“Contrary to what is believed, Pinochet’s Constitution had not existed for a long time,” says Ricardo Israel, lawyer, professor, former candidate for president of Chile, from Miami. And he says it because this noon, Miami time, he presents his latest book: Chile and its 360 degree turn. There he talks about the two constituent processes that between 2019 and 2023 tried to change the Chilean Constitution inherited from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. Both attempts failed, reflecting, according to the author, the inability of political elites to build a democratic consensus in the midst of an increasingly disenchanted citizenry.
In the seventies, the academic observed first-hand the effects of political polarization in his country. As a law student, he witnessed the 1973 coup d’état and how it marked national politics for decades. Perhaps that experience is the key to his way of understanding democracy.
In October 2019, the social outbreak in Chile took the political class by surprise. What began as protests against an increase in the price of public transportation quickly escalated into a deeper questioning of the political and economic model. In this context, the president Sebastian Piñera He promoted the idea of a new Constitution as a response to the crisis.
In the book, Israel does not hide his skepticism about the reasons behind this decision: “There is still a lack of an explanation as to why pineapple led the country to this uncertainty. (…) Out of cowardice? To avoid being prosecuted for human rights violations? So he can finish his term?”
Then a Constituent Convention was formed, which ended up drafting a project with an orientation linked to the left: recognizing plurinationality, expanding social rights and transforming the relationship between the State and the economy. This project was voted on and rejected in 2022. But the impulse to renew the Constitution remained and in 2023 a new process led by conservative forces tried to draft its own text. The Chileans again said no.
-What was the error of the constituent processes in Chile? If there were two rejections, something happened.
-Yes, the error was the same in both cases: confusing what a Constitution is. One with a proposal from the left and the other from the right, what they did was transfer what was a political program to paper. In the case of the first process, with a radicality that Chile had not known. It was a proposal that went against the entire process that began with the Colony.
-But wasn’t the idea to end Pinochet’s Constitution?
-Contrary to what is believed, Pinochet’s Constitution had not existed for a long time. It was the most modified Constitution in the history of Chile since 2005. It had the signature of President Lagos and all his ministers. I have taught Constitutional Law for a good part of my life and the students were very surprised when one assured that Pinochet’s Constitution, the original, practically did not apply. In fact, as soon as it was approved, Pinochet’s cousin, who was the Minister of Justice and who later became a dissident, Mónica Madariaga, drafted the transitional provisions and that was what governed Chile until democracy returned. In fact, after Pinochet was defeated in the 1989 plebiscite there was a reform to that Constitution that modified fifty-odd articles. Without that, the election that elected (Patricio) Aylwin could not have existed. Neither communists nor socialists would have been able to participate.
-Is the first reform project born from that 2019 uprising?
-Yes, it was the consequence of a deviation from democracy known as “mob rule.” The violence of October 2019 was so unexpected, it was so strong, that decisions were made based on no one knows what. Unless what Piñera wanted was for his government not to end, how could it have ended due to that acute violence?
-So what happened after that first attempt at constitutional reform?
-Instead of accepting the result, which was very overwhelming, 62 percent, and where the difference against was greatest was where it would have had the greatest consequences, which were the areas of indigenous predominance, instead of accepting that result, the right They had the fantasy that now they could approve the Constitution they wanted.
-And what happened?
-That, due to the radicality that had been experienced, for the first time in Chile, two forces that had been smaller in these 30 years of the return to democracy faced each other in the last presidential election. One is a group that goes against the Concertación, and elects Boric. But whoever faces it, and wins the first vote. It is a group that breaks away from the right. And the Republican Party is born: for the first time there is a party that, without any complexes, vindicates the Pinochet dictatorship. This political program is the proposal that comes in the second draft of the Constitution. But it’s good that it was rejected, because on both occasions the electorate taught both the right and the left that in democracy the votes do not belong to anyone, they do not belong to the political parties.
-Then he went from one side to the other.
-From a Constitution that wanted to change everything, it went to one that did not want to change anything. In the last one there was a fantasy that the problems of questioning the political system and especially the economic system would end, if there was a Constitution approved in democracy. And that was the political program that tried to be expressed in a Constitution, that is why it was defeated and in good time. After four lost years, we returned to the starting point, which is why I call my book “The 360 Degree Turn.”
-But the country has to continue…
-Chile’s experience has been hard enough for many people to reappear now demanding what gave such good results to Chile, the democracy of agreements. In the year 88, more things divided us than any division that exists today. The division was total. The percentage that supported Pinochet did not want democracy and many others did not want the market. And we were able to agree until the process was exhausted.
-When was it sold out?
-I would say that when the Lagos government ended, in 2006. There was a very strong political defeat with the arrival of Piñera. But above all, that impulse to do new things was lost. Imagine in a mining country having proposed a Constitution that considered it degrading for the country to continue exploiting its natural resources, which is what Chile lives off…
-And what should be done?
-I would propose only two things. One, economic development. We know enough to know what policies work and what policies don’t work. And the other is to go towards quality democracy. In other words, two elements that no Latin American country has today.
-Is there a possibility of returning to a democracy of agreements in Chile?
-I think so. Everything that surrounded the funeral of a person who was not a good politician, like Piñera, caught my attention. Yes, he embodied from the right the possibility of seeking agreements above all and legitimizing himself with the support of his rivals. But there was some of what had been lost, some of what worked well. Starting with the election of Aylwin, which was a great surprise for Chileans because it was a very successful government. Aylwin was selected fundamentally because he had supported the coup, and to say that he supported the coup and that it was key to the return to democracy, isn’t that contradictory? But it is the story of Chile told without bias.
-How was it?
-An agreement was made with one of the last political prisoners, Clodomiro Almeyda, who was the head of the Socialist Party, who had entered Chile clandestinely and was in jail for that famous article that legalized left-wing militants. Chilean. Because fundamentally they had sought to make it impossible for the political forces that had been behind Salvador Allende to return. That’s my turn: my parents came here to the United States as political exiles. All my childhood memories are with the figure of Allende. They were very close friends with my father. He was dedicated to commerce and had no political motivation, it was simply a friendship of many years since my father was a journalist in the south of Chile. But what catches my attention is the influence of a Nazi thinker in the two Chilean constitutional processes.
-A Nazi thinker?
-His name is Carl Schmitt. And he was not only a political scientist. He is the author of this idea that politics is not about reaching agreements, that you fight an enemy and not an adversary. Furthermore, Carl Schmitt had another peculiarity: he died in Germany without ever giving up his ideas and very proud of having been the ideologue. He was influential in the person who wrote the Constitution for Pinochet, whose name is Jaime Guzmán.
-What consequences does the failure of the two attempts at constitutional reform have?
-They were wasted opportunities and I hope the experience has been useful. The problem for Chile is that the political center has disappeared, for practical purposes. And both processes had that phenomenon that is the influence of social networks. People who were not active in parties promoted themselves: rather than offering the knowledge they had, they offered their ignorance. They considered it a virtue not to have any. Such was the discredit of the political class.
-It is not a phenomenon exclusive to Chile.
-It is a phenomenon that we see in the United States, we see it in Europe, we see it everywhere. The lack of knowledge is flaunted, but with the consequence, at least in Chile, of having written something that was ultimately rejected.
* The presentation of “Chile and its 360 degree turn” is this Wednesday at 12 noon Miami time. Can follow on Youtube from this link.
♦ Ricardo Israel was born in Los Angeles in 1950.
♦ He has a doctorate in Political Science from the University of Essex and a degree in Law from the University of Chile. He was a presidential candidate in Chile in 2013 for the Regionalist Independent Party and has worked as a teacher and commentator in various international media, including Infobae.
♦ Among his works stand out Chile 1970-1973: The democracy that was lost among all y Politics and Ideology in Allende’s Chile.
