Explaining Brazil #131: What the future holds for Chile

Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Chile endured one of the most brutal of Latin America’s dictatorships, under the rule of General Augusto Pinochet. Throughout his 17 years as president, Pinochet oversaw the execution of thousands of his critics, along with tens of thousands more arbitrary arrests, incidents of torture, and forced disappearances, while Pinochet himself amassed a huge personal fortune.

On Sunday, Chileans voted to draft a new Constitution, doing away with Pinochet’s charter once and for all. And this was no tight referendum, a stunning 78 percent voted in favor of drafting a new constitution. This week, we speak to an expert on Chile to learn more about this movement and how the country will design its new constitution.

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On this episode:

• Daniel Figueroa is a political scientist from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and a Chevening scholar at the University of Sussex.

Background reading:

• Chile’s referendum on Sunday came after a year of civil unrest.
• Unlike Chile, Brazil passed a new democratic constitution in 1988, after 21 years of military rule. Listen to our special 4-episode series on the 30th birthday of Brazil’s charter.
• A law to allow Chileans to make withdrawals from their pension funds could expose the extent of the country’s social security deficit.
• Amid the turbulence of the Covid-19 pandemic, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera saw his popularity tumble.
• In episode 83 of our podcast, we covered the wave of social unrest that swept Latin America in 2019.
• Chile’s capitalization pension system is a “ticking time bomb,” explains Lucas Berti.

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• #constitution
• #democracy
• #dictatorship
• #latinAmerica