Mass protests threaten to halt Chile's progress. But they could also spur the country to improve its social contract
along the Alameda, the main avenue of Chile’s capital, Santiago, to the well-heeled neighbourhood of Providencia, and for several miles the scene on either side is one of desolation. Hundreds of businesses are boarded up, some operating through doors between shutters. The Baquedano metro station and a large hotel next to it are partly burned out. Pavements have been ripped up, leaving earth and rubble. Traffic lights are disabled. Walls and statues are plastered with graffiti.
According to several sources, this time the military commanders balked at intervening without immunity from prosecution. “The armed forces would have obeyed a presidential order,” insists Mr Piñera. For whatever reason, he drew back. The government swiftly negotiated cross-party agreements for a plebiscite, to be held on April 26th, on whether to set up an assembly to write a new constitution.
But if violence continues and the state is unable to contain it by democratic means, and if conservatives block change, others fear a darker future. Chile could face “a classic Peronist moment in which a country successful in growth has contradictions it can’t manage”, says Óscar Landerretche, an economist aligned with the Socialist Party, referring to the period in the 1940s in which Argentina embraced populism and dictatorship.
“It’s not [about] 30 pesos, it’s about 30 years of abuses,” goes a popular slogan. Considered more broadly, inequality is indeed at the heart of the matter. It “isn’t just about income, it’s about place, gender, skin colour, where you live, what school you went to, what surname you have,” says Heraldo Muñoz, who leads the centre-left Party for Democracy. “The explosion is against the arrogance of the elite.
The dictatorship set up a segregated health service. All those in jobs pay a contribution of 7% of salary for health care. In theory, they are free to use that to join private health schemes known as Isapres. But these demand often large additional payments. The Isapres cream off people “with better health and more money”, according to Carolina Velasco of the Centro de Estudios Públicos, a think-tank. Some 77% of the population relies on the public system .
When Ms Bachelet proposed a new constitution to overcome such resistance in 2015 this was greeted with a collective yawn. Now it has been seized on as a way out of the troubles. Opponents fear that a new charter will lead to the creation of “rights” that are impossible to fulfil and to fiscal irresponsibility.
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