The Chilean turn
towards a Progressive Left.
In an interview published in Latin American Summary on December 24, I referred to the Chilean political situation after the elections. The interview touched on several topics, to which I responded according to my lifelong militant experience. I tell Atilio that what we are experiencing in Chile we have already experienced for 30 years: we began with “Joy is coming” in the first government of the Concertación of Patricio Aylwin in 1990, governments that lasted for decades “with democracy in the as much as possible”, some thought that with Ricardo Lagos the circle could be broken, but we obtained more neoliberalism since his government was that of large concessions, roads, ports, services, etc. With Bachelet, the first female president in the history of the country, socialist, exiled; but with which the “militarization of Wallmapu” is installed, with the creation of the Jungle Command, trained in the paramilitary state of Colombia, military police at war against our Mapuche brothers, after finishing each of their mandates they left us with Piñera as inheritance.
Today Gabriel Boric comes to the presidency, and the love of the left is reborn Latin American and its intellectuality. True, Boric was born from a process of upward struggles, which began in the so-called Penguin Movement of secondary students in Chile in 2007; At the same time, the environmental movement would emerge (which, by the way, did not emerge from the traditional left) which would have its maximum expression with the environmental mobilizations of August 2010; with the approval of the Barrancones thermoelectric plant, in the Punta Choros nature sanctuary in the Coquimbo region. The mobilizations would last three days. that extended from Arica to Punta Arenas, until Piñera gave up on the project, scoring an important victory for the Chilean environmental movement. After that, the university student movement would emerge, from which outstanding student leaders would emerge (almost always disconnected from the social world), who were configured as a social sector for themselves, reaching middle positions in the governments of the Concertación and Nueva Mayoría. , being figures of the various political parties that allowed them to reach parliament, in some cases with their own political instruments. In that walk in the halls of parliament, the model continued to deepen with new laws, and outside the diverse social world was looking for its own path.
Each government would add its own deaths in the repression of the Mapuche people, unionists and activists would not escape the state's murderous bullets; The large and small struggles would add up to fundamental social demands: the end of the AFP, health, education, the environment, and one that encompassed them all, such as the Constituent Assembly, with territorial expressions that were beginning to become a reality, the secondary student movement Persecuted and pressured by the mayor of Santiago Felipe Alessandri, he jumped the subway fence with the slogan “it's not 30 pesos but 30 years” starting the social situation, while the elites played partial reforms in parliament.
On October 18, all the alarms would go off and the state would remove the entire repressive structure, declaring a state of siege and curfew with the resulting deaths, thousands of detainees and imprisoned, the model would be mortally wounded, and it had to be saved.
This is how the peace agreement was born, sealed on November 15, 2019, managed by Jaime Bellolio (UDI) and Gabriel Boric (FA), and signed by almost all the parliamentary benches, an agreement that had the objective of saving the model and with this to Piñera, burying the constituent assembly - our main demand - and changing it for a convention with the rules of Pinochet's constitution, to stop the social outbreak and invent an orderly transition where the people are only called to vote.
Thus the constitutional convention is installed with 155 representatives, where 64 of its members are lawyers, 10 are engineers, an important fact to understand their social composition, beyond the independent candidates supported by the lists of traditional parties and the representatives of the indigenous peoples, all with gender parity, but well tied.
This is how Gabriel Boric's candidacy was born, within the framework of some parties opposing Piñera, achieving in the first round 1,814,777 votes with 25.83% and Kast 1,961,387 votes with 27.91% with a participation of 47% of the electorate, so far nothing of the large malls. With the votes of the old Concertación the right was not surpassed, in addition the program had to be modified to incorporate the old political class. Bachelet announces her arrival and seals the political agreement with her presence. Among Kast's stupidity, with his hate speech, the story of fear is built, "fascism is coming", the remnants of the dictatorship beyond the '80s constitution penetrated deeply into the popular sectors that refused to participate in the elections, therefore, the story of the wolf sold well. Thus, in the second round, 1,244,370 voters join the electoral contest. The question is whether they are votes for Boric or against Kast. In any case, the victory is consolidated, Boric, 4,620,890 votes with 55.87%, Kast 3,650,088 votes with 44.13%, with a participation of 55.65% of the electoral roll.
Atilio, you indicate that you have never said in your article of November 23, published in the magazine “El Viejo Topo” that Boric is Allende, of course I have read and very well what emerges from your analysis and your own construction of a reality with which I do not agree, -in advertising the image is everything- and if you link the words, "the great avenues opened" phrase of Salvador Allende in his last hours defending the government palace, before falling in combat, that has tremendous symbolism for us Chileans. And if it goes with Boric's photo, when the entire article also revolves around his political role in the elections, and you develop the idea "It is to be hoped that upon entering La Moneda (hopefully before!) the spirit of Salvador Allende settle on the young president and transmit all his wisdom and values to him” and continue "The certainty that Allende had that the Chilean ruling class will never accept a left-wing government and that, just as it happened to him (and is already happening to Boric: see the reaction of the Stock Market on Monday, a 6% drop and dollar skyrocket)” your Boric/Allende analogy is clear, therefore I must conclude that the idea that Boric is Allende is being constructed by appealing to emotions. Naivety in politics does not exist, I believe.
Of course, Boric is the expression of the neoliberal model, I reaffirm it, at least until now, it was he, together with the business political class, who built a political operation, two months after the social outbreak began, which put the model in check. neoliberal and Piñera's government, everyone in the streets was asking for his departure and Constituent Assembly, it was a matter of time, it was he in person who articulated the agreement together with representatives of the right-wing parties, to achieve a political agenda contrary to what It was demanded in the streets in the social outbreak, and with this the popular solution was buried, of course it was changed by a constituent convention with the rules of the model, under the protection of Pinochet's 1980 constitution.
When we talk about the new government's program, I say that it does not put the neoliberal model in check. First there are two programs: the first round, and the second round, which is in the process of being reviewed by advisors and technicians, according to the conglomerate itself. For example: economically, tax collection was initially 8%, today it dropped to 5%, indicated by its economists, and I dare say that there will be a third program in which it will be discussed in parliament, where the large malls did not pass. . The right emerges with a greater presence in parliament, where each comma will have to be negotiated in a position favorable to the right, (well the pillars of the 1980 constitution are eleven and not four).
Boric came to the presidency with 54% of the electorate, Frei came with 57% of the electorate at that time. To win there are more than a million votes that did not participate in the first round, to which they were called not by the candidate's program, but by the campaign of fear, with the slogan that fascism is coming. That electorate voted against Kast, the ultra-neoliberal right-winger, whose only fascist is his hateful, xenophobic and ultra-conservative speech, and I insist, he is made of cardboard. He was one of the first to call Boric to congratulate him on his victory and wish him the greatest success, all within the framework of the republic. What's more, that fascism with which they so scared and terrorized our people, reminding them of sinister times from our dictatorial past, is not in the streets, no one marches with the banners of Kast and his group. What's more, some of its deputies resigned from the party, the right is reconfiguring itself for a new scenario and it is already clear that Kast will not be the leader.
You don't have to experience fascism to understand it, many of us know it from our clandestine struggles of many years against the dictatorship, later we learned about it in torture, in prison. For my generation there are no double readings, I would never use fear for an election or build stories about the future as was done in the second round campaign. Well, stories also construct common senses, which are not common but constructions.
By Luis Vega González.
Member of the Patriotic Movement Manuel Rodríguez, former political prisoner, was a combatant of the FPMR against Pinochetism. In Bolivia, during the government of Evo Morales, he worked on decolonization programs alongside Ángel Cárdenas.
Original note: Latin American Summary, December 30, 2021.