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June 2020
Social Outburst in Chile: Interpretative Analysis of
How Emotions Operated in the Chilean Social Conflict of
October of 2019
By Luciano Panizza Student Number 12760773 Master Thesis Political Science Track: Public Policy and Governance
Graduate School of Social Sciences University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Prof. Supervisor: Mike Medeiros Second Reader: Imke Harbers
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Abstract
The Chilean social conflict presented in many ways a surprise for the occidental world, as the county has been seen as one of the successful cases of the neoliberal economic model, and was considered as one of the most stable and strong economies in the Latin American world. The intensity of the violence from the very beginning also took by surprise even the Chileans and did not entirely understand what was happening and why so much destruction was occurring. As the conflict advanced through the weeks and months, it became clearer the reasons of so much social discomfort: the neoliberal system itself. The emotional display by the protesters and the social movement, the construction of the narratives, the creation of collective identity, the division created in the society, all come from those who agree and those who reject the system, creating intense responses and interactions among individuals and the actors involved in the conflict. The Chilean press called this conflict “Social Outburst”, which for the purposes of this article, the name fits to size, as emotions will be presented as the main factor to decode the escalation of the conflict.
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A man who stands tall, Is a man who lets a tear roll. He knows every brick, Comes from the scars of every fall.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter I: Introduction ………..6
Chapter II: Theoretical Review………...…9
1. Important Definitions………..9
2. New Approaches………...10
3. Resistance and Critiques to the New Approaches………...13
4. Different Uses of Interpretative Analysis………...14
5. Social Movement Theory in Latin America………..16
Chapter III: Case Presentation………..19
1. Historical Context………...19
2. Explaining the Demands……….22
a. The Pensions System………...23
b. Healthcare System………...24
c. Public Transport System, Especially in Santiago………...24
d. Privatization of Water Supply………25
e. Education System………...26
f. Corruption Cases……….27
i. La Polar………...27
ii. Collusion on Medication Prices………..28
iii. Illegal Financing for Political Campaigns………..28
iv. Caval………...29
3. Justification……….30
4. Research Gap………..31
5. Theoretical Framework………...32
a. Emotions in Social Movements………..32
b. Relative Deprivation And Social Movements……….35
c. Analyzing the Stages of a Conflict………..37
6. Methodology: How Emotions Operate………...37
a. Identifying Emotions………..38
b. Narratives, Words, and Metaphors……….38
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d. Survey and Sampling Strategy………39
7. Main Expectations and Hypothesis………....41
Chapter IV: Empirical Setting………..42
1. Level I: Win – Win………...43
a. Stage 1: Tension……….……...43
b. Stage 2: Debate………...43
c. Stage 3: Actions Instead of Words………...44
2. Level II: Win – Lose………...44
a. Stage 4: Coalitions………..44
b. Stage 5 - 6: Loss of Face - Threat Strategies………..45
3. Level III: Lose – Lose………45
a. Stage 7 – 8: Limited Destruction – Total Annihilation………...45
b. Stage 9: Together into the Abyss………53
Chapter V: Analysis………...62 1. Chronology………..62 2. Main Metaphors………..68 3. Survey Results……….70 a. Raw Results……….70 b. Crosstabs……….76
Chapter VI: Conclusions………...79
References……….83 Appendix………...87 1. Pictures………87 2. Figures……….93 3. Videos……….93 4. Consent form………..94
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CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION
The words used in a discussion, in order to successfully transmit a message with a positive outcome become a crucial part of the interaction. Certain words, such as those with a determined emotional load and delivered metaphorically, can deliver much strongly the message and create a change of opinion in the counterpart. When a situation like this occurs, the concept of resonation also occurs. In social movement theory, this concept is used to analyze if claims made by an actor manage to impulse their counterpart to respond to the message, and thus attract citizens to their causes the intended goal (Verhoeven & Duyvendak, 2015).
In the Chilean social outburst of October in 2019, this phenomenon occurred with various slogans used by the protesters and that spontaneously appeared among the broader civil society’s mindset. Examples of those slogans are “no son $30, son 30 años” (“It’s not $30, it’s 30 years”), and “Chile despertó” (“Chile woke up”). Both of them try to explain that for a long period, Chile has been in a situation of social discomfort that has finally ended. Both of the slogans strongly resonated among public opinion. The 30 years refer to the period of time since Chile recovered its democratic regime under a neoliberal system until the present day, which will be explained in the further pages, and presented how that model has been part of the framing process of the Chilean civil society throughout this time. The metaphor of Chile waking up is related to the fact that during that time, the population did not do anything to change the model, being in some kind of ‘slumber’. In October of 2019, the slumber ended with a fierce social conflict, which in Chile has been called “Estallido Social” (Social Outburst), filled with passion and intense emotions that led to violence, confrontations, division and unity, identity, and the claims for more social justice were transversal in every sector of Chilean society.
The protests took place almost in every city in Chile, with citizens going on the streets and participating in a social movement for the first time, a second time, others that have done it multiple times, crowding places that never saw so many people united for a common goal. One of the most emblematic points in Chile for celebrations, protests, and any social gathering of people with the same purpose is Plaza Baquedano, in the center of Santiago. This small square has a monument of Manuel Baquedano, a Chilean military and
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politician of the XIX century, a symbol of patriotism and greatness in the Chilean culture, and the square is used as the gathering nucleus of the people of Santiago, where large masses, without distinction of social class or political ideology, attend when there is a massive protest or an event to celebrate a sporting, political or social event at the national level. The name of the square was symbolically changed as Plaza Dignidad (Dignity square). The reason behind this is, besides being a neuralgic point in Santiago, is because one of the main claims of the social movement is recovering the dignity that was lost to the neoliberal system during the last 30 years.
The reasons for this social outburst are given by Chile having strong neoliberal principles embedded in the very roots of the society, where private companies have become the providers of most of the basic services for the citizens. For instance, in Chile, the water supply is in hands of private companies and not the Government, so it is not a ‘public’ service; part of the health care system is also in hands of private companies; the educational system has strong participation of privates, and higher education usually requires asking for a loan to a private financial entity and being in debt to them for long periods of time. These are some examples of basic necessities that society has and should be controlled by the State, but in Chile, the system is modeled in such a way that it encourages the participation of private companies in every aspect of daily life. The claims by the protesters are given mainly by the fact that the civil society feels that living with ‘dignity’ has been lost to the elevated costs of living in Chile, the incomes are not enough, the State has very low participation in the economy, and therefore the high levels of inequality that is present in the Chilean society. For this, demanding a new Constitution appears to be the only solution inside the mindset of the social movement for the problems of the Chilean system.
But, what is the problem with the Chilean conflict? Problematic communication and intense emotional reactions. Not only in political discourse but also in social movements, how emotions and meanings are expressed is a crucial aspect and can be decisive whether the protesters achieve their goals or not. In contexts like Chile, where their recent history has been marked by the establishment of this neoliberal model during a non-democratic period, emotions towards this system are very interesting to study, where it creates large division among the Chilean society. The importance of the emotions is decisive in the
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development of the interaction of individuals and actors, and also in the way, a social movement evolves through time, where placing certain emotions on their actions will permit success or failure on their quest for the demands. When enacting individual and collective motion, Verhoeven & Duyvendak (2016) present the idea of anxiety being an emotion that increases in scenarios of uncertainty, which can trigger the apparition of other emotions, like anger.
In sight of this, this article will be focused on a vast examination of the emotions in the Chilean social outburst, analyzing how emotions play a role in the actions of the parties and also in the escalation of the conflict. This examination will be carried out to present an answer to the question: How and which emotions in these social movements have contributed to the escalation process of the conflict? To provide guidance in the comprehension of the construction of the emotions, it is important to explain a framing analysis of the actors of the conflict, where a review of the historical, political, economic and social context will be studied, and see how the Chilean system has produced an accumulated emotional discomfort among the society. For this, the interactions will be presented through a chronology of the conflict, in order to apply Frederich Glasl’s Conflict Escalation model, which will allow to properly understand the stages of the conflict.
Finally, this work will strive to present which emotions and how they have played a crucial role in the escalation of the Chilean conflict, which has been transmitted by words, actions, protests, metaphors, discourses, images, etc. Those emotions will be the outcome of the interaction of a large social movement, and the other actors involved in the conflict, such as NGO’s, public institutions, the police, and especially the Chilean Government. And ultimately, present the results of a survey, where respondents will be asked about their feelings, emotions, and perceptions regarding the conflict, to deliver further information, and also test if the empirical analysis is consistent with the responses delivered in the survey.
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CHAPTER II: THEORETICAL REVIEW 1. Important definitions
It is not easy to understand how social movements are built and how they function, how they work, how they evolve, how to comprehend their roots and causes, and maybe even harder to finally come to a solution for the demands and complaints of that social movement. In this aspect, pragmatism would not provide many useful answers for the present times, especially in western society, where the relativization of the concepts and the truths from the past have been a constant trail of thought in the last decades. However, it is important to address the concepts of a social movement and collective action, and how they will be understood in this article. A very raw definition of both terms are given by Charles Tilly (1978), where he defines social movement with three main characteristics: a) the groups and organizations that make up a collective action; b) the events that are part of the action repertoire; and c) the ideas that unify the groups and guide their protests. Drawing some attention regarding the third aspect of this definition, the unification of a social movement is crucial if they will thrive in their demands. Johnston (2014) digs deep into the study and examination of this phenomenon, and comments that in the recent years, scholars have acknowledged the importance of identity in a social movement, contributing in the cohesion of it; afterward, in his work, the author remarks the theoretical insight about collective action frames, emphasizing that collective identity and interpretative analysis are constructions that are carried out in situations of interactions. This means that for a social movement to exist, and scholars can study them, it has to be in the context of two or more parties contesting with each other.
Secondly, collective action is comprehended as "people acting together in pursuit of common interest” (Johnston, 2014). It is possible to see how this definition intertwines with the concept of identity, where a common purpose will necessarily provide unity among a large group of people, even when that group is built by individuals with very different backgrounds. Drawing on John Kelly’s understanding of collective action, under a unified purpose, participants in collective action develop a collective identity, willing and able to create and sustain collective organization and engage in collective action (Gahan &
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Pekarek, 2013). In addition to this, the roots of the concept are given by the idea of social injustice, where widely shared values construct collective action frames (Kelly, 2019).
2. New Approaches
The evolution of the theories proved that pragmatic views of reality and finding a unique solution for different types of situations is no longer available in the range of possibilities for those who strive to solve a conflict. Until the 1960s, social movements were understood only by crowd-based theories, usually under pejorative perspectives, where crowds were assumed as groups of ‘primitives’, and emotions were completely left behind in the academic world (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006); they were seen as features that drive people into non-rational actions, and falling into exaggerations on their demonstrations. Structuralist theories of social movement strove to prove that collective action was connected with irrationality, impulsiveness, and psychopathology (Emirbayer & Goldberg, 2005). Moreover, there is proof that although meaning and beliefs, and especially the notions of ideology have always been present into the analysis of social movements, the treatment of them did not produce satisfaction, whereas they were examined either as static phenomena rather than dynamic; or they were considered highly irrelevant (Benford & Snow, 2000). Sociologists saw that rational theories of individual and collective behavior did not fulfill all the explanations that they were looking for, and shifted the questions from a motivational “why” to strategic “how” (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006). The authors comment that even grievances were rarely seen as important and emotions were dropped out of view, as activists were comprehended as rational actors. The introduction of new paradigms into the theoretical universe when academics looked into social movements opened new possibilities of comprehension of the societies, government, and behavior of the actors.
During the final part of the 20th century, a new wave of scholars and researchers focused on the construction of social movements using approaches that have not been really considered during the past. This was partly given by the new ways of participation and collective action that started to take place and become more popular, classified as non-conventional or extra-institutional types of action (Grasso, Yoxon, Karampampas and Temple, 2017). These approaches tended to be less pragmatic and included factors that
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other scholars would reject, going closer into a more interpretative analysis of these phenomena, and investigating more into non-conventional political participation, like demonstrations, protests, and riots. A new wave of authors presented new insights that were offered into the theoretical and empirical analysis of social movements and collective action, and claimed for the introduction of a social and psychological combination into the analysis, under the assumption that protests had a psychological dimension (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006). The authors quoted Smelser’s (1968) statements: “Some of the most powerful human emotions are bared in episodes of collective behavior, and since persons differ psychologically in the propensity to become involved in such episodes”. The factors that authors looked into were culture, morality, frames, emotions, biography, lived experiences, among others, which gave new insight on how people and governments had to understand social movements and interactions between actors. After the postwar periods, there was a reintroduction of the issues of the political settings into the analytical debate, where topics as administrative institutions, societal processes, and cultural features started to be examined as a whole and not separately (Hajer, 2003). It is important to remark that Hajer presents this comment under the lights of his studies on the shift to governance and the creation of new networks, leaving behind hierarchical statutes that ruled the world until that time. Nevertheless, the author proves the point that this shift meant a new way of understanding politics and interactions with different actors.
Academics understood that when analyzing social movements, many factors have to be taken into account if they want to contribute in the process of finding better solutions for a conflict, it is more convenient to dig deeper into the causes and the background of those who participate in the conflict, with the purpose of comprehending where they come from, their motives, their wishes and dreams, their view of the reality and the construction of their own reality. Theories regarding framing processes, interpretative analysis, emotions, lived experiences, culture, meaning, and every factor that is included in the construction of how an individual understands their reality started to be stronger among academia and authors.
More specifically, when a social movement or collective action was classically seen as groups of people mobilizing for a common purpose, ideology was considered to be the main factor that united them. Under the lights of new findings on the grounds of
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interpretative analysis, academics came to find clarification between the concepts of culture, social movements, frames, and ideology (Benford & Snow, 2000). According to the authors, “ideology functions both as a constraint and resource in relation to framing processes and collective action frames”. This is given since ideology implies a determined set of thoughts, principles, and values that give direction to an individual’s political and daily life. Those principles and values are keen to stay static through time and change in the most minimal way possible. Framing processes come to heal the dilemmas that live through the group of people represented by a given ideology by providing a wider view of the world, permitting the person to identify with the ideology in a way that suits better (Benford & Snow, 2000).
Scholars started to present investigations about the way individuals construct their realities and how they understand the settings where they interact with other actors in the framing process of those individuals. Benford and Snow (1992), defined the concept of ‘frame’, describing it as an interpretative outline of the world by an individual, by selecting and coding objects, events, situations, and experiences, so they can create a course of action upon those interpretations. Furthermore, from frames emerge three levels: personal life, scholar or scientific inquiry, and policy-making (Rein & Schon, 1993). Frames provide a solution to the problematic condition where an individual lives and transform it into a grievance that can be acted upon (Gahan & Pekarek, 2013). Frames have been discussed in the academic world whether they should be studied as static or dynamic phenomena, as some scholars defend the idea of frames being a result of social construction, where relations with other actors will morph one’s frame (Van den Brink, 2009). Ellingson (1995) argues that events disrupt the sets of ideas and structures within a given society, and those events change the assigned meaning to something, reconfiguring the interpretation of that given society towards a given object. Events provoke the evolution and adaptation of the individuals and social movements to the new settings of their contexts, becoming a changing and in many cases unpredictable actors in the political scenario; it might be impossible that a social movement does not evolve throughout the conflict.
The gathering and combination of the various framing processes of individuals that participate in a determined situation are considered crucial and essential for the creation of
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collective action (Van den Brink, 2009). In a determined country and society, culture plays a crucial role in the construction of reality and the framing processes of the actors. Ellingson (1995) discusses the importance of the cultural power on social movements by exposing academics that focused on “how social movement organizations and actors interpret grievances and generate consensus and belief, create collective identities, and produce frames of meaning”. But culture does more than that, where Poletta (2006) defends the idea that culture “is practically and creatively used to pursue interests, (…) and it does in a way that reproduces arrangements of power and privilege”.
However, similarly to social movements, culture does not stay still through time; it also evolves and changes (Jasper, 1997). The author comments that “culture is the only one dimension of life that humans are capable of changing”, and that people “reconfigure their individual feelings and loyalties. Taking culture into account set a major differentiation of the streams of researchers of social movements. Initial research on cultural aspects where highly cognitive, but brought to understand the aspects that build culture, such as beliefs, values, customs, symbols, ideas, ideology, and identity (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006)
3. Resistance and critiques to the new approaches
It is clear that these new approaches faced resistance by classical scholars, where they pointed out many flaws of the early stages of the interpretative analysis, as methodologically, emotions were difficult to measure and identify due to the lack of empirical proof (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006), and also overly cognitive (Van Nes & Summers, 2018). Additionally, the latter authors described crowd-tradition and Freudian-tradition rejections towards the inclusion of emotions into the analysis, the first on the grounds that emotions appear and disappear in response to the individual’s surroundings, with very little resonance; in Freudian-tradition, emotions were just the representation of one’s inner conflicts rather than responses to the social environment (Goodwin & Jasper, 2006). Regardless of the early flaws, the importance of the introduction of interpretative features into the analysis came to the attention of many other authors, contributing to the shift of paradigms in the academic world.
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Criticizers have pointed out that researchers have focused more on the conceptual development of this new approach, or the application of these concepts to specific cases, rather than doing it in a more systematic empirical method (Benford, 1997). Benford presents this critique, even though he belongs to that trail of thought. The author argues that one of the possibilities for this situation is given by the recency of the apparition of the interpretative concepts, however, he points out that more than twenty years have passed since that apparition when he presented his critique.
Another stream of critiques to the approach concerns framing processes, and its rather ambiguity to properly define a ‘frame’, given by the fact that the concept is applied for an individual behavioral scheme, while authors tend to scale the concept up, and apply it into collective behavior frames (Van den Brink, 2009). This can be connected to Goodwin & Jaspers critique on the methodology of the approach, remaining quite unclear how the method is applied into the interpretative analysis, where Rein & Schon make use of the concept in a more individualistic manner, applying it into policy controversies and strategies of action (Rein & Schon, 1993). Generally, analysis of framing processes has been criticized by authors of other streams, and also by interpretative scholars because of the “descontextualization of frames and framing processes, and for their rational focus on strategy and agency” (Van den Brink, 2009).
4. Different uses of interpretative analysis
Benford & Snow (2000) stated that “the cultural material most relevant to movement framing processes include the extant stock of meanings, beliefs, ideologies, practices, values, myths, narratives”. The components of the framing processes have come to present new approaches and comprehensions inside interpretative analysis, where the factors that build the framing process of an individual, and more broadly a social movement, are significantly various, and a framing process can be de-constructed in order to analyze the components separately. As mentioned by the latter authors, one of the main components of a framing process is the narrative, which will be the way of how a message will be developed and presented to the counterpart. Emotions are a way to design one’s narrative, but also to decode the behavior of the actors. Narratives are methods of discourse, vehicles of ideology, and essentials of the framing process of a social movement
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that calls for collective action (Poletta, 2006). When negative emotions arise in an individual or among a group of people, or in the narrative of a social movement, where identity has grown strong due to the collective action of the participant, Verhoeven & Duyvendak present an interesting characterization of the actors, where identity plays a significant role, which is the “Us and Them” concept. This characterization comes from the anger produced in the “us” because of the actions of “them”, where anger arises from the failures of the others to produce satisfactory actions to the social norms, or the status quo. ‘They’ are who are held responsible for causing a grievance that ‘we’ experience and who should undertake action to remedy the cause of the problems for which they are held accountable, or otherwise, we (us) will take action” (Verhoeven & Duyvendak, 2016).
Emotions in narratives play a crucial role, where depending on the experiences of an actor will modulate the emotions that they feel towards something. For example, loss provokes uncertainty, and “when there is an unknown future scenario or uncertainty, people often suffer the effects of anxiety or manifestations of fear”. However, the authors argue that anxiety is not an emotion that necessarily triggers to take action, where there is less urgency to act upon (Verhoeven & Duyvendak, 2016). Nevertheless, an emotion that triggers action is anger, alongside with grief. Grief motivates individuals to take action, especially when it lives along with fear and anxiety, and anger caused by the action of another actor that aggravated the loss or the deprivation of the particular reality (Gray, 2003). Furthermore, Goodwin & Jasper (2006) paid attention to the ‘emotional investment’ in social movements presented by Melluci (1995), where collective identities are the root for collective mobilization, and reproduce Melluci’s statement: “there is no cognition without feeling”. The authors valued that Melluci’s recognition of the importance of emotions, which made it possible to make important distancing from structural analysis and encouraging interpretative authors to focus more on culture, identity, and other complementary processes.
When enacting action, meanings are disposed into emotions felt by the actors, and when they act to defend something with high levels of meaning, their actions might be found more intense. Meanings in collective action come from the lived experiences of the individuals, which causes different levels or interpretations of meaning to the same thing.
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One way to decode the emotions inside those meanings is through metaphors (Yanow, 2007). In this sense, Benford & Snow (2000) draw on Tarrow’s appreciation of meanings in social movements, affirming that movements are fed by the existing meanings of a culture, but also produce new meanings. The evolutive nature of social movements and collective action, representing also the evolutive nature of a determined culture allows to confirm the assumption that frames are better understood as a process rather than a static phenomenon.
5. Social Movement Theory in Latin America
In order to comprehend the collection action and the nature of Latin American social movements, it is imperative to mention that the political, economic, social and cultural processes that the countries experienced differ greatly from the European cases. Issues such as political evolution, adverse economic international system and limited capacity of the local economic models, the existence of different political cultures, had to be confronted by the Latin American countries in a much shorter period of time than other European democracies, who processed those situations more gradually (Vaconi, Peraza Martell, & Murphy, 1993). Huge differences in the social benefits that political and economic elites enjoyed in contrast to the poor conditions of most of the population sprung the opportunity for international socialist political parties to take place inside the mindset of those lower classes, providing a more ideological ground for the apparition of social movements. The foundation of the Communist Party in Chile was in 1922, and the Socialist Party in 1933; while in the rest of Latin America, these parties were founded in the near 1950s (Vasconi, Peraza Martell, & Murphy, 1993), and these parties were significantly important for the apparition of populist movements, strengthening labor units, calling for social insurrection; however in academia, they were regarded more as unstructured ‘mass-movements’, mainly by workers organization under a ‘defense of the proletarian’ understanding of the matter (Ever, 1985). Nonetheless, it is true that these movements can be called responsible for the election of presidents with a strong communist/socialist agenda, like Salvador Allende in Chile in 1970, which ended with Augusto Pinochet’s 17 years’ dictatorship.
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Some scholars have presented studies regarding a new way of social movement in Latin America, where during the decades of 1960s and 1970s, these social movements where highly studied under a marxist-influence scope, which started to be rejected in the 1980s by a reformed wave of scholars (Veltmeyer, 1997). The demands that begun to be present in the examinations of those social movements were a mixture of small catholic-influenced communities of the countryside, urban collective action, indigenous associations, women and feminist groups, human rights committees, educational and artistic performances, environmental movements, altogether with high participation of youths (Evers, 1985). The author comments that the main purpose of these new types of social movement is not power itself, but a renewal of socio-cultural paradigms and patterns. In this sense, he offers a new way of comprehending these movements: as they were understood as highly marxist-influenced, they were viewed as “partidista” movements; Evers prefers to view them as “movementista”, where he presents them as a mixture of various causes united. Connected to this, Veltmeyer affirms that there was a change of paradigm in the study of the Latin American social movements, where the notions of exploitative and coercive relationships of peonage were replaced by the study of various actors with a minimum control of their lives, depending only on themselves and their performance in the different aspects of their lives (Veltmeyer, 1997).
Two main research approaches have been said to have been quite popular in the Latin American studies of social movements: Political Opportunity Structure (POS) approach, and the New Social Movement (NSM) approach. It has been pointed out that the latter fits better to understand these societies and their conflicts given by the transformations of civil societies, which greatly appeals to the normative ideals of the Latin American intellectuals (Davis, 1999). This approach is mainly focused on the constructions of meanings and identities, added to intellectuals claiming that new social movements present a much more distanced attitude from the traditional ways of mobilization. The definition of ‘new social movements’ was presented as groups of individuals with contentious attitudes and tactics to challenge and change old paradigms. they seek to do this taking distance from hierarchical models and institutions, a horizontal method of decision-making, and the quest for solidarity under the idea of social justice and the combination of various identities, such as race, ethnicity, gender, etc. (Stahler-Sholk, Vanden & Kuecker,
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2007). The construction of the identity of the new social movements in Latin America was given by four main conditions: 1) Poor, or unequal, economic conditions; 2) authoritarian regimes which shifted into institutional democratic governments; 3) structural economic reforms, directed by a capitalistic and neoliberal model, and the participation of various international actors, such as the World Bank; and 4) the reaffirmation of the capital accumulation process, firmly associated to a class structure (Velmeyer, 1997).
Nevertheless, even when these social movements are constructed by various groups with different demands, it is largely alleged that usually there is a characterization of an ‘enemy’: the governments and the neoliberal model (Veltmeyer, 1997; Stahler-Sholk, Vanden & Kuecker, 2007; Davis, 1999; Evers, 1985; Boron 2004), More specifically, it has been studied that these ‘new social movements’ have as main claims anti-capitalistic - or at least anti-neoliberal demands, with a more reformist point of view rather than the old marxist-leninist revolutionary discourse (Stahler-Sholk, Vanden & Kuecker, 2007; Veltmeyer, 1997). Scholars have pointed out that the economic failure in Latin America, added to the problems brought by defective reforms, generated the apparition of new non-political actors, such as ‘piqueteros’ in Argentina, indebted farmers in Mexico, sexual and ethnic identity communities, indigenous movements in Brazil, Bolivia and Ecuador, protests of middle-class workers in Peru, all with a discourse of weariness caused by the ‘marketization’ of what is supposed to be ‘social’ (Boron, 2004). Even when there has been historical resistance to the advance of the neoliberal model in the modern world, which was studied limited only to labor-classes, it has been proven that by no means it continues to be what has happened in the recent decades, where the globalization of the economic model has sprung the participation of various sectors of the societies (Stahler-Sholk, Vanden & Kuecker, 2007).
It is clear to conclude that the evolution of the research of the social movements in Latin America has brought new understandings and comprehensions of the cultural and historical aspects of the movements, where there has been a continued demand or discourse against the capitalistic model. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of interpretative analysis of various factors in each conflict of each country to deliver a more complete analysis of each reality.
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CHAPTER III: CASE PRESENTATION 1. Historical Context
After seventeen years of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship, Chile came back to a democratic regime in 1990, with the centrist-left Patricio Aylwin being elected as president. From that point, Chile has been viewed and considered as one the strongest and most stable economy of South America, given by solid institutions and the neoliberal principles that were inherited from the Pinochet’s dictatorship (Morales, 2008). His government and a group of economists from the Chicago School of Economics, called the “Chicago Boys'' transformed the whole economy and institutional system with strong neo-liberal principles, which has lived on to this day. The main purposes of these transformations were to control the hyperinflation and macroeconomic imbalance from Salvador Allende’s presidency in 1970-1973, the removal of pricing controls, indiscriminate opening of imports, liberalization of the financial market, followed at the end of the decade by a broad liberalization of international capital flows, reduction in the size of the public sector, privatization of traditional public companies, deletion of most union rights existing at the beginning of the regime, and a taxing reform (French-Davies, 2002). By ‘reduction of the public sector’, means very low participation in some basic services for citizens, such as the public health system, education system, public transportation, pensions, water supply, which many of them are in the hands of private companies.
A profound shock in the Chilean society happened in 1973, which was walking on a road towards a marxist-socialist regime with Salvador Allende, and then radically changed into an extreme neoliberal system that embodied Hayek’s ideals of the world, which meant the freedom of the individuals over anything, and far from any coercion by the State (Gutierrez-Campos, 2019). The traumatic experience of this process under a dictatorial regime is still something that Chileans have not recovered from. In a reality where the Government strives for the complete freedom of the individual and a small-sized State but living in a dictatorship without that complete freedom, like speech and press, is a fierce contradiction which many Chileans had to live in for over seventeen years. Some political parties were banned, such as the Communist Party, citizens were persecuted and tortured, and many violations to the human rights were committed, to the point that the United
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Nations pressed for peace and the de-escalation of the violence during those years (Delano & Traslaviña, 1989). These violations have remained as an unhealed scar in Chile, and the democratic regimes in the 1990s had to address this difficulty in a great manner (Gutierrez-Campos, 2019), added to the permanent inequality levels in the social and economic indicators that the neo-liberal model has not been able to solve in the country.
This situation has occurred during the last four decades of democratic regimes, where the first four presidents belonged to a reformed socialist-progressist ideology, configured by a coalition of political parties called ‘Concertación’, which were the ones that led the political campaign against Pinochet in the 1989 referendum. The presidents were Patricio Aylwin (1990-1994), Eduardo Frei (1994-2009), Ricardo Lagos (2000-2006), and Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), and it is part of a consensus the consideration that during the decades following the dictatorship of Pinochet, neoliberal policies continued to shape the Chilean society (Ramirez, 2017), whereas despite some deep transformations made by these presidents, the centrality of macroeconomic balances, the construction of a ‘subsidiary’ State, deepening the asymmetry between capital and labor (already very deep before 1973), the unrestricted support for the export strategy as "engine" of macroeconomic growth, control of most natural resources for transnational conglomerates, the hegemony of speculative finance, have remained the distinctive feature of today's economy in Chile. (Gaudichaud, 2015).
During the presidency of Aylwin, little was discussed about the transformations in the neoliberal-based economic system, but during Frei’s period, there was a modernization of the public apparatus, by introducing a series of changes, such as increasing control and encouraging institutional performance, within a framework of greater flexibility and autonomy (Gutierrez-Campos, 2015). Thus, the public system adopts a new image and a language similar to a private company, since the latter is presented as a model of quality of service and efficiency. However, no meaningful transformations were made in the neoliberal model of the economy, and at the end of the decade, it was announced by some intellectual sectors the accumulation of social discomfort or intrinsic conflicts that the model adopted after the dictatorship, and were still alive (Ramirez, 2017). Although this
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The society of democratic governments of ‘Concertación’ was tied to the model of society established during Pinochet’s dictatorship by two chains or enclaves: on the one hand, the socioeconomic or neoliberal model, with the hegemonic role of the market in the various spheres of social life, the subsidiary role of the State and deep structural inequality; and on the other, the institutional model, expressed mainly, but not exclusively, in the Constitution of 1980 and whose ultimate reason was to prevent significant changes in the socio-economic model in the upcoming years (Garretón, 2013). By not exclusively, it means that many aspects of the system lays presidential decrees, which could be changed if there was political will to do it.
Given this, the neoliberal model did provide major spaces for macroeconomic developments in Chile as were mentioned in the previous paragraphs, which produced an average of 5.1% of annual growth in Chile from 1990 until 2010 (Fazio & Parada, 2010), and a significant reduction of the absolute poverty. But as Gaudichaud (2015) mentions, in no case this orientation meant a substantial change in deep distributional or territorial inequalities. Up until 2015, the average income in Chile was of CLP 600 thousand (USD 740 approx.) per month, with the 50% of the economic force earning less than CLP 320 thousand (USD 400 approx.), and the richest 1%, gathers the 30.5% of the GPD. Furthermore, the author reflects on how the economy really works by presenting, in his words, a paradox where the small and medium businesses, which usually are family businesses, are the ones that hold the 80% of the national employment, and the other 20% are large companies, both national and international. According to the World Bank, Chile in 2017 had 44.4 points in the Gini Coefficient which means that occupies the 5th place as the most unequal country in South America, 25th place in the world, and 38th place on the OECD list; but presenting the 2nd highest GDP in South America, only behind Uruguay.
It is important to mention that the biggest national economic conglomerates in Chile belong to the five richest families of the country: Matte family, Lucksic, Paulman, Angelini, and Claro. Gaudichaud (2015) affirms that the Chilean economy is controlled by a handful of oligopolistic few families, very ideologically and culturally cohesive and with a strong influence on the public agenda. They make up a true regional economic empire under a transversal character, by being present in the main commercial sectors of services
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in the local economy. Some examples can be seen in their participation in public transportation, communication companies, banking, retail, pharmacies, primary, secondary and university education, mining production, pensions, health care system, among others. There is no room for real economic competition or participation of other actors, and the accumulation of wealth keeps growing in the hands of a few. For these sorts of situations, Ramirez (2017) blames the Chilean constitution established in 1980 by the Pinochet’s regime, and the author strongly believes that the document portrays an “intrinsic neoliberal disparagement towards democracy”, and will crystallize the framework for the accumulation of wealth by dispossession, as he believes that the objective is to constitutionally stop all kinds of redistributive policy and ensure the hierarchical order of society. It is true that this is a bold statement, with large loads of ideological hatred against the neoliberal model not only in Chile, but also in the world, and the author is right when he affirms that the constitution was designed not to suffer from any dramatic and radical changes, to provide stability to the system.
2. Explaining the Demands
Slogans have been a very significant part of the various social conflicts in Chile, where protesters, political parties, intellectuals, the media, and the public opinion do make use deeply of the slogans. Many of those slogans have become part of the daily language of the citizens, and thanks to those slogans, some of the demands have clinched into the collective mindset, becoming into some sort of “undeniable truth”. One very good example of this situation is the slogan “Educacion de calidad y sin lucro” (High Quality and Non-Profit Education), or simply “Fin al lucro” (no more profit). The latter slogan applies to many other topics, apart from education, as there is a large sentiment among the Chileans that they have to pay for everything, and the number of social rights is essentially low. For this, Ramirez (2017) discusses the ideas of social rights and liberal rights, explains the main differences between them both, and goes to affirm that social rights imply overcoming the liberal law, which the author defines as indifferent to cooperative models, and subjective. On the other hand, social rights contain the idea of certain aspects of each individual’s daily life is the responsibility of everyone, as they lay in reciprocity and cooperation.
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Unlike liberal rights, the social kind fights the presence of shortage from a different perspective: by not depending on the market. Boric (2014) defines social rights as those rights that are required from the State to ensure that every individual has access to the same material conditions of support for our physical and psychological, such as health, education, and housing. In the case of Chile, many of these rights, like health, pensions, and education, are not defined as social rights: there is a mixture of a public-private administration of them, but the presence of the market has been far too strong, and the participation of the state remains too weak, sticking to their subsidiary role. The quality of those institutions, such as schools and hospitals, that are controlled by the state have not been able to compete against those that are private, so people still prefer to use private services, even when the price of those services is unreachable to their own pocket. There comes the banking industry with the loans, which are also very hard to pay, taking into account the low family incomes, and this keeps producing more and more social discomfort.
a) The Pensions system:
The critiques to this mechanism, called AFP’s1, come because the system has not been able to meet the expectations of the citizens, where the pensions are extremely low and 80% of people in Chile receive pensions that are less than the minimum wage, which is CLP 320.000 (USD 390 approx.)2. Given this, many protests against AFP’s took place in recent years, and one of the most popular slogans was “No+AFP” (No more AFP). The slogan became very popular, so a group of people created an organization under that name (see the organization’s webpage3), and they have been the fiercest critics to the mechanism, even stating that “those businessmen use pension funds so that they can expand their investments and further concentrate capital in a few hands”. The idea of AFP stealing people’s savings stuck into the general mindset.
1
(Asociaciones de Fondos de Pensiones) The pension funds administrators are private companies that are responsible for managing the pension savings of every individual for their retirement. The savings come from each worker’s income, so when the incomes are already very low, they are even lower when they go into the AFP’s every month. See www.spensiones.cl/portal/institucional/594/w3-channel.html.
2
https://www.cnnchile.com/economia/jubilacion-promedio-mujeres-chile-176-856_20191212/
3
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b) Healthcare system:
The Chilean Healthcare system, as was previously commented, is a mixture between a private and public system, with private hospitals and medical centers, and public as well4. Private hospitals and other private health institutions receive resources from the state, while the prices for their services are extremely high. Without any kind of insurance, paying for private services is almost impossible5. In Chile, up until 2015, only 7% of the GDP is destined to the Healthcare system, which is very low compared to that of developed countries of America and Europe (Goic, 0215). In addition, complaints against ISAPRES are mainly given by rising of the health contracts unilaterally, low coverage of various diseases, restricted access to medical centers, and pre-existing conditions, and the amount of complaints has quadrupled in the last ten years6. Also, women usually have to pay more for their insurance, 179% more than men in some cases, as they are considered as a high-risk person because of the possibility of pregnancy, and they need more medications for birth control7. In April of 2019, a project was presented by Chilean president Sebastian Piñera to reform the system, but it has remained largely discussed in the Parliament for its approval, delaying the promulgation of an improved system8.
c) Public Transport System, specifically in Santiago:
The Public Transport System in Chile is completely privatized, and every city has its own bus service with various companies providing them. In Santiago, the bus system is called Transantiago, created during Bachelet’s period in 2007, where it was a concession to various transport companies who would administer the buses and the good performance of
4
The insurance system is also a mixture, where FONASA (Fondo Nacional de Salud) is the insurance provided by the state, and ISAPRES (Institutos de Salud Previsional) are private companies. The 80% of the citizens are affiliated to FONASA, and the rest to ISAPRES; however, as was commented earlier, the differences of the quality of the services between public and private are considerably remarkable, where the public sector presents a large absence of enough hospitals and medical centers, specialists, and long waiting lists for treatment of diseases and hospitalizations, which ascends to almost 2 million people. See
www.isapre.cl/home 5 https://www.elmostrador.cl/braga/2019/10/26/la-razones-de-la-crisis-estructural-del-sistema-de-salud-publico/ 6 https://www.latercera.com/la-tercera-pm/noticia/denuncias-isapres-se-cuadruplican-ultimos-10-anos-colmena-cruz-blanca-lideran-alzas-reclamos/511010/ 7 https://www.latercera.com/nacional/noticia/planes-isapres-mujer-edad-fertil-paga-179-mas-los-hombres/117419/ 8 https://www.minsal.cl/presidente-pinera-presento-la-reforma-integral-al-sistema-de-salud/
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the system. Today, it is one of the biggest problems in the city, usually collapsed, and people having to travel for more than an hour from their homes to work and vice versa. The system is only for the buses, and the subway train system, METRO, works as a public/private company, with their own board and resources, but it answers to the government. METRO has been considered one of the best subway systems in the world, but also one of the most expensive9. Since the implementation of Transantiago, the system presented serious defects in its planning and design, and the city did not have the proper infrastructure for the new buses. Transantiago remains as the 9th world’s most expensive public transport system for the citizens, in relation to their average income, and the evasion rates in 2019 were up to 25.7%10.
d) Privatization of water supply:
In Chile, the water supply is controlled under the “Code of Waters”, created in 1981 with Pinochet’s dictatorship11; since then the document has not experienced major changes. The code states that water is a national asset for public use, but it also establishes that privates can proclaim perpetual right of use over waters. There is structurally unsolved access, and since the water management model in Chile is focused on allocation criteria and market transactions, resulting in that the “free competition” between the different uses and property rights of the waters has favored the concentration of their ownership in the electricity, mining and export sector, considered 'engines' of national development (Larrain 2006). The agricultural sector, which consumes almost 85% of the water for consumptive use, represents 18.5% of Chilean exports. Fruit exporting companies are entirely private, and the impacts of monoculture on these products are long to list: pressure on water resources and concentration of property; contamination by intensive use of pesticides, herbicides and fertilizers; destruction of local economies and family or community agriculture; damage to the health of agro-industry workers (Larrain, 2006). Water supply for daily use, like houses, buildings, etc., is also controlled by private companies, and the privatization of the drinking water supply happened during the presidencies of Eduardo Frei
9 https://www.emol.com/noticias/Nacional/2019/10/18/964843/Chile-9no-mas-caro-transporte.html 10 http://www.red.cl/noticias/evasion-de-buses-del-transantiago-sube-a-28-5-en-primer-trimestre-de-este-ano-y-debuta-nuevo-plan-de-fomento-al-pago-del-pasaje 11 https://leyes-cl.com/codigo_de_aguas.htm
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and Ricardo Lagos – who were members ‘Concertación’, left-wing parties – and the processes were carried out without consulting the citizens and ignoring massive pronouncements against it (Larraín, 2006).
e) Education System:
This is by far the greatest issue that the Chilean governments have had to face since 2006. In the same way as the healthcare system, in Chile there is a mixture of public and private administration of the education with public and private schools, but similarly to the healthcare system, private schools surpass tremendously the public schools, quality-wise. The problems in the education system in Chile are quite extensive, so I will strive to be as brief but precise as possible. It has been stated that inside the education system lays the very roots of the existent inequality, and it prevents people from having true social mobility (Améstica, 2014). The neoliberal system in Chilean education allows private schools and universities to profit with the provided service, so as a result, the prices of the better institutions are also quite expensive, and consequently, the loans for higher education are also expensive (Sanhueza, Cornejo & Leyton, 2015). Protests for a better education system started in 2006, and the social movement led by the school and university students demanded no more profit in the education system, as it should be a strict social right (Boric, 2014). The protesters were led by CONFECH (Confederación de Estudiantes Chilenos)12, and many confrontations took place against the police and military forces, as some small but very radical groups of students of the social movement became very violent and instead of peacefully protesting, they only went into the streets to destroy public places, small businesses, bus stops, etc.13 The issue became very controversial, causing great division among the public opinion, with people supporting the students and their causes, but not their violent behavior; other people did not support them at all; other citizens strongly criticized the police and claimed that they were overly repressing the protesters and out of
12
The largest national student organization for the defense and representation of students in various issues. CONFECH had leaders who eventually were elected and became members of the Chilean Parliament, such as Camila Vallejo and Karol Cariola (Communist Party), Gabriel Boric (Convergencia Social Political Party), and Giorgio Jackson (Revolución Democrática Political Party) – all left-wing political parties, which formed a new coalition called Frente Amplio, founded in 2017.
13
biobiochile.cl/noticias/nacional/chile/2019/04/26/graves-hechos-de-violencia-empanaron-marcha-estudiantil-encapuchados-agredieron-a-dirigentas.shtml
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the limits of the violence. With these protests and the high levels of violence that occurred, the idea of the police being overly repressive to any kind of protester stuck among the public opinion, and they turned into a “public enemy”. This contributes to taking the actions of both protesters and police to an increased level of violence, where there is already a predisposition to believe that the counterpart will be violent.
f) Corruption and abuses.
The economic and political elites have been largely discredited and de-legitimized in the last decade, where corruption scandals have been present throughout the Chilean recent history, and how they were addressed by the government and the Ministry of Justice created high levels of polemics and were largely criticized by the public opinion. There have been various social media campaigns by many citizens regarding the income of the politicians, and especially members of the parliament, where compared to other countries in South America, Chilean congressmen are the ones who earn the most, and public opinion feel that politicians do not really deserve earning so much money.
For the purposes of this article, four corruption cases will be described to provide more information and data that have generated discomfort in civil society, which has to do with the voids into the Chilean neoliberal model, and the lack of political will to punish the guilty properly.
La Polar:
In 2011, SERNAC (Servicio Nacional del Consumidor)14 filed a complaint against La Polar, a big retail company, claiming for unilateral renegotiation of the debts owed by the clients against the company, which meant that the clients would owe much higher amounts of money. These renegotiations were made without the consent of the board, and they created an inert portfolio that kept existing but designed not to provision it. Thus, instead of generating losses, it generated profits, but it was uncollectible, so it was some sort of mini ‘subprime crisis’, because they had insolvent defaulters (Alfaro, 2012). The shareholding of La Polar is distributed among the AFPs (24%), foreign investment funds (19%), mutual funds (9%), stockbrokers (34%), and national investment funds and others
14
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(14%)15. When the complaint was filed by SERNAC, 40% of the company's total portfolio was in default disguised as assets, so two AFPs also filed lawsuits against La Polar for losses of USD 257 million; and in addition, La Polar owes another USD 560 million for concepts of bonds issued to various banking companies (Alfaro, 2012). The most dramatic part of this fraud is that AFPs presented millionaire monetary losses, which meant losses for their clients, who are normal citizens16.
Collusion on medication prices
In 2008, the National Prosecution filed a request for investigation regarding the explosive increase of the prices of more than 200 medications on the pharmacy market, more specifically, three companies: Cruz Verde, Salcobrand, and Ahumada. These three chains control 90% of the medication market in Chile, and with the pricing collusion, some of the medications saw the modification of their prices by 1000% (Serey-Zuñiga, 2012)17. When the investigation finally proved that there was actual collusion on the prices, the sentences were monetary donations to various NGO’s related to health, and assisting to ethics classes; the sentences did not imply jail for the owners of the companies (Muñoz, 2013). An important factor here is that at that time, future Chilean president Sebastian Piñera, was a minor shareholder in Ahumada,18 and the investigation took place when he was starting to plan his presidential campaign.
Illegal financing for political campaigns:
In 2015, SII (Servicio de Impuestos Internos -National Tax System) filed a complaint against PENTA, a Chilean powerful holding company which operates mainly in the financial and investment world, for tax fraud of nearly USD 700 thousand, and creating fake invoices by some politicians for political and economic assessments that were never
15 http://www.cmfchile.cl/institucional/mercados/entidad.php?mercado=V&rut=96874030&grupo=0&tipoe ntidad=RVEMI&row=&vig=VI&control=svs&pestania=49 16 https://ciperchile.cl/2011/07/08/la-polar-un-mapa-para-entender-como-se-fraguo-y-ejecuto-el-lema-de-%E2%80%9Cllegar-y-llevar%E2%80%9D/ 17
There is a big opportunity for these three companies to collude on the prices, where the market is highly defective. Cruz Verde, Salcobrand and Ahumada are focused on the market of brand medicine and smaller pharmacies, such as neighborhood apothecaries, sell generic drugs; there are high barriers to entry into the market for other competitors; and the demand for medicines is almost non-elastic.
18
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real, for USD $2.7 million in 2009, and USD $1.7 million. The investigation demonstrated that the company illegally financed numerous political campaigns19, and found that another large company resulted guilty: SQM, an important mining company, which have been committing the same crimes as PENTA. Since the start of the investigation, many politicians and business people have been convicted, but only a few sentenced to jail. Other participants have been sentenced to pay large amounts of money on fines and house arrest, or probation20212223.
Caval:
The people that were committing the fraud were Sebastian Dávalos, son of Michele Bachelet –president of Chile at that time- and Natalia Compagnon, Davalos’ wife. Everything exploded in 2015 when an article by the magazine Qué Pasa24 exposed a company called Sociedad Exportadora y de Gestión CAVAL, which was property of Natalia Compagnon, that received a loan from the bank Banco de Chile, property of Luksic family, -mentioned on the previous paragraphs as one of the wealthiest families in Chile- for CLP 10 million (USD 18 thousand approx.) on the 16 of December 2013, one day after the Chilean presidential election that gave Bachelet as a winner. In the whole process, some political figures also took part in the scam, such as Hernan Chadwick and Juan Diaz, both who at that time were members of UDI (right-wing party), who were involved in crimes of money laundering, tax evasion, and influence paddling -Dávalos and Compagnon managed to collect private information thanks to Chadwick and Diaz. Afterward, the investigation found out that two other public workers were involved in the scam, where they were the ones who facilitated the information to the UDI members and also received money to speed
19
Mainly for UDI (right wing political party), and some of the politicians were important figures in the political scenario, like Jovino Novoa, former leader of the party, Laurence Golbourne, Mining Secretary of the Sebastian Piñera’s administration in 2015 and pre-candidate for president for the next elections, and Andrés Velasco, also pre-candidate for president but representing the center-left and left wing political parties, all through fake invoices.
20 https://fae.usach.cl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2906:el-qcaso-pentaq-explicado-punto-por-punto&catid=13:noticias-fae 21 https://www.latercera.com/noticia/nacional/2014/10/680-599269-9-caso-penta-los-puntos-claves-de-la-denuncia-presentada-por-sii.shtml 22 http://www.pulso.cl/noticia/empresa-mercado/empresa/2014/08/11-48980-9-caso-fraude-al-fut-escala-hasta-socios-del-grupo-penta-y-relacionados.shtml 23 https://blog.poderopedia.org/post/107319401505/el-expediente-del-pentagate-los-involucrados-las 24 http://www.quepasa.cl/articulo/actualidad/2015/02/1-16218-9-un-negocio-caval.shtml/
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up the paperwork. The investigation is still ongoing, and there have not been jail sentences for any of the participants of the scam; they were convicted for influence paddling, bribery, illegal payments, fake documents, tax evasion, and money laundering, among others. One of the most curious and also polemic aspects of this conflict was that Michele Bachelet claimed that she found out about all of the scandal only by the press, and that she was completely unaware of what had been going on, as she was on her vacations and ‘unconnected’.25262728
3. Justification
These reasons come to explain why today in Chile there is so much social discomfort. The high levels of inequality that exist in Chile and the accumulation of wealth do not translate good macro-levels into good micro-levels, allowing improvement and repair of the glitches of the system. The corruption cases play their part as well, where political and economic elites have abused their privileged positions to transgress the law, even in million-dollar amounts, and not being punished in a proper, or at least socially accepted, way.
The defective aspects of the Chilean system and the corruption cases are solid reasons for the Chilean society to feel discomfort and neglected from social justice. Even though Chile presents the highest GDP of the region, it is seriously concentrated in a few economic groups, whereas the average income is considerably low in the labor market. Added to this, as was explained in the description of the neoliberal system in Chile, many of the basic services are provided by private companies, such as the water supply, when it should be by the Government, which has generated high levels of distress and discomfort among the citizens, where the feeling of being scammed by those companies is something quite generalized. 25 https://ciperchile.cl/especiales/caval/ 26 https://www.publimetro.cl/cl/politica/2015/03/09/esto-que-caso-caval.html 27 https://www.latercera.com/la-tercera-pm/noticia/manual-para-entender-el-fallo-del-caso-caval-tres-claves-de-la-resolucion/240625/ 28 https://ciperchile.cl/2015/02/26/el-historial-financiero-de-caval-el-meteorico-ascenso-de-la-empresa-de-compagnon-y-davalos/
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Chile being an extremely unequal society, with high concentrations of economic wealth, presents the opportunity to apply Relative Deprivation theories in the analysis, and connect them to the emotional appeal and interactions in the conflict. In societies where Relative Deprivation theories are applicable, it is affirmed that non-traditional participation is likely to appear, such as strikes, protests and large social movements, with deep meanings to try to regain what they have been deprived of, and feelings of unhappiness demonstrated by the people “at the bottom” (Chen, 2015). In the next section, Relative Deprivation theories will be applied to the lack of justice equality, where Chilean citizens believe that the system is so corrupted that they have been deprived of true justice, and when someone who belongs to the political or economic elites, do not receive the same treatment as someone who is a normal citizen.
4. Research Gap
It is true that Latin America has historically called the attention of scholars and researchers to look into their history and political, social, and economic development. The region provides a wide spread of cases where the mixtures of political and economic models have presented different outcomes - some more successful than others. Cases like Brazil, Argentina, and Chile have been largely studied because of their enormous amount of natural resources, their political and economic strategies, and the results of those combinations. Social movements in the region have also brought the attention of the academics, as these phenomena differ in a great manner than the European classical way of protesting, and the cultural clash of natives and European colonizers constructed a completely different culture, even when among the Latin American countries, culture differs greatly.
However, as it was discussed in the literature review of Latin American social movements, much of the literature and examinations of these social movements were directed to a historic-marxist approach, then shifting to a more inclusive approach of the participation of non-political actors and various demands in the 1980s, and lately presenting examinations of a highly anti-neoliberal agenda in the social movements. Despite the latter, Davis (1999) commented that there have been “a growing number of studies of Latin American social movements that are empirically rich, but noticeably under-theorized”.
