If you only follow what most mainstream media are reporting about Chile’s recent election, you couldn’t be blamed for thinking that the South American nation was on a path to socialism.
The reality is a bit more complicated.
Gabriel Boric, a 35-year old ex-radical student leader, defied polls to edge out far-right candidate Jose Antonio Kast by 11 points on December 19, becoming the country’s youngest-ever president. In the first round, Boric had finished behind Kast, the son of a former German soldier and Nazi Party member.
Scenes of tens of thousands flooding into the streets of downtown Santiago to celebrate Boric’s victory were reminiscent of the enormous demonstrations that erupted in October 2019. Back then, initial protests over a proposal to increase bus fares in the capital quickly spread to virtually every city in the country as the multiple grievances that Chileans had spent years protesting converged into a single demand – changing the country’s constitution.
The 1980 constitution, passed during the brutal dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, was crafted specifically to make it practically impossible to reverse the market reforms and widespread privatizations ushered in by his military regime. Since the return to civilian rule in 1990, elected governments and mass movements alike have pursued moderate reforms on numerous issues from quality and affordability of services like health and education to workers rights and pensions, only to have the courts rule that the constitution would not allow such impositions on the private sector.
Boric, described as a ‘leftist’ who cut his teeth in one of these movements before being elected to Chile’s Congress in 2013, rode this wave of discontent along with a coalition that featured the left-leaning Broad Front bloc as well as the Communist Party of Chile.
This bears some similarities to the 1970 election of Salvador Allende, who was overthrown by Pinochet in a US-backed coup three years into his term. Allende earned the ire of the country’s elites as well as Washington by nationalizing Chile’s vast copper reserves and building relations with the likes of Cuba and the Soviet Union, among other socialist-oriented measures.
Despite proclamations about ‘burying neoliberalism,’ though, statements from Boric’s camp have signaled that his government won’t exactly be like Allende’s.
The 35-year-old has promised to tackle inequality, improving services and pensions primarily through tax reforms aimed at the country’s wealthy minority as well as the private firms operating in extractive industries.
I know many Chileans, including members of my family, who are working well into their 70s because they can’t live on the pensions afforded through the privatized pension system, as well as others paying off huge student debts or avoiding doing health checkups to avoid medical bills. If followed through on, these reforms will address some basic yet pressing needs, but are hardly indicative of a path to socialism.
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