After Sunday’s historic vote, Chileans are now faced with the once-in-a-lifetime responsibility of drafting our future

Chile is beginning to write its own history. In last Sunday’s referendum, 78 per cent of voters opted to ‘approve’. The decision before them concerned the drafting of a new constitution [editor’s note: the current Basic Law is inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, 1973-1990, and is seen as the root of the demonstrations that took place in 2019.]

Furthermore, 79 per cent voted in favour of the new text being drafted by a Constitutional Convention (assembly) formed only of elected citizens (whose election will take place on 11 April 2021).

These results have led to the realisation that Sunday was a historic day for our country. Young people made their mark through their high participation. I personally went to vote with my two little daughters, Florencia and Elena, at the Bicentennial Stadium in La Florida, a district of the capital city of Santiago. There we were able to see for ourselves the high level of commitment to this referendum, as well as the conviction and hope of the majority of the people who were waiting to make their vote count.

Despite the Covid-19 pandemic and the measures and protocols in place to avoid contagion, crowds of citizens were heading to the polling stations from early in the day (14.7 million Chileans were called on to vote) and enormous queues formed.

This civic mobilisation highlights the failure of the government and traditional politicians in responding with violence to try to undermine the cross-sectoral social movement that began on 18 October 2019. The day after the referendum, we woke up to a different country.

Memories of the 1988 referendum

Despite the queues and hence the waiting time, in some cases for hours, the feeling among the voters was one of joy, and an awareness of the importance of this vote. Inevitably there were conversations with our elders who told us about their past experiences, but Sunday’s vote was not one of those dispiriting elections that we have had for our presidents or parliamentarians over the last 15 or 20 years, in which we voted for the ‘lesser evil’ – and in which many people found themselves obliged to accept the candidate from one of the two blocs that have been governing our country in recent times, just to stop the opposite camp from winning.

The memories they were recalling and discussing were of the 1988 referendum, the one that put an end to the dictatorship, and of that generation’s desire for change. But that desire was overridden by considerations of state and multiple excuses, and the use of traditional hegemonic politics to demobilise the citizen’s movement that was trying, even then, to repeal the constitution – that came into force, let us not forget, in 1980 in a fraudulent process by the dictatorship.

For decades traditional politicians ran the neoliberal system set in place by the Pinochet constitution, they got accustomed to it and so comfortable with it that they ended up defending it.

That said, distinction must be made for the person who twice became President of Chile (not consecutively), Michelle Bachelet. She tried to set up a constitutional process through dialogue (there are official documents attesting to her efforts) but it was the politicians, including some political parties from the governing coalition, who boycotted her attempt, and made sure it failed.

On the opposite side, we must not forget that one of the first formal statements made by the current President of Chile, the multi-millionaire on the economic far-right, Sebastián Piñera, was that the constitutional process was not on his government’s agenda and would not happen.

Despite all of this, a cross-sectoral social movement developed around the country that put social rights and equalities at the heart of the debate; a movement that questioned the greed and profit on which the neoliberal capitalist system is based, and that put a new constitution as its first priority, one that would be the result of democratic and participatory debate by society as a whole.

On Sunday, a historic day, we made the first step towards this. We now have the challenge and the responsibility of building our own history.

As our President and brother Salvador Allende said: “Workers of my country: I have faith in Chile and in its destiny. Other people will overcome this grey and bitter moment, in which betrayal is trying to get the upper hand. You still know that, much sooner rather than later, the great avenues through which the free person passes will open again to build a better society”.

Long live Chile! Long live the people! Long live the workers!

This article has been translated from Spanish.