In the park in front of the Palace of Fine Arts, where the large demonstrations of the historic social outbreak of 2019 were parading, fragments of an intense discussion could be heard between six twenty-somethings sitting on the grass.
“Look, nowadays, they don't need an operation Condor…”; “The process is slow and journalism is already sold”; “They are talking about the communist enemy; but he does not exist.”
This group maintained the spirit of Santiago 2019, but most of the young people in that corner of the park stopped fascinated by an electronic jazz duo.
That hive of ideas and rebellion four years ago now seems like another city. “The momentum was totally lost; Now he has it on the right,” said Alejandro, a hairdresser at the Bonehead barbershop, with an alternative dyed blonde hairstyle and post-punk clothing.
The slogan then was: “Neoliberalism was born in Chile and it will die here.” Two years after the electoral victory of the young progressive leader Gabriel Boric, after the fall of Santiago Piñera's conservatives, the new slogan of the left could be: "Against Piñera we lived better."
“If Kast had won, maybe we would have returned to the streets,” reflected the young hairdresser.
He was referring to José Antonio Kast, the leader of the new Republican Party of the Catholic extreme right, whose version of the Constitution – even more conservative and neoliberal than the current one, drafted during the Pinochet dictatorship – will be voted on in a plebiscite today.
Boric, 37 years old, personifies disenchantment. The Chilean economy emerged worse than any in the region from the pandemic when the young leader of the broad front took the reins. Inflation was around 15%, the public deficit was out of control, along with a dangerous dependence on the influx of foreign capital.
It wasn't Boric's fault. He inherited from Piñera an overheated and irresponsibly managed economy after the shock of the protests. The young leader gave the green light to a rather harsh adjustment. “Stabilization has been Boric's main achievement,” said Stephany Griffith-Jones, a Chilean-British economist and member of the Chilean Central Bank. “It's not exactly what you expect from a revolutionary, but it has been a very difficult environment.”
At the same time, its measures to pacify the Mapuche conflict in the south ran into resistance from armed groups and the Government was forced to return to the police methods of previous governments.
Insecurity has become a matter of daily concern. Organized crime has infiltrated Chile from Colombia, Mexico and Venezuela. This reinforces the speech of Kast and the more traditional right. An unknown immigration in Latin America led by Venezuelans, but from many other countries as well, is another front of Kast's offensive.
Lacking a majority in Congress, Boric has not advanced in his two most emblematic policies: on the one hand, a tax reform to combat inequality; on the other, modify the private pension system created in the Pinochet era, whose paltry pensions have disappeared with inflation. He has also failed to fulfill his promises to correct injustices in the education and healthcare system.
“Boric and the wide front made a mistake from the beginning. They confused the social outbreak with a pre-revolutionary process,” said Sergio Bitar, 82, a veteran of the years of the Pinochet coup and minister of the so-called center-left concertation governments that followed. “They were very young and wanted to break with the agreement. It didn't work. The right is going to win the next elections.”
Perhaps it is too blunt a statement. Boric played an intermediary role between the most radical left, reinforced in the protests, and the social democracy of the previous governments of Ricardo Lagos and Michelle Bachelet. To win the elections, it was necessary to break with the past.
The political class “grew older and this group of young people appeared saying: We are going to change education and health!” said Andras Uthoff, a veteran pensions expert who joined the Boric government to design its reform. “We have designed a mixed system that would work well, but it cannot be implemented.”
Boric actually showed pragmatism from the beginning when he appointed social democrat Mario Marcel as head of the Treasury and incorporated monetary policy and pension authorities such as Uthoff and Griffith-Jones.
Those responsible for the forceful rejection of the left's Constitution in the 2022 referendum are not the Boric government but the drafters of the draft, who did not know how to focus it on the most consensual demands of the social outbreak: public health, pensions and decent salaries, free education , labor protection and public goods such as water.
After two horrible years, Boric may have hit rock bottom. In the latest polls, after the success of the Pan American Games, he is already rising in popularity. The probable defeat on Sunday of the far-right draft will leave the constitutional nightmare aside for the moment.
Even more important: the economic adjustment comes to an end. Inflation has dropped from 15% to 4.8%, the fiscal deficit is now under control and the green shoots of recovery appear.
It remains to be seen if Boric can seize the moment to regain the support of those who have suffered the most. In the Vitacura district, where there are many BMW, Mercedes and even Maserati dealerships, the parking attendant at the Aurora restaurant explained the problem: “I already pay almost all of my income (the minimum wage of $420 per month) in rent; Food has risen so much that sometimes I can't eat.” An elite wedding was being held inside the restaurant with exquisite signature dishes.
