Purging the Legacy of Dictatorship From Chile’s Constitution

[Judi Lynn]

Purging the Legacy of Dictatorship From Chile’s Constitution

Marca Tu Voto AC, a citizens’ group, is spearheading the national effort to overhaul Chile’s 1980 constitution.

Alisa Solomon January 21, 2014

When Chileans poured into the streets on December 15 to celebrate Michelle Bachelet’s landslide victory in the presidential run-off election, vendors popped up out of nowhere, peddling flags to wave at the victory rally: Myriad purple or blue options hailing “Michelle Presidenta!” and “Chile de todos”; a big red one for the Communist Party proclaiming “100 años de lucha”; the bright multicolored banner of the indigenous Mapuche people. There were two Socialist options—one commemorating the iconic musician Víctor Jara, murdered in the first days of the Pinochet coup of 1973, another promising that “the dream of Allende lives!” and quoting the overthrown president’s famous last speech, in which he promised that the streets would one day again be filled with free people building a better society. And here they were: thousands cheering president-elect Bachelet as she acknowledged Chileans’ decision to address the nation’s “unfinished business” and “begin deep transformations.” Soledad Falabella, director of ESE:O, an NGO promoting democratic literacy, and a professor at the University of Chile, looked up at the sea of flags and soaked in the jubilation. “At last,” she said, “the chains of Pinochet are broken.”

Nearly a quarter of a century has passed since Chile’s return to democracy, but this election—and, especially, the movements that burst into the streets in 2011 and made Bachelet’s progressive platform possible—represent the paradigm shift that genuine democracy requires, activists say. Nothing has heralded this change more resoundingly than “Marca tu Voto AC,” a citizens’s mobilization that took shape around the elections, calling on voters to write the letters that stand for Constituent Assembly onto their paper ballots, thereby demanding a participatory process for creating a new constitution. The campaign has been remarkably effective as both direct and symbolic action.

Chile’s constitution dates from the Pinochet years and was engineered not only to guarantee ever-lasting disproportionate power to the right, but also to entrench neoliberal economic policies, and even to prevent legislative changes to them. Though the constitution has been revised many times over the last two decades—patched up with more than 200 amendments, according to the Chilean legal scholar and Rutgers law professor Jorge Contesse—its internal mechanisms, established by the “technocrats of the dictatorship,” he explains, “prevent channels for the majority to express itself or for just laws to be passed.” Chief among its obstacles to genuine democracy is the unique binomial system of elections: for congressional seats, candidates from multiple parties typically run in each district, and the two highest vote-getters win office, which almost always means high representation for the minority right-wing parties.

But some of the less obvious impediments to democracy are now fully on the agenda, too, thanks to the social movements of the last couple of years among students, environmentalists, and residents of the provinces, which brought mass demonstrations into the streets for the first time since the restoration of democracy in 1990. The inequities for which these movements have been demanding redress are tied to provisions in the constitution.

More:
http://www.thenation.com/article/178006/purging-legacy-dictatorship-chiles-constitution#

[MisterP]

1. lengthy backstory of massacres, in fact

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_María_School_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marusia_massacre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranquil_massacre

(y Neltume tambien)

[Judi Lynn]

2. Never knew of these atrocities. From the beginning of your first entry:

The Santa María School massacre was a massacre of striking workers, mostly saltpeter works (nitrate) miners, along with wives and children, committed by the Chilean Army in Iquique, Chile on December 21, 1907. The number of victims is undetermined but is reliably estimated at over 2,000.[citation needed] It occurred during the peak of the nitrate mining era, which coincided with the Parliamentary Period in Chilean political history (1891–1925). With the massacre and an ensuing reign of terror, not only was the strike broken, but the workers' movement was thrown into limbo for over a decade.[citation needed] For decades afterward there was official suppression of knowledge of the incident, but in 2007 the government conducted a highly publicized commemoration of its centenary, including an official national day of mourning and the reinterment of the victims' remains.

The site of the massacre was the Domingo Santa María School,[1] where thousands of miners from different nitrate mines in Chile's far north had been camping for a week after converging on Iquique, the regional capital, to appeal for government intervention to improve their living and working conditions. Rafael Sotomayor Gaete, the minister of the interior, decided to crush the strike, by army assault if need be.[citation needed] On 21 December 1907, the commander of the troops at the scene, General Roberto Silva Renard, in accordance with this plan, informed the strikers' leaders that the strikers had one hour to disband or be fired upon. When the time was up and the leaders and the multitude stood firm, General Silva Renard gave his troops the order to fire. An initial volley that felled the negotiators was followed by a hail of rifle and machine gun fire aimed at the multitude of strikers and their accompanying wives and children.

More:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Mar%C3%ADa_School_massacre

I'll return to read the rest of this material later this evening.

Looks as if the scum rose to the tip in Chile, too, doesn't it? That's a very long history of murderous contempt for and hostilities against those born without wealth, such a familiar, tragic story throughout the "new" world. The dumbshit 1%'rs don't seem to grasp, even yet, how helpless they really are without those who provide the energy, and movement for their parasitic "power" in the world.