From Santiago
Three years ago I would start in Chile the “social explosion”: a series of mobilizations led by high school students who protested against the increase in subway fares, to which a large part of the population was joining complaining about the economic modelthe health system, education and inequality, coming to congregate more than a million peoples only in the center of Santiago, cacerolazos every night while playing “The right to live in peace” by Víctor Jara and one brutal repression of the police that left dozens of dead and hundreds of people with ocular trauma as a result of the shots of pellets directly to the eyes.
the then president Sebastian Pinera he claimed to be “at war” he took the military out on the street and a month later, he had no choice but to accept an agreement for peace —led among others by the current president Gabriel Boric— and open up to a constituent process which led to a new constitutional text that was rejected in the exit plebiscite a month ago.
Matías Hermosilla (1990) is a historian and researcher associated with the Center for Historical Studies of the Bernardo O`Higgins University. Unlike many of his colleagues, he not only tried to elaborate theories about this entire cycle that still shakes Chilean society, but also went out into the streets and interviewed various social actors such as the current minister Giorgio Jacksonthe PC deputy Karol Cariola or Gustavo Gaticawho lost his sight due to police shooting, in the podcast “The truth is also invented” that has just been transformed into a book edited by Cuño Edtores, where he acknowledges living “a strange moment” and an “unpredictable future”.
“I think it is essential to think of the outbreak as a consolidation process of a host of social and political demands that began to increase in Chilean society since the late 1990s as a result of the frustration surrounding the political and social process of the transition and that year after year it was increasing”, he points out. The foundations are in the “penguin movement” (in Chile schoolchildren are called that in allusion to the uniform) of 2006 that began to lay the foundations for criticism of the political, economic and social model and, in turn, “is the result of horizontality media that was expanding with greater access to the internet, which allowed a transversal organization that led both to the generation of new meeting spaces, less and less regulated by the rules of traditional media and, in turn, diversified cultural creation and consumption .
“All points that were fundamental so that the outbreak is not a starting point, but a point of condensation of multifactorial tensions that were built over the years, that is, I like to think that the outbreak uncovered or, literally , blew up the forms of protest both in the concept of the use of violence, but also – this process led to a visual and cultural transformation of political protest that, it is difficult to go back, in fact, it is something to look at the walls of Santiago and every day a mural with a paste-up style or a creative phrase that is impregnated with a slogan of transformation reappears. In a sense, more of a political background, it is interesting how the outbreak showed that the action of the radical protest –coordinated or not– made it possible to highlight systemic contradictions that had been emerging since the beginning of the millennium.”
—From Argentina perhaps it is not understood how this explosion of discomfort ended in an institutional solution in the form of a plebiscite that was approved but then rejected. What is your theory of the constituent process?
—It is important to differentiate the cycles. On the one hand, the explosion did not have a new constitution as its founding purpose, but rather a cross-cutting criticism of the political, social, economic and even cultural systems. I am thinking of the decolonial claims represented by the destruction of statues and, at the same time, the creation of other pop icons such as Sensual Spiderman or Aunt Pikachu. I also think that this first moment is very well depicted in that poster that said: there are so many weás that I don’t know what to put. That is to say, this first stage that lasted between October 18 and the first days of November is called by analysts “the spirit of Octobrism”. The second stage is the demand for a constitution and the idea of attacking “the base of the system” that governs Chile and that produces so much inequality. In this sense, the agreement of November 15 inaugurated a process of de-escalation of the social conflict, inaugurating what has been called the “Novembrist” spirit or “the constituent moment”. The third stage is the cycle of the constitutional convention, a process that I see marked by the profound sign of the ambitious but beautiful mission of wanting to profoundly change a model and, above all, reconfigure the theoretical framework of the entire country.
—And that radical nature of the Convention scared many.
—The entry plebiscite made a total difference in that, practically, 80% of the population approved a change in the constitution and, furthermore, left out the idea that the congress was part of the process. Then, the election of the conventional men and women ratified this situation of 155 people who represented 155 different communities, the majority, without a traditional militancy and, in addition, realizing that the right did not manage to conquer a third of the room. In this sense, the most transformative forces of the convention advocated a systemic change but, in turn, it was slowly stressing forces from the right and, also from the center, which revalidated and defended the legacy of the transition. In this sense, the result of last September 4 was surprising but, at the same time, I think that it can also account for certain social readings, also supported by the strong campaign of systemic lies of the rejection option, that after the avalanche transformative comes a process of retreat and fear. In this sense, a systemic change – however positive it may be – is always going to be uncertain because it is, equally, an experiment.
-Many analysts spoke of the outbreak and the “violence”, but always focused on the protesters, which implied that they had never been on the ground, because the police -and at the worst moment, the army- effectively intensified the atmosphere, many sometimes shooting just because, having children, older adults, etc.
-I am very interested in this topic because I was surprised when after the violent actions of October 18, 2019 when the television channels interviewed people who no longer had their metro stations open and had to walk or wait for the bus no They condemned the violence. I think this responds to the fact that the social protest processes, prior to the outbreak, always had an element of containment, for example, the negotiation with the mayor on the routes of the Thursday marches. In that sense, this more radical beginning responded to a new, more “determined” way of pushing for changes.
Likewise, what you mention about state violence is fundamental. A few days ago, a sentence was finally handed down against the police officer who blinded Senator Fabiola Campillay. And it is important to take it into account because, sadly, this is the legacy of the role of the State during the outbreak. The excessive force, the violent action and, also, the non-existence of humanitarian protocols by the institutions of order and public security. What is surprising is that in recent weeks opposition politicians have been advocating “the end of proportionality in the use of force” by the Carabineros and the Armed Forces. which is a complete contradiction with the sad legacy that affected and affects a series of people who saw their lives transformed by the extreme actions of the police and law enforcement.
The pandemic factor
Although the outbreak is still present in the stripes of the streets, public spaces witnessing the clashes between carabineros and protesters and in a rich catalog of images, memes and videos, there is one factor that seems to have stopped everything: the pandemic. “Families put politics back into daily life and neighbors began to have organization WhatsApp groups, they knew each other and greeted each other by name, in fact, politics was openly debated on the street. But, the pandemic produced a change of axis because getting together with your closest people could have a fatal result, even more so, at the beginning of the pandemic where it was not known how the virus was transmitted. So, every day the idea that the person next to you was your “biological enemy” became more apparent, so, again, relationships became more prophylactic and distant, this is just beginning to change, I think, in order to the mandatory use of masks in public spaces.
—Do you believe in the idea that Chile is finally a centrist country with angry consumers who ultimately value order and the possibility of accessing consumption more than imagining -really- a fairer society?
-I do not think so. It seems to me that, like any process of searching for profound change, it must face a gradual social fear of instability. In addition, it seems logical to me that the longer the beginning of the new constituent process is delayed, certain social contradictions will intensify, which may even end in the exacerbation of social apathy or in a new cycle of political polarization. But, I believe, that the desire for change and rewriting a constitutional charter is still alive in the population and that, soon, a stronger pressure will begin for it to be carried out.
—When is a new social explosion coming? After an earthquake?
—Haha, good question, the truth is difficult to say, but I think that as the constitutional process continues to be delayed, the tensions between the various social actors will intensify. It would not seem strange to me that people take to the streets again to demand that politicians keep their word and that new intense protests take place. But an explosion, despite the readings of the essayists of the crisis, is never coming, because if we could predict both a social explosion and an earthquake, the political reactions would be prepared. At the end of the day, the social outburst is the result of the constant dilation in dealing with underlying problems and that, as the postponement is maintained, they have been more intense year after year, increasing the demands. What I am clear about is that the country has changed and no matter how much the changes are delayed or measured, the future is heading towards a profound and inalienable transformation of Chile and its political, economic and social model.