanism to consolidate the economic reforms imposed by the dictatorship in the second part of the ’70s.

The constitution for instance, had at its core, the defense of property rights. It also defined the state as subsidiary, which means that it can only intervene where the market can’t do it, right?

David Goldstein:

Right.

Marcelo Casals:

More importantly, I think this constitution design a very limited democracy that in the end can’t change the basics of this economic system.

David Goldstein:

It’s no accident I suppose, that this constitution essentially imposes the primacy of the market over the democracy, considering how informed it was by what we call the Chicago boys, the economists coming from the University of Chicago. How large a role did they play in the shaping of the constitution and the democracy that followed the fall of the dictatorship?

Marcelo Casals:

Well, the constitution was designed by the dictatorship and also by their civilian advisors. As far as I know, the Chicago boys themselves didn’t participate directly in the process of the elaboration of this constitution. But as I said before, the constitution as a whole was an attempt to consolidate the economic reforms of the ’70s.

And of course, the Chicago boys especially the ’70s, but also in the ’80s, were a central part of the civilian [inaudible 00:11:53] pressured the dictatorship. And many of them were still very important during the ’90s and the 2000s, as you know, economic authorities, right?

David Goldstein:

Uh-huh.

Marcelo Casals:

Even though they didn’t participate in the elaboration of the constitution, they have been the most [inaudible 00:12:14] defenders of this, of what I call a neoliberal democracy.

David Goldstein:

Right. So when we last looked at what was happening in Chile on the podcast, the uprisings were still going on. In May 2021, Chileans voted to elect a constitutional convention. What were the results of that election? And were they surprising in any way?

Marcelo Casals:

Well, yeah. Actually those result were really surprising at that time for a number of reasons. First of all, the constitutional reform that allow to replace the constitution said that every article of the new constitution should be approved by two-thirds of the convention. So that meant that the right wing only had to get one-third of the seats in order to block the most progressive proposals and they didn’t get it.

That was very important. They were unable to get one-third of the seats. On the other hand, the majority of the convention were not part of the political establishment or the social elite. Which again, it was really knew at that time.

Many of them at the same time were independent activists from different part of the country. Many of them were not part of political parties, even though the majority of the convention can be defined as left wing, so to speak.

But there are also another result that were very surprising and have to do with the original constitutional reform. For instance, there is an important representation of Indigenous peoples since they had reserved seats to the convention and also half of the convention, the person who were elected are a woman, right?

So at least in comparison with what had been the political and the electoral trajectory of Chilean politics, it was a very new scenario.

David Goldstein:

And what do you attribute this to, this really big shift in the electorate in Chile? Were these sentiments always there, or was this simply a matter of people deciding, “Okay, now I’m going to vote.”?

Marcelo Casals:

Well, I think that those electoral change were the direct consequence of the 2019 uprising. Because as I said before, that uprising for many people was a uprising against the political establishment. So the youth in that political party have in the years, I mean, in the early 2000, all of a sudden disappeared.

And the original election will, at least according to our constitutional reform, will have been in April, 2020, but the pandemic delayed that election to October. So I think if those elections were held in April, the results were had been even more surprising.

So yeah, I think it was a direct result of the uprising because many people felt that the constitution should be written by people who are not part of the political and social elite.

David Goldstein:

Right. So part of the dissatisfaction with the, as I understand it, part of the dissatisfaction with the political elite in Chile is the way the center left essentially endorsed the existing neoliberal constitution as part of the transition to democracy. Do you think they had a choice? Did they make the right pragmatic choice at the time that having any democracy was better than risking another military coup if they were to reject the constitution?

Marcelo Casals:

Well, yeah, that’s a very good question. And also a very difficult one, because I don’t know, of course, I don’t know what will happen if the center left coalition at that time will made another choices. As I said before, during the ’90s, the Army, the business class, the right wing were still very powerful.

So the democratic system at that time was very weak. So I don’t know, at least during the ’90s, right?

David Goldstein:

Right.

Marcelo Casals:

If there was another feasible choice. But after that in the 2000, as the political situation was very different and the center left coalition had some opportunities to trying to at least replace the economic system, if not the constitution itself.

For instance, during the second administration of Michele Micheletti between 2013 and 2017, she had the opportunity to open, to initiate a constitutional replacement process or a constitutional change. She had at that time the support of the majority of the people who wanted to replace the constitution.

But she created this process just at the very end of her second administration. And it was a way to fulfill that demand to a certain extent, but without the political will necessarily to actually do it.

After that, Sebastián Piñera was elected. Of course, this idea of replacing the constitution was completely eliminated out of the political debate. So I think they choose. And they choose how things. The concept assumed this center left government had some opportunities to really reform at least the economic system, even though they were able to implement some social policies, especially in the 2000 and 2010.

For many people, that wasn’t enough because the main problem in Chile at that time, and is still now is inequality. So you can apply some social policies in favor of the lower classes. You can improve to a certain extent, the educational system, the health system, but we’re still living in a very deep, deep cultural unequal society. And that is the problem.

David Goldstein:

And of course the rich and the powerful haven’t gone away since the uprising, what are they doing to fight the proposed changes to the constitution and how much at risk do you think Chile is for a far right revival?

Marcelo Casals:

Yeah, well, that’s a very good question because there has been an important conservative reaction the last few years. The media, the right wing, the business class, of course, are opposed to the process of constitutional change. This is not very surprising since they are very identified with this neoliberal democracy. But this reaction is not only a conservative upper class reaction.

Let’s don’t forget that in the last presidential election, the far right candidate in the second round get 44% of the vote, which is a lot of course.

David Goldstein:

Right.

Marcelo Casals:

So I think there is a sort of middle and lower class anxiety about the future. And also, there are some doubts about the feasibility of the political [inaudible 00:21:16] of the left, and also about the new constitution. We’re still living in a political, social and economic crisis now in Chile.

This conservative, anti left, anti-progressive reaction can grow, and we can still have this kind of political scenario where just like in the US or in Brazil or in East Europe, where a far right populist candidate can start to be very popular and can be elected.

So that is a possibility right now in Chile. And actually at least according to some polls, it is not sure that the new constitution will be approved in the September 4th plebiscite. It’ll be a very close call. So if the constitution, the new constitution is not approved, that will be a political disaster, especially for the left wing government in Chile.

David Goldstein:

Does it require a simple majority at the polls?

Marcelo Casals:

Yes.

David Goldstein:

Okay.

Marcelo Casals:

Only a simple majority.

David Goldstein:

And do you think that public sentiment is in the process of moving back towards the right? Or is it simply what we’re seeing all over the world, where sentiment is fracturing into a far right and a far left?

Marcelo Casals:

Yeah, I think it’s something like that. I mean, we are, as I said before, we’re still in this political, economic and social crisis. So the political scenario, the political context, it’s very polarized.

I wouldn’t say that there is a far left in Chile. I mean, there is, of course, but it’s really small. Whereas in the right, we of course, we see that they have a very strong candidate. They have now a new political party and also the traditional right wing is open to collaborate with this new far right.

David Goldstein:

Right.

Marcelo Casals:

The current government in Chile is supported by a left wing coalition, but that is a very immoderate coalition that is in comparison with other countries. It’s a sort of social democratic coalition. So it’s not a far left coalition. It’s not a far left government.

David Goldstein:

I agree. I misspoke. It’s all relative, of course, I fell victim to the way journalists tend to divide it. It’s a polarization between a moderate center left and an extreme far right. That’s what we have in the United States. And that’s what you see obviously in Chile and a lot of other places.

And in fact, as an American it’s interesting looking at Chile and seeing so many parallels to what we’re experience here. A lot of our… A crisis created by radical inequality. We see a lot of the same issues. As I understand it in Chile, that there’s a push to go from their privatized pension system to a government pension, more like social security.

And also a lot of protest over high tuition fees at private schools and universities, just like here where there’s this fight for student loan relief and debt free college.

I’m wondering if you think what’s happening in Chile is a lesson for the United States?

Marcelo Casals:

Well, even though the problems can be compared and we can find a very similar process, at the same time, of course, the US and Chile are two very different countries. So I’m not sure if there is a lesson to be learned or, I mean, there is one, but it can apply not only to the US, but also to the rest of the world.

And it’s also a lesson that we can learn from history. Things can change. And sometimes can change very quickly, especially when political, social or economic structures cannot be seen as a legitimate way of organized society and organized power.

So I think if there is a lesson of the Chilean process is that collective action can change things very dramatically at some time. And also, I don’t know if this is a lesson, but this is a good idea. The political conflicts can be also institutionalized, right?

We shouldn’t quit to get political power and we can change things at the core of the institution, like in Chile with this new constitution. I’m aware that in the US that is not option, or this is not an issue, the constitution, because you have had only one constitution. But at least in Latin America constitution are symbol of creating changes.

After every crisis like civil wars, dictatorship, et cetera, new constitution has been created because they reflect new relation of power. And also the constitution can define the role of the state in society, which is of course very important.

Actually, that is why the dictatorship understood. I mean that they had to create a new constitution in order to create their economic, political, and social system into the future. And that is why the Chilean people who went to the streets as I did in 2019, demanded a new constitution.

So, yeah, I guess if there is a lesson, is that people can change thing and can change it in a very institutionalized way. And they create a new political system.

David Goldstein:

I hope the American people take some inspiration from what they see in Chile and throughout Latin America, where there’s been a lot of effort from people to take government back into their own hands.

One final question, we ask all of our guests, why do you do the work that you do?

Marcelo Casals:

Yeah, well, that is a very good question of the world. I think the short answer is what any historian you will say. I do what I do to understand the presence to gain a more complex understanding of my surrounding reality, because I do believe that history can give us tools to analyze reality by knowing how things have come to be.

It can also teach us that well, as I said before, that what can be seen as permanent is not, and that the collective action of people can change things for good.

David Goldstein:

Great. Well, thank you for joining the podcast and thank you for doing what you do.

Marcelo Casals:

Thank you.

Speaker 5:

Pitchfork Economics is produced by Civic Ventures. If you like the show, make sure to subscribe, rate and review us wherever you get your podcasts. Find us on Twitter and Facebook at Civic Action and Nick Hanauer. Follow our writing on Medium at Civic Skunk Works and peek behind the podcast scenes on Instagram at Pitchfork Economics. As always from our team at Civic Ventures, thanks for listening. See you next week.