On October 18, 2019, Chilean President Sebastian Piñera ordered a 3% hike in subway fares that ignited massive protests in Santiago with more than 1.2 million participants. In a society where 33% of the nation’s wealth resides with the top 1%, and where ex-military officials and a tiny elite control the majority of the country’s remaining precious natural resources, Piñera’s fare hike led to what became a key slogan of the movement: “Chile se despertó”, or “Chile woke up.”
Since October, mass mobilizations have expanded into every city in Chile, blossoming into a transformative social movement that has had local, national, and global reverberations.
Recently, I was in Punta Arenas and noticed that even in the extreme south of the country, hundreds of protestors actively engaged in skirmishes with the military police – toppling colonial monuments, and targeting the city’s cultural institutions with revolutionary inscriptions. Indeed, the movement has reached into every sector of Chilean society and presents an uncertain, if hopeful experience for undoing the excesses and failures of neoliberalism.
