René Rojas is an assistant professor in the department of human development at SUNY Binghamton. He is on the editorial board of Catalyst.
The first round of voting in Chile’s general election in November saw the shocking rise of the far right and the collapse of the country’s new left. It’s a crushing but not total defeat for the movement helmed by President Gabriel Boric.
In the United States, one of the twentieth century’s most prolific butchers died as he lived — beloved by the rich and powerful, regardless of their partisan affiliation.
In the mid-1970s, fanatical dictatorships viewed South America as the forefront of a third world war in the fight against communism. Henry Kissinger endorsed this crusading spirit — and unlike in Vietnam, he accomplished his objectives there.
By the time Chile’s workers rose up to rally around Salvador Allende, Latin America had become a key arena in US planners’ “mortal struggle to determine the shape of the future world.” Henry Kissinger was obsessed with toppling the socialist president.
“If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly,” Henry Kissinger advised the Argentine regime. In the first three years of the dictatorship, thousands of labor, student, and community activists were killed or disappeared.
The great achievements of Salvador Allende’s socialist government in Chile have often been overshadowed by its brutal defeat. But the fall of his government wasn’t inevitable.
The rejected Chilean constitution was not “too far left.” Rather, it exalted a set of identitarian outlooks that has for too long masqueraded as radical politics.
Chile’s president Gabriel Boric’s government rose to power on the back of a decade of industrial militancy and popular protest. To achieve its aims, it will need to use these forces as a battering ram against the elite.
Despite the Right’s surprisingly strong showing in Chile’s first-round elections, socialist Gabriel Boric is still favored to win the presidency tomorrow. But the Left needs to be laser focused on a broad working-class agenda to fully roll back neoliberalism.
Three decades after Augusto Pinochet’s fall, Chile stands at the precipice of electing a socialist president and reordering its political system. But the achievement of genuine democracy in the birthplace of neoliberalism is far from guaranteed.
Chile voted for sweeping structural reform and an end to neoliberalism. It’s a repudiation of Augusto Pinochet and the economic regime he cemented in the country.
Pink Tide populism was built in the context of two decades of deindustrialization and industrial fragmentation. But we need a socialist left that can reverse those very trends.
Chile’s most marginalized workers are leading a revolt that threatens the country’s entire political order. Now is the time for an escalation of the struggle into a national strike that can build a real economic and political democracy in its wake.
Recent elections in Chile offer hope that the country’s neoliberal consensus will soon shatter.
Patricio Guzmán’s The Battle of Chile captures the class war that culminated in Salvador Allende’s overthrow 44 years ago today.
New movements in Chile are fighting to bring down the country’s post-Pinochet establishment.
The Socialists’ return to power in Chile has raised expectations. But so far reforms have stabilized neoliberalism, not undermined it.