The 1980 Chilean Constitution, conceived during the government of the dictator Augusto Pinochet, has been in question since its conception. Reforming it, however, seemed an impossible task until mid-October 2019 when the Chilean people took to the streets in a social protest that shook their government, echoing in almost every corner of the country.
Thousands of Chileans took to the streets for a month to demand improvements in health care, education, and greater social and economic equity. Finally, on November 15, 2019, the government agreed to call a referendum on April 26, 2020, that would decide whether the southern country would initiate a constitutional process to draft a new constitution that would move it away from the neoliberal and authoritarian model inherited from the dictatorship under Pinochet, which prioritizes market growth over social welfare.
The calendar, however, was extended when the pandemic arrived due to the unrestrained increase in new cases of Covid-19 in April. The Chilean government, attending to the Ministry of Health, postponed the referendum for October when it was presumed that the contagion figures would decrease.
