If there is something to commemorate, which is worth remembering, it is the massive marches of October 25, 2019, which were peaceful in almost all their extension. Strong and clear message, urgent need to address elite abuse, concrete steps to address the structural inequality of our society, was overall a velvet day.
While October 18, 2021 was a dark day, of unleashed violence, of concerted action by extremist groups that to begin setting fire with accelerants, at the same time, the Santiago Metro, among many violent actions of that day. They pass it off as a social outburst and it was rather a day of insurrection, the red October of the Russian revolution, Chilensis version. They flooded us with fake news, full of victimhood, a psychological and sociological handling of human reactions, worthy of novels of manipulation of the masses, in the manner of “big brother”.
Contributing to all this was the success of so many governments, the complacency of the advisers, the gatopardism of related and rival political sectors that did multiple times as if they did and worked for the people, to leave things the same, the urgent issues never addressed, such as the children of Sename and pensions, gluttony for personal business before the common good, abusing the apparatus of the State, the negotiated, the eternal privileges, the systematic abuses, the vision of predation of the whole country, the chains of power, the witch inaugurations, the lying promise, the shameful collusions … Do I continue?
And here we are, in a peak, complex, difficult moment, with feverish extremists who take to the streets when they want, with delirious looting as a celebration of 18-O, with an elite about to be swept away by a more empowered citizenry in uncertain elections and a work of a constituent that has not yet departed, and that it presents itself as the key to solving our problems, but that in the light of what has been done, there are many citizens who legitimately have more doubts than hopes in the results. For now, the beginning of the work of the constituent assembly in the background phase was the 18-O, lousy, they chose the day of the consecration of violence as a method of political action, they refused the 25-O, the day of the citizen demand for changes but with the seal of the softness of velvet.
The social and political life of a country is full of symbols, enshrining violence is a fact that we will regret for decades. It is intelligent people who do this, it is not the product of chance, of a state of mind, it is not a spontaneous construction. They are people who have their own agenda, we must be attentive, on permanent alert, the future of our society is going away in that.
The changes that bear the seal of velvet generate profound, real and non-violent changes, thus fell the police regimes of communism in Europe in general, without stridency, without blood, without looting, they suppose more social self-containment, they suppose character, they suppose use of intelligence, they suppose high doses of temperance. The changes in the midst of the violence unleashed only bring pain, they involve the action of minority groups that present themselves and believe themselves to be avant-garde, they say that violence as a method of action is the “only” way for changes, which is completely false, they are more noticeable because they are Dantesque, violence is always embraced with its natural friend, the lie. Violent and lying are its peripatetic cultists.
We need velvet changes, our current limited political class, the one that has touched us, has been unable to develop it. He has preferred genuflection to violence: some for feeling pseudo-revolutionary, others for reactionaries, for mere opportunism and high doses of cowardice.
That’s how we are, there are people, Chileans who are up to the times, apparently they have surpassed us.
The content expressed in this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.
