Chile has awakened: looking at the core of the country’s sociopolitical unrest
On Friday, October 4th, the Chilean government announced that a fare increase of 30 Chilean pesos ($0.04) per ride would be implemented that Sunday at midnight on the public transportation system in Santiago. While the raise might not seem too significant and is, according to experts, purely cost-driven, it was a widely unpopular measure. Public transport in the Chilean capital is perceived to be generally unreliable and overcrowded as well as too pricey: a lower-middle class household allocates over 20% of their income to transportation expenses.
This inspired a handful of high school students to protest by jumping the turnstiles at certain subway stations. These were mostly isolated occurrences, done in a disruptive yet peaceful manner and for short periods of time — similar to last weeks’ protests on the subway system in New York City following repeated incidents of police brutality. Several of these Chilean high schoolers were shown on local news explaining that they were doing this for their families, which led to a flurry of posts on social media trying to call the government’s attention to the true underlying problem: raging socioeconomic inequality.
This inequality isn’t exactly news. While painted as a successful case of policy-making in Latin America and an example of economic liberalization and fiscal discipline for the developing world, Chile is also the OECD country with the largest gap between the rich and the poor: the ratio between the top and bottom deciles of income is a staggering 7.2, and the Gini coefficient, a textbook measure of disposable income inequality, stands at 0.46 — higher than Mexico, Turkey, and the United States. The gross minimum wage is too low at a monthly 301,000 CLP (roughly $414), an amount that would not cover monthly tuition at the University of Chile, the main public college in the country. The pension system, a mandatory private-savings format that was fully original when implemented in the ’80s has, as the result of insufficient individual contributions, decreasing return rates, and changing demographics, led to cripplingly low pensions for most recent retirees while the companies managing these funds rack up millions in profits. In addition, the healthcare system — a public/private hybrid that guarantees insurance for everyone but allows people to opt out of public coverage if they can afford a private plan with companies that price-discriminate by income, age, and gender, and that can reject individuals with certain pre-existing conditions — has public hospitals perpetually underfunded and short-staffed, meaning people have to wait for months for both regular appointments and life-saving procedures, all this while the cost of drugs continues to rise. Finally, and to add insult to injury, the public has recently been outraged after learning both the police and the military have been involved in millionaire corruption scandals, and that many of the rich and powerful, ranging all the way from business people to the billionaire right-wing sitting President Sebastián Piñera, have been eluding property tax payments for their second and third houses for decades and will face no consequences whatsoever.
Many commended the students’ spirit and showed sympathy with the cause, particularly after the insensitive tone some government officials adopted, with the Minister of Economic Affairs declaring that a good way of saving some money was for people to leave their houses earlier in the morning as they could take advantage of the off-peak fare. This tone-deaf attitude made protests more frequent over the next few days. As more people joined in on mass turnstile evasions, the Police retaliated by tear-gassing the stations, affecting not only those trying to get in but also those who were already on the platforms or trains. Families at home started to organize cacerolazos, a traditional type of peaceful protest that consists of beating a cooking pan (in Chilean Spanish, cacerola) repeatedly with a spoon. On Friday, October 18th, the government led by Mr. Piñera, who holds a PhD from Harvard, decided to shut down the main two lines of the subway system in the middle of a working day without further discussion, citing safety concerns. Many lines of public buses were also removed from circulation, thus disconnecting the city. People coming out of school or work that evening had to walk home across town, which caused anger and frustration to proliferate.
To Chileans, this decision prompted an awakening. Demonstrations turned to the streets, and people were detained and violently repressed by the police. That night, some subway stations that had been left empty and unguarded were burned down. The protests amplified further by the next day, and then the government decided to declare a state of emergency, imposing a curfew and sending the military to the streets — a decision that triggered painful memories for most Chileans.
Chile was ruled by a military dictatorship led by General Augusto Pinochet between 1973 and 1990. During that time, thousands of people were detained illegally, with many of them tortured, abused, killed, and disappeared. Others went into exile. The rest of the population was kept under a media blackout with the press fully controlled by the military. When democracy was eventually restored in 1990, General Pinochet remained as the highest-ranked military official and shielded himself to remain unscathed. He even served in the Senate for over four years in a position he had constitutionally designed for himself. He died without receiving any kind of punishment in Chile. Some of his officials spent years free before going to jail for their crimes while the majority of them died before facing the justice in any way.
Many civilians who were part of General Pinochet’s tyrannical government have remained involved in politics — one of them being Andrés Chadwick, Mr. Piñera’s Minister of the Interior — the most important cabinet member and acting Head of State in the President’s absence, who is also Mr. Piñera’s cousin. And while most civilian collaborators have distanced themselves from the Dictator’s figure and have reinvented themselves as “new democrats,” there are some far-right politicians and even members of Congress who continue to shamelessly defend Mr. Pinochet, his rule, and his legacy. All while hundreds are missing, still today.
The military sent out by Mr. Piñera has been ruthlessly and violently oppressive, bringing back their ways from the Pinochet era. The country hasn’t seen this level of sustained police brutality since the return to democracy. The air in Santiago has been covered with tear gas for days, the streets full with litter and debris. There have been constant sources of conflict: fires, looting, clashes between violent far-left groups and the abusive police and military in which many innocent people have been caught in the crossfire even when protesting peacefully. Instead of being protected by the armed forces, demonstrators and bystanders have been dispersed with water cannons, shot at with rubber bullets, and chased down even inside their own houses. Thousands have been illegally detained, with many reported to have been harassed, beaten, tortured, and sexually assaulted. Twenty-three people have been killed according to official sources. Amnesty International declared the situation is severe, with significant evidence of human rights violations. As of last week, the Chilean District Attorney’s Office was investigating over 800 such accusations.
On Tuesday, October 22nd, Mr. Piñera announced a relief package with a 20% increase in minimum pensions for persons aged 75 or older and a guaranteed income of 350,000 CLP ($481) for workers employed full-time, a move that has been perceived as insufficient as it failed to address the core issues the country is facing. People are not asking for handouts — they want a reform to the healthcare and pension systems, a significant increase to minimum and average wages, and more social security overall. And they demand for the military to be removed from the streets, and for the government to take responsibility for all the abuses and brutality the repression has carried. Over a million people gathered that Friday in a peaceful protest in downtown Santiago’s Plaza Italia and demanded immediate change, with multiple simultaneous marches happening in other Chilean cities, in a general act of civil disobedience and unity that has inspired solidarity among artists, athletes, and celebrities around the world. However, politicians from all sides quickly tried to claim this protest as a widespread show of support for their partisan agendas, and government officials shockingly attempted to label this as some sort of final act before everything came back to normal.
Last Monday, Mr. Piñera announced a cabinet change that he widely advertised as a grand gesture but was truly just a meaningless shuffling of pieces, with the exception of Mr. Chadwick’s dismissal. The President has also refused to acknowledge his role in igniting and inflaming this social crisis, and was sternly criticized after he gave a speech lamenting that “people died — some of them innocent.” The state of emergency was lifted last week as well, but largely to guard appearances as an official delegation sent by Chile’s former President Michelle Bachelet, a moderate-left leader who currently serves as the High Commissioner for Human Rights for the United Nations, arrived to analyze the situation in the country. Ms. Bachelet, who served for two terms and who for years was revered and respected by most, has also been under scrutiny in the past few weeks as her government is perceived to be another culprit of the sustained inequality.
A solution, however, does not appear to be in sight. No further reforms have been announced, and no plans to lead a country-wide discussion have been made — this partially because this grassroots movement doesn’t have a clear head that would sit at the negotiation table, and also because a significant part of the left has pushed forward the need for a Constitutional Convention to replace the current Chilean body of law which was drafted under Mr. Pinochet’s rule — something the right fiercely opposes by quoting the turbulent experiences of Bolivia and Venezuela. In addition, the government has been forced to cancel both the COP25 Climate Change Conference and the APEC Summit due to the instability and overall lack of public safety, and many large sporting and musical events have been rescheduled and postponed until the situation is under control.
Meanwhile, the conflict rages on. New violent attacks have been perpetrated by extreme groups, with retail stores and other subway stations engulfed in flames with full impunity while the police continue to aggressively repress peaceful protesters instead. Last Tuesday, a group of kindergarten teachers was completely drenched by water cannons as they calmly marched down Santiago’s Alameda, and just this Friday a cluster of social activists who traveled 60 miles by foot for two days from the neighboring town of Limache to the capital to have a letter delivered to the government were teargassed instead, sparkling outrage on social media. Politicians on the left have adamantly denounced the government’s repressive tactics, with a small group of Representatives in Congress formally requesting the impeachment of Mr. Piñera, while their counterparts on the right claim this is a political trick and condemn the left’s alleged indifference towards the repeated destruction of property all over the city.
The public, however, has strongly rejected all this violence as they believe it could delegitimize the most significant social movement in Chile since the return to democracy. Still, they vow to continue fighting for change, for economic equality and social justice, and more peaceful protests are scheduled to take place in the upcoming days starting with this Monday evening, where organizers and activists hope to recreate the same spirit of the massive demonstrations from 10 days ago in Plaza Italia when both the young and the elderly marched down peacefully — some hopeful, some determined, some singing along to Víctor Jara’s iconic song “El Derecho de Vivir En Paz” (The Right to Live in Peace), some waving flags with their favorite fútbol team’s colors while hugging their sporting rivals, some holding signs for women’s rights or equal marriage — all convinced, through the now sticky streets and the piercing scent of tear gas in the air, that Chile has awakened.

