The Ugly Truth about the Complex Stratification of the Chilean Society
How the country is divided in classes
The title of the story sounds complex too, but life isn’t always easy anyway. Remember I told you not to have great expectations and illusions about Chile? (in the first story)
Here is why…
You won’t believe it, but the modern world still contains the archaic division of people in classes. And such division is ubiquitous in Chile.
It resembles the Indian caste system: there are different classes of people, and rarely these classes get mixed together. Chile perceives a very low level of social mobility.
Let me explain to you how it works.
Officially, the classes are categorized by the government considering their income. The social and economic groups (“GSE” — Grupos socioeconómicos in Spanish) get their letter names depending on each family’s income, family head’s education and occupation, and property goods, among others:
AB — 7.000.000 CLP ($10.000) family’s average income
C1a — 3.000.000 CLP ($4.300)
C1b — 2.000.000 CLP ($2.800)
C2–1.500.000 CLP ($2.100)
C3–1.000.000 CLP ($1.400)
D — 640.000CLP ($914)
E — 361.000 CLP ($515)*
*Association of Market and Public Opinion Researchers of Chile, GSE Report, 2019
The AB is the higher class, the C letters are the middle class, which is very wide as you can see, and the D and E are the lower classes. However, as I said, this is an official division. The real-life with real perceptions are a bit different.
Please notice that this is a generalization of the situation, you can always find exceptions.
The Lower Class
Let's begin with the class that contains approximately 48% of the population on average.
These people have neither higher nor technical education, and they literally live in poverty. The lower class isn’t the “beautiful” people like the higher class.
With such a low income they can’t afford credit cards, access to the private healthcare system, universities, or even sometimes food and drinking water. Many of them live in “campamentos” and social housing— camps, that is a type of housing of very low quality, either offered by the government or made by themselves of carton.
This is a reality hard to imagine. A reality filled with narcotraffic (especially in the lowest class), murder crimes, femicide, children with no or just one parent, and the hell of the hells — the SENAME (National Service of Minors). For you to imagine, the SENAME is a governmental institution for adolescents from 14 to 17 years old that have infringed the law. They are being kept closed to prevent further law violations, but the escape cases are so repetitive, the conditions so abhorrent, and the minors’ education so abominable, that the whole system is on the road to total reformation (promised land not achieved yet).
(Sorry, there is only information in Spanish)
People from other classes call the lower class “flaites”, “ordinarios” or “rotos”. It doesn’t have an exact translation, but means that a person doesn’t have manners, education, style, doesn’t speak well, is almost illiterate or badly behaved — dregs of society or scum of the earth. And I am sorry to notice that the lower class is considered by the higher class to have a very bad appearance, dark complexion and, of course, weight problems.
The Middle Class
Here we are getting closer to the big C, the well-beloved and aspired by the developed nations Middle Class.
It comprises an average of 48% of the population of Chile. The middle class is a very wide concept starting from a low income of $900 and a tail dollars and beyond. This class includes people with no higher education and people with technical and higher education. The majority of them are in the state healthcare system (FONASA), however, a percentage belongs to the private one too (ISAPRE).
A little bit of context to be introduced: the private system shines with its expensiveness. It can’t even be compared to the state system by prices or quality. I will develop this issue in another story.
A very bright feature that divides the middle and the higher classes is religion. Catholicism is the official religion in Chile, and historically a big percentage of Chileans were Catholics. Nowadays, religion shifted mostly to the higher class. The middle class developed agnostic or atheist visions, some of them are evangelist or baptist.
Unlike the lower class, the above-average middle class is called the “high middle class” and it can afford higher education, postgraduate education, and a “nana” (domestic employee or servant). In fact, the high middle class is very aspirational. These people want to live in the best sectors or “comunas”, they wear brand clothes and expose the brands on purpose to level up their provenance. And the most ridiculous of all is that they try to assign themselves foreign relatives and foreign last names.
Consequently, talking about the appearance, it is very representative of the middle class to be dark-skinned (“morenos”), have black hair, and suffer from overweight.
Remember that this is an introductory and very generalized post about class stratification. I will deepen the content in further stories.
The Higher Class
And we finally get here, to the “creme de la creme”, the rich and famous of the Chilean society, the higher class. People from this class are called by other classes the “cuicos”, and the teenagers “zorrones”. However, inside their class they called themselves “ABC1” or “GCU” — literally People Like Us (Gente Como Uno).
It is a small circle of higher society where the members know each other by last name or family. They can work together, start a business and send their children to the same private (needless to say, very expensive) schools and specific universities (just some of them).
They own expensive housing because the housing in Santiago is very expensive per se (it doesn’t necessarily have the style of expensive American housing), and if you can afford a house bigger than 140 m2 in good “comunas”, it is expensive from the premises. These people also have a second house outside Santiago, on a beach or lake. There are few points of the second housing for the rich, so the house and land prices can sky-rocket to some million dollars.
The rich people must mandatorily have these traits:
- Have a good last name, and by good, I mean foreign — Spanish, American, German, or other European
- Have an acceptable appearance — they are preferably light-skinned and blonde. You can also have dark hair, but your skin should be light, and your general face features European (not indigenous)
- You must come from a good private school, preferably catholic
- You must have a higher education at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Universidad de los Andes or Universidad del Desarrollo at worst
- You are Catholic, especially Opus Dei
- You have a second house outside Santiago, as I already mentioned
- You MUST have money.
To make a long story short, these were the core traits of each Chilean class. Of course, there are many more.
My intention is not to offend anyone but to put light into these dark matters that are not widely mentioned, only thought.
Please don’t shoot the messenger.
He will bring more news further on.
