|
FAÇADE POLITICS
Back in the 70s and 80s, under Pinochet’s rule, a series of neoliberal reforms were implemented in Chile. This set of reforms was conceived mainly by a bunch of Chicago’s alumni under the influence of Milton Friedman.
The results of this experiment had mixed results. A great portion of the population was indeed able to come out of poverty, and GDP per capita grew to become the highest in Latin America. But this apparent success was happening at the same time as natural resources and most of the public companies were sold for peanuts (most of the guys doing the selling happened to also be doing the buying); the pension system was also privatized in a way that only benefited those that administered the funds; the private sector did not invest in research and innovation and instead rented from natural resources and market manipulation, and wealth and income inequality deteriorated even further and became one of the worst in the world.
So, two separate countries started to consolidate, one made to measure for the elite and another, very different, for the rest. One group had access to decent private education, excellent private health, and good urban infrastructure, the “other country”, instead, had to put up with meagre salaries, bad pensions, poor housing, terrible public transport, second class health and education, lack of opportunities, and so on. In sum, while half of the working population earns the minimum wage or less (this includes two thirds of all working women), the top 1% take home around a third of the national income. Our current president, a billionaire of course, belongs to this later bunch.
It was in this context, that at the end of last year a group of “experts” in charge of setting public transport fares decided to make a small raise, literally 30 pences. And for some reason, out of all other possible reasons, this one was the one that sparked a massive outburst of discontent that quickly became a riot. What followed was a mixture of violent and peaceful protests, culminating in a march that brought over a million people to the streets of Santiago, forcing the right-wing government to concede the unthinkable: a plebiscite to change Pinochet’s constitution, which was still in force after 30 years of “democracy”. This was followed at the beginning of March by another “million march”, this time organized by women against gender-based violence and inequality. So things were getting extremely interesting, and then COVID-19 came along…
Since the beginning of the protests there was some looting and arson, mainly in the periphery and also in some commercial centres of big cities, led by a large group of [mainly] marginalised young people. Santiago was the hardest hit, and as a reaction some of the better off financial and commercial districts of the city started to board up in anticipation. At the end, the riots never quite made it to these parts of town (which were in any case heavily guarded by the police and even the military) so the buildings remained boarded up for months unscathed, creating a rather telling new facade that interacted between this mostly private “affluent” generic architecture and the “other country”. This set of photographs is an attempt to create a registry of this new temporary condition. |