Chile lives turbulent days at the end of 2021. In the midst of the process towards a unique and exemplary change with the drafting of a new Constitution, which seeks to bury the one still in force, the one that covered the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, an absolutely polarized electoral campaign it alters their political and citizen pulse. The country is living an absolutely divided pre-electoral period that will lead to the elections that on December 19 will elect a new president between the candidate José Antonio Kast, who embraces the entire right (including the far right) and conservatism in general, and Gabriel Boric , which makes left-wing voters fall in love with it.
If the latest polls are correct and the winner is Gabriel Boric, all of Chile knows that the new Constitution will follow the progressive development that had already begun before the pandemic broke out. The question is what will happen if the new president is José Antonio Kast, son of a former Nazi soldier and brother of a former Pinochet minister, a guy closer to ideas of the past and who has not yet ruled on whether or not he will maintain the process. reform of the Magna Carta. “The road is full of potholes, but pencils and fists are eager to capture the desired right to live with greater dignity,” says a Chilean citizen who prefers anonymity.
The country has been trying for years to bury the surname of the father of the Constitution that has governed citizens’ destinies since 1980. Many reforms have taken place on it, but the stamp of the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship has been impossible to erase. That time heals everything has not been fulfilled here. Democracy, in a country whose political culture is considered very high, has lived since 1990 on statutes designed to sow fear in the people, cut off freedom and hijack human rights. And well that it was used for it during the long dictatorship.
The recovery of democracy succeeded in repealing the article in which political pluralism was prohibited for some ideologies. A few years later (2005), one of the privileges of the Armed Forces and the Supreme Court, which was to hand-designate some senators, was put to an end.
Surely infected by the political schisms that most Latin and Central American countries are experiencing, Chile also had its turbulent – and violent – October two years ago, when 1.2 million people took to the streets and collapsed downtown Santiago in the which is considered the largest protest that this country has experienced in its recent history.
Demonstrations and student marches began to emerge in 2006 and still find an echo among the population today. “Santiago is not Chile” is the clamor that attacks directly against the centralism of the country’s government and the inequalities experienced by other cities and regions, which some compare with those registered in the dictator’s time.
Supporters of Kast, the candidate of the right in an increasingly polarized country. /
The social outbreak of 2019 especially demanded the implementation of social reforms. The demonstrations would culminate in the approval of a referendum after a political agreement within Congress. Symptoms of a major illness, which inevitably led to a consultation on the need to draft a new Constitution.
The plebiscite asked for approval or rejection at the beginning of that constituent process. The triumph was overwhelming. 78% of the population said ‘yes’ to the new Magna Carta. It was also approved that the wording was written by a group of citizens elected by the people, by a group in which there was not a single career politician.
President Elisa Loncón
And so, since last July 4, the Constitutional Convention is made up of 155 people, 78 men and 77 women, who have made this entity the first joint body, the only one in the world, chaired by a woman, Elisa Loncón, Mapuche, academic and activist of the original languages, to whom the magazine ‘Time’ granted the honor of including among the 100 most influential people in the world.
Furthermore, the participation of State authorities was not accepted in the Convention and the presence of any person belonging to the Government, including the current president, Sebastián Piñera, was also rejected. The main concept is to break with the past and the established power.
On October 18, the elaboration of the new Magna Carta began after three debate sessions in which the operating regulations, the composition of the tables and the commissions of the different topics to be discussed were approved. Among the most important issues to be resolved are human rights, the country’s historical truth, bases for justice, comprehensive reparation, and guarantees that the past will not repeat itself. Very few want to go through the same thing again, relive the dictatorship that buried the country for 16 years, between 1974 and 1990.
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people, 78 men and 77 women, are part of the Convention that must agree on the new Constitution of Chile. The works began last July and are questioned by the parties of the right, especially by the candidate José Antonio Kast, who won the first round of the elections. -
Without politicians or state authorities
After the referendum that overwhelmingly approved the drafting of the new Constitution, it was decided that the main concept is to break with the past and the established power.
So far, the Convention has carried out an intense tour throughout Chile to gather ideas and dialogue with the different territories. You have visited marginalized and discredited sites. The first session of the body was held in the San Joaquín women’s prison, in the capital Santiago, because the intention is not to exclude any person, to carry out a broad and inclusive process, in which some of the members have come to propose that prisoners can vote. The phrase pronounced by the director of the prison during the visit of Pope Francis three years ago was felt again throughout this process: “In Chile poverty is imprisoned,” he had said before the highest Catholic authority in the world.
In the construction of the marvelous dream, which almost embraces utopia, of turning Chile into a more plural society, in which the entire society is represented, that accepts some of the most felt demands by native peoples, the Constitutional Convention has encountered opponents of the right that attack it permanently and that clearly would not have made the referendum. That they would give a capital “no” to the new Magna Carta. They accuse her of wasting time on matters beyond her assigned role and say she clearly identifies with the left.
Polls record a drop not only in optimism aroused by the Convention process, but also in interest in it, especially after the victory of José Antonio Kast in the first round of the elections. Despite this, the majority are citizens, authorized voices, professors, lawyers who, through the Convention website in live broadcasts, present their ideas and denounce the violence experienced by the areas most affected by inequality, especially in the Araucanía, a region to which the Commission on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and Plurinationality listens carefully, and which today lives militarized.
The demands for autonomy of the original Mapuche people
Ingrid Conejeros defines herself on her Twitter profile as a Mapuche woman, educator, social leader, weaver and candidate for deputy for the 22nd district. On October 13 she posted this tweet: “October 12, nothing to celebrate! Less when Piñera sends us more militarization and violence in Wallmapu. Mapuche children have known for years of raids, jail and death. The problem is political and must be solved with dialogue, but the government’s response is bullets.
This newspaper was able to contact Ingrid Conejeros to discuss the Constitutional Convention process: «Since the process began, some Mapuche sectors have decided to participate in it. We want it to be able to accept the historical demands of our people that have to do with self-determination and autonomy. Plurinationality may be a path, but it is not the goal. And from those higher levels of autonomy, to guarantee the rights of the native peoples with regard to health, their own education, the regulatory mechanisms in terms of their own laws and different ways of life, also that the Mapuche culture is revalued and raised. ».
Regarding the latter, the activist underlines the need to confront “the revitalization of our language. The native peoples have been strongly hit by colonization and there is a very important desire to advance in territorial restitution. This has to do with the processes that began with the return of democracy after the Pinochet dictatorship and that crystallized in the return of some territories to those communities that had been able to prove their loss.
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