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Chile

Chile’s referendum

A clear majority of 55.76 per cent of Chileans voiced their disapproval of the proposed overhaul of a constitution that dates back to the era of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

Constitution & Climate

The present Constitution in Chile was crafted in 1980 by people who were handpicked by the then military ruler ~ Augusto Pinochet. It opened the country to mining investments and allowed water rights to be bought and sold. Over time, Chile prospered by exploiting its natural resources ~ copper, coal, salmon and avocados.

Seminal moment in global politics

Chile’s early dalliance with neoliberalism also exposes how the latter requires extreme violence or ‘shocks’ — as Naomi Klein argues in The Shock Doctrine — to entrench itself. Klein traces how the massive  upheaval the privatisation policies of neoliberal Chile triggered were only implemented under a draconian regime that rested on mass killings and torture which served as the ‘shock’ that allowed Chilean society to become more complaisant towards these radical economic changes.

Many milestones

With a larger mandate than his predecessors, Boric represents the forces that don't belong to the dominant traditional political compact since the 1990s. He is the first candidate in the post-Pinochet era to have won after coming second in the first round. His victory is largely seen as a rebellion against elitism

Chile’s triumph of hope over fear

After winning the presidential primary in his left-wing coalition earlier this year, Boric declared: “Chile was the birthplace of neoliberalism, and it shall also be its grave!” Ahead of the run-off round, both Kast and Boric strove to win over the middle ground. History, as it turned out, tended to favour the latter. A couple of weeks before polling, credible documentary evidence emerged proving that Kast’s father had joined the Nazi party in Germany in 1942, eight years before emigrating to Chile.