This man is Salvador Allende,
Chile's first socialist president,
holding his baby granddaughter in 1971.
Just two years later,
Allende lost his life
during a CIA-backed military coup
that led to a brutal dictatorship.
Fifty years later,
the baby in that photo
became Chile's defense minister,
in charge of the military
that once overthrew her grandfather.
She's part of the first leftist government
since that coup,
as Chile gets ready
to write a new constitution
that would finally do away
with the dictatorship's legacy.
The new government is led by this guy,
Gabriel Boric,
a leader in Chile's decadelong student movement.
This is the story of how they won -
and what the U.S. can learn from it.
This story
starts, like many others in Latin America,
with a U.S.-backed coup.
On Sept. 11, 1973,
President Salvador Allende's
democratically elected
government was overthrown
by Chile's military,
with the backing
of the Nixon administration.
That coup kicked off
General Augusto Pinochet's brutal
17-year dictatorship.
Chile's military killed, tortured
and imprisoned as many as 40,000 people.
More than 1,200 people,
mostly political dissidents,
were disappeared by the military
during Pinochet's rule.
Once in power,
a team of American-trained
economic advisers
worked with Pinochet
to use Chile as a lab
to test their economic theories.
The dictatorship decreased
government spending,
deregulated business and privatized
essential industries, like education,
health care, even water.
The reason
why that sounds familiar
is because in the decades that followed,
this economic model,
known as neoliberalism
became the ideological consensus
in the United States
and many other countries.
In 1980, Pinochet ensured neoliberalism
was cemented in Chile
by orchestrating a rigged vote
that made it part of a new constitution.
You see, the old constitution from 1925
actually had commitments
to provide for the social welfare
of all citizens.
Pinochet's version got rid of those,
and instead
encouraged privatization,
which put government services up for sale.
In terms of health,
education,
housing and pensions,
it gave a lot of power to the market.
After the first few years
of neoliberalism,
the country's GDP skyrocketed,
growing an average of 7%
per year from 1985 to 1997.
Some called this the "Chilean miracle."
But anyone who looked
deeper would see that growth
mostly went to the top tier
of Chilean society.
In fact, today,
Chile's richest 1% owns
half of the nation's wealth.
Meanwhile, more than half the country's
households are considered
economically vulnerable.
Bet that sounds familiar, doesn't it?
Now, why did the dictatorship
need a new constitution
to lock in its economic system
in the first place?
Well,
the Pinochet regime needed to improve
its international reputation,
which was tarnished
after years of brutalizing
political dissidents.
The dictatorship
thought it could legitimize itself
by appearing open
to some elements of democracy.
So, the new constitution
also included a promise to let Chileans
vote for
or against Pinochet's dictatorship.
And, on the off chance
that the dictatorship lost that vote,
the constitution
also included roadblocks
to stop future governments.
For example,
it created a National Security Council,
made up mostly of military leaders,
with the power to effectively override
elected officials
in the name of "national security."
One of the constitution's chief
architects said these provisions
were meant
to, quote,
"ensure that if adversaries
come to govern, they are constrained."
And that is exactly what happened.
When pro-democracy groups
were able to pressure
Pinochet into finally holding
a fair referendum,
he lost.
Vote no.
But thanks to the constitution,
he held on to a lot of power.
You have to consider that
when we have the referendum in 1988
to end the dictatorship,
in fact, Pinochet
not only
was still in charge of the army,
but then became one of the senators.
So it wasn't really
a fully democratic context to make
the changes that were needed.
By the 1990s,
Chile's voters were able to vote
center-left governments into office,
but the constitution stopped them
from challenging
the country's economic system.
Like in other parts of the world,
that challenge
would be taken up by student movements.
So in 2006, high school students
went on a strike
against the country's
unequal education system.
Under Pinochet,
Chile's education system
was partially privatized
and increasingly unaffordable
for many families -
sort of like the charter system
that's decimated
public schools in the U.S.
The movement became known
as the "Penguin Revolution"
because of the protesters'
black-and-white school uniforms.
More than 1 million students
from both public and private schools
participated in the strikes.
One poll showed that
87% of the public supported the strikes,
showing just how widespread discontent
was within Chilean society.
And the movement was successful...
kind of.
Some reforms were introduced,
but many students felt
they didn't go far enough.
They wanted the entire
neoliberal education system changed.
So in 2011, that same generation,
now in college, organized
an even bigger student movement,
this time demanding free
public university tuition.
And this was when now-President Boric
became a movement leader.
The demonstrations were often
compared to other movements
happening around the world
at the same time,
like the Arab Spring,
Occupy Wall Street
and the Indignados Movement in Spain.
2011 was so massive and so radical
at the same time
that we actually felt
that we could improve our lives
and we could change the system.
In 2013, Boric
and other movement leaders
won seats in Chile's Congress.
But, like the "Squad" in the U.S.,
these upstarts weren't exactly
running the show.
They became political representatives
of the movement later, but that also,
you can imagine,
it also
makes a lot of people suspicious,
because when people
who are social leaders
become politicians,
some people
don't really believe that that's
where change can come from.
Instead, the same centrist coalitions
that had governed Chile
since the '90s
continued to take turns
running the country.
But then in 2019,
the government raised prices
on public transit, and Chile exploded.
Once again, it was
students who led the way.
Protesters targeted
not just the fare hike
and the education policy,
but the whole neoliberal system
and its impact on health care,
rent, utilities, pensions.
In the past decades,
you would see social movements
organizing and protesting
against specific
neoliberal policies in housing,
in pension system,
in health care, education,
against patriarchal violence,
against women and LGBT community.
But then, in 2019, the movement
as a whole realized
that we needed not partial change,
but more structural change.
And then the idea of having
a new constitution
through a constituent assembly
sort of coalesced
all the different movements
and all the different demands.
Boric, who had been organizing in favor
of a new constitution
since he entered Congress,
used his power to strike a deal
with center-right President
Sebastián Piñera
for a constitutional referendum.
Unlike the Pinochet constitution,
which was written
only by the dictatorship,
this new one would be written
at a democratically elected
constitutional convention,
with voters
approving the process at each step.
Seventeen of the convention's
155 seats were reserved
for Indigenous communities.
And the convention
was evenly split between men and women,
a world first.
The convention now began the
long process
of drafting a new constitution.
Meanwhile, Piñera's presidency
was coming to an end
and supporters of the new constitution
had to make sure
they had an ally in Chile's
highest office.
Having a government
that supports the process
and wants people to be fully informed
is very, very important
for the legitimacy of the process too.
Boric was chosen to lead
the left-wing Apruebo Dignidad coalition.
- It represented leadership
that came from student movement in 2011.
The political project
that kind of grew over the last 10 years,
from people that were uni
that built their own political parties.
His main opponent was José Antonio Kast,
who has family ties to the Pinochet regime.
Also, his dad was literally a member
of the Nazi Party.
- He reclaims the legacy of Pinochet for Chile.
The election's first round featured
several candidates
across the political spectrum.
In that round,
Boric actually came in second place,
with Kast in first.
- That fear of having a new,
a new Pinochetista
in power was a key factor.
So that's one reason why a lot of people
who didn't go to vote
for Boric in the first round,
went to vote for him in the second round.
But in the second-round runoff election,
Boric pulled off
a resounding victory,
winning nearly 56% of the vote,
the largest majority in Chile's history.
After his win, Boric announced
the members of his cabinet.
Not only would it
include Maya Fernández,
Salvador Allende's granddaughter,
but it would also be majority women,
a first in the Americas.
Cabinet members also included
fellow student leader-turned-politician
Camila Vallejo,
showing just how far the movement had come.
When Boric visited the presidential palace,
he took this photo
with a bust of President Allende
and tweeted
a promise
to continue building
on "his dreams of a better Chile."
But with the constitutional convention
still underway and Chile's
economy still recovering
from the pandemic,
those dreams face many challenges ahead.
- The biggest challenge of Boric's government
is keeping this moment
of change, of structural change
in Chile, open.
He has the historical opportunity
of not being another neoliberal government, but
the first president of a new,
not completely new society,
but at least the beginning
of a new society.