The 2006 National History Prize, Gabriel Salazar, gave his vision on the role that political parties have had in this second pass to a new Magna Carta, in an interview with Mirna Schindler in El Mostrador Radio.
The academic highlighted society’s enormous distrust of political parties as a fundamental factor in explaining the current crisis.
He also pointed out that job insecurity, which affects large sectors of the population, as one of the ingredients of the current insecurity.
Rejection and distrust of politicians
– From your perspective, where is the pendulum today and how do you explain what we are experiencing, with the transformation of a Chilean society of 2019 to one of 2023, which is more for order, moderation?
– We must remember that I am a historian and also a social historian, not purely political or economic. We work economics, politics, but from the social. That allows one to work history in its natural processes that are not day to day, from one day to the next, not even two to three years, they are longer. Processes of medium duration, half cycle, or even longer.
These long processes in history are more decisive because they are deeper, they are not in the day to day, they cannot be photographed. They can’t be smelled, they’re not tangible. Deep processes go inside you, that’s why they’re invisible.
When looking at history from there, all these things that are seen in the short term take another color, take another direction, and that is why it is important to always look at the present from history, because you see there processes that are underway but that go below, journalists do not always capture them, politicians less.
From the point of view of historical processes there is something that is important. You said 62% rejection, I tell you from 2014 to today, all surveys done by more or less serious agencies, for example the Center for Public Studies (CEP), mark that citizens reject over 92% politicians, it is a fact that is maintained over time and that comes from long ago.
In fact, in 1991, Aylwin’s first year government, it was already 56% rejection, and that has been slowly rising and is maintained.
– Does it have to do with what happened (the triumph of the Rejection)?
It is a profound trend that is not going to disappear because of the 62% who rejected a constitutional project.
That 62% was read by the right as a reaction against a group that wanted to refound the country.
The political class, the centre-right, particularly a group of business, not big business, read this as a shift to the right.
– Why not big business?
For various reasons, because they are not necessarily involved in the conjuncture, they read the historical process from other perspectives, and they realized that the situation is very bad from the point of view of the perspectives of a great businessman. The CEP survey itself says so.
For some time now, the business community has been saying that the situation is bad, their confidence in the general situation for business has fallen by 40%. They are withdrawing their capital from Chile as early as six-seven years ago. It is estimated that about US$74 billion has already left the country in outward investment, because they no longer trust inward investment, and because they even think now not only to take out the capital, to go abroad themselves.
They are reading the conjuncture not that we are on the way to the old great democracy as they say, the democratic tradition.
The Cause of the Triumph of Rejection
– We have this reality, octobrism and violence, others speak of a progressive wave that tried to solve the great pains of our people (pensions, health), and suddenly everything turns around, and we are basically focused on talking about security. There is a change. From A and now we are in Z, is it normal?
– In short-term public opinion, yes, in the deep processes of history, no. The same CEP survey presented the results, it said clearly, it is a profound mistake, she said, that this 62% is interpreted as a pendulum that benefits the right.
– What is that 62% for you?
– Rejection of a text, it is also rejection of everything that comes from the political. There is a rejection of politics in general, over 90% and it remains static. There is another very important fact, which is the fact that in this country only a third of adults take a book during the year, and 3% of those who take a pound.or during the year he understands what he reads. That is, it is not being read, not as before, the image is much more interesting.
– The Convention was blamed for wanting to refound the country. And you have said in your book: “Has the traditional State of Chile ever been founded?” On page 7, you say that “Chile accumulates 11 failed recastings”, well, what are the constituent processes for, if not to refound?
– There are many data, information about it that I have gathered in 60 years of research. What I say there is fundamental: 11 times in 200 years, it means that we have failed 11 times.
– If we think about that 62% it was also with respect to those who represented the other option in what was the Convention.
That 62% must be read in many ways, it is not only a rejection of politics, convention, the left, etc. That reveals what I said, that we are not reading, let alone reading politicians. So people don’t have a clear notion of what the political process is like inside, they’re not interested.
So, of course, it rejects everything that comes from there, and the case of the other Convention is painful, because who read, not even the experts know to me have read or understood what that Constitutional Convention was or the text they delivered.
I read “El Mercurio” every day, and what have I seen there: I have not seen any comment from an expert, a politician with years of circus, deep, of the constitutional text that was not approved. Not one, pure adjective, are “refoundationists”, “octobrists”, “leftists”, they have the inflated disease of identity, they are pure adjectives.
I read the draft carefully and twice the final text, and there is a fundamental issue that no one commented on: that the Convention approved the creation of communal assemblies that represent themselves in the regional ones, in a chamber that was called of regions that abolished the Senate. That meant the exclusion, deterioration and probably marginalization of the political class.
When the citizenry wants to take the constituent power, which corresponds to it by nature by itself, all politicians of the left, center, right, unite.
Did we ever have a truly participatory Constitution?
– Only in 1828. It lasted less than a year because the oligarchy of Santiago organized a mercenary army paid by the great merchants to defeat the patriot army that was in accordance with this Constitution, and the civil war that ended with the battle of Lircay was provoked. The mercenary army won, so that Constitution did not last a year, and that Constitution was discussed first in the communes, cabildos, delegates later to a Constituent Assembly that was made in Valparaíso to wrest the oligarchy of Santiago, and there it was approved with all the officers of the patriot army.
What should have happened in Chile after this last attempt?
– Normally, constituent power is an expression of the sovereign will of the peoples, sovereignty is inherent to the peoples, to the community. Because sovereignty is a collective will, it is not individual will. The individual will is the free will of the individual. Sovereignty is a collective will.
For there to be sovereignty there must be the possibility for communities to develop themselves, to integrate, to work. And the only possibility of doing that is through a social form, the assembly, the cabildo, the crazy, communal assembly.
It was eliminated by Diego Portales in 1830 and has never been recovered. We do not have councils, we do not have provincial assemblies, citizens have never had the possibility of participating within the State to at least give their opinion.
Security crisis
– How do you see the security crisis affecting us?
– There are two types of security. Let us leave aside external security, two types of internal security, which has to do with the balance of civil society in general in terms of its expectations, willingness to develop, its living conditions; and the balance that has to do with crime. They are two very different things.
– In relation to the latter.
– Today there is a loss of internal security, firstly, and secondly, due to a huge development of crime. Enormous. Historically speaking, whenever the employment rate falls or increases, only precarious employment, not career-insuring employment, crime rises. The lower the wage rate, the higher the return on crime has.
– Where is the way out of the current situation in the country?
– Politicians have not solved this problem that was already serious in 1830, to this day it remains serious. There has been no substantive solution.
Some say this is the worst moment in the last 30 years, in terms of security.
– Of course. But it is the impact of a Tra Code.Under a Labor Plan that they also call it, which imposes precarious employment as a rule. Between 60% and 70% of jobs in Chile are all precarious, even at university.
What do you think of the whole situation that has been generated with irregular migration, with the arrival of gangs with a high level of fire that were not typical of our national reality?
– Aggravates the phenomenon. If I remember correctly for 2012-2014, about 7% unemployment, immigration that begins to arrive in Chile increased this rate progressively, and now we are, they say officially 9-10%, but in practice, it is about 12%-13%.
Immigrants are mostly employed in what was once underemployment, precarious street employment. And crime has been notoriously inflated with all the hallmarks of tropical crime.
– Make me a diagnosis of what you see coming, based on a Left government that has to face an issue that is more complex.
– There are two things. On the one hand, we have to talk not so much about left-wing, centrist governments. It is political class, this government is political class, it could have been leftist, it was not already, and it is clearly political class. On the other hand, we must see what happens no longer with the political class, but with the people themselves, with the citizen mass, with the citizen people, there you have to look and there are very interesting things happening.
-Like what?
– Distrust of politicians is a piece of structure, that will continue. You can project in the future what will happen with this tendency of citizens not to believe in politicians and what they intend to do, give a new Constitution by politicians to their liking. What can happen there?
– What if the problems are not solved?
– There may be another social explosion worse than 2019, because that one was romantic. This is not going to be romantic, obviously there is a rage in the street, one sees it all the time. That can produce an explosion, a non-romantic social explosion like the other, because we do not express our identity, we enjoy the street for being together, we were a collective being, but this time, by going with anger, the thing will not be similar, it will not be the same.
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