Dyer: Chilean elections don’t fit the tale of mad Americas

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British journalist Claude Cockburn once claimed to have won a competition among London Times sub-editors to write the dullest headline and publish it in the newspaper. His winning title: Small Earthquake in Chile, Not Much Hurt.

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Gwen Dyer • Special for Postmedia News, Chilean presidential candidate Jose Antonio Caste of the far-right Republican Party looks after a live radio debate ahead of the December 19 second round presidential election in Santiago, Chile, December 10, 2021. (REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado/File Photo Article content

British journalist Claude Cockburn once claimed to have won a competition among London Times sub-editors to write the dullest headline and publish it in the newspaper. His winning title: Small Earthquake in Chile, Not Much Hurt.

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This is bound to annoy the Chileans, but their country elsewhere is a boring example. Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, asked about Chile’s geopolitical importance, once quipped: “Chile is a dagger pointing to the heart of Antarctica.”

Anyway, here’s an article about tomorrow’s presidential election in Chile, and I’ll try not to make it too boring (although it doesn’t help that the right-wing candidate is doing a salute to Donald Trump).

Many journalists present him as another episode of The Americas Go Crazy. After Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil, here comes another far-right tyrant who bases his rhetoric on nationalism, racism, and contempt for laws and rules that restrict less fortunate men.

Indeed, some journalists, desperate for a consistent narrative line, even portray this election as a replay of the great Chilean tragedy of 1973-90, when the leftist Allende government was violently overthrown by Augusto Pinochet’s 17-year dictatorship (3,000 executed or “disappeared”). , torture of 30,000, etc.). But it is not so at all.

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The biggest surprise in the first round of last month’s presidential election was that far-right politician Jose Antonio Caste got the most votes. He promised to save Chile from the communists (even though the communist candidate received only one percent of the vote) and from vicious job-stealing immigrants.

Since 1.5 million immigrants, mostly Venezuelan and Haitian refugees, entered the country (population 19 million) in recent years, many Chileans are feeling overwhelmed. Caste says he will dig a great trench along Chile’s 7,801-kilometre border to stop them – and the idea of ​​the Great Wall has already been taken – and that promise has some momentum.

Cast paints his opponent in the run-off, Gabriel Borek, as a “Communist,” but the 35-year-old former student leader is a sheep in wolf’s clothing. He suffers from the reflexive romanticism of the left in Latin America, where he calls his colleagues “the Comrade” and salutes now and then, but his political project is not revolutionary.

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There are the usual parts about feminism, the green economy, and rights of the LGBT community and indigenous peoples, but the political heart of Boric’s program is to expand the public health and pension systems, cut the work week from 44 hours to 40 hours and rebuild the national rail system.

It’s the kind of program that Joe Biden is happy to sign on to. The question really is whether this is drastic enough to convince the frustrated veterans of the massive street protests of 2019 to come out and vote for Borek.

Chile is a booming country with half of the population worrying about making their money until the next payday. It has the worst income inequality of any developed country, thanks in large part to the legacy of the Pinochet years.

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Other countries that have voted for populist autocrats learn from bitter experience that this kind of situation gives fast-talking snake oil sellers plenty to work with, so Chilean Democrats are right to worry. But the recent votes in Chile, which were really important, showed a different picture.

About 78 percent of Chilean voters approved a national conference to write a new constitution to replace the Pinochet-era constitution in 2020. In last May’s elections to write that constitution, right-wing parties could not even elect a third. Of the members who needed to veto parts of the constitution they did not like the oath.

Chilean voters are clearly fickle, but less than half of them bothered to vote in the first round last month. They were waiting for the second round to choose between two presidential candidates, not seven.

In the last poll before the vote, Borek still had a lead of 52 percent to 48 Caste. It’s close, but probably enough.

Gwen Dyer is a freelance journalist based in London, England.

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