translated from Spanish: March is coming: the carrot and club

The main slogan of the massive mobilizations initiated on 18 October – together with the end of the AFPs – is the demand for dignity. The government and characters of the media, politics and even, of the Chilean oligarchy itself, have asked for forgiveness. They noted that they have listened to the public and promised a package of measures to restore order and improve the conditions of the population. There is talk of a social agenda and a security and public order agenda. Next to them, the promise of a new Constitution closes the circle.
It is important to stop for a minute to weigh that in just under 3 months, a tremendously massive and heterogeneous popular uprising, without clear driving and outside the established institutional channels, has shaken the foundations of the current social order. Something like that doesn’t happen overnight. The order in Chile before October, was reeling on the web of a spider. And if most of the demands present at this juncture are tracked, you will be able to observe years in which the form according to the oligarchy corresponds is followed. The malls were flattened, demanded, participated, proposed, gasped, repressed, the territories were swemmed and agreements were signed by raising their hands.
The Government’s insistence on the adoption of intelligence laws, the hardening of penalties against regular repertoires of demonstration, the protection of the military to critical installations that can be defined at the President’s discretion. Deniacionism about human rights violations and the thesis of the internal enemy, set from day one from La Moneda, add another element to the mix. A worrying one, which has not yet been openly exposed to the conditions of an economic crisis such as that announced at the international level.
Those mechanisms that allowed to legitimize the order in Chilean society during these last 30 years of abuses, have been losing their ability to generate adherence, obedience and passivity. This is a “crisis of authority.” This means that those who exercise authority lack sufficiently effective legitimation mechanisms to maintain order through “voluntary” citizenship. A period opens in which order is increasingly dependent on the use of force by the state rather than on the promises of political authority.
There are significant differences in the way the situation is understood from the oligarchy that dominates the spaces of power and the people, in terms of the historical times in which each lives and is politically oriented. The people live the day-to-day of the conjunctural time, of events. The oligarchy, on the other hand, remains in time of structures, institutions and therefore maintains a medium-term structural gaze. For the same reason, she is also jealous of order. He is quick to put the end point to expressions of discontent, to hasten the solutions, because that of the popular is not the way.
In the course of the crisis, the Government has been able to open and close windows of opportunity for various actors, politicians and social actors. Keeping his program in the same way, he has put on the red jackets to respond to each demand with a set of measures of short range and high communication impact, but without touching the model. These measures constitute a social agenda that, substantively, reiterates and deepens the freedom of the last 30 years, defunding the State to strengthen access to rights through private sector enterprises.
It’s what it’s doing in health reform, diverting resources from the sagging public sector to private clinics, generating a rise in women’s plans for non-uterine plans. This is what you are doing with pensions, by increasing the percentage that goes to individual accounts from 10% to 13%, despite recognizing that the only way to improve pensions in the contributory component is through distribution.
As a result of tensions between the opposition and the Government, a social agenda will be obtained in line with the accumulation by dispossession that has characterized the last 30 years. That won’t bring “return to order.” On the contrary.
But the government and the oligarchy sectors that do not want to move an apex of this profitable Chilean model, live in the time of structures. They know that they will increasingly require the strength to maintain order, because not only have they not responded to social demands, but they have taken advantage of it to go for more, to deepen the accumulation. A set of measures has been initiated to bring green jackets back into everyday life. Not only is the “social agenda” of these 30 years repeated, it has meant nothing but a private business. It reiterates the repertoire of montages, threats, silence of the media, violations of human rights. A government with less than 10% approval gets institutional support to criminalize protests against it.
The Government’s insistence on the adoption of intelligence laws, the hardening of penalties against regular repertoires of demonstration, the protection of the military to critical installations that can be defined at the President’s discretion. Deniacionism about human rights violations and the thesis of the internal enemy, set from day one from La Moneda, add another element to the mix. A worrying one, which has not yet been openly exposed to the conditions of an economic crisis such as that announced at the international level.
The combination of a social agenda that does not advance in dignity, that encourages abuse and, an agenda of order that criminalizes social protest, is an explosive mix of the much-heralded “March 2020”. Social, trade union and territorial organizations have more left of unity. Unfortunately, the centrifugal forces of the political system have increasingly strained social movements, but it is not too late to take a medium-term look, which highlights the importance of unity and the narrowness of differences.

Original source in Spanish