 Welcome to what the F is going on in Latin America, Code Pink's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of Latin America and the Caribbean. On Sunday, October 25, the world witnessed the Chilean people via a national plebiscite resoundingly vote to rewrite their Pinochet era constitution. This a historic defeat for neoliberalism. Today, we're joined by Patricio Zamorano. He's a political analyst, journalist and co-director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, coha.org. He's joining us today from Washington DC to talk about Sunday's plebiscite and what it was like to vote in Washington DC and the resounding results and what it means for the Chilean people and the rest of us in the hemisphere of the Americas. Welcome, Patricio. It's so great to have you here and I so appreciate your time. Thank you so much. There is a real pressure always. Thank you so much for all the attention that you're putting on what happened last Sunday. It was really historic. So yeah, very, very exciting times for the Chilean people. So you're a Chilean citizen living in Washington DC and you voted at the Chilean Embassy on Sunday. So tell us what that was like. It was probably just very emotional and thrilling for you, I'm sure. Sure. I mean, that was something that I write to vote from overseas that we didn't have like a couple of years ago or maybe three years ago. I think 2017 maybe was the first time that we were able to do that and as always happens, I mean, conservative forces in the country, they didn't allow Chileans to vote from outside Chile. Mainly because a big percentage of the Chilean people living overseas, they were actually former exile people from the dictatorship of Josefino Chet. So there was this huge population of Chileans living in different countries, progressive people. So that's why some conservative forces were against that. But at the end of the day, it took years. Oh my God, it took years to fight through Congress, to find political consensus. So finally, last Sunday, I think it's the second election or maybe third election that we were able to vote. And it was just amazing feeling to feel a citizen of your home country in the capital of the United States. Yeah. So let me before you tell us a little more about Sunday specifically, just to clarify, how were you able to vote at all? Did you have to fly home to Chile to vote? Or were you not able to vote at all living outside the United States? Yeah, I mean, at that time, before the law was passed, you had to go to Chile, period. And before that, for several years, both of us was a mandatory actually. And in those cases, you had to go to a consulate to explain that you were living in a different country, for example. But now it's voluntary. So, but then we got the right to vote here. And what we do though, I think in the U.S. is different when you are overseas, you are able to vote based on where you used to live or your legal time in the United States. In our case, we have to change our district. So we move our electoral district from Chile to Washington, D.C., in my case. So we are officially residents of another country. So if I go back to Chile, for example, if I don't change my address, I cannot vote. I see. So it's an extra process, basically, if I wanna vote in Chile. So it happened to me something very funny in the first round of the previous, presidential election. I voted here on the first round. And then during the second round, I went to Chile, just a very saddened trip. And then I was there during the final stage of the presidential election. And then I couldn't vote there because I was registered here. So that was the irony of that. So you voted on Sunday. So tell us what that was like. What it was personally like for you and what it meant for the Chilean people. Sure, I mean, what happened on Sunday was truly, truly historic. Everybody who is watching us, I think you actually saw the images, the footage, the video recordings of Santiago downtown. There are hundreds of thousands of people celebrating since very early in the evening until the whole night, basically, having a blast. Dancing, singing, chanting for democracy and for the future of the country. It was really an expression of feeling alleviated after a whole horrible year of repression, violence and also beautiful, beautiful, popular expressions in the streets. The Chilean people, we have had a very tough history for the last 40 or 50 years, but we are also very artistic. We like the street expressions. So you could see throughout, not only in the last year when we have the issue with education reform and hundreds of thousands of students in the street of Chile or then later on when we were fighting for democracy or to eliminate this constitution that we got from the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, people would express themselves in the streets in very creative ways with art, with music, with theater. So all that was also part of the narrative of the last year. It was not just violence. Although everybody saw the horrible repression that the Chilean police perform on protestors, right? Or Friday, people... Well, specifically the students. I mean, the uprisings, the protest started with the raise in bus fares, correct? Or student fees, the raise in fares for average working people. And I know some of the photos we were seeing here in the United States were not unlike the photos we see coming out of Palestine with people being shot in the eye, protestors being discouraged to protest by being shot in the eye with rubber bullets. I mean, that's a technique we have seen in many places. That was brutal, brutal, brutal. One of the worst cases in the world we have never had. I believe that Chile is one of the worst cases where the police forces are using actually rubber bullets hitting the eyes of people. Some people got totally blind. Can you believe that? A couple of examples, jump people with their eyes destroyed, both of them. So it's just a horrible example of repressive police force that is also under a huge crisis. I mean, the police institution in Chile is also super, super under a huge pressure for reform. So it's very similar to what's going on here, right? With the police. Yeah, the US foreign policy has come home, or at least people are physically seeing it now in the streets in the United States. But in Chile, it's even worse, I would say, I would argue, because the police forces in Chile are militarized. They're really part of the military tradition. So it's even worse, we don't have any community-based police or policing or something like that. It's just a repressive force that is about to get totally, totally reform. I mean, it's just been horrible, the social cost for young people in the streets of Chile. Yeah. So let's talk technically about what Sunday's national plebiscite was and what the resounding vote, yes, vote to rewrite the Constitution, what is the 1980 Constitution and what is the hope for the new Constitution? Sure, I mean, people need to understand that this Constitution is just, is that from the origin? I mean, from the very beginning, this Constitution was approved in 1980. Very, very dark times for the Chilean society just in the middle of the dictatorship by brutal dictatorship. Just a few months or a couple of years later after the assassination of Orlando later here in Washington, DC by a bomb planted by the secret police of Pinochet. So then Pinochet and the right-wing leaders of the political parties, the conservative parties, especially the UDI, those people had this idea. In general, we need to create a Constitution so we create some legitimacy, right? So we create an institutional framework that could respond to the new situation of the country. And the new situation was based on neoliberalism, the Chicago voice influence, right? That they... This was the first country in the Americas, 1973. Chile was basically the Petri dish for the Chicago voice. Yes, well, Friedman came to Chile, actually, which is a scene that Friedman later on tried to run away from, because Friedman came to Chile during the dictatorship, very proud of the fact that his theories were being applied in a brutal way, because I have to say, I was raised during the 80s. I was a child during the 80s. So nobody can tell me anything about that because I lived the dictatorship from the very beginning and I can tell you in the 80s was horrible. It was a horrible economic situation, a social situation. The neoliberal policy were applied with no resistance because we were with curfew after a coup d'etat, people being tortured, being disappeared, exile, terror, basically, state-sponsored terror. So then Pinochet's regime created this referendum. They wrote down this constitution and with no electoral registration whatsoever, with no records, they decided that the constitution was approved by, I don't know, 90% of the population. With a curfew, I mean, we have curfew and then they pretended that people went to devoting polls and all that. So it was just a charade, basically, yeah. It's fascinating for me to hear what you're sharing, particularly about your childhood, because what we have heard in the United States over the last 40 years is how stable Chile is. It's the most stable economy in the Americas and the healthiest economy. And yet, listening to you, we're hearing the absolute brutality needed in order to keep the economy. In order to keep the economy stable. It's exactly that. I actually was interviewed yesterday actually by a Mexican TV station as well. You are in Mexico now, so... And they compare... They showed me this interview with this conservative lady and she was saying something like that. Exactly that. Why they complained so much about the constitution? She was so awesome under the dictatorship under the government of Augusto Pinochet. The country was modern. The country was prosperous. And then, of course, I had the chance to explain that that was just a lie. It's a mirage. It's not really what happened during that time. It's true. The country had macroeconomics in the sex that were very, very strong, but they only helped the rich. They only helped the elite, the bright-wing elite of the country. The population felt the hit of these neoliberal policies, the hit in their lives, unemployment and sub-employment was huge. The leadership created this very, very extremely low salary, little job program to try to hide the actual numbers. A lot of Chileans who are listening to me, they're going to understand the PEM and the POG, those were these two weird little programs to try to hide the actual unemployment rate. People were hungry in my neighborhood. We literally were hungry because the buying power of the population was extremely low. Why? Because Pinochet and the Constitution of 1980 and the Chicago Boys, they privatized everything. They privatized education. They privatized the health system. They privatized health care system. They privatized the pensions. They privatized absolutely everything. So basically you had a good life, you had a good salary, a good job, but most of the population is still now. 70% of Chileans made less than $700 per month. Still now. So it's not a surprise the explosion of happiness that we had just last Sunday because it's a whole process of four decades of inequality. So all of that was the dictatorship to say that the country was modern and it was an example of prosperity. It's just a lie. It's not real. It was prosperous for one very small percentage. You know what's fascinating to me about, and we see this in the States too more and more and more, and it's just great to hear you share this because I hope your words allow a lot of U.S. citizens to wake up that it's very similar here. This push to, or there, again I'm in Mexico talking to you right now. This push for 100% privatization of the economy, if you are not going to raise workers' wages, there is no way the average person is going to have the disposable income to pay for every single thing. If there's suppressed wages, certain aspects of a person's life have to be subsidized or socialized by the government, healthcare, education, public infrastructure. It's impossible to pay for all of that when you have a suppressed wage. And so you have neoliberalism privatizing everything, going up, and then the suppression of wages. And how can there not be massive poverty? Exactly. I mean, if you talk to learned people, I mean, both are extremely, extremely real. I mean, a big percentage of the population, I think it's more than 25%, is suffering depression right now. I mean, it's one of the highest rates. I think Chile is the eighth country in the whole world in rates of depression. The inequality, some, according to some indexes, we are one of the top three countries in the whole world in inequality, according to numbers from the World Bank. I mean, the country is extremely unequal. Rich people are extremely rich. Poor people are extremely poor. The middle class is so close to being poor in every single month, salary by salary, check by check, that if you have any personal drama, a health issue, you lost your job, you had an accident, any of those incidents can put you to poverty in one minute. So that's why it's a sense of being vulnerable. People believe, feel that they are vulnerable, that something's going to happen. So imagine living like that for four decades. I mean, it's just, that's why the most neoliberal country of Latin America, the example of the Chicago Boys, is surprising, quotation marks are surprising, the rest of the continent by breaking apart from neoliberalism and a constitution that actually preserve those fundamentals for so many years. So there's a couple of things that I want to follow up with you on given your comments. One earlier, let's talk about the disintegration of neoliberalism in Chile and what that means for the, perhaps for the rest of the hemisphere. But before that, you had mentioned that the Pinochet regime had created this constitution with this false sense that the people participated in its creation. So the other, there were two parts to the plebiscite on Sunday. One was yes or no, do we rewrite the constitution? And the second part was how, what political body is going to be used to rewrite it? And the people did not choose to have the existing government rewrite or any government figures rewrite the constitution. They chose a constitutional convention. And it's very clear. I mean, it's clear listening to your comments as to why that was so overwhelmingly chosen. I mean, it's the double effect. I would call it the double effect. I was convinced, I have to be honest, I thought, well, I think the country is, of course, ready to have a new constitution. That started with a very minor, isolated little group of people from the left saying we need a constitutional assembly which created a lot of anti-bodies because it was the same sentence, Assemblea Constituyente in Spanish, it was the same sentence used in Venezuela, in Bolivia, refund the country, recreate the contract between the state and the citizen. So, especially conservative Chileans were very worried about that. No, we're not going to be like Venezuela. We're not going to be like Bolivia. So at the beginning it was impossible. I mean, I was one of those analysts that thought it's impossible. Chile will never do something like Assemblea Constituyente where the population can actually participate. So on Sunday, I really thought that the option to change the constitution was going to be extremely strong, 70%, 80%. That's really what happened, 79%, 78%. The second question that you mentioned, I thought that the people who were going to choose or maybe 50-50, this hybrid convention where you were going to have regular congresspeople, congressmen, women, congresspeople basically that were going to be maybe half or part of that convention and then the rest of the deputies were going to be elected by vote. I was extremely surprised that the second option that is also 80%, 78%, I mean, impressive. It means people want to participate and it means there is something extremely interesting. We have to remember that the Chilean vote for the right-wing parties is always still strong. It's 30% minimum, 40%. It goes up. Piñera won with a very strong vote. So 50% plus, right? So in that 80%, we have people who are conservative and who understood the need to create a new contract between the state and the citizens and that's beautiful. People that we have a concern that this is for all of us. It's not just for the left. It's not just for the right. We need to recreate the country in a better way and to eliminate inequality. That is extraordinarily hopeful. I mean, that allows you to really believe in the possibility of success when you have people of mixed political philosophies. That's incredible. That's so hopeful and it's so encouraging. It's such a fantastic example of what's possible. But still, we have to remember this. The right-wing sectors of the country, at the end of the day, they had to agree because they saw that the force of the popular expression was so huge that at the end of the day, and you can hear President Piñera with this message of conciliation, of consensus and saying the people have spoken and we need to change this constitution. We need a constitution whose words were, we cannot have a constitution that divides us. We need a constitution that is going to unite us. So that was a very strong message. And I think it's also very pragmatic because they didn't have another option. I mean, 80% is just impossible to refuse. So now is the risk. The risk is that those 155 deputies that are going to be elected on April 2021, are going to be elected by the population. But the right-wing parties, they have the right to compete as well. And they have a lot of funds. So don't get me wrong. They are going to fight for every single deputy as much as possible. And the progressive forces, of course. But the beautiful thing is, we have certain rules. It has to be gender balanced. It has to be 50% women, 50% men, which is great. We have to get representation of indigenous people. We have to get the representation of unions, of et cetera, et cetera. The professional schools that we call in Chile, meaning the association of doctors, the association of teachers, the association of et cetera, et cetera, all those social activities. So the goal and the challenge here is to create a democratic representation among those 155 deputies. And that's the challenge that we need to face now. Well, it's hopeful. And it's such an important message of people power. And not just for Chile, but for the world as a whole, what's possible. And especially on the weekend, right after what we witnessed in Bolivia, we have seen two huge, enormous governmental and political impacts by people, by movements, by people deciding their future and their politics. What do you think all of this means for the United States? The United States has presidential elections on November 3rd next week. What do you see, how do you see the results in Chile on Sunday affecting the U.S. people? I would tell you that the political class here in the U.S. was totally, it is totally disconnected from what's really going on in Latin America. And I have to tell you before the Chilean, huge and historic event last Sunday, we have the Bolivia situation as you mentioned. It was a big surprise the fact that the United States was very fast, even the Organization of American States, that actually it was part of the scandal of the so-called fraud that created the Pudeta and a lot of universities of the United States were very clear that the OAS, the Organization of American States, was really, they were the ones who created the fraud by doing these mistakes, so-called mistakes when they were analyzing the results. We know now that even moralists actually won that election. And just for our viewers, this was, we're talking about October 2019, the first president, yeah. So the point I want to make is after all that, the support of the United States to the Pudeta in Bolivia against Evo Morales, the support of the OAS to the Pudeta, then Luis Arce come together with the rest of the mass movement, the movement towards socialism, the MAS, the party of Evo Morales, they organized elections, they faced a lot of prosecutions, legal challenges that the dictatorship actually put upon them. And then they won in one of the highest rates in Bolivia history and then the United States was very fast to congratulate Luis Arce. That was, for me, was very weird. I mean, how is that possible that they didn't even try to do anything? Because they got surprised, basically. They never expected that, right? After, it doesn't happen that after a Pudeta organized or backed by the United States and by the OAS that the previous political party, the socialist party of Bolivia, comes back to power through legal and legitimate elections. So it was really, really, you are right that, I mean, in two weeks, we have this strong expression of legitimate, popular expression that you cannot deny or you cannot deny at all, basically. I know, it's just a resounding defeat, pretty much resounding defeat of all forms of U.S. influence and interference in both countries. Economic, militarily, politically. It's a real statement of people wanting their countries back and a great sense of national sovereignty. Sure. I mean, and the fact that the U.S. is disconnected from the reality. I mean, I think after Luis Arce won by a huge advantage of 20 points over Carlos Mesa and Camacho, I think then the United States understood I mean, what the hell? I mean, we are wrong here. I mean, Evo Morales was the leader of this new era of Bolivian history and people actually responded to the great economics of the Evo Morales government, the fact that they created wealth for the indigenous people. It's not just socialists. I don't agree with just socialists. No, no, no. Evo Morales also created tools for indigenous people and especially indigenous women to be part of the market as well and to compete in the market and to be part of that in a democratic way and also the fact that they were able to nationalize the gas and the minerals. They created a huge social agenda to cover all those aspects of where the market is not strong enough, right? So it's a beautiful, beautiful balance. And I think the Bolivian people after a year of dictatorship, they realized this is not what we're looking for. We really support what the Evo Morales party was actually doing for the last year. So they responded to that in a very honest way. And I think the United States had to accept that reality. Yeah. So now we see the Chilean people wanting the same thing, the end of neoliberalism and an opportunity for everyone to participate in the economy. Women, men, people of all ethnic backgrounds and a pathway to education, to healthcare, to participation in the economy and the society as a whole. Exactly. And Sunday's plebiscite really is the opening to creating all of that for the Chilean people. And that's the irony of the situation. We were discussing with our editorial board of the council on a metaphor. At first yesterday, we were analyzing all these elements of the last two weeks and we agreed that, and we wrote a couple of pieces actually about the Chilean situation coming towards the referendum. The fact that the Chicago voice and the dictatorship at the beginning of the 80s, they really created this irony. They were talking about their narrative was about freedom, liberty, the fact, open markets, right? All that. Open markets for whom though? Exactly. Open markets for whom? It was in contradiction to the actual situation of the workers of the country. So they didn't allow the workers of the country to enjoy that freedom, to enjoy that market, to enjoy that with good salaries, good healthcare, as you were mentioning at the beginning of the interview. They actually, they play against their own values by also doing political repression. So they believe in liberty, they believe in freedom, also only in very narrow senses just for the elite, just for the economy, but not for political purposes, right? So socially, they repress the people economically, they open the markets for elite, and politically they also repress. So it doesn't make any sense. That's not liberty, that's not freedom. So that's the irony of the situation, right? So what happens next, Patricio? What happens next in the Americas? I mean, I'm listening to you talk and there's so many things you've said, I could talk to you for hours about this. You know, one of the things that I try to share with people when I come back from traveling, particularly Latin America, delegations or personal travel like I'm doing now. U.S. citizens do not understand, and you talked about this so beautifully earlier, the absolute brutal force that it takes to support a neoliberal government, the political suppression, the social suppression, and military suppression. It's a brutal, brutal form of economy, and it's simply about profit and where does a certain population of the planet place its capital? Because like you said, it just does not benefit society as a whole. Sure, I mean, that's the irony that I was talking about. We want people to be free, which is just an abstract value, okay? Yeah, we want people to be free, but free with no healthcare, free with no jobs, with very bad salaries, where big companies basically they actually profit from the sacrifice of millions of people. I mean, in Chile, the situation is really so unequal that it's morally, morally unacceptable. And I think at the end of the day, what happened on Sunday is that morally, the whole population, including the elite, they realize we cannot sustain this anymore. I mean, it's been so bad. I was in Chile actually a couple of times during the last year. The level of this combination of the social depression, people said about the situation of the country all these years of sacrifice and people were not able to fulfill the expectations of the social contract that I'm going to have a good job. I'm going to raise children. They're going to go to college. I'm going to buy a car. I'm going to have a house that is dignified. All that didn't exist for so many years. So we're talking about people here. We're not talking about ideologies. So that's why we have that 80% of support last Sunday. This is not about the political parties. This is about the human lives of 17 million Chilean people. So I have hope for the future of my home country. I believe that what happened on Sunday is the beginning of a new era. I'm convinced about that because the mobilization was so wide and broad that nobody will be able to stop that. Hopefully we won't have more violence. Violence was horrible for so many families, for police officers, for protesters, for young people. Horrible. So we expect that the repression level will be decreased. We expect police reform. We expect justice for so many police officers that had committed so many violations of human rights. Not only now, during the dictatorship, oh my God, those cases are still open. But still, I think we have a lot of lessons to learn from what happened last Sunday. Well, I'm so happy for you. I'm happy for you and all the people of Chile. And I'm happy about the message, the encouraging message it sends to all of us about what's possible. And I'm so thankful that you had time to join us today. I know you are working in a thousand different directions, especially running up to the elections in the states on the third. So thank you so much, Patricio. I just want to remind our viewers that Patricio Zamorano is co-director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. Coja.org, correct? And so thank you again. And I hope all of you join us every Wednesday, noon time, Easter, 9 a.m. Pacific on Code Pink's YouTube channel. This is what the F is going on in Latin America. Thanks again, Patricio. So wonderful to talk with you. Thank you so much. And I invite all viewers, just go to coja.org, coha.org. We do analysis every week about what's going on in Latin America. So thank you so much for listening and thank you so much, Terry, for the invitation. It's always a pleasure to dialogue with you about what's going on in Latin America. Well, you as well. Thanks again. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.