Around The
world, 2019 has been
a year of public pro-
test, and in some
countries it’s not hard
to understand why.
In Hong Kong, dem-
onstrators want to preserve the city’s
autonomy within a repressive Chinese
political system. In Algeria and Sudan,
the issue is frustration with decades of
dictatorship. In Ecuador, Nicaragua and
Haiti, it’s poverty and bad governance.
In Iraq and Lebanon, the protest focus is
endemic corruption.
But what’s going on in Chile, one of
South America’s most peace-
ful and prosperous countries?
Earlier in October, a team
of government technocrats
announced that a weaken-
ing currency and higher fuel
costs demanded an increase
from 800 to 830 pesos in
the cost of rush-hour public-
transit fares in Santiago,
Chile’s capital. That’s a rise of
about 4 U.S. cents. In protest, younger
commuters began dodging the fares,
prompting a police crackdown and a
wave of arrests.
The public anger, and the protests,
then boiled over. Demonstrations spread
to other cities, and some turned violent.
Shops were looted, fres were set, and
the government declared a state of emer-
gency. Curfews were established in the
country’s largest cities. Startled Chileans
have seen nothing like this since the end
of the Pinochet dictatorship nearly three
decades ago, and President Sebastián
Piñera seems slow to recognize the pub-
lic anger as legitimate.
This surge of public fury didn’t
come from nowhere. Chile’s new middle
class has expectations for improving liv-
ing standards. There have been protests
in recent years over the cost and qual-
ity of education and health care and
over pensions that don’t help the elderly
make ends meet, but little has changed
in response. There is also the reality that
Chile has one of the widest gaps between
rich and poor of all the Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Develop-
ment countries. But to understand why
Chile’s unrest is especially worrisome for
other middle- income countries, look to
the larger problem of unfairness.
In 2017, three Yale University
scholars published a report in which
they argued that concerns about
inequality miss the mark. “There is
no evidence,” they wrote, “that people
are bothered by economic inequality
itself. Rather, they are bothered by
something that is often confounded
with inequality: economic
unfairness.” In other words,
their study found that people
will accept that some within
society have more than
others if they believe the
better-off have earned their
wealth and, crucially,
if those less well-off have
a fair chance to do better
in the future.
That would mean Chileans, and those
who live in other relatively peaceful and
prosperous countries, are angered by
doubts that the political system that gov-
erns their lives can provide a fair shot to
get ahead. Why, they might ask, should
poorer people who rely on public tran-
sit have to pay the price for a strong dol-
lar and higher diesel costs? Particularly
at a time when the wealth gap continues
to grow. This is not a preference for one
political party over another. It’s an ex-
plosion of anger at an entire system that
some consider hopelessly rigged.
In that sense, Chile is a sign of protests
to come in places where you might not
expect to see unrest. Widening wealth
gaps are a global phenomenon, and a fu-
ture in which new technologies eliminate
lower- skilled jobs and make life better
for the highly educated is likely to widen
the divide still further.
And though Chile’s government has
backed down on the fare increases, the
protests continue. □THE RISK REPORT
Chile’s protests reflect
our unequal times
By Ian Bremmer
Chile is a sign
of protests
to come in
places where
you might
not expect to
see unrestQUICK TALK
Deepak Chopra
In his 90th book,
Metahuman: Unleashing
Your Infinite Potential,
Deepak Chopra advises
readers to “go beyond”
human constructs and
connect with their innate
beings. He calls this
becoming “metahuman”
and says it’s necessary for
creating a better world.Why did you write this book
after so many others? The
impetus was looking at what
our collective mind has
created: climate change,
extinction of species,
poison in our food chain,
nuclear weapons, biological
warfare, interference with
democracies through
Internet hacking. Seriously,
it looks like we’re planning
our extinction.How can being metahuman
help? We have the technolo-
gies to reverse these trends
already. But do we have the
collective will? I think that
requires a spiritual shift.What’s the first step in
becoming metahuman?
A simple contemplative
meditation practice. Also
a little bit of contemplative
inquiry: “Who am I?” “What
do I want from my life?”
“What is my purpose?”
“What am I grateful for?”
When people start a journey
of self- inquiry, it immediately
leads to deeper insight.
ÑAnnabel Gutterman