Extensive reports in the newspaper El Comercio in Lima, continuous interviews in the newspaper Clarín in Argentina, special envoys from the main European media, editorials and columns in newspapers of the United States or the United Kingdom wondering about the convenience of these two world powers being able to follow the path of Chile and update their democracies, and an increasingly heated debate in academic circles, with the enthusiastic participation of constitutionalists of the stature of Roberto Gargarella and the Americans David Landau and Bruce Ackerman… Curious is the attraction of political events taking place in such a remote country. Remote? Yes, but not very peripheral, after all.
There is an explanation for this based on two certainties that remain firm among international analysts: one, that Chile has historically exerted a gravitation in Latin America that far exceeds its size and population; two, that the country according to a history that has always placed it at the political forefront of the region (and global), will affect the future of the countries that make up our continent. “And perhaps that influence goes further,” says international analyst Ricardo Holzmann, who is betting that the Chilean constituent process will mark a new path for those countries that, according to the expert, “live immersed in a permanent social conflict, with high inequality, and with an evident separation between their elites and the citizenry.”
And this is how our country is once again opening a path with a machete in the thickness of a crisis that, at this point, is already global. “Obviously, Chile has a leadership in that regard. And it is a reference, in addition, because it has an institutional tradition of crisis resolution, something that does not exist in other countries where institutions are weaker, “says Holzmann. “That’s why even Asian nations are watching carefully what’s going on here. So important has it become that even the European Union tried to collaborate like I had never seen before in the region,” he adds.
Fernando Estenssoro, director of the Doctorate in American Studies at the University of Santiago, says he is impressed by the interest shown by the world in the Chilean constituent process. “Imagine: it is extraordinarily democratic and more representative, it produces a phenomenon of democratic deepening to the point that it establishes parity between men and women in addition to seats reserved for the first nations. It is something very new at a global level. I am not exaggerating when I say that this will be worthy of analysis for the next 15 or 20 years in all the academies of political science and international studies in the world,” adds the researcher.
“Three years ago we lived a pre-revolutionary situation, with a party system completely overwhelmed and a government that fell into total immobility, except when it came to calling the Armed Forces. It was a very complex scenario that, even so, could be conducted institutionally,” adds Estenssoro.
The claims of Estenssoro and Holzmann are not surprising if we think about the historical republican wealth. By the way, Chile was the first country in Latin America to build its State and was always the first to experience, in the most diverse ways, what made possible a State of compromise that gave it a certain stability, changes of political cycle pushed by proletarian movements that reached early a remarkable power of organization, a liberalism that addressed the social question with cutting-edge laws for the time, the only successful Popular Front, the only Marxist-inspired government that accessed La Moneda through the ballot box and…
“And there are also neoliberal policies, those that were tested here,” Holzmann is quick to recall, regarding the conservative and technocratic revolution designed by civilians who collaborated with the military dictatorship, where classical developmentalism gave way to a development strategy based on a minimal state.
Paz Milet, Master in International Studies, Doctor (c) in Political Science and academic of the Institute of International Studies of the University of Chile, highlights that, as a result of the different social outbreaks registered in the region, “some organizations such as the Andean Development Corporation, the OECD and ECLAC began to question the idea of generating a new social contract between citizens and their states, and have concluded that an answer is what is being doneendo Chile with its constituent process”.
“Our neighbors are also following the process with great interest,” Says Estenssoro. “I can see it because I’ve been outside. It is incredible because the Colombian case should be more interesting in the eyes of international observers because they have a first leftist government in their history (Gustavo Petro), and this after decades of civil war… and yet, they look more closely at what’s going on here. As if they had hopes that it would translate into the way to find a channel, “adds the academic of the University of Santiago, Fernando Estenssoro.
In the academic world the interest is alive and permanent, says the constitutionalist and academic of the Diego Portales University, Domingo Lovera, and this is evident in the round of conversations that, for example, organized the Canadian Council for the Americas, “where we have participated with world-class experts in very interesting debates on issues on social rights, property, gender, environment… Now comes a conversation about legal pluralism and then something will be organized with constitutional reforms. In general, the opinions of all these experts were very positive, and in some cases I would even say that they were undone in praise, especially in environmental matters,” he adds.
An exportable process?
“Undoubtedly, this process itself, as a gestation of a possible response to discontent, captures a lot of attention from that perspective in terms of channeling a change and rethinking the model,” adds Paz Milet.
And of those cases of discontent we have several in the region. Today, without going any further, the last Latin American “oasis” to explode is Panama, which completes almost a month amid violent protests. Colombia? Also. Ecuador is another case of chronic instability. “I’m thinking about Peru too,” Estenssoro says. But, beyond the countries that could draw lessons, Holzmann assumes that “it would not be uncommon for them to be encouraged to seek a political solution to the crisis that is presented to them, although much of this has to be adjusted to their internal processes,” he adds.
In the long run, according to Holzmann, the differences in terms of idiosyncrasies have a lot to do, an aspect in which Paz Milet agrees very much, who believes that the experience of each country can hardly be “exportable”, even if it is clear that “the countries that have not responded to the causes of their crises and discontent are more expectant”, according to Milet.
“There are very different realities in the region, with countries living in very different conditions than Chile. There are some things that can be rescued at the macro level. For example, to give a constituent response to a deep fracture, to do so with parity between men and women… The issue is that the pandemic aggravated the problems of the countries of the region, and although several of those countries have changed the political sign, it does not seem to me that the fundamental conditions are given to initiate this type of process, “says Paz Milet.
But Holzmann warns that not only those countries that have gone through similar revolts are expectant. This, because many of the “innovations” of the Chilean model, such as the AFP, were exported to other countries. There are foreign elites who are expecting to introduce them, which would be very difficult if Chile decides to modify its Constitution and its social contract. In that sense, the publicity blow for neoliberalism would be devastating.
In this way, he adds that it would not be strange either if some former conventional or key actors in the process end up offering conferences in other countries interested in following a similar path.
In the end, this process illustrates that we are a country capable of “showing a way out”, something typical of that inventiveness that is so characteristic of avant-garde positions, assumes Holzmann, who is quite aware that this singularity allowed, among a considerable number of anomalies and oddities that accumulates the republican history of Chile, that in our country the oldest Communist Party in America emerged, the only Nazi party (National Socialist Movement of Chile) that achieved legal existence within the continent, a powerful anarchist movement, “to which I would add a socialist government with a social democratic bet, a dictator who left power through the vote … as you will see, there are many examples that speak of a very developed and avant-garde institutional and republican spirit,” concludes Estenssoro, so the innovations of the current constitutional proposal should not surprise anyone.
Follow us on
