How neoliberal reengineering has incapacitated the Chilean state as multidimensional public service provider

Final Paper
MINT025 – State-building and War-Making in the Developing World
David Hoffmann
M.A in Development Studies (MDEV)
December 2021, The Graduate Institute Geneva
Word count: 3899

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The Estallido Social
On October 18, 2019, Chile awoke – #ChileDespertó. Damaged public infrastructure including 118 metro stations and clashes with the armed police and military marked the violent peak of a series of protests that had started in Santiago de Chile at the beginning of the month (Selman, 2021). Reacting to a public transport fare rise on October 6, students were first to start protesting and ultimately evading payment in metro stations, causing disturbances in those. Met by police violence and repression, the protests escalated and took to the streets on October 18 with all generations becoming involved in what is considered Chile’s wake up to the failed “promise of democracy and a dignified life […] [caused by] the forced deepening of neoliberalism and its violent malaises” (Arias-Loyola, 2021). The protests, named Estallido Social (literally translated as social outburst), were now directed against the elite-ruled government and the neoliberal system promoted by them, which had eroded and crumbled the pillars on which Chileans were trying to build their lives. This became even clearer on October 25, when more than 1 million Chileans came out to peacefully protest in Santiago alone, constituting the largest protest since the end of the Pinochet dictatorship (Caroca Soto et al., 2020). The grim record of at least 26 fatalities, 1,938 victims of firearm induced injuries, and 134 cases of alleged torture, points at a level of violence that was thought to be unimaginable in the region’s most stable and prosperous country (Amnesty International, 2020, OHCHR, 2019, Milanovic, 2019). Chile had been considered for long the “poster child for international organisations”, especially by following internationally encouraged liberalisation and macroeconomic reforms and by becoming the first South American member of the OECD (Ferreira & Schoch, 2020). By referring to the “core functions of the state”, this paper discusses how the 2019 Estallido Social could be viewed as the consequence Weiterlesen →