The stars of Ernesto Ottone

The dear friend Ernesto, in an extensive interview in a newspaper of national circulation, has pointed out the following regarding the inclusion of Indigenous Peoples in the draft of a new Constitution for approval, referring specifically to the proposal of a Plurinational, intercultural and ecological State. He said: “In Chile there are native peoples, some more consistent and with real life, and strong in the country, and others who are rather like those stars that existed, and that you continue to see. So, there’s an exacerbation there too.”
In the generous Sunday interview, Ottone refers to plurinationality as “something that can make way for an embryo. In that sense this constitution is like a combination of a democratic constitution and a partisan political project.”
When we discussed with the right and the government in 2020 the bill that created the indigenous seats for the Constitutional Convention (CC), we heard for the first time from them, similar opinions to refer to what a conservative senator pointed out as the “villages” already almost extinct, Kaweskar in the south, Changos and Diaguitas in the north, among others — of the 10 indigenous peoples (PPII) recognized in Law 19,253. For them, the conservative senators of the constitution commission of the senate and the technical commission of government (and they agreed on this), the existence of such “villages” (Ottone calls them “stars” but it is the same tone) could not be considered, really, in the constitution of the indigenous seats because, due to their population density and their almost zero existence, they could not have the same right as the rest of the nationals to have a representation in the CC because, in addition, that affected the equality of the vote.
Such conservative senators, by the way, had no memory to remember the enormous inequalities created by the binominal electoral system imposed for years by the constitution they defend, generating fundamental inequities in the true electoral representation of Chileans in Congress, and thanks to that they stopped many essential reforms. They also demonstrated that their knowledge of modern international treaties, some of them signed by Chile, such as the 2007 United Nations Universal Declaration on the Rights of PPII or the American Declaration of Indigenous Rights, made giant strides in the value and recognition of PPIIs without exception. Or that Pope Francis, in his previous tour of this brown continent, referred to such native peoples and “small towns” or “stars” now, as the reserve of the world for its enormous and transcendental experience, for example, in the understanding and care of the environment and natural resources, many of them preyed upon by the extractive industry also in indigenous lands of Central America, the Amazon of Brazil and Peru and the rich forest territories of Argentina and Chile.
The difference in tone between indigenous “villages” and shooting “stars” is a bit more of the same. When referring to plurinationality, for Ottone the idea of nation “has a theoretical history and a practical history. So, the nation in Chile requires much more” and suggests that the constitutional project in citizen consultation could be modified in its form and in its substance and that, for this, it is necessary to reject it.
18 years ago, in 2004, when Ottone was in charge of President Lagos’ team of advisers (on the emblematic “second floor”), in a large official ceremony in La Moneda the historic “Report of the National Truth and New Deal Commission with the PPII” was delivered to the country. This report bears the signature of President Lagos and former President Aylwin, who chaired the presidential commission for two and a half years before arriving at the aforementioned text, now available to all Chileans on the Internet. This report, by the way, never differentiated the PPII between the “most consistent” and those that today are pointed out as “stars” or “small towns” in the words of the conservative world.
This historic commission has been formulating for 18 years an unalterable approach, I insist, which bears the signature of two former presidents of Chile who recognize and manifest to the country that everything studied “emerges as an irrefutable truth: that the current identity of the PPII in Chile has been constituted, finally, in relation and conflict with the project of construction of the national State”. This reference is important to emphasize that this relationship was critical, and this is reported in the Report in a substantive manner. “Low eThis finding – the official text continues – the Commission has reached the conviction that it is necessary to accommodate a new historical opportunity for understanding, promoting a frank and open dialogue between the State, Chilean society and the PPII, which is typical of those historical moments marked by the flourishing of democracy and peace among all Chileans and that should be based on the principles and proposals that come to be expressed”. And the national truth and new deal commission recommended 120 political, social, cultural and rights recognition measures, the vast majority of which are included in the draft New Constitution to be approved.
Reviewing again that historic presidential report I do not find in its pages any discriminatory reference that forces us to think that said report established conditions or requirements to refer to Indigenous Peoples, such as saying, for example, that “it is necessary to accommodate a new historical opportunity” for an understanding between the State, Chilean society and Indigenous Peoples but “mainly, with the ‘most consistent villages’ (in Ottone’s words) and then with other less consistent peoples” (those who are a shooting star).
The Truth and New Deal Commission did not discriminate between the PPII and recognized the historical, political, social and cultural value of each of them and lamented the obscurantism of the State and the almost total invisibility of the genocide that occurred with the Selk’nam People in the extreme south, practically exterminated by mercenaries to facilitate the fact that there was no indigenous person alive who could later claim community ownership of their lands that was later stripped and registered by third parties. President Lagos, in delivering this Report to the public in April 2018, expressed his condolences to Chile’s PPII for this irreparable loss. Someone had also thought in the extreme south that these indigenous communities were just “little towns” or “stars” of the sky.
I think these references are unhappy and unfortunate. For decades women’s political rights were excluded in Chilean society and were treated in the second category, as non-citizens. For years, workers were excluded in various processes and even the Pinochet-reformed-inspired constitution has denied that trade union leaders can run for parliament unless they renounce their social representations. For years, minorities of various kinds have been excluded from our constitutional order. For years, by the way, PPIIs have been marginalized from different forms of political representation.

And now, when a draft of a new Constitution proposes a constitutional recognition of indigenous rights, voices emerge from the conservative world to accept the inevitable, but they put conditions: “only the most consistent peoples”. And for the others, the “stars” or “small towns”, as an RN senator told me in the senatorial discussion pro-law of indigenous seats for the Convention during the 2020 debates: “We must look for a formula of representation that groups the “villages” among themselves, because it is not possible that those with low population have the same rights as all Chileans.” And finally, that’s what it’s all about. The political power to be expressed in the new National Congress of Deputies must be plural. Yes. But only to a certain extent.
When Chile approved in a plebiscite a new Constitution and it was approved to convene the election of a constitutional Convention, it established gender parity as a recognition of the right of women to be represented from their own identity and approved 17 seats proportionally distributed among the PPII and no indigenous people was excluded. But of course, these 17 indigenous seats among 155 elected members of society and some political parties have caused enormous concern in classic sectors of Chilean politics because this Convention represented, in a way, a less dominant and hegemonic social, political and cultural diversity.
The draft of the new Constitution reflects these experiences. And in the case of the PPII it includes a large part of the recommendations already made to the country in the Truth and New Deal Report of 2004. Why did the governments of the time and following not fully comply with all these recommendations and thus we would not have reached the point of conflict and tension in the south of Chile and also in the north with the PPII? This is the subject of another reflection.

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Original source in Spanish