A TALE OF TWO PLEBISCITES

A Tale of Two Plebiscites

Histories of liberation and stagnation in Chile

Sunday, September 4, was a day of unrest in Chile. As many across the globe settled into a typical day of the week, Chileans across their slender stretch of land shuffled into voting booths. Rather than running through a seemingly never-ending list of candidates, those voting checked one of two boxes: yes or no.

The public gathered that Sunday to vote on whether or not to replace Chile’s current constitution with a proposed document that would reenvision the state’s approach to civil rights, authored and brought forward by a popularly elected constitutional convention. If approved, this plebiscite—an initiative that allows the electorate to decide whether or not to implement a law—would enshrine the newly drafted constitution into law, replacing the current iteration instituted in 1981 under Augusto Pinochet, the former right-wing despot of Chile. While each option may have been monosyllabic on the page, the choice they represented—approving or rejecting a new constitution that had been almost three years in the making—carried the burden of history. It would reverberate with the sounds of mountains eroding, rivers rerouting, and the deafening silence of those lost to the violence of a Chile post-colonialism, a Chile post-Pinochet.

Voters were invited to partake in transforming the state and its relationship to its people. Alternatively, they could allow the dominance of extractive corporations and the insufficiency of the current welfare state to maintain control. Ultimately, the Chilean people deferred the mountain-moving to the men in suits; on Sunday, September 4, this radical text was overwhelmingly rejected by the public.

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This story of nation-building can be traced back to September 11, 1973, the day the military junta took the Palácio de la Moneda in Santiago, Chile, and then-president Salvador Allende died by suicide inside the besieged palace. During his time in office, Allende instituted bold economic reforms—such as the nationalization of Chile’s rich mining industry—that angered his political opponents. Under the Nixon administration, the United States invested ample resources in disempowering Allende, engaging in covert operations to prevent his election in 1970 and helping his political rivals (such as the Christian Democratic Party) consolidate power. While there is no record of direct U.S. involvement in the 1973 coup, declassified reports describe an “extreme option” the United States had considered: a “covert effort to overthrow” Allende that would ensure “the role of the United States would not be revealed” and that “the action be effected through Chilean institutions,” specifically the Chilean military.

After the coup and Allende’s death, Pinochet took power. His reign lasted 17 years, during which over 3,000 Chileans were ‘disappeared’ by the state.

But perhaps Chile’s current political reality finds its beginnings later, on October 5, 1988. On this day, Chile engaged in another plebiscite, another yes-or-no question: whether Pinochet should extend his rule for eight years. This 1988 plebiscite would not relieve the Chilean populace of the dictatorship in the immediate or in the long-term political sphere. If the “no” vote— which would enforce democratically held elections—were to succeed, there would still be another election to win, and the state would still be trapped within the repressive constitution passed in 1980. However, it provided the electorate with a sense of both the agency that had been stolen from them, as well as an opportunity to regain confidence in the institutions that had previously betrayed them. Along both time horizons—the short and long term—this vote in 1988 was a breath of freedom, a glimpse into a future Chile envisioned, not by a single leader but by a multitude. Finally, ‘el No’ won the referendum, with 56 percent of voters demanding accountability from a previously untouchable government.

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Over the past few decades, the country has been stuck in limbo between what has been and what could be. In the last three years, the constitutional convention has formulated their response to the latter. The proposed constitution is transformative: it guarantees sovereignty for Indigenous peoples, universal healthcare, gender parity in state employment, and legal recognition of some non-human entities, extending rights to nature. It lays out constitutional rights to housing, education, internet coverage, sanitation, and care “from birth to death.” Such a constitution would be a sharp departure from the dominant neoliberal policy, an unabated remnant of the military regime that has allowed economic inequality in Chile to grow while wages, quality of life, and welfare have remained stagnant.

The conception of this new constitution, however, was its most radicalizing force. The referendum to draft this new text came only as a result of massive social unrest, coupled with a violent state response. The protests, dubbed estallido social, began in October of 2019, when the capital city Santiago’s metro fares were increased while minimum wages remained the same. A year later, over 30 demonstrators had died, and thousands were injured—their calls for justice met with rubber bullets, torturous arrests, and sexual violence.

When the referendum to devise a new document passed, 155 people were elected to the drafting body, many of whom were leftists, activists, and Indigenous peoples, including Elisa Loncón Antileo, the convention’s president and a prominent Mapuche linguist. The original nine-month horizon of completion extended itself by almost a year and a half, with the new constitution arriving to the public and their ballot boxes just a few Sundays ago.

But the proposed constitution— the product of these tumultuous protests and years of arduous deliberation—died in the course of a day. With 62 percent of the vote, ‘el No’ triumphed once more, this time denying a path toward liberation.

Both the 1988 plebiscite and the one held earlier this month promised the Chilean people a newfound freedom. Why did one pass while the other didn’t?

Evidently, the conceptualization of liberation in these two contexts are very different. The 1988 plebiscite provided a chance at freedom from

oppressive entities, whilst the vote from earlier this month motioned toward constructing a nation that is systemically free. In authoring such a radical text, the Chilean left counted on the scope of freedom broadening over time, its purpose being to go beyond survival, to guarantee a life well lived. But how could this be the case for the Chilean public—for their collective imagination—when the neoliberal economic and political systems that the Pinochet regime installed have gone unchanged?

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Holding a plebiscite suggests a degree of action. Rather than an assessment of how the people feel, this kind of vote interrogates what they want to do. Yet Chileans were not ready to make a decision, at least not one of this gravity. Before the Sunday in question arrived, polls suggested that as many as 15 percent of the voting population remained undecided. It could be that the stagnancy exhibited by the country’s political and economic systems are entrenched, embodied in its populace. But if that is true, what do we make of the thousands of people who flooded the streets over the last several years, who rejected a nation gone idle? We recognize them, seeing them alongside those who refused the new constitution, hesitant to usher in this dream of Chile whilst still dissatisfied with the country that lay before them.

Liberation is never linear. Even though the 1988 plebiscite passed in favor of freedom, even though over 30 years later el estallido made visible an inflamed public, there are still undeniable structural issues in Chile that prevent equality. The country’s legacy of state violence looms over the current government’s response to social unrest. Thus, this proposal of increased state involvement in public life, though rooted in care, triggers lingering memories and aggravates fresh wounds.

Even though the recent plebiscite was rejected, the convening of leftist leaders within a sphere legitimized by the state reveals the momentum contained within this moment. In 1988, the plebiscite cloaked the political and economic realities that resided behind a veil of hope. In 2022, the recent plebiscite and the rejection of the new constitution underscore the work left to be done, and the freer, more engaged Chile that is yet to be constructed.

MARIANA FAJNZYLBER B’23.5 wants their beef empanadas with raisins and olives.