Chile Despert: the decades-long build-up to Chile's mass protests

[Judi Lynn]

By Amy Hodgson
28.Nov.19

Chile’s protests, ongoing since mid-October, are the culmination of thirty years of frustration and disillusionment with Chile’s neoliberal economic model and rising inequality.

A hike in subway fares was the trigger. In mid-October, President Sebastian Piñera announced a 3% rise – the second in twelve months on fares that were already among the most expensive in Latin America. The minimum wage in Chile is 301,000 pesos per month before taxes, equivalent to 584.23 AUD. With this new increase, someone on minimum wage commuting to and from work five days a week would spend over ten cent of their pre-tax monthly wage just on transportation.

In protest, Chilean students began jumping turnstiles and evading fare en masse. Police were sent into the subway stations to disperse them. But the students did not stop, and adult workers began to join them. Confrontations between Chile’s militarised police and protestors ensued. Police began teargassing and beating protestors – including uniformed students – with batons. Metro stations were set alight and Santiago continues to smoulder six weeks later.

But the demonstrations are about more than the subway – they are about the ever-increasing cost of living and the stagnation of wages that are the by-product of the neoliberal model installed during the Pinochet dictatorship. During Pinochet’s rule, everything from water, to pensions, to health care and education were privatised for the profit of a few. Thirty years later, health care is so expensive that families simply avoid going to the doctor. Even when attending public universities, students take out twenty-year loans and work multiple jobs to pay for tuition. Most of those receiving pensions, in a system created by the President’s brother José Piñera during the Pinochet dictatorship, earn 200-300 USD per month. Water and electricity prices are ever-increasing, with a 9.2% rise in electricity prices planned for November and since suspended in an effort to quell the protests.

. . .

Chile may be the wealthiest country in Latin America, but it is also one of the most unequal. Chile’s GDP may be 15,130 USD per capita but, according to Forbes’ 2014 data, the combined wealth of Chile’s twelve billionaires accounts for a quarter of this figure. For comparison, in the United States – a country of substantial inequality – 540 billionaires comprise account for 12% of the GDP. The per capita income of the bottom quintile of Chileans, or 34% of the total population, is under 140 USD a month.

More:
https://overland.org.au/2019/11/chile-desperto-the-decades-long-build-up-to-chiles-mass-protests/