[News] Citizen Assemblies Are Challenging the Neo Liberal Model in Chile

[Anti-Imperialist News]

https://orinocotribune.com/citizen-assemblies-are-challenging-the-neo-liberal-model-in-chile/ 



  Citizen Assemblies Are Challenging the Neo Liberal Model in Chile

February 6, 2020
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By Juan Manuel Boccacci – February 3, 2020

If a Chilean was told a year ago that in a few months he would find 
popular assemblies in his neighborhood to give his opinion and decide on 
the future of his country, he surely would not have believed it. But 
it’s happening. October 18, 2019, marked a before and after in Chile. 
The social uprising that began with high school students jumping the 
turnstiles of the subway is now requiring new forms of organization.

One of the most extraordinary phenomena is the thousands of these 
assemblies that were created in every corner of the country. Just as 
during Argentina’s crisis in 2001, neighbors are meeting to comment 
about their reality and take concrete measures against the repressive 
model headed by President Sebastian Piñera.

*“We started to question the way we live”*

The Marin Assembly meets a few blocks from Dignity Square, the so-called 
“ground zero” of Santiago de Chile’s demonstrations. Priscila Rojas, 37, 
is one of the neighbors who is part of the meetings. “This assembly 
began as almost all of them did, spontaneously due to the popular 
rebellion of October 18, after the Government started to repress 
students and brought soldiers to the streets,” Priscila explained. 
Cacerolazos, which means making noise by banging pots and pans, were the 
way common people used to express their opposition to the terrible 
repression that was just beginning. “One cacerolazo after the other led 
the neighbors to start talking to each other. And that’s how the 
assemblies began. Living in such a neoliberal model as Chile’s means not 
only establishing economic relations but it is also a way of life that 
had become very individualistic. The assemblies break with that,” Rojas 
said.

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Suddenly, Santiago de Chile seems to be the scenario for a surrealistic 
movie: tens of neighbors began gathering in street corners or in 
squares, occupying public spaces. Carlos Villalobos, 43, is also a 
member of an assembly in Santiago. He tried to explain to Argentina’s 
newspaper Pagina 12 what it means to be living this unique moment. “We 
are living a total break with the everyday life to which we were 
subjected. That’s why the atmosphere is very special, invigorating and 
very joyful. We are recovering a sense of humanity from the rebellion, 
the appropriation of spaces in our communities,” Carlos commented.

But far from being ideal spaces, assemblies are full of contradictions 
and tension. Accepting the gaze of others and building in the community 
is a challenge. “In my assembly, there are people of all ages, with very 
different backgrounds. The truth is that there is a bit of everything. 
And what we see is that there is an emptying of content in people’s 
normal discourse. Just imagine that we have now been meeting for a few 
months and an ordinary neighbor who probably refrained from political 
participation is now interested in his country’s future. Therefore, he 
is practicing his opinion,” Villalobos noted. But the meetings were 
fostered by the need of venting about the outrages committed by Chile’s 
economic system against the population. “We began to question the system 
that was imposed on us for over 30 years. That is one of the topics we 
could not avoid in every meeting. We also gathered to resist the 
enormous repression that we were living at the time and that still 
continues,” Rojas added.

*“Carabineros police seem like a foreign occupation army”*

A few days after the popular uprising began in Chile; President 
Sebastian Piñera ordered a curfew and decided to use soldiers in the 
streets. The image of trucks loaded with soldiers traveling around the 
country was a hard blow to the memory of many Chileans. During those 
days and until today, there is bloody repression with thousands of 
complaints of human rights violations. If such repression was violent in 
Santiago, despite all the media reporting every day, it’s hard to 
imagine how it was in less visible areas of the country. Andrea 
Gonzalez, 30, is a member of the Marga Marga Assembly in Quilpué, an 
area of green valleys located between the cities of Santiago and Viña 
del Mar. Gonzalez commented that her city’s police station is infamous 
for having the highest number of complaints nationwide given the brutal 
actions of its personnel. “Here there were rapes, torture, humiliation, 
even kidnappings, mainly of children and women. In our assembly, we 
understood that we had to do something more than denunciating. So, we 
decided to protest in front of police stations, to monitor the police 
activity. We moved to the surroundings of the police station. We slept 
there so that we could pressure and somehow prevent them from violating 
and raping our children,” Gonzalez said.

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Facing the fear embodied by the police corps inherited from the Augusto 
Pinochet dictatorship is a great challenge for a large part of the 
Chilean population. “Many of our adults seemed to be very scared. What 
we have been living for 100 days they lived for 17 years and with much 
worse horrific situations than what we can imagine. However, we decided 
to do something about it in our assemblies because we understood that 
this fear was one of the reasons why Chile took so long to rebel,” Rojas 
explained. “We are facing some sort of foreign occupation army that sees 
citizens as their enemies,” Villalobos said to explain what the 
Carabineros police generate among the population.

A deep criticism of the neoliberal system is the common denominator in 
the assemblies. People are talking from their exhaustion about a system 
that wore them down. They don’t want to continue living in debt; they 
don’t understand why they have to pay expensive basic services while the 
elite fills their own pockets. It is their dignity that the Chilean 
people are demanding in the streets. And the assemblies are the space to 
express their exhaustion with party politics. “What emerges in our 
assemblies is the need to build a new institution that allows the people 
to take part in the decision making process. A participatory democracy, 
not a representative democracy,” Villalobos argued. Outside Santiago’s 
Marin Assembly, the Marga Marga Assembly is also putting on their agenda 
the need to denounce the serious socio-environmental crisis generated by 
the Chilean model. “Real estate development is devastating our native 
forests and is moving towards the vegetation of our hills. We have to 
understand that they are the basis for inhabiting our territory with 
dignity,” Gonzalez said.

The Chilean people have said enough. Based on organization and unity, 
the assemblies are projecting a determination to not to repeat the 
measures that have enriched only a few. Priscila, a member of the 
assembly in Santiago, explained it like this, “We are the generation 
that did everything the model demanded from us to succeed, to live the 
life of surplus that neoliberalism promises. But we realized that even 
doing so it will not work. If we continue that path, our parents will 
continue to die poor. That’s it. No question the choices are resist or 
resist.”

/
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Source URL: Resumen Latinoamericano – English 
<https://www.resumen-english.org/2020/02/citizen-assemblies-are-challenging-the-neo-liberal-model-in-chile>



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