In a year now notorious for the dismal pandemic that has gripped the globe, as well as the far-right authoritarianism that has blossomed in its midst, a remarkable opportunity is facing Chile. Some three decades after the right-wing dictator Augusto Pinochet left power by way of a national plebiscite, more than a million Chileans took to the streets on October 18 of last year to demonstrate the stark neoliberal policies that his government wove into the very foundations of Chilean society.

Despite the transition to civilian rule that took place in 1990, the country’s 1980 constitution — forged during the height of Pinochet’s violent dictatorship — remained in place. That constitution has helped maintain much of the privatization and power the Chilean right wielded during the seventeen-year dictatorship. Consequently, despite Chile’s reputation as a thriving democracy and economic success story in the region, it ranks among Latin America’s highest rates of inequality.

At the height of last year’s protests, now referred to as el estallido  — the explosion — the country’s billionaire president, Sebastián Piñera, declared a state of emergency, claiming the country was “at war” with an internal enemy. Chile’s Carabineros, the nation’s armed police force infamous for its participation in the torture and disappearance of thousands of Chileans during Pinochet’s rule, took to the streets, embracing violent repression and human rights abuses that alarmed the world and harkened back to a political climate many Chileans thought the country would never see again.