Almost half a century passed. In the middle one atrocious dictatorship who tortured, killed, disappeared and exiled hundreds of thousands of Chileans. Besides sacked the country Y enriched the hierarchs of the regime, starting with the own Augusto Pinochet and family. Then, with the return of “democracy” – in reality, a very well mounted simulacrum, with all the forms, pomps and circumstances of that, but orphan of real substance – long thirty years would elapse in which the damned seed sown with force germinated by the dictator and his cronies. Its fruits were a tremendously unequal society, which also broke its traditional solidarity ties and surrendered to the mirage summarized in the formula coined by the regime: citizenship is consumption. In other words, the triumph of “anti-politics” and, by extension, the obsolescence of all forms of collective action.
To this was added the looting of the country’s wealth and its transfer to powerful business oligarchies, the unconditional alignment of Chile to Washington, scandalously represented by that photograph of Sebastián Piñera in the White House where he made the star of the Chilean flag coincide with the fifty of the imperial pavilion, illustrating the aspiration of the elite of his country to become a colony of the United States. Thirty years in which there was continuity and not a break between Pinochetism and the successor regime, which ruined any pretense of speaking seriously of a “democratic transition.”
“It was thirty years, not thirty pesos” said the protagonists of the great social struggles unchained on October 18, 2019. At that time the popular masses glimpsed the proximity of those great avenues that Salvador Allende had invoked in his last speech and they started walking in that direction. It was a long march, uphill and bristling with traps and obstacles of all kinds. But despite everything progress was made: pinochetista “>the repudiation of the Pinochet Constitution, the call to a Constitutional Convention and its realization, with the significant influence that the opposition forces acquired and the presidency exercised by a Mapuche leader, Elisa Loncón Antileo, were other milestones of that irresistible advance. But there was still a greater challenge: to build a coalition that could fight a right-wing that was far from giving up and that came down to the electoral fray with the pitch tilted in its favor. We saw it this Sunday: the media in a rabid anti-communist campaign, denouncing the “extremist” Boric; National Television discouraging the turnout of the electorate with apocalyptic forecasts of a heat wave; and, worse still, the rude and undemocratic government maneuver to order that the means of transport public surface (“the micros” in Chilean slang) they did not go out on the street and stay in their garages. But everything was useless, and the Coalition of Approve Dignity, made up of the Broad Front and the Communist Party, with the support of other forces, won an overwhelming victory that no survey could predict: Boric obtained 55.87% of the votes against 44.13% of Kast. It is not a minor data that with that figure Boric practically equals the maximum mark in a presidential election: the 56.09% that had consecrated Eduardo Frei Montalva as president of Chile in 1964.
There are so many things to say regarding this moving and hopeful opening of the great avenues. First, the importance of the decision to go out and look for those who had starred in the great popular protests but they had not voted in the first round. The electoral turnout was 55.65%, and that was the key to Boric’s triumph. He did not go out to seek the votes of the quasi-non-existent “political center” by lowering the great flags of the October days but by summoning the popular neighborhoods. Second: a very tough task awaits him: social debt, economic crisis, pandemic, and everything under the relentless attack of the right wing. It is to be hoped that when entering La Moneda (hopefully sooner!) The spirit of Salvador Allende will settle on the young president and transmit all his wisdom and values to him. For example, its unlimited trust in the people and its essential organization, the only reassurance that it will have in the face of the relentless war it will be subjected to.
The certainty that Allende had that the Chilean ruling class will never accept a left-wing government and that, as it happened to him (and it is already happening to Boric: seeing the reaction of the Stock Market on Monday, a 6% drop and the dollar skyrocketed) ) will appeal to any recourse in order to frustrate his work of government. And, finally, the absolute conviction that President Mártir also had that the maneuvers of imperialism and the right, the political caste and its spokesmen and articulators in the media, NGOs and other powers that be must be resisted, which they will combine with calculated cunning his typical pressure and extortion with certain “friendly” gestures trying to soften Boric, all of which has the sole and non-negotiable objective of weakening and, if possible, ending his government and turning Chile into the 51st star of the United States. This compass from Allende will be essential to successfully materialize what will undoubtedly be a very tough and prolonged social dispute, in which the awareness and organization of the popular camp will play an absolutely crucial role.
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