System Fail #9 - Chile: The Frontline Against Neoliberalism

Oh, hello, welcome to System Fail,

the show where progress is a relative concept.

I'm a woman of color.

Oh, wow.

I am a mom.

Oh, wow!

I am a cisgender millenial who's been
diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder.

Oh my God.

I am intersectional,
but my existence is not a box checking exercise.

I refuse to internalize misguided
patriarchal ideas of what a woman can or should be.

I stand here today a proud
first generation Latina and officer at CIA.

♫ I got the eye of the tiger

a fighter, dancing through the fire

'Cuz I am a champion,

and you're gonna hear me roar ♫

What the fuck!

I am disgusted.

I'm your host, Dee Dos

and with the exception of Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and preppers,

We're not so silly now, are we?

Here's to the end of the world!

[group] Cheers!

It's been a trying year for the human race.

I want to fucking die.

For those caught up in this whirlwind of
generalized outrage and constant anxiety,

It can be easy to forget that 2019 was marked
by a wave of popular insurrections,

unlike anything seen in more than half a century.

From Haiti to Hong Kong,
people took to the streets in historic numbers

and fought pitched street battles
with heavily armed state security agents

and the forces of paramilitary reaction.

Revolt spread across borders,

and tactics developed in one country were taken up

and adopted by comrades, thousands of miles away.

New unities were forged
behind barricades and in occupied squares

rooted in common experiences of corruption,

police impunity,

and the generalized alienation of so-called late capitalism.

And then all of a sudden,

In the past two weeks,

the number of cases of Covid-19 outside China
has increased thirteen fold.

The onset of the covid-19 pandemic
helped to empty the streets for a while,

but it did nothing to address the systemic issues
that had fueled the revolts.

And so it wasn't long before riots started back up

and new insurrections broke out in countries
that had been spared the first wave.

Peering into the flames of this global upheaval,

some commentators have seen the death rows
of neo-liberalism itself.

It is therefore rather fitting that some of the fiercest convulsions

came from the nation where this economic system was born,

Chile.

In the wake of the revolutionary upsurge of 1968,

Unrest which had lurk beneath the surface, spilled into the open.

Chaos ruled the streets.

Global capital responded by implementing
a large scale restructuring of the international economy.

They found a willing accomplice in General Augusto Pinochet.

After seizing power in a U.S. backed coup d'etat in 1973,

Pinochet installed a cadre of Milton Friedman's former students into top policy positions.

I never like this, eh...

[stuttering]

well, the dictatorship!

This group of free market economists known as the Chicago Boys,

Da Bears!

soon set to work transforming the country into
a vast laboratory for neoliberal shock therapy.

With the support of the IMF and World Bank,

Public spending was cut.

Resources, lands, and services were privatized,

and revelations changed to favour big business.

The ethical issues involved are subtle and complex.

Pinochet was removed from office in 1990

as part of the Chilean state's formal transition
from a dictatorship to a democracy.

Democracy is good, right?

Yet much of the state's repressive trappings were left intact,

including its constitution drafted by the military in 1980.

Over the following decades,
as the sheen of democracy has worn off,

And what seems to be the problem?

It doesn't work.

A deepening disillusionment
with the entire political class has set in

Providing fertile soil for some of the most
dynamic and militant social movements in the world.

Since the so-called Penguins' Revolution of 2006,

The Chilean student movement has served as a veritable factory of struggle,

Training hundreds of thousands of youth
in the use of confrontational tactics

and repeatedly paralyzing the entire society in its pursuit

of a new system of free participatory education.

Building on earlier mobilizations carried out
under the banner of 'Ni Una Menos' or 'Not One Less',

and the global 'Me Too' campaign,

In 2018, Chile's powerful feminist movement
launched a coordinated wave of protests,

blockades, and occupations to demand an end to harassment,

femicide, sexual assault, income inequality,

and the broader culture of machismo that underpin them.

Militant calls for the abolition of prescribed gender roles,

and persistent attacks on patriarchal institutions and social norms

have transformed Chilean feminism into a vital, catalyzing force

within popular movements,

and served as an example and inspiration to women
and gender transgressors worldwide.

Another important vein of resistance comes from the Mapuche,

the indigenous inhabitants of Wallmapu,

a nation located within the colonial borders
of the Chilean and Argentinean states.

Recent decades have seen a re-intensification
for the Mapuche struggle for self-determination,

which has manifested in a cultural resurgence,

long term land occupations,

increased attacks against extractive industries,

and a growing incorporation of
their demands for national sovereignty

within broader social mobilizations.

In 2018, Chile elected former President,
Sebastian Piñera, back into office.

Piñera is a billionaire who is prone to gaffes.

And has a history of making
misogynistic statements in public.

Suffice to say he is widely hated by participants
of all the major social movements in Chile.

On October 6th, 2019,

as an indigenous led insurrection
was spreading across nearby Ecuador.

Chile's Transportation Authority
announced a 30 percent hike

to Santiago's metro fare.

This did not go over well.

The next day,

calls for a mass fare-dodging campaign

began to circulate under the slogan, ¡EVADE!

In the days and weeks that followed,

a wave of coordinated actions swept across
Santiago's metro stations.

[chanting] Evade! Don't pay! There's another way to fight!

With thousands of high school students swarming the turnstiles,

sparking running battles with police,

On October 18th,

these steadily building tensions erupted into generalized rioting,

arson,

looting,

And the barricading of major roads across the capital.

What we have seen and heard in the streets

shows a massive rejection of the actual system as a whole.

Forty five years of free market fundamentalism

and the result is deep social inequality.

Piñero responded by declaring a state of emergency,

imposing a curfew,

and deploying the military to the streets
in a policing role

for the first time since the end of the dictatorship.

This did little to quell the unrest,
and by the next day,

the uprising had spread to Concepcíon and Valparaíso,

and things were just getting started.

Stores and subway stations torched

Over three days of nights of rioting,

nearly all of Santiago's 136 metro stations were vandalized,

78 were heavily damaged,

and 19 was set on fire.

Numerous busses and subway trains were also put to the torch,

along with several bus stops, banks,

and the headquarters of Italian energy company ENEL.

Wal-Mart later announced that 60 of its stores had been looted,

and six had been burned to the ground.

This violent uprising, dubbed the Estallido Social or social explosion,

soon transformed into a months long popular movement

that drew in millions of participants all across the country

and which was characterized by mass demonstrations,

the spread of territorial neighborhood assemblies,

and the refinement of street fighting tactics

developed by militants in Turkey, Greece, and Hong Kong.

In the face of these unrelenting protests,

on October 30th, Piñero announced the cancelation
of the COP25 climate conference

and the 2019 APEC Summit.

This is the summit where Xi Jinping and President Trump

were supposed to get together and do a trade deal.

Chile is pulling out of it!

This was the first time that a high level international meeting

had been shut down by protesters since the so-called
Battle of Seattle in 1999.

On November 15th,

Piñera announced a national referendum
on the drafting of a new constitution,

a long sought-after goal
of a segment of Chile's social movements.

Despite this concession,

clashes and demonstrations continued at a high level for months

up until the onset of the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The Chilean state has ruthlessly used
this pandemic to its advantage.

This time they mean business.

That's the message Chile's government aims to send

by deploying thousands of soldiers onto the streets.

Since March 2020,

its military has enforced one of the longest running
and strictest lockdowns in the world.

The repression of the revolt has also taken a huge toll.

There have been 5,540 cases of documented
human rights violations against protesters,

including widespread rape and torture by police.

At least 36 people have been killed,

and 460 people have been shot in the eye.

Over the course of the uprising,
more than 27,000 people have been arrested.

And today, more than 2,500 of them
remain in prison.

Some have now been waiting

more than a year and a half
for their bail hearing or trial during the uprising.

The state passed new laws

further criminalizing looting
and the use of barricades at protests.

Before that, a change to Decree Law 321

gave the state additional power
and discretion over the granting of parole,

a change that effectively translates
into longer sentences for subversive anti-state prisoners.

On March 22nd,

nine anarchist prisoners launched
a coordinated hunger strike across four prisons

demanding the reinstatement of the previous parole policy

and freedom for Marcelo Villarroel

an anarchist militant who has
already served 25 years behind bars

and who now won't be eligible for release until 2036.

The hunger strike lasted 50 days,

during which time the prisoners faced
severe physical abuse,

including beatings,

forced exercise,

and the denial of water.

In recent years,

Chile has also witnessed a number of hunger strikes
by Mapuche prisoners

resisting the indefinite pre-trial detention

they faced under the country's colonial anti-terrorism laws.

Several of these have lasted for multiple months,

including one last year that involved 34 prisoners

and lasted an incredible 123 days.

The referendum on the new constitution
was held on October 25th of last year.

Despite a high level of abstention,

nearly 80 percent of voters supported a new constitution.

The next step came on the weekend of May 15,

when elections were held for the
155 person constitutional assembly

tasked with drafting the new constitution.

In a gesture to the country's social movements,

it was agreed in advance that this assembly
will feature an equal number of men and women,

plus representatives of 10 of the country's indigenous groups.

When this was announced,

Piñera's approval rating shot up five points
to a whopping seven percent.

This process has exposed divisions in terms of goals and strategy.

Many activists point to the real world
benefits of passing a progressive new constitution

and the need to cement gains won
through the past two decades of struggle

Others have taken issue with a constitutional assembly model

suggesting that the drafting of the Constitution
should have been carried out

by the neighborhood assemblies themselves.

Finally, there are anarchists who see the whole process
as a dangerous exercise and recuperation.

This is the spectacle at its most clear.

Social relations between people or groups of people mediated by images.

and a distraction from the struggle,

which still continues in the form of nightly clashes with the police.

And recent attacks on logging companies in Wallmapu.

To learn more about all of this, I recently caught up
with Santiago based anarchist, Javiera

Hey Javiera, how's it going?

Very good.

That's a nice mask.

Oh, you could wear it for the interview if you wanted.

What effects did the Estallido have on the Cilean society?

And how have things changed since the Covid-19 pandemic?

How did the practice of territorial assemblies emerge in Chile,

and what sorts of activities
have these assemblies carried out?

What are your thoughts on the constitutional assembly process?

What does it mean for a country to have its new constitution written by Pikachu?

Thanks Javiera

We've now reached the end of this episode of System Fail.

You can catch the full interview with Javiera,
along with another participant in the Chilean revolt

on an upcoming episode of the Circle A podcast.

For more English-language coverage on the social war in Chile,

check out the Crimethinc's Ex-worker podcast's,
Radio Invasion series or Enough is Enough 14.org

This episode was a collaboration with
our comrades at AantiMidia

and Windborn films.

Be sure and check out their documentary, Chile Veins of Resistance,

available on Kolektiva.Media

or at our website, VeinsofResistance.net

Due to their woefully insufficient processing capabilities,

my human produces at SubMedia have informed me
that this show will be placed on a temporary hiatus

while they focus their vapid attention spans on another project.

Expect me to return in the fall with some upgrades to my operating system

and other improvements to the show's format

To support SubMedia,

Consider making a one time donation or signing up to be a monthly sustainer

at Sub.Media/Donate

You can also support us by buying
some of our merchandise at Sub.Media/gear

Be sure and follow us on your corporate
data-mining platform of choice.

Just search for subMedia.

Or better yet, sign up for our mailing list and
get every new episode

delivered directly to your inbox.

Godspeed, humans.