On October 18, 2019, Chileans in their capital of Santiago launched a massive revolt at a handful of metro stations over a fare increase of a few cents. But their discontent was much deeper than the fare hike, as one popular slogan proclaimed: “This is not for thirty pesos, but thirty years” of neoliberalism.

This rebellion sparked the ongoing uprising that, at the very least, seems poised to eliminate the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship–era constitution and force the state to address accelerating inequality despite improved living standards. This rebellion also has real potential to fail if there is not a concrete path for a peaceful transition for both political and social demands.

My father was one of the tens of thousands of Chilean exiles in the 1970s. From childhood, I visited Chile nearly every year, seeing it turn from dictatorship to representative democracy and from poor country to OECD member. Those years showed how periodic social uprisings and political fissions over the past decade and half facilitated the possibilities for a progressive turn not seen in a half a century since Salvador Allende’s Popular Unity government. I recently spent a week in Chile at the invitation of A Toda Marcha, and I saw how a country that had been a model and laboratory for neoliberalism could reject three decades of extreme free-market consensus seemingly overnight.