The Economist November 20th 2021 49
The AmericasChilePole positions
I
n october 2019 more than a million
Chileans took to the streets to demand
greater equality and better public services.
At least 30 people died in protests that last
ed for weeks. To restore calm, Chile’s lead
ers increased social spending and agreed
to a process to rewrite the constitution
adopted under Augusto Pinochet, a dicta
tor who ruled from 1973 to 1990. Members
of a constitutional convention elected in
May this year, many of them leftists and
political neophytes, have begun drafting a
charter that could transform the country.
Until recently it looked likely that Chile
would elect a new president who shares
the protesters’ goals. For months Gabriel
Boric, a 35year old former student leader
allied with the Communist Party, was the
frontrunner in a presidential election
whose first round takes place on Novem
ber 21st. (Legislative and regional elections
are also scheduled for that day.) Now it
seems that the presidential race will be a
hardfought contest between him and a
candidate of the far right, José Antonio
Kast, who has surged in the polls. A cham
pion of “liberty, the rule of law and thefamily”, Mr Kast would preserve Pinochet’s
lowtax economic model and restore his
social conservatism. “Boric represents the
demands that gave rise to the protests. But
Kast represents what happened two years
after, which is that people want peace, or
der and security,” says Roberto Izikson, the
head of Cadem, a polling company.
The summoning of the constitutional
convention did not end the upheaval, as
Chileans had hoped. On October 18th prot
esters marked the second anniversary of
the demonstrations with more violence.
Two people died and hundreds were ar
rested. Last month the government also
declared a state of emergency in southern
Chile in response to arson attacks, mostly
against logging companies, by some Ma
puches, an indigenous group seekinggreater autonomy in its ancestral lands.
This allows the government to send in the
army. On November 9th it extended the
emergency after a video appeared on social
media that showed heavily armed, hooded
men threatening to boot the army out. To
many, a rise in immigration looks hardly
less menacing (see next story).
Having demanded a new constitution,
some Chileans have misgivings. They wor
ry that it will enshrine obligations that the
state cannot afford, fuelling inflation,
which has recently risen sharply. The con
stitution may declare Chile to be a “pluri
national” state, giving indigenous groups
more influence. Trust in the convention
fell after the revelation that a farleft mem
ber had lied about having cancer, which
was a central theme of his campaign. One
poll shows that its approval rating has
dropped by almost 15 percentage points
since July (though it remains more popular
than other political institutions).
Mr Boric would put the presidential
palace on the side of the protesters and
their allies in the constitutional conven
tion. He would scrap the model for public
services introduced by the Pinochet re
gime, which gives private providers a large
role. He would forgive all student debt,
abolish private pension funds and make
public transport free and green. Children
as young as 14 would be able to change
their gender on documents; schools would
be equipped with condom dispensers; “at
least” 1% of jobs in the public sector would
be reserved for trans people. Mr BoricS ANTIAGO
Candidates of the far left and far right are the leading contenders for the
country’s presidency→Alsointhissection
50 Cuba’ssquelchedprotest
50 HardshipformigrantsinChile
51 Bello: The ambiguities of Peronism