Alondra Carrillo, a psychologist by training and member of the Coordinadora Feminista 8M (8 March Feminist Coordinator), was part of the Constitutional Convention of Chile elected at the ballot box in 2021. On 4 September 2022, a referendum was held on the new constitutional text drafted by this body – the composition of which was resolutely left wing and feminist. Around 62 per cent of voters rejected it, a historic milestone which came as a major blow to the left, both inside and outside of Chile.

Less than a month ago, on 7 May, the far-right wing Republican Party won a resounding victory in the ballot box to elect the 50 constituents that will draft a new constitution proposal for the country (which still lives with the constitution inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, a constitution that the Republican Party is in favour of maintaining).

How do we explain the lurch of Chilean society, from left-wing positions and from the demands for sweeping social reforms – towards the extreme right? Alondra Carrillo sheds light on the complexity of this historic constitutional process, as well as the impact of the feminist wave which has swept Chilean institutions and society.

The social outburst of 2019 in Chile, a country that has often been described as a model for the liberal model, came as a surprise to many outside the country. How did those of you who were involved in the process experience it?

A few months earlier, in 2018, we [the Coordinadora Feminista 8M] organised the first feminist general strike in Chile with the aim of becoming a major transformative social force. We wanted to interrupt the neoliberal normality, to open a new historical period characterised by cycles of mobilisations that would overthrow neoliberalism and challenge those politically responsible for its implementation.

So while we didn’t imagine the outburst taking the particular form that it did, we did expect a large-scale movement, which we believed could be a profound interruption of neoliberal daily life. A few days earlier we were at the Plurinational Encounter of Women, Lesbians, Transvestites, Transgender and Non-binary People in La Plata, Argentina, at the same time that the revolt was taking place in Ecuador, and it was our great hope and belief that people in other countries would rise up as well. We returned to Chile shortly before the revolt and found that display of popular strength, rage and creativity that has been one of the most exciting and moving moments of our lives.

In those years, there seemed to be an acceleration of historical time. In many countries, 2018 saw an unprecedented mass emergence of feminist movements. How would you sum up the changes that took place at that time?

I think one of the most significant developments is that feminism has become a permanent presence in many social spaces, though certainly not in all. There are some spaces where it is not even on the horizon, including in certain very precarious and rural territories. But in many others, such as schools, workplaces, the media and universities, feminism, its critique and the way in which it renders the invisible visible, has allowed us to break with the established norms of patriarchal oppression.

The global pandemic took place at the same time. How did the pandemic affect the Coordinadora Feminista’s organising work?

The pandemic had a variety of impacts. In terms of our organising work, it certainly prevented us from being able to meet in person, with all that that entails for political organisation. More significantly, it also meant even greater impoverishment, the deterioration of the living conditions of the majority of the population and the weaponisation of fear as an effective tool for those in power, as evidenced by the many societies that have taken an authoritarian turn during the crisis. The pandemic is much more than just a health crisis: it has brought about a worldwide reorganisation of our living and working conditions.

In our country, the health crisis and the inflationary impact of some of the economic measures taken to combat it, such as the withdrawal of workers’ private pension funds, have decimated women’s employment.

At the same time, we have been able to start meeting in person again. This year we held a fifth Plurinational Meeting of Women and Dissidents in Struggle, which was the third time we met face-to-face after two years of virtual meetings. Against this backdrop of precariousness, this more stable organisational structure, while not without difficulties, has given us a degree of stability within a context of generalised instability.

How do you interpret the ‘no’ vote on the constitutional text in the plebiscite of September 2022? One of the most widespread interpretations is that, due to its radical nature, the text did not correspond with the majority sentiments of the Chilean people. Do you agree?

I believe that simple interpretations of the results of the plebiscite are always misleading.

The result of the plebiscite is the expression of an extremely complex political situation. It was also the first vote in Chile with compulsory voting and automatic registration, which is the most complete in-depth look we have of our people [more than 85 per cent of the electoral roll – more than thirteen million people – voted]. The fact that the vote was compulsory, compared to previous votes in the process, means that there are four million people who did not participate in the previous stages of the process but did participate in this final stage. There were also several obstacles preventing the text from being made available to the public, so many people did not have the opportunity to learn what was actually in it.

There was a lot at stake in the plebiscite: certain fears were stoked among the population, such as the fear of losing ownership of private pension funds, which completely displaced the discussion on the pension system that we need to guarantee decent pensions for all. Another was the fear of losing ownership of housing, which displaced the discussion on the housing crisis we are currently experiencing. Yet another was the fear of the effects of plurinationality, which was presented as a dissolution of national identity, in a country where property and nation have become subjective pillars for broad sectors of the population who find in them the only certainty within a context of widespread uncertainty.

Rather than being explanatory or comprehensive, the idea that the text was too radical was useful for forming preconceptions about what was at stake and what the proposal represents.

It is essential that we analyse the process in a way that doesn’t place all the responsibility for the defeat on the ‘usual suspects’. To understand what it was that the population rejected on 4 September, we have to look at the left’s lack of an economic programme to overcome neoliberalism; the impossibility of producing a general narrative that would be easily understandable and persuasive in the face of the enormous smear campaign that was deployed against the text; and the unforeseen and contradictory consequences of the measures used to combat the precariousness of the pandemic.

What lessons can be learned from this process and how can we deal with the disillusionment that the ‘no’ to the constitutional text entailed for the feminist movement and, in general terms, for the social movement?

Any disillusionment that may have arisen in the feminist movement following the plebiscite must be viewed within the context of the new process in which the parties have agreed to deliberately exclude the social movement. But I also think it is important today to think about the state of the movement in relation to the extremely complex and difficult conditions we are facing.

We are witnessing the acceleration of authoritarianism, the deprivation of fundamental rights and guarantees, and the erection of an apparatus of persecution. The right wing has taken almost total control of the political agenda and has focused the discussion on insecurity and crime, while the government has abandoned the initiative. We have seen the approval of legislation that even the UN has denounced as extremely dangerous, such as the ‘Naín-Retamal’ law, which grants privileged self-defence to the police, a trigger-happy law that deprives the migrant population of rights in an unjustified way and which equates migration and crime. This law will be used against us when we have to take to the streets because living conditions continue to worsen.

What is your opinion of the current government of Gabriel Boric?

While we called on people to vote for Gabriel Boric to prevent the election of the ultra-right wing José Antonio Kast, we never placed great hopes in his government. This government, which presented itself to the public as a feminist and environmentalist has ratified the TPP-11 [editor’s note: a contentious free trade agreement] and is on the verge of ratifying the modernisation of the agreement between Chile and the European Union. It has also renounced parity in the ministerial cabinet and its latest appointments only consolidate a certain political direction.

To understand the current health of the student movement, let’s go back almost two decades. Your introduction to politics came as part of the student movement, particularly during the so-called ‘Penguin Revolution’ of 2006 [editor’s note: named so because the students, in their black and white school uniforms, were said to resemble penguins], in which you took part in as a high school student. What was your experience of those protests?

In 2006, some older students [from the Colegio Latinoamericano, founded by returnees from exile, Communist Party supporters and leftists during the dictatorship] had organised a series of assemblies, where we linked up with student organisations from the south of Santiago. It was my first experience of political mobilisation, my introduction to student organisation. It began with a very specific demand related to transport but later turned into widespread protests against the Organic Constitutional Act of Teaching imposed by the civil-military dictatorship [which essentially privatised education].

What are the connections between that student movement and the ‘social outburst’ of 2019?

The student movements of 2006 and 2011, along with the mobilisations against HidroAysén [the planned hydroelectric megaproject in Patagonia], against subcontracting, and the various feminist movements, brought to light a series of conflicts related to the functioning of neoliberalism and its continued deployment in our country: as a structure that guarantees power and enrichment for a small sector of our society, which appropriates social wealth, and whose legitimacy is based on the institutional legacy of the dictatorship as administered by the transition governments, all against a backdrop of growing precariousness of the majority of the population. Like the other social movements that have emerged over the last 30 years, the student movement is the result of the sectoral conflicts that arise from the functioning of neoliberalism.

In your opinion, is the Chilean student movement still alive and well?

It’s no longer what it used to be. Many of the organisations that were powerful in those years have been weakened or no longer exist, including the Federation of Students of the University of Chile, which was one of the most dynamic and active organisations during the years of struggle that shaped us politically. While there is an important and very relevant feminist current within the high school movement which took to the streets on 8 March, the student movement in general lacks the strength it had in those years.