Constitutional debate in Chile: 449 articles for a turning point

Social progress or poison for the economy? In Chile, a new constitution is intended to herald the departure from the neoliberal economic model. The debates revolve around the question of how wealth should be distributed.

If you look at the huge avocado groves that stretch for kilometers north of Chile’s capital Santiago through the dry steppe, you get an idea of ​​how important the export of vegetables and fruit is for the narrow Andean country. The plantation owners have so far had private water rights for the booming, water-intensive avocado business. But now they are in danger. Because in Chile, water should no longer be privately owned, but declared as a public good.

At least that’s what the draft of Chile’s new constitution, which has just been drafted, says. The 154 elected members of the constitutional convention had almost a year to present a new Magna Carta. In mid-May the time had come: a draft with 499 articles.

And they have it all. This is intended to herald the end of the Chilean special way that water is privately owned. The aim is apparently that large avocado landowners are no longer allowed to pump up the damp water from deep wells, while small farmers and the population are missing it.

Social movements found a hearing

Other articles deal with demands from social movements that had campaigned particularly hard for a new constitution. These include the right to abortion and free education up to a university degree.

Accordingly, the state should play the decisive role in the fulfillment of these rights. This is a novelty in Chile, where pension provision, education and health care have been largely privately organized by constitution.

Farewell to the legacy of Pinochet

The Magna Carta, which is valid to date, dates from the time of the military dictatorship under Augusto Pinochet. In the 1980s, he laid down a neoliberal course that helped Chile’s economy to enjoy a long-lasting boom.

The country now has the highest per capita income in South America. However, wealth is extremely unequally distributed. While avocado exporters send their children to expensive private schools, poor Chileans often live in shacks without electricity.

rebellion against inequality

This social inequality was one of the reasons for the 2019 social protests, in which 1.5 million people took to the streets. Their most important demands at the time: more social rights and an end to the neoliberal agenda.

After months of protests, the protesters finally forced the election of a constituent assembly in 2021 – and thought they had achieved their goal.

Participation – not everyone perceives it

But the vote that followed revealed once again Chile’s problem with democratic participation. Shortly after compulsory voting was lifted in 2013, voter turnout fell dramatically.

In the 2017 presidential election, just 49 percent of Chileans voted. It won the conservative Sebastián Piñera. In 2021, when left-wing President Gabriel Boric won, the turnout of 55 percent was already celebrated as a success.

Different mobilization

Apparently, a large part of the population always stays away from the ballot box, depending on the election. In the 2021 Constituent Assembly vote, it was primarily the Conservatives who failed to mobilize their supporters.

Because the right-wing conservative camp is critical of the entire constitutional process. Voter turnout at the time was just 43.38 percent.

So Chile’s left emerged as the clear winners. The centrist and conservative camps that had dominated until then even missed out on the blocking minority of a third of the seats.

Therefore, the draft constitution with its 499 articles now represents a turning point in Chile. In addition to a decentralization of political power away from the capital Santiago, minorities such as the Mapuche from southern Chile are to be recognized for the first time and given special basic rights.

More rights for indigenous peoples

In this way, Chile should develop into a plurinational state in which the indigenous peoples receive their own rights within the state as a whole. Above all, this creates resistance in conservative circles. They fear that this will allow indigenous Mapuche to claim lands and territories that were snatched from them by the Chilean state in the 19th century. That would inevitably lead to conflicts with companies that have thrived in the Mapuche provinces of southern Chile for decades.

For example, cellulose companies operate extensive eucalyptus plantations for the global packaging industry. Settlers, many of whom immigrated from Germany or Switzerland, also fear for their farms. And of course the new constitution also threatens the private water rights of avocado exporters and thus their profits.

The right-wing conservatives make mood

That is why the most important representative of the right-wing conservatives is against the draft: José Antonio Kast – the losing presidential candidate in the 2021 run-off election – railed against members of the constitutional convention on Twitter. They want to “steal the money of the Chileans, their children and grandchildren,” he recently warned. With “499 articles, the draft constitution is the longest constitution in the world,” he said. Kast is the representative of a significant part of the population. In December’s election, 3.65 million people voted for him – a total of 44.13 percent.

It is therefore completely unclear whether a majority of Chileans will accept the draft constitution in the referendum on September 4th. Polls meanwhile see the proponents in the minority. While some hope for a fairer Chile and an end to the privileges of a small elite, for others the spirit of the new constitution apparently goes too far.

In the end, it will probably be decisive which side convinces the undecided. After all, the vote in September is mandatory for all voters for the first time in years. That’s what the Constitutional Assembly decided.