The Protests in Chile

We have not written much since the total solar eclipse, however, we have been doing a fair bit of travelling and activities. It is overdue to do a post on how the social protests have developed and what is our experiences in Chile about the political situation recently.

Let´s start with a little bit of history:

Chile is one of the 36 OECD countries. One can have a very comfortable life here in terms of material comforts, good schools/universities, good health care, good housing and safe neighbourhoods, quality roads etc... The Chilean model is hailed as a miracle in the region and from the 80s the main priorities have been economic liberalization, privatization of state-owned companies, and stabilization of inflation following the advice of the Chicago Boys (a great documentary on this can be watched here and it is really worth the 5USD, but as a summary, Chile has been a bit of an experiment for free market liberalism... and it has worked, for better and for worse).

If you scratch the surface, however, you realise that having everything privatised has a number of serious disadvantages. A few examples below:

• Healthcare: at present there is a public system which is funded almost exclusively by those who cannot afford private healthcare (i.e. it is VERY underfunded). And a private system that runs in parallel and, while being really well funded, it has perverse incentives for doctors recommending that patients go through interventions even when they are not needed. Examples of this, Chile has one of the highest rate of birth by C Sections in the world. Almost 48% of births occur this way even though the WHO recommends to keep the rate between 15-25%. If you look at private clinics, 62% of births occur by C Section. One  might think that this is how chilean women like to give birth but we have now been in several situations with very pushy doctors recommended procedures that were not required (like being recommended to take out 4 wisdom teeth due to a mild gum infection in one of them which went away after 1 week of using an antiseptic mouthwash...). Women pay 179% more than men for the same health insurance as their uterus are considered a liability for them to deal with rather than a potential asset to the nation which should be protected.
• Housing: The minimum salary was on 301.000CLP in October 2019. In the better sectors of Santiago is nearly impossible to find a house or flat for less than 400.000CLP. 
• Education: Out of the 10 schools which give the best chances to get into university, only one of them is public. The most expensive requires spending 1.000.000CLP (aprox. 1300 USD) per child per month. Often university students need to get in debt which means they are paying these loans for years after they start a job (one friend confessed that he would finish paying his loan when his son entered university).
• Pensions: the average pension for men is 320.000CLP (430USD) per month; for women it is 128.000CLP (170USD). After our trip to Europe, we can confirm basic food items are cheaper in Madrid than in Santiago.

In short, a lot of Chileans live in difficult conditions and/or with little margin to get sick, lose their jobs, take holidays, educate their children (both in terms of available time - 2h commute each way are not uncommon and the work week is 45h - and money) or even retire.

If you are in the top 10% of earners, life is very different from when you are not. The top earners in Chile earn better money than in many other developed countries. The average salary for someone working in parliament is approximately 20 million CLP per month (or 26,000USD per month, this includes salary plus allowances) so as you can imagine, the legislators live very different lives from most Chileans and understand little about daily struggles. Added to this is the fact that there is little social mobility and that the elite is a very small group.

There has been growing social discontent for a while and a number of incidents have exacerbated this situation and weakened the standing and public opinion on the state institutions (note the "gate" ending which has been used colloquially in Chile for the similarities to the Watergate scandal):

• Pentagate: a scandal involving some companies and private individuals stealing public funds to finance political parties. Some of the business men (it is always men...) who were found guilty were given a choice between prison or taking business ethics classes... you can imagine what they chose.
• PacoGate: so far 132 individuals in high ranking positions within the Chilean Police Force have been found guilty of misusing and redirecting public funds for personal gain. It is believed that this is one of the largest fraud ever committed in Chilean history (28.300 million CLP or 38million USD)
• MilicoGate: Same sort of idea as in Pacogate, but involving the army which receive 15% of the country copper mining revenues to finance themselves... one could have thought that if "the market regulates itself" mantra is good for education, pensions and health, it would be good for the army too, but nope... They were found to have produced fake invoices to buy arms and other war material for stock that did not exist after being audited... The fraud was in the order of thousands of millions of pesos which was spent on casinos, parties (here one can infer drugs, sex and alcohol), horses and properties among others. 
• Pharmacies, Nappies, Toilet paper and Chicken companies have been found to discuss price rises in detriment to consumers in what has been determined to be collusion. This is not so uncommon in a country with a very select elite who attend a handful of schools and universities and when 50% of the country lives within 200km of the center of the city of Santiago.

On 6th October this year, the straw that broke the camel´s back was a rise in the "public" transport prices. The actual rise was small (30 pesos), although "public" transport prices have increased between 70-80% in the last 12 years and are more expensive than a ticket in most European cities. This prompted massive protests in the form of students flocking the stations and jumping the barriers and therefore using the metro without paying any fee. While this is not something that most Europeans would consider very civilised, consider that the previous month the President had been found to have avoided paying tax on one of his properties by a beautiful lake (30 years of tax avoidance which will only result in 3 years having to be paid)... so setting the example from the top is not really happening.

This escalated in the police being sent to protect the metro, the students destroying some of the metro barriers to be able to not pay the ticket and not be caught by the police, police using violence to deter the students, videos of it being distributed, even more students (and not so "studenty") joining the movement and continued escalation for 12 days after the price hike, on 18th October, 80 of the 136 metro stations were vandalised, the Enel building was burnt (it is still standing but workers had to find alternative office space), and finally other criminal groups made use of the chaos to loot supermarkets and create even more chaos... in the midst of this, the president (who was eating pizza and celebrating his grandson´s birthday in a nice restaurant while the country was on fire) eventually declared a state of emergency which lasted 2 weeks and included a curfew in some of the major cities in Chile and sent the army to the streets. (In the midst of this, a Whatsapp audio by his wife was filtered in which she was saying how the situation was critical and Chile was being invaded and she was not sure if by foreigners or aliens).

The aliens are coming

Below a short video of some tanks in Las Condes sector (approximately Apoquindo with Warren Smith Junction).

In the official presidential address to the nation, he said "We are a war with a powerful enemy", a clear sign that the elite and political establishment thought the whole country was under attack by external agents but at the same time a really poor choice of words to deescalate.

https://www.t13.cl/videos/nacional/video-revuelo-autoridades-masiva-evasion-del-pasaje-metro-escolares

It is easy to think that this was a crazy reaction for a 30 pesos fare increase... but it is not about 30 pesos, it is about 30 years of social injustice. It is easy to argue that peaceful protests would have been the way forward but in truth these have been ignored time and time again and for the past 10 years in Chile. Remember the student movement protests? They did not achieve much. Perhaps, the questions are deeper, why does the Chilean government expect that people who use public transport and who are not normally in the higher strata of society should finance the metro fully? Are they not creating positive effects for the rest of society by keeping the roads free from cars and pollution? Why are there, for example, no taxes for car users that can help to subsidy the metro? Why is the state so absent in all state decisions when they should be there to stir society in the right direction?

In the middle of all these the police have been used to try to keep public order but have been thoroughly overwhelmed by the situation. The lack of preparation and resources has translated in many injured civilians, including more than 100 people who have lost vision for being shot in the face with non lethal police weapons. Amnesty international and the UN have both written reports on police brutality, lack of protocols and accountability and human rights violations (including unnecessary violence, sexual abuse, permanent physical injuries etc). The Chilean Government has tried to brush these under the table... Or at least most of the public consider than they have not made the necessary acknowledgement and taken the necessary actions to ensure that the police did not harm any more civilians exercising their right to peaceful protest.

Police actions have left several people with permanent eye damage including some completely blind

For the rest of October, all of November and part of December, the politicians (both government and opposition) tried to get control of the situation but often offering too little too late. The government cancelled the metro tariff increase on the 19th of October... had they done it on the 6th and before the 18th, perhaps things would not have escalated? They have passed legislation to address some of the social demands but most of them seem more rhetoric than real and always have a catch. For example, minimum salary was increase from 300.000CLP/month to 350.000 (this is good, but still not enough money to have a decent quality of life ;)), or have somewhat reduced the monetary allowances for members of parliament (again... good, but not quite sufficient for the level of inequality and outrage). Minimum pension has increased... but again, the amount is laughable (although the % increase seems high). In parallel they have also passed legislation to criminalise protests and protesters... The president said that he would change every single one of his ministers and asked to make their positions available but when the new cabinet was announced, most ministers either stayed in their positions or merely changed from one Ministry to another (musical chairs?)... The one minister who had to go, was the President's cousin, Andres Chadwick, who was known to have been very close to Pinochet during the dictatorship and is rumoured to have provided very poor advice on handling the crisis.

Finally the government offered a referendum on whether the 1980´s constitution should be modified and which is something that according to recent polls has between 80 and 90% approval within the voters. Only now that the summer holidays are starting, Chile seems to have somewhat recovered an air of normality. We will have to see if we can manage to keep it up till the referendum in April or whether in fact in March when the summer holidays finish we will see more social unrest.

For the country, of course there have been and there will be negative consequences at least initially. To start with the Peso is weaker, social unrest has meant an economic slow down, some people have lost their jobs or been unable to continue with their small businesses, the COP and the APEC international forums which were meant to happen in Chile have had to be cancelled and several others. One can only hope that at the end a more cohesive and fair society arises.

Below is our best selection of photos and videos (note that none of them are ours and we often do not know the author!)

The artist and the tanks

The largest protest in Chile "Cabros, esto no prendió"

The largest protest early on in the afternoon

The Mapuche flag at the top and many chilean flags below on the statue in Plaza Italia/Baquedano/Dignidad

Protests in Villarica (close to where we are these days)

The well known metro character "Sensual and Stupid Spiderman"

With the masks of La Casa de Papel

A panorama showing the extend of the largest protest

Negro Matapacos, a stray dog that has become a symbol of the social unrest. People identify the care of the state towards them as similar to what is provided to street dogs...a bit of water and food here and there but for the rest, fend for yourselves. Matapacos used to join the students in their protests during 2011.