Author: Simn Escoffier M.

Doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford.

http://www.futureofcities.ox.ac.uk/people/simon-escoffier
Bio:
Simn is a DPhil candidate at St Antonys College, University of Oxford,
and a postgraduate research associate at the Oxford Programme for
the Future of Cities. As an activist he has been involved in student
organisations, groups defending health rights, and other movements
defending the right to the city. Simns research is concerned with
social movements of the urban poor in Chile and Latin America.
Twitter handle: @SimEscof

THE CURRENT TRENDS

SEPTEMBER 11THS RIOTS

OF CHILEAN POLITICISATION:
IN POOR NEIGHBOURHOODS.

LEARNING

FORM

As every year, this September 11 th in Chile was marked by social

unrest in marginalised neighbourhoods (poblaciones). Groups violently
clash with the police - coming to these neighbourhoods to protect
private and public property. Barricades block main streets in the
neighbourhoods and hooded people attack police cars and tankettes.
Every year, police brutality and peoples violence leave some detained
and
injured. With these expressions of social violence people
performatively enact, in current days, the confrontations produced
during the 1980s between poblacin dwellers and the military
dictatorship (1973 1989). Back in those years poblacin dwellers
many times engaged in deadly clashes against the military, using
stones, sticks, and Molotov cocktails. Those confrontations became
regular forms of resistance against authoritarianism, the daily military
repression, and human rights abuses. In the current democratic regime
the confrontations only resemble the ones that occurred during the
dictatorship. In Chile this phenomenon is criminalised and little
reflection is devoted to it. In fact, most people act rather indiferently
to these riots: after 25 years of democratic rule, violence in
poblaciones seems like merely stereotypic behaviour. In this context
however, a question remains unanswered: are these clashes simply an
empty, pointless way of offloading violence, or can Chilean society
learn something from them?
I argue that although a seemingly isolated phenomena, the riots
express the spirit of Chiles process of politicisation in the last 25
years.

Current forms of grassroots politicisation

I call the process whereby people exercise their power to influence
public afairs politicisation. While in the last fifteen years an increasing
share of Chileans become interested in having a political role,
expressions of collective action have carefully detached from political
parties. That is, Chilean societys politicisation is increasingly
prescinding from political parties. Former student movement leader
and Communist party member Camila Vallejo knew that any sign of
prioritising party interests over the movements would threaten the
student assemblys autonomy, resulting in a loss of leadership. The
Communist Cristin Cuevas also needed to distance himself from party
politics to successfully lead the 37 days strike of subcontracted mining
workers in 2007 - setting an important precedent for the mining labour
movement. Social movements have had to react to parties collusion
with economic private interests and consistent efort to co-opt
organisations, reducing politics to an electoral matter only.
Accordingly, all other movements have had to take a particular stand
regarding party politics and the government. As one of the most
innovative and consistent movements claiming for social housing, the
Movement of Dwellers in the Struggle (MPL) for example has made this
relationship very explicit, claiming that their struggle is without,
within, and against institutional politics. Divided into a strand more
sympathetic to party politics and another rejecting any electoral logic,
Democratic Revolution (RD) is another movement that has needed to
keep a distance from political parties. In fact, despite becoming
country-wide and having parliamentary representation, RD decided to
define itself as a movement, explicitly asserting autonomy from
electoral games.
This scenario radically difers from the one that Chile experienced
before 1989. In those years diferentiating grassroots from party
politics was not simple: because most people involved in social
movements also belonged to political parties. Unlike today, parties
were in the core of Chilean politicisation, which ubiquitously permeated
all national processes. Parties ideological commitment was so strong
that their actions only partially had electoral aims. When the Socialist
party for example coordinated urban land take-overs in the late 1960s
and early 1970s, it mainly intended to supply the poor with what they
had been historically deprived of, namely, land. Later, during the
dictatorship (1973 - 1989) parties were not concerned with electoral
interests: belonging to a political party became a way of struggling
against the military, over human rights, and democracy.

The meaning of Septembers riots

Supporting the interesting argument whereby Chile has constructed a
marketing democracy in the last 25 years, in the acclaimed film No
Gael Garca plays the role of a brilliant and creative publicist who
successfully designs the campaign that seduced Chileans to vote in
favour of democracy in the 1988 referendum. In the eyes of many
Chileans, however, the film completely neglects their national political
reality. The truth is that the return to democracy was orchestrated
much earlier than the referendum. Since the early 1980s, a coalition of
centre-left political parties called Concertacin negotiated a
democratic transition with the right wing and the military. As a result,
the early 1990s saw a Chilean society with a highly unsuccessful
process of transitional justice due to a constitution created in 1980
extending dictatorial public policies, and a set of laws that prevented
Chile from being completely democratic. This marked a strong decoupling on the left: much more engaged with grassroots popular
organisations, many leftists, the Communist party, and factions of the
Socialist party had created the revolutionary project of a new society
built upon defeating the dictatorship and not negotiating with it. Not
supported by the rest of the centre-left parties during the 1980s, this
revolutionary project became relegated at the expense of
arrangements benefitting local elites and trans-national corporations. A
great deal of Chiles current regulations favouring economic private
interests have their roots in the authoritarian dictatorship.
Chilean figures of growth, consumption, and poverty in the last 25
years may be promising, however it is undeniable that those
developments have not accounted for all voices. It is this neglect
together with historical frustration that motivates the violent
confrontations occurring in poblaciones every September 11th. One
may be inclined to ask: why do people choose violence, stones, and
Molotov cocktails instead of words and arguments? I would answer that
these people feel that their voices have been denied. The people in
poor neighbourhoods hence choose to re-create in current days the
same clashes that occurred during the dictatorship. They use violence
and an emblematic date to theatrically bring the dictatorship to the
present. With no words they manage to convey that in Chile the
dictatorship never ended, because they feel as politically relegated as
they did when Pinochet ruled.
The Chilean student movement is one of the most organised,
numerous, and convincing movements seen in Latin America in the last
20 years. Called the Chilean Winter by the New York Times (recalling
Arab Spring in 2010) the student movement coordinated monthly
marches during the second half of 2011. Portrayed by the media as the
biggest demonstrations since the return to democracy, the movement
managed to gather more than 150,000 people in some protests.

Students occupied schools, universities and institutions, they did

hunger strikes, and even dressed like zombies to dance Michael
Jacksons Thriller in front of the presidential palace. Pieras neoliberal
government (2010 2014) completely neglected students demands,
responding by strengthening police repression. Although Bachelets
current centre left government has addressed the issue, students are
still struggling to have the core of their demands heard. Students claim
that decisions are being made behind closed doors, and suggest that
the drafted educational reform only reflects politicians collusion with
private economic interests.
The politicisation of social movements in the last years and the yearly
clashes in poor neighbourhoods express a common reality: that since
the dictatorship Chiles political institutions have become historically
accustomed to neglect peoples voices.
I thought that maybe the article could include some images and
videos.
Images
A woman defending a barricade in poblacin La Victoria (1983)
http://www.archivomuseodelamemoria.cl:8080/uploads/1/5/154638/81.j
pg
Raid at poblacin La Victoria (1983)
http://www.archivomuseodelamemoria.cl:8080/index.php/158514;isad
Clashes at poblacin La Victoria (1983)
http://www.archivomuseodelamemoria.cl:8080/index.php/158526;isad
Videos:
Clashes in poblaciones (1980s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fs3hVNnCS8A
Clashes in poblaciones (2000s)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5uZqqyaL5sw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op1_u3MeyOI