Still no way out of the crisis that is shaking Chile. After a week of protests, sometimes violent, the Chileans do not relieve the pressure on their government that seems paralyzed in the face of a social explosion, fed by years of socio-economic frustrations, he did not see coming.
Poor neighborhoods and wealthy neighborhoods, all mobilized
Clashes with the police, hundreds of looting, protests that culminate Friday, October 25 in Santiago with a historic mobilization of nearly a million people: one week after the start of the dispute, triggered by a rise in the price of metro ticket, the street does not give in and the list of demands continues to grow.
Decent pensions, affordable health and education, lower prices for medicines ... but also the resignation of conservative President Sebastian Pinera or new Constitution to replace the one inherited from the period of Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship (1973-1990).
Social justice claims to the demands of political transformation, "which of these two dimensions will be the key to managing an exit to the social and political crisis that the country is living, it is difficult to say," said Marcelo Mella, a political scientist at the University of Santiago.
But with over a million people mobilized in the streets of the country, the challenge is not limited to the claims of the most disadvantaged. "In this social explosion, there are people who have a lot of anger, but also, and this is new, join the demonstrations of the inhabitants of wealthier neighborhoods", says Genaro Cuadros, professor of social urbanism at the University Diego Portales.
Chilean yellow waistcoats
From the beginning of the protests, President Pinera, elected in 2017, was criticized for not having taken the measure of the crisis. As proof, his request for "forgiveness" to the population, after considering Chile as a country in "war". "Never has a government been so incompetent to handle a crisis that the police have not been enough and we have ended up with the military on the street," says Genaro Cuadros.
For now, Sebastian Pinera clings to his "social agenda", with the announcement Tuesday of a battery of measures including a rise in minimum old age, more taxes for the richest, freeze the increase in price of electricity.
But "the majority of these measures strengthen public spending and weigh on the state, rather than advance on the regulation" of the Chilean economic model and its inequalities, judge Marcelo Mella.
For the political scientist, the absence of leaders of a particularly heterogeneous protest movement also represents "a big challenge" for the power.
Several Chilean newspapers have also drawn parallels between the Chilean slingshot and the Yellow Vests crisis in France, recalling that the "recipe" of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, to get out of the crisis had been the organization of a " great national debate.
Emergency state
Deciding to declare a state of emergency from the first violence on October 18, with thousands of military men in the streets, the Chilean president has attracted the wrath of protesters, in a country still marked by a dictatorship that left 3,200 dead and missing.
In case of unrest, this type of decision "is the last, or penultimate" that a government takes. In the case of Chile, this was the first, "says Marcelo Mella, for whom the power has thus trapped itself.
In an attempt at appeasement, the head of state announced Thursday the possibility of an upcoming lifting of the emergency measures. But what is its room for maneuver against the risk of persistent violence?
"It will take the government is very aggressive in the process of reforms (...) and capable of the widest possible political dialogue" to respond to it, says Marcelo Mella.
Hundreds of supermarkets, businesses, companies ransacked or burned, tourists who postpone their stay, major damage in the subway. According to local media, the destruction amounts to more than $ 900 million and directly affects 400,000 employees.
But in this country, which is among the most economically stable in Latin America, "it is unlikely that (the demonstrations) will have a significant economic cost," notes Latin America Economic. The Santiago Stock Exchange showed no signs of excitement and the Chilean peso remained stable.
With AFP