Chile

Inequality in Santiago, C64-92

The few chilenos I have met have felt a bit different to other people from the Americas - more European, perhaps. I find this has been noted by others.  The extent of privatization in Chile has created some parallels with Europe and even the United States. Since the Pinochet dictatorship (1973-1990), it has had a market-oriented economy like Europe and the US. The privatisation of its public services is in some cases more similar to the US than to Europe, as in the latter zone privatisation varies significantly between countries.  Economic growth has raised the standard of living for many Chileans, resulting in urban areas with amenities and lifestyles comparable to European or US cities. There are immigration ties too. In a country of nearly 20 million, it is estimated that there are about 600,000 Chileans of Italian descent, half a million of German descent, predominantly in the Zona Sur and between 200 and 400,000 Chileans of Croat descent.

Karte: NordNordWest, Lizenz via Wikimedia Commons

A Chilean I knew had made his home in Europe.  He was always interesting to talk to, never said quite what you expected, never gave an easy answer, was liable to argue the toss but then he was usually better placed to say. He was astute, wouldn't be pinned down, had a wry sense of humour.  It was he who had said Everyone's a communist until they start making money.  I liked him, didn't see him often and when I did he was usually busy, so we spoke seldom.  Smart people can seem slightly forbidding and I was wary of bothering him. He had the rare and valuable ability of being capable of not just seeing but expressing two sides of an argument.

No, he had disagreed previously - he was prone to disagree and I liked it -  there wasn't any desprecio from Spaniards towards latinos but conceded, pointed out in fact, that many latinos in Spain are poor. He seemed to prefer Spain and the Spanish to his own country. Things worked in Spain. There was less corruption. Life was better and that is why so many latinos emigrated there.

Is Chile an advanced country? I asked a new acquaintance, casually.

- Depende de lo que entiendas por 'avanzado', she said, with more care than I had used. Es moderno. Pero hay mucha desigualdad. 

- ¿Es cierto que todo es privado allá? 

- Todo. 

- ¿En serio? 

- Hasta el agua.

The privatisation of water had long been an open wound. 

The privatisation she said went back to the time of the Pinochet regime. Aggressive privatization policies and the neoliberal economic reforms of this era were significantly influenced by the "Chicago Boys," a group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago. 

The 1980 Constitution, enacted during the dictatorship, enshrined these policies and reforms and  emphasised private property rights and free markets. By the end of the Pinochet era, privatisation of state owned enterprises and public services was already complete - mining, telecommunications, and electricity, the pension system, health care, and education sectors. 

The subsequent transition government towards democracy had not undone the policies of those years and involved significant compromises to ensure stability and avoid a return to authoritarianism.  My new friend had said that above all, Chileans wanted stability in all its forms. Heaven forfend a return to the unrest, repression and human rights abuses of the Pinochet era. Political stability led to economic growth.  Chile was doing well.  It's economy diversified and grew more than most countries in region.  It attracted foreign investment. It was relatively easy to do business there. On average it had a higher GDP than its neighbours.  In 2022, the poverty rate in Chile was 8.1%, well below the Latin American and Caribbean average of 24.1%.  Income inequality was about the regional average.  So why change the Constitution?  Why rock the boat? 

If anyone was seeking another path, changing the Constitution was an uphill route. It  was designed to be difficult to amend, required supermajorities for constitutional changes. Governments in that era were not radical, were often coalitions. Apart from anything else there were still significant conservative elements in the judiciary, the military and in business. 

After Pinochet the country was ruled by the Concertación, a series of centre left governments with presidents first from the Christian Democrats  and later for the Socialists. It came to an end with the election of  Sebastián Piñera's conservative government in 2010.  Michelle Bachelet came back from the centre left to take over again from him and Piñera won again until 2022. Over the years there was some tinkering to try to reduce the effects of inequality in society, but nothing substantial. The current government (since 2022) under Gabriel Boric, is the first left wing government (Social Convergence party). 

While all this was going on, someone I knew had been growing up in the south part of Santiago, where, as in Bogotá, the less well-to-do live. In the Colombian capital Bogotá, the people on the south side are more liable to call each other the more formal usted, instead of the confident, easygoing, tú, of the richer classes. We had a conversation in the town where we both live, a couple of years ago.

All the areas of  Santiago had a state school, one per district. The best schools were known to be in the north. At thirteen, she went for an interview and a selection process and got in. She travelled an hour each day on the bus to get there. Even though it was a good school, the rich people didn’t put their kids there. They put them in private schools.  So the poor kids travelled long distances to get to the empty schools in the rich area. That's capitalism.

The topsy turvy logic of that economic practice reminded me of something I saw recently in a left leaning social media post about a Colombian health insurance company, EPS (Entidad Promotora de Salud), part of Colombia's largest co-operative, named Coomeva.  It went bankrupt and later ended up  being as a bank. 

The post sought to suggest an unscrupulousness about people running health insurance, which the poster might have thought ought to an honourable enterprise, especially in a co-operative: but it wasn't profitable enough, so forget that, let's just be a bank instead.

There are notable parallels between the history of the right in Chile and in Colombia, in terms of the influence of the military in politics, the neoliberal reforms enacted by Pinochet in the 70s and 80s and by Colombian presidents César Gaviria and Álvaro Uribe in the 1990 and 2000s and in the right's violent response to leftist protestors in both countries. In several respects, Chile looks almost like a testing ground for neoliberal policies and actions that influenced right-wing strategies in Colombia. While Colombia had a well-established and powerful right wing before Pinochet's takeover of Allende's government, it probably influenced him less than US support for his coup. Today, Boric is Chile's first thorough-going left wing leader since Salvador Allende (1970-73). Though perhaps not as radical as Allende, his campaign slogan nevertheless was:

Si Chile fue la cuna del neoliberalismo, también será su tumba. 

If Chile was the cradle of neoliberalism, it will also be its grave

The Colombian incumbent president, Gustavo Petro is that country's first left wing leader ever.

What might the sceptical Chilean would say about the Coomeva advert? Perhaps he might have shrugged his shoulders and say So what? They can do what they like. Besides, they're a co-operative they're owned and democratically controlled by their members, contributors and beneficiaries.

Continuing her story about school, the santiagueña said there was a strong mentality of attainment in this school in the capital's north.  I wondered if that was why the schools were good more than because they just happened to be in the north.

This person was, at the time I spoke to her, training to be a teacher here in the UK. Her view seemed to be that we have so much here in education and yet we don't value it, we don't make the most of it, we take it for granted. In Chile, students worked hard. Education was seen as a way to climb out of poverty, to improve your situation in life, in a way that it is here too just not with the same urgency.

She did well in school, went to university, became an engineer, got a good job in a company. Then her boss started giving her work that wasn’t part of her responsibility. The person it was supposed to be forwas the boss's son. He didn’t get lumbered with the work, she did. She realised that no matter how much she strived she was always going to be up against nepotism, this “old family” thing in Chile that she said dated back to the conquistadores. So she decided to leave - not just the job, her country. 

She also said that in Chile education policy makers had tried to take history out of the curriculum.  They didn’t want you to learn about history and they definitely didn’t want you to learn about the dictatorship. The reason they really liked me in my job was because I worked so hard. I worked hard because they don’t like us to think, they just like us to do. 

And so things continued until the end of 2019 and the "Estallido Social" (social outburst), which was significant and widespread. Over 1.2 million people participated in the largest single demonstration at the end of October 2019, in Santiago, marking the biggest protest in Chilean history.  While protests were concentrated in Santiago, significant unrest occurred across all regions, especially in major cities like Valparaíso, Concepción, and Antofagasta.

The immediate trigger was a modest increase in metro fares, but the protests quickly expanded to address broader issues such as high costs of living, inadequate pensions, poor public services, and entrenched inequality.  Behind all these were the long-standing grievances about the privatization of essential services, corruption and the constitution perceived as favoring the wealthy.

Some protests were peaceful; others involved vandalism, arson, and looting. The government clamped down, declaring a state of emergency, imposing curfews, and deploying the military to restore order. The security forces' response included using tear gas, rubber bullets, and water cannons, leading to numerous human rights violations.  

36 people died, thousands were injured, and more than 28,000 were detained. Human rights organizations documented torture, sexual violence, and excessive use of force by police and military personnel. The economic  damage in terms of insured and uninsured losses was estimated at US$3.3 billion and around 300,000 jobs were affected.

During this time, continued the former engineer, each secondary school had student leaders.  The only time I had read about political school leaders was during the Cultural Revolution which whole history had chilled my blood. My thoughts turned to my own sons. 

Yes, she said, your son, 15 years old, absolutely, he could have been a student leader. 

- Doing what?, I said.

- Organising protests, she said. 

The police cracked down on the students. She said they came not just for adults who caused trouble, but for adolescents who they thought might do so. They went to the houses and they took the kids away. The neighbours were telling the children to shout out their names she said, as if it were self-explanatory. 

- What?  Why? 

- The neighbours were filming the kids as they were being taken away, and saying 'Tell us your name, tell us your ID number'.  And the child is shouting their name and their ID number as they are being taken away. 

- Why were they doing that? 

- If the child is taken away and if the parents can’t get any information then they then have proof of what was being done. 

I just looked at her.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But then I realised how many people, how many children are still 'disappeared' in Colombia snatched or seduced into criminal gangs or to work for political fighting groups, exploited through poverty or lack of education. In the UK, 90% of children who go missing are found within 48 hours. I couldn't find comparative data for Colombia but internal conflict, trafficking, geographical challenges and a less inclusive, less well-resourced welfare system means the chances of children missing in Colombia are not the same.

So, the Chilean ex-pat continued, I realised at that point I did not want to have a child in my country. 

It was one thing to read about violence in Latin America, drugs and corruption and the effect it had on other people's lives, but another to hear first hand testimony. I wondered what would have happened to her if she had not met a Scot and moved here. Would she have stayed?

Critical thinking, she said, is a dirty word in Chile.  And it’s dangerous. You can endanger yourself by thinking critically and certainly by advocating critical thinking. She wanted to go back to her country, specifically to teach children to think critically but she didn't want to  live there, rather to return periodically but live permanently outside - because she thinks she will be safer in the UK.

- Do you mean that you are in danger of being attacked, or injured or even killed for teaching critical thinking.

- Yes, she said, matter of factly.

In 2020, following the protests, a new and radical draft Constitution was proposed. It was rejected, in referendum with nearly 62% voting against. The people had protested but now they didn't want the change? Areas of dissent regarding the Constitution included the extent of changes to the political system, indigenous rights, and environmental regulations, which some voters felt were either too ambitious or poorly defined. People were not convinced everyone had been represented and some just thought it too radical. The 2019 protests indicated dissatisfaction but people couldn't agree how to fix things.

The fallout however was the election, in 2022 of the young left winger, Boric. They country couldn't commit to a radical new Constitution; they postponed the issue, electing the youngest and most radical president in decades. Under Boric's government, a new Constitutional Council was elected in May 2023 to produce a revised draft. This new council raised concerns, being predominantly right-leaning, but attempts continue to revise the Constitution, albeit less radically than before.

I asked my new friend:

- ¿Pensaste en irte en 2019?

- No, me complacía que las protestas estuvieran ocurriendo.

No. She was glad there had been protests.

I mentioned that I hadn't met many Chileans here and that they didn't seem to be represented in the local Latin American Association. The main countries represented seemed to be the Dominican Republic, Colombia, Venezuela, Mexico, Peru, Ecuador. Brazil, Argentina, Chile and most of the Central American countries were not usually represented. It was hard to know whether the countries that were represented was because of higher numbers of emigrants or just because someone from those countries decided to step up and organise a sub-group that was then represented in music, dance and food at the wider meetings.

She commented,

- Bueno, tal vez los chilenos no emigran tanto.

- ¿Ah, sí?

- Sí, tenemos gente que viene a nosotros. Venezolanos y colombianos especialmente, pero también argentinos ahora, por la situación actual.

- ¿Y son bien recibidos?

- Bueno, no, ahora hay problemas. Los delitos violentos más graves aparentemente los están cometiendo los venezolanos, especialmente, los colombianos.

- Gente desesperada...

- Sí, y ese país tiene una historia tan violenta que tal vez tiene un efecto brutalizador. 

Following some of the horrific stories of the crimes committed by all sides during Colombia's armed conflict, I could believe it.  A special court and process (Jurisdicción Especial para la Paz or JEP), set up in 2016, is overseeing the confessions and giving reduced sentences for those who come forward, provide reparations to victims, and facilitate the reintegration of former combatants into society. It is a public and visible effort in Colombia's healing from decades of war.

There is a perennially confounding aspect of Chile: it is often seen as one of the most unequal countries in the region and yet the statistics are confusing on this point. Income inequality is slightly lower than  Brazil, Colombia and Mexico but using the same Gini coefficient on an OECD scale it measures as very unequal.  It has relatively low poverty rates compared to the regional average, yet is not perceived as such.  The inequality between neighbourhoods however, is very visible in urban areas like Santiago.  Because of the stasis of the Constitution, wealth is concentrated among relatively few who run the country yet this is not uncommon in the region. Although the media is in the hands of the right, the extent of the 2019 protests meant that the issues of inequality and social justice were brought to the fore in the media and in public discourse, possibly adding to the perception that things are worse in Chile than elsewhere.  There are good tools available on Core Econ using the World Inequality Database to dig into this. Some examples:

I mentioned, to the visitor, the anthem-like Vuelvo by Patricio Manns, a Chilean singer-songwriter, novelist, and political activist known for his contributions to the Nueva Canción Chilena movement. The song was written in 1979, during Pinochet's dictatorship while Manns was himself in exile in Europe. It was first recorded by the group Inti-Illimani who were also in exile and is well known in that version.  It is a famous anthem of resistance, of love for one's country and it is also a poem.

  

The song she gave me though, to represent her country was one I already knew, Gracias a la Vida by Violeta Parra, one of the most covered songs in Latin American history.  

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto

Me ha dado la marcha de mis pies cansados

Con ellos anduve ciudades y charcos

Playas y desiertos, montañas y llanos

Y la casa tuya, tu calle y tu patio

Gracias a la vida que me ha dado tanto

Me ha dado la risa y me ha dado el llanto

Así yo distingo dicha de quebranto

Los dos materiales que forman mi canto

Y el canto de ustedes que es mi propio canto

Thanks to life, which has given me so much

It has given me the march of my tired feet

With them I walked cities and puddles

Beaches and deserts, mountains and plains

And your house, your street and your patio

Thanks to life, which has given me so much

It has made me laugh and it has made me cry

This is how I distinguish happiness from brokenness

The two materials that make up my song

And your song is my own song.

Parra took her own life at the age of 49, only a year or so after writing Gracias a la Vida.

The contrast between the two songs was a reminder of the difference between recent epochs: the struggle against the dictatorship and oppression of the past and the efforts under presidents with very different visions from those of their predecessors, towards a more peaceful, less exploitative future - in Colombia for that matter, as well as in Chile.