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<div class="header reader-header reader-show-element"> <font
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<h1 class="reader-title">Citizen Assemblies Are Challenging the
Neo Liberal Model in Chile<br>
</h1>
February 6, 2020</div>
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<p>By Juan Manuel Boccacci – February 3, 2020</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>“We started to question the way we live”</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><a
href="https://orinocotribune.com/beaten-mutilated-and-forced-to-undress-inside-chiles-brutal-police-crackdown-against-protesters/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">RELATED
CONTENT: Beaten, Mutilated and Forced to Undress:
Inside Chile’s Brutal Police Crackdown Against
Protesters</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><strong>“Carabineros police seem like a foreign
occupation army”</strong></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p><a
href="https://orinocotribune.com/chile-hard-right-group-vandalizes-tomb-of-victor-jara/"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">RELATED
CONTENT: Chile: Hard Right Group Vandalizes Tomb of
Victor Jara</a></p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.</p>
<p>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.”</p>
<p><em><br>
</em></p>
<p><a
href="https://www.resumen-english.org/2020/02/citizen-assemblies-are-challenging-the-neo-liberal-model-in-chile"
target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Source URL:
Resumen Latinoamericano – English</a></p>
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